Aftermath 6, The Kindness of Strangers...

Sunday, I took off from work. The head cold won for a day...or at least I let it think it won for a day.  I slept in until about 8:00.  Yes, I set my clock back before I went to bed.  Every fall, I much prefer this to doing so after I sleep.  It somehow makes the night and that extra hour seem longer.  I can change the time when I'm in a quasi-somnambulistical state, forget I did, and then wake up at a regular time but feel like I've had more sleep.  Anyway, that amount of sleep, almost 9 full hours, seemed to get rid of the aches, most of the snot and a even a tad bit of the coughing.  I'd say by tomorrow morning I'll be closer to 100%.

I wanted to do something, and have wanted to do something all week, with my good fortune following this storm.  Knowing it'd be Wednesday before I could go anywhere that needed help, I opted to donate clothing Sunday because I heard my church was picking things up and taking them to communities in our area, Red Hook and other places on the waterfront.  I also wanted to go to church, even though I told my choir director I wouldn't be there for rehearsal.  Just felt like I needed to be there.  After the harrowing images and stories from this week, and knowing that some of my fellow congregants were affected, I needed to sort of touch base and hear everyone's stories.  Some of the members got up and spoke about their respective adventures throughout the storm.  One woman had a tree on her house and just happened to have taken her family out for dinner that night while the storm was just starting to get bad, so no one was in the house when it happened.  Another, our junior minister, was in the E. Village when the substation exploded on 14th Street. Sounded like it was pretty exciting and scary.  He was outside and, like many others, saw the sky light up blue before all the power went out. 

 I wanted to write a blog at some point sort of encompassing my entire experience with the storm and its aftermath and some reflections.  But it's hard to really know where to start and stop.  For example, the news coverage angle never really stops.  We went straight into election coverage and now there's a Nor'easter slamming the city as if Sandy wasn't enough...it's actually snowing outside right now.  WTF?

Two realizations have come from this experience.  One has to do with the over-arching dilemma of how inefficient and sometimes one-sided news coverage can be and even if it is thorough on some news outlets, how easy it is to assume the one bit of coverage you happen to watch is the entire picture.  For example, I've heard so many sound bites from angry Rockaway Beach residents (whom we've given a chance to shout at the camera and make their voice heard regarding the inefficiency or non-existence of the clean up effort) and, forgetting for a moment that they probably don't have electricity to watch TV coverage of the storm cleanup, it makes you think that, wow, the government is really dropping the ball here, or why hasn't their been any relief out there?  But, stay on the channel for a while, and you'll hear all sorts of reports about how quick and efficient the government response has been to the worst hit areas or how ordinary people are helping out in so many ways.  I saw a story that moved me quite a bit, the local Sikh community in Staten Island were some of the first people (in fact, maybe the first), to go out and serve food to people who were without power and whose homes were destroyed.  The Southern Baptists even came up to serve food to displaced residents in Staten Island.  So, there are amazing things happening and those sensationalized sound bites are merely one side of a story.

I also heard that the gas lines were crazy.  One man was arrested for brandishing a gun at a man who complained when he jumped the line.  But every interview our reporters have fielded from the lines, people seem to understand why the lines are there, why this is happening and they are not angry.  One man said, "so many others have it so bad, so what is it to me to have to wait in line for a few hours?"

It's interesting how people can take one bit of information and run with it without consideration as to whether that bit of information is truth, only a tiny piece of the reality, or a complete falsehood. This is a can of worms indeed so I won't go so far into it.  Suffice it to say that there are far more than even two sides to every story.  While some things as far as cleanup and relief have been inefficient and some bad things have happened post Sandy, I personally choose not to firestorm the government agencies and whomever else because I have had a chance to see several interviews with the local officials over the past few days and I see how big and multifaceted this clean up effort is.  Getting the subways back online in a timely manner itself is a massive feat of engineering and quite frankly, I think the MTA officials are genius for having the presence of mind to shut down the subway to safeguard the equipment.  We are up and running at almost full status as of just about a week later and I'm probably never going to be so quick to complain about a late train for at least a couple of months now that I've been listening to what goes in to keeping the system running 24/7 like it does...the inconvenience of being without it for a few days notwithstanding.  
 
