Family

It felt like a crazy thing to do. Prepare and perform a concert with the three people I love the most, weeks before our daughter gets married, on the free weekend between our son's big job interviews, and in the tiny breather between the opera season and the audition tour.

But it was our only chance, and we took it. And we all had an amazing time. In our own varied and idiosyncratic ways, we way we love the music is all mixed in with the way we love each other.

Don played his trumpet in that heartfelt and elegant way only he can. He and I engaged in some corny musical humor in an attempt to embarrass our progeny. Lexi sang and brought us to tears. Ben coaxed music and lyrics out of his guitar in a way that few software programmers can. We sang four-part lullabies that I crooned to the kids when they were babies. It was sweet, it was fun, it was us.

House Concert, Wolf Trap Style

Another great house concert night in the blue room last night.

 

Woody Guthrie, Adele, Jackson Browne, Louis Moreau Gottschalk, Cy Coleman, Jason Robert Brown, Jamie Cullum, Billy Joel, Yo La Tengo, India.Arie, Crooked Fingers, The Avett Brothers, Leonard Cohen.

Piano, 3 guitars, banjo, uke, drums and singing singing singing.

My piano (and my brain, to tell the truth) needed a little break from woodshedding crazy hard licks in opera scores, and tonight was just the right palate-cleanser.  Thanks, guys!

 
 

House Concert 2/14/10

a.k.a. Valentine's Cabaret 2010 a.k.a. "Sunday in the Music Room with Room" (with apologies to Mr. Sondheim and George)

An amazing array of singing, in which my adult daughter and her friends allowed this accompanist to participate.

House Concert #1!

Plans are underway for the Valentine's Day Cabaret.  10 amazing singer friends and their guests.  Song list under development.

This will inaugurate this spring's monthly house concert series.  More details to follow!

Sad Songs

Following my nose and my ear, I'm rediscovering my extreme preference for minor keys.

I'm generally a sunny person (well, not these last few weeks, but that's another story). So I find it odd that when I casually surf through the piano music on my shelf, d minor wins out over A major, hands down.  Modal is even better sometimes.

There's something about minor keys that feels honest, transparent, un-self-conscious.  Major keys exhaust me with their relentness perkiness, and the inevitable sameness of their cheer.  So don't sorry about all of that sad music coming out of my piano. It completes me.

Don't Fight It

Feeling an inexplicable amount of mental fatigue and emotional weight all week, and unable to work it off at the piano.  So I retreated inside it, with Adam Guettel's Myths and Hymns.  ""Awaiting You", "There's a Land" and "Migratory V."

Aloft and in formation,
A migratory V.
How wonderful if that's what God could see.

Words

I was out of town for work on the weekend, away from the piano.  But airplane time = time with my iPod and its ever-evolving Folk/Rock/Alternative playlist.  Some deletions, some surprises.  But one thing remains clear.

My love affair with vocal music begins (and almost ends) with words.  Opera and art song aside, I have very little use for singing if the words don't grab me around the neck.  So if I ever manage to reclaim my songwriting muse in my dotage, it will be first through lyrics.