wedding

In the summer of 2005, I was commissioned by an old college friend to write an arrangement of the Irish folksong, The Minstrel Boy. That same college friend got married last weekend in Milwaukee and yours truly was in the wedding choir (my second in as many weeks).

Never having been to Milwaukee I decided to drive around a bit and see what I could find. Since I didn't have a bunch of time I made it to a Caribou Coffee (see previous entry) and a sushi restaurant called Samurai. Despite the fact that I was next to Lake Michigan (as opposed to right on a coast somewhere) the sushi was excellent.













Now, your normal wedding reception fare usually consists of a chicken breast, steamed green beans and a potato of some sort (usually mashed). Not so at this gathering. They served this amazing plate of pot roast, chicken Kiev (I think), risotto and vegetables. It was unbelievably good.













Another highlight of this particular wedding was that Tony wrote a brand new piece for his wife. Myself and 6 other men sang it for their candle lighting. How many world premieres take place at weddings!?













Congratulations Tony and Katherine!

the good land

My LASIK surgery went amazing. I can't overstate how easy it was...I was under the enormous-straight-out-of-Goldfinger laser for less than 10 minutes. Totally painless and instantly better vision. It was like a miracle...no lie. I drove later that night. But what's really freaky is how much I've been missing out on without perfect vision. In my case I couldn't see things far away without glasses or contacts. Once they shot my eyes with laser beams things farther than 100 yards away took on an incredible amount of detail that I didn't even know existed. Way cool. I'm obsessed with leaves.

I'm currently sitting in an anonymous Caribou Coffee in Milwaukee (which is Algonquian for "the good land") pissing away a few hours on my laptop before I have to sing at a friend's wedding. Needless to say, there isn't much to talk about, but thanks to The Onion, I can share this little beauty with you.

The tag line reads: Disgruntled Ninja Silently Kills 12 Co-Workers

take a breather

I finished work on Renascence Monday and sent it off. Damn that feels good. I might just be composing music because I'm addicted to the feeling of being done (although hearing it performed for the first time is pretty awesome). I'm on a tight schedule for the rest of the year, though, since the final volume of Color Madrigals are due at the drop of the new year. This, of course, means that I'll need to get them done before then so I can ring in 2008 with style instead of stressed. Anyway...

I'm going in for LASIK eye surgery tomorrow (something which will definitely provide this tired, verbose blog with some long-needed pictures). I forgot to ask if they can videotape the surgery because I most definitely want to see what it looked like when I intentionally let someone take a knife to my eyeballs and then shoot laser beams into them. I'll be all whacked out on on whatever they give me so I'm sure I won't notice. Supposedly they give you these enormous goggles to wear afterwards so you don't touch your eyes in your sleep. If they let me keep them I'm going to try and incorporate them into my Halloween costume for this year. Last year I was Fraternity Party Moses:













You can't see it in the picture but the back of my shirt says "Drink 'Til The Bush Talks" and I had a sweet walking staff to smite the Pharaoh with. I'm thinking something along the lines of Tennis Player Jesus this year. Maybe Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter? Who knows?

So it's off to start working on those madrigals. I'll be done with John Keats for a while for sure.

In other news I found a multi-track recording of David's Lamentation by a guy named Curtis Allen from I-don't-know-where singing all 8 parts. You can find it here. He doesn't go for the soprano 1 high 'A' at the climax but, thankfully, no mortal man past puberty has the ability to do that anymore. Times have changed. Mahalo.

still working...

I'm still slogging away on my piece for Ankeny High School. I think it's going to be a blast to sing and hopefully I've done justice to the poetry. I'm on track for my Monday deadline (it's my hope that putting this on the internets will make me actually meet this deadline). Of course this really means Sunday is my last chance since Monday is a school day.

Last weekend I spent about 4 hours in St. Paul recording the score for a dance project that will premiere next week. Nicholas Lemme wrote the music (we collaborated in June 2006 when Spaghetti Western did a concert with the Singers...he played the mandolin part on my arrangement of the Irish folk tune Nell Flaherty's Drake) and Vanessa Voskui did the brilliant choreography.


















Having never worked with dancers before I will just say that it was an eye-opening experience to say the least. Although both aspects of the project (music and dance) are interesting on their own, it is the synergy of the 2 that makes it interesting. If I can I'm going to try and make it to the performance.

In other news it turns out that I got a bump from Minnesota Public Radio yesterday when they played a performance of my Color Madrigals, vol. 1 around 3:30 or so. Thanks to Matthew Culloton for commissioning them and The Singers: MN Choral Artists for singing the bejeezus out of them. We'll finish off the whole set with the third volume in January to celebrate the 150th anniversary of my adopted state. Go Minnesota!

YouTube

YouTube is the best thing the internets have come up with. It has brought me so much joy since it was first created and it seems that it just keeps on giving.

There's the evolution of dance.

And then the Filipino prisoner version of the same video.

We can't forget "the guys on treadmills video."

One of my personal favorites: Chad Vader-Day Shift Manager.

Want to revisit the crappy themes from childhood cartoons that seem solely concerned with exposition? Look no further. YouTube has them all: Transformers, G.I. Joe, the ninja turtles and even He-Man.

How about 7 straight minutes of David Caruso's one-liners from CSI: Miami?

I love YouTube so much that I've written whole entries before praising its amazing ability to keep me at my computer for hours at a time.

However, not until recently did I feel a personal connection with Our Lady of The Internet Video. I happened upon some of my own stuff posted there by other people. Most notably a choreographed version of Musica animam tangens with The Choral Project.


They sing it really well and, even though the song doesn't have anything to do with death, it works well as a "soundtrack" to the scene the actors and dancer are portraying. They also did a cool version of my friend Matt Culloton's Famine Song.

Besides Musica, there are two different versions of David's Lamentation floating around as well. One is a really nice performance in Belfast, Northern Ireland by a high school choir from Washington state (Go Knights!)


The other is by a choir called Limited Edition (which Google knew nothing about).


Thank you, YouTube. You have brought me joy as well as a myriad of excuses to be lethargic and drink coffee.

As for actual work, I've got somewhere between 50-60 percent of Renascence done. It's due in 2 weeks and I'm on track. Hee-haw!

out of the frying pan...

It's been WAY too long since I've posted so I'm long overdue. I just started writing a piece on an Edna St. Vincent Millay poem called Renascence. I'm only using an excerpt of it (because it's WAY long) but I think it's going to turn out to be a really nice piece. It will be premiered next spring/winter by the Ankeny High School choir under the direction of Brandon Dean (who graduated, like me, from Luther College...go Norse!). They are a really great group so it's a pleasure to write something for them.

There's really not that much else to report. Since all my trips this year happen near the end of the season I doubt I'll have many photos or posts for a while. On the plus side I just posted a fantastic recording of the Young New Yorkers' Chorus performing their commissioned work, Sleeping Out: Full Moon on the MySpace page. They really did a fantastic job. You can read about my trip to hang out with them here, here and here.

Pavarotti

As a whole bunch of you know, Pavarotti died last week. In a blog like this I don't need to say much about how that voice will never be heard again. This is a bit delayed but...check this out.

Okay, that was just a bit of fun. If you're interested you should check out THE REAL VERSION...Puccini and Pavarotti would have been best friends on a musical level even if they hated everything else about each other.














p.s. Aretha's version is pretty amazing too.