I acknowledge however that I have a pretty comfortable spot to survey this all from and perhaps I would feel differently if my home had been swept away and I was dealing with a range of emotions over the loss and needed somewhere to direct that.  I get it.  But that's just my perspective and I'm aware that it can't be easy to lose so much.  At least three of my co workers had their homes flooded and are dealing with cleaning that up and salvaging what they can.   It's heart wrenching. 

The other realization ties pretty closely in and it has to do with my own reaction to the storm's effects on this community I live in.  I'll preface this by saying that I've seen this in rooms full of people watching news coverage of past storm cleanup efforts a dozen times before over the years.  Every time this argument comes up and I have to pause when I hear it.  Those people in the evacuation zones who are stranded without power, with destroyed homes, what are they even doing there?  They should have evacuated, it's their own fault, how can they expect government help, yadda yadda blah blah blah.   It's almost cliche at this point.   But, my response to that after being this close to a situation like this is this, and it comes straight from Buddhism: we should be compassionate toward people without judgement.  Especially since some of those people either couldn't evacuate because they are elderly, or maybe they weren't even in an evacuation zone but just happened to be affected or couldn't get out once the storm got bad and they closed the bridges so they hunkered down.  The point is, you don't know someone's situation and you can't presume to condemn them and say they are undeserving or they just want a handout.  If someone's drowning, you don't ask what they're doing in the water.  You jump in and try to save them as best as you can.  Ask questions later.  This is what I've seen so many in this city doing over the course of the last week and it's amazingly uplifting.  We as a society should be more like this all the time.  That's a slice of Ana's sermon on Sunday at the UU church.  Kind of this call to not stop at donating clothes and canned goods.  And I agree and I also think it should extend to more than just storm relief.  I'll leave it at that for now though.  I don't much care for proselytizing or grand-standing.  I just feel like we as humans are at our best when we are compassionate toward each other rather than when we are being isolationist or selfish. 

With that, I'm going to photograph this insanity outside my window and get back to troubleshooting my audio/MIDI equipment problems.  And also share with you a wonderful piece of news that I got last night as I was starting my shift at work:  I just booked another voice over gig!  My 9th paid gig in almost as many months and the first one I'll be going into Manhattan to record at a studio.  It's an internet ad for a young adult novel.  I'll let you know how that goes.  The session is Monday at noon.  Talk soon!

Massive update...

I've neglected to post a few fun things that I've done in the past few days along with a few general updates so I thought I'd write something.  The weekend was a busy one, between work, working on the score for the sci-fi short I'm doing, and a tiny bit of socializing, but also, Sunday was jam packed with musical stuff. 

While I did not sing for the Brooklyn Unitarian's Palm Sunday service, I did attend and it was well worth waking up early.  They sang selections from Handel's messiah with a full string orchestra, trumpets, tympani and harpsichord (played by my multi-talented choir director Bill Peek).  The piece, while known for being performed in religious settings was actually conceived as an oratorio.  Written in under a month the piece consists of three movements and, interestingly, was composed for a small ensemble at first and only later adapted for the large orchestras we're so accustomed to hearing perform the piece.  So Sunday's performance seemed fitting as it was a small choir and a small instrumental ensemble.  But the piece still moved me and felt powerful enough.  Sidebar, I'm not really religious in the traditional sense, so I can't say it was the subject matter of the piece.  The Hallelujah Chorus from the end of the second movement, though it's probably one of the most recognized choral works in the traditional repertoire, is still profound.  I think hearing it with such a small ensemble in such an intimate setting makes a difference too. 

On top of all of this, I'm proud of the Unitarian Church's choir, because they sounded amazing.  It's times like this that I wish I had all the time in the world to do everything.  I wanted to be up there singing with them.  To me, music is definitely a serious career but indeed, it is also a hobby.  And I wish I could always have opportunities to treat it as such.  Getting paid to write music is an amazing feeling and I've worked hard to achieve it.  But, rehearsing with an ensemble and performing beautiful music for the sake of it is something that I always will need and want in my life. 

After leaving church, I was headed to the Village to catch the extremely talented Tania Stavreva in a production of The Tempest put on by the Onomatopoeia Theater Company and my friend Thomas Gordon.  A friend from church was headed that way as well and agreed to have lunch with me.  She even suggested a place that happened to be right next to the Player's Theater where the performance was taking place.  It was called the Olive Tree Cafe. A great place with really great art on the walls, silent films being projected (Charlie Chaplin while I was eating there), and tables that could be drawn on with chalk.  Mostly Mediterranean food but it was good and it was good catching up with my friend before the play.  Since it was right next door, too, I was able to take my time with lunch.   

The performance incorporated modern elements (most notably casual nods to the setting, an office instead of a desert island, complete with references to the king of Mahattan and the Duchess of Brooklyn instead of Naples and Milan respectively) and music, performed by Tania Stavreva (some of it composed by her as well).  It was a lot of fun and the cast was great. 

Incidentally, as I was settling into my seat and the play was starting, someone popped into the door of the tiny theater room that I did not expect to see at all.  An old friend from graduate school, Rachel, who lives in Washington Heights now and whom I hardly ever get to see.  She knew someone in the play apparently.  So, that was really great getting to catch up with her after the show.

Part of the reason I came to the show was to finally give Tania the score to my new piece that we will be performing on May 10th at Galapagos Art Space in DUMBO at this show.  I'm incredibly psyched about that but also somewhat nervous.  It's going to be a logistical nightmare but if we can pull it off it should be rewarding.  As I may or may not have mentioned, there's going to be some pretty complex electronics for the piece.  Complex only logistically speaking.  I'm going to be looping Tania and she's going to play over top of herself.  In addition, I'm going to be performing triggering samples of her earlier performance, which I decided to capture at a rehearsal and not during the actual performance.  This will give me time to edit the samples and morph them however I see fit and then map them to my MIDI keyboard.  There's a program called Max/MSP that I used in graduate school that I could probably use to achieve these ends while performing live but I'd either have to program a patch myself or borrow someone else's patch.  For a later performance of the piece I may go this route.  God knows it'd be fun to delve back into Max/MSP, considering I haven't used it since the graduate school days.  Even then, I could barely program using it and was borrowing patches here and there.  I have a program by Native Instruments called Reaktor that is sort of similar, at least in some of its functionality and interfacing but in fact, very different, that I could also use but, to be honest, I've been so slammed lately that I've barely had time to learn how to use the latest piece of MIDI equipment I've bought, the FCB1010 MIDI footswitch.  I'm even writing a blog for the main webpage about the damn thing and I still haven't even finished that!

So, it's becoming clear to me that I need about 6 more hours in every day to fit in all the things I want to do with my life and my career.  Meanwhile, I've been plugging away at the score for the sci-fi short, having just finished the first set of ideas to pitch to the director to see if he likes where I'm going.  That means I get a little respite this evening because there's no point in working anymore until he's responded and let me know I'm either on the right track or way off.  I'm also meeting with the documentary filmmaker who's asked me to score her 90 minute documentary on trailblazing nuns.  That's tomorrow at 6pm. 

And on one final note, related to voice over, I finally got some more attention from voice123.com.  Someone asked me today to resubmit one of the auditions that I sent in yesterday.  They were looking for two more takes because the first, while they thought it was a good read, was a little flat to them.  Now I wait for their response to my resubmission.  Wish me luck with that.

When this is all over at the end of May and I have a little extra money in my pocket, I'm seriously buying a new desk chair because the one I'm currently sitting in as I type this causes me to slouch something awful and I have to deliberately tell myself to sit up every five minutes.  I'll leave you with this, though, the most recent fruits of my labor, the official Youtube release of the opening scene of the pilot episode of "The Life," complete with music by yours truly.  Good night for now!

Caffeinated...

Yerba Mate can be my salvation when doing these overnight shifts.  It has just enough caffeine so that I can push my way through the last 8 hours of a 24 hour period of wakefulness that is often only broken up, as in the case of today, by a meager 40 minute nap.  A nap that was interrupted by my precious and wonderful cat scratching around in the litter box.  She seriously has some kind of compulsion where, after she uses the litter box, she repeatedly wacks her front paws against the side of the box, probably in attempt to dislodge little disgusting granules of cat litter with no regard to the fact that I'm sleeping like a BABY!  Or that I was sleeping like a baby, that is.

I'm in a little early tonight and working on the laptop in my "office" overlooking 9th Avenue.  Okay, so it's just a conference room that I have no claim on that happens to reach Google's guest wifi.  Anyway, I spent a lot of time last night looking up alternatives to a plugin that comes with Mainstage that's used for looping.  I have it all set up as such (see blog on main webpage here), and yet I'm having issues with record latency so I've downloaded two open source plugins, one called Sooper Looper and the other Mobius.  Tonight I'm going to be devouring all I can about the two.

This week, Mohammad and I will try and do a test screening Sides of the Track on the big screen.  If not, this week, then next.  It's still not solid yet when we will do it, but expect impressions on that once it happens.  I'm excited to see and hear it in a big theater.

And, with any luck, I'll have some updates on the state of the apartment that will not include rants about interrupted sleep.   I anticipate work being done during the day tomorrow and Tuesday, outside and I'm hoping that my super and his guys will be working demolishing the walls and ceiling in my cousin's room.  I implored him not to come on Monday or Tuesday but to definitely come at some point and, even if they aren't yet finished on the outside, to at least start cleaning up the mold and disgusting-ness inside.  Hopefully, that will pan out in the best possible way.  I have a guest coming to stay with me this coming Saturday.  Let's just say the apartment is going to be a little bit crowded if Katrina can't sleep in her own room.

All this has gotten me thinking about my luck lately. I've got so much floating up in the air right now, from little things like the payment for the Celiac disease study to much bigger things like the resolution of the apartment debacle, that I can't wait for it all to just resolve itself and have found myself hoping that at least something will work out for the better.  Because I've had a handful of other things come to rather disappointing resolutions lately, not all of which I will talk about here.  Have you ever gotten that feeling like several things are about to happen and any number of them could go any way?  Yeah, I have that now.  And it's the anticipation that drives me nuts.  You almost stop caring about the outcome out of a sheer desire for something to just happen already!  But then, I feel like sooner or later, my luck just has to change and maybe something will turn out the way I had hoped.  With the apartment situation, I just wish I could be comfortable again soon whatever the outcome is.  With my music, I just want new jobs and to pick up some momentum on my own projects.  With voice over, I just wish I had the time to devote to it and could finish my new demo on my own.

The good news is, and I hesitate to say too much about this but, I came up with a musical idea today that may actually turn into something.  I was sitting in church this morning and our new interim minister was reciting a Rumi poem that really hit me, so I googled it on my phone, copied it and pasted it into an email to myself.  While I was sitting with Jennie after brunch, enjoying the weather, and waiting on our friend Dawn to meet us, I read it out loud and it still resonated.  So, this evening, while I was laying in bed trying to drift back off to sleep after my at woke me up, a melody and accompaniment started to swim around in my head.   Ultimately, this is what made me finally give up on the tossing and turning and catapult myself out of bed and toward the piano.  I plunked out the idea I had and luckily it fit the first few lines quite well.  I played through a few things and scrawled out my ideas on some staff paper that I keep on the piano.  Tomorrow I plan to drop it into Sibelius and flesh it out a little (or a lot) and we'll just see where it goes.  The rest should fall into place as long as I still like it when I sit down with it tomorrow evening.

All in an afternoon's work.  That having been given away, I hope soon to have something basic I can show to my choir director and maybe we can get another piece of mine premiered before the end of the year.  I think the choral music might become a staple for me since I have a definite outlet for it.  It's hard to write my chamber pieces without any idea of when or how I could get them performed.  The piano works of mine are probably going to become another important area for me, especially piano with electronics, now that Tania and I are working together so closely.  She wants to premier something new at a concert in Feburary and we are planning on doing the Rhythmic Movement concert again at some point later in the year.

Anyway, I'd better go for now.  Hope this rambling blog made some sense.  Cohesion is not my forte in the wee small hours.

A musical day...

So, I'm about to tweak a few things on the film score mix because a composer's work is apparently never done. I dreaded listening to the mix after I submitted it for exactly this reason. But last night I was showing Karishma and a crucial part was not coming through the mix strongly enough. Plus, I just spoke to the director, who submitted the film yesterday to both Sundance and the Big Apple Film Festival, and he had a few extra ideas once he heard I was in an editing mindset. But that's okay. Perfectionism can be a good thing. At least it's not procrastination.

And speaking of, I don't want to procrastinate since I'm free of one job and essentially don't have anything big on my plate. So I spent most of last evening trying to figure out why my notation program wouldn't open. Turns out there was some background process interfering with Sibelius. I need to be able to edit my scores though so that was something I definitely wanted to work out. I'm planning on diving into at least three different pieces. I want to tweak a piano sketch that I finished writing this year, write a new choral piece for which I have no lyrics yet and finish a chamber piece with electronics that I started the year I moved to NYC.

On top of that, I'm playing three hymns on piano at the Brooklyn Unitarian church on Sunday so I need to practice today and then Lacy is coming so we can practice a little and maybe play Bar 82 or scope out another open mic to play.

So, it's going to be a pretty [insert title of blog entry here].

Goings on and other fun things...

I've really gotta catch you guys up don't I? I've been hard at work on the film score for a while, mixing and remixing, recorded the oud player the other day and we may do some more recording, plus things are really ramping up with Lacy and we've been playing more consistently at open mics and working on her new stuff and some covers (We just played "Anthem" by Leonard Cohen at this week's Bar 82 open mic). So, things are crazy. I've kind of been trying to build up things to talk about in the next newsletter, which, get excited, is coming up soon!

In the past week, I've had some fun times though in addition to all the work. Monday night, the 4th of July, I went to a cookout at my friend Kirsten's, whom I know from undergraduate days and with whom I reconnected at the Unitarian Church last spring. Met two electronic musicians both named Phil while there and hung out most of the afternoon and all of the evening up until I had to go to work the overnight shift. Some of the Unitarian folks were there too and we all got talking about going to see a concert in Prospect Park, most likely this one, and doing other cool Brooklyn summer things (God, I love this borough!).

Tuesday nights are always fun when I go to Adriana Rizzolo's yoga class at Abhaya. Wednesday night, Lacy and I went to Bar 82 to play the open mic as usual. We did a new song of hers and the Cohen tune, which went over well. Our organizer, Wayne, was highly complimentary of our performance. The rest of the open mic got a bit rowdy but we stuck around until the end. Now, I'm really wishing we hadn't because my very good friend Crystal Bright was in town with her band Crystal Bright and the Silver Hands playing not one but three shows. I stupidly didn't look at the second Facebook invite she put out which announced the three shows as part of her band's whole tour. The first Facebook invite only mentioned the show last night which was at Pete's Candy Store. There was one Tuesday at Pianos and one Wednesday at The Delancey. Man, what a good show at Pete's though. She plays accordion and keys at the same time while balancing a musical saw between her knees and a Ugandan stringed instrument on her nose and occasionally drops it all to pick up a drum she got from Argentina...all with a spectacular backing band. If any of you anywhere ever get the chance to see Crystal's band, go see them, or else! You won't regret it. I had a great time and the other band headlining were great too, Tin Pan. Check them out as well. They rocked the place clean in half with their raucous 1920's style swing. They even sing songs about pirates and toss used CDs at the crowd if you answer pop culture questions correctly between their songs. I caught four.

The ride on the G train home and subsequent walk through downtown Brooklyn because the G wasn't running all the way to Park Slope, was worth it.

This evening, while tired, I'm excited because Tania and I are getting closer and closer to the show we've been talking about for months. I won't give away too much yet but we're working on getting more press on the event. Here's a link to a Daily News blurb about it. We're meeting tomorrow to discuss rehearsals, etc. The show itself is on the 27th of July, a Wednesday night at the Metropolitan Room in the heart of the Flatiron district. So please come all you New Yorkers...and you too mom and dad. I know you'll be up here in the city!

Other than that, some exciting news on the health front: I just had my first appointment with the Celiac experts at Columbia U and I am happy to report that this is the best doctor I've had since both moving to NYC and being diagnosed with this disorder. I spent about an hour and a half there and an hour and fifteen minutes of that was spent talking to the doctor. So, I'm happy about that, especially since I left with Dr. Peter Green's expansive tome on Celiac which is more informative than anything I've read on the subject. Happier days are on the way.

That having been said, I must get some sleep.

Before most of you would have woken up if it were your day off...

Something peaceful about a casual walk through several neighborhoods and a rest in a park to cap off a morning of hard work and productivity. I just got back from dropping off a few books at the Central Library in Brooklyn, first walking through Park Slope from 4th Avenue up Union Street to the library, then sitting on a park bench by Grand Army and reading a bit of my weekly magazine and then walking from there through Prospect Heights briefly before catch the 3 train back to Atlantic Avenue. It's also nice that my day off can feel leisurely and busy at the same time. Of course, I did have to get up at 7:00 am for a yoga class, like the yogi rock star I've been lately, so that I'd have time to polish off most of the other tasks I had on my to do list before Lacy got here at 2:00 pm. Anyway, poor Lacy's effing car got towed so she had to alter her plans and take a bus to the city and is meeting me in Tompkins Square Park in about an hour and a half. We'll probably try to run a few things out there before heading to Bar 82 for the open mic at 7:00 pm.

This morning, post yoga, I grabbed a bottle Tea's Tea at the bodega on my walk back to the train and headed home. Fried up some eggs with toast and sat at the computer to write this. Then, I penned some program notes and came up with a new title ("Moon, Tides, Cycles") for my piano and electronics piece that Tania will be performing in July. After that, I hooked up the mic, setup the portable sound booth and recorded a handful of auditions for some voice123.com jobs. Once satisfied with those, I took down my setup and moved it into the living room, miked the piano and hooked it up to the laptop and my M-Audio Axiom keyboard and MIDI controller and toyed with MainStage, an application used for live performance through your laptop. The aim was to get it setup so that I could use my laptop to perform the electronics part of the piece, using my keyboard's controllers to fade in and out and pan left and right. Sounded awesome, by the way. And programming it all in Mainstage was a piece of cake. I love my Macbook! I'm going to be writing another blog entry tomorrow about that on the new site as well.

All this, and I still have plenty going on tonight! Don't worry, I plan on sleeping at some point. Tonight after Bar 82, I'm having Ethiopian Food in the village at Meskerem and then heading across the street to the Grisley Pear for a bluegrass jam session. Should be fun!

This Sunday, I'm actually playing guitar at the Brooklyn Unitarian Church for their Juneteenth service. More on that later. Huzzah!

Many hats...

I'm sitting at one of my favorite coffee shops in the village right now (The West Village) killing time between working Technicolor this morning and working at NY1 this afternoon, drinking mate and charging my phone. Yes, I can do all these things and type a blog. I'm pretty sure I just saw Keri Russell on the street on the way here too. Which is weird because she was in August Rush and one of the films I screened this morning at Technicolor had Freddie Highmore in it who was also in August Rush. Weird coincidence. She had a very floppy hat on to hide her face but I saw it was her.

Speaking of hats, (kick ass segue I just thought up) I've always worn many hats in my professional life. Currently, I'm a projectionist, broadcast media operator, composer, performer and voice recording artist (I used to joke that I was like Tyler Durden from Fight Club because of the multiple jobs and that one of them was a projectionist job). I am all these things to varying degrees. Because I can't be them all at 100% I've recently realized. I was starting to get a little overwhelmed last night in fact, which somewhat prompted me to write this blog. Last night, despite being sleep deprived from the night before and having to switch my sleep schedule around so that I was waking up when I usually get off work, I couldn't sleep. Juggling so many of these things, having a professional career, a side career, music as a hobby and then trying to have a social life as well can be daunting. So, in a moment of clarity, I thought it might be a good idea, instead of tossing and turning, to do a little exercise in compartmentalization. Dividing my life into five categories seemed to be the way to go.

1. Professional Career, i.e. day job.
2. Side Career, i.e. voice over and composition
3. Music as a hobby, i.e. performing with Lacy and singing with the choir, as well as working on my own live music projects
4. Social life, including dating
5. My health.

The reason I put health up here is that it's important to me that I remain healthy and if my focus is taken up by too many of these things my health will suffer, no doubt. Not only from lack of sleep, negative effects of stress could really put a damper on things quickly. It becomes necessary to put all these things in an order of priority then for this exercise to have any real effect on my life. Of course, health is always going to be in slot number 1 or 2 because of how important it is to me to remain healthy. It is also necessary to point out that if one of these "hats" is lower in ranking it doesn't necessarily mean I don't work on it or that I neglect it entirely. It merely means that I work on it next, after I finish working on those things that are higher ranking. Or if there's a day where I have a limited amount of time, items that are lower in ranking just might not get worked on. On any given day (well, day of my work week), my day job will of course be in slot 1 or 2. And all the other things will fall somewhere else on the scale. Health will always waver between 1 and 2, likelier to be in slot 1 on days when I'm not feeling myself.

This system, now that I've worked it out, should keep me slightly more sane, in theory, because I won't be hassling myself if I don't get to work on a particular project on a given day. And I will be making sure that I keep things in perspective. And that alone should reduce stress significantly. Particularly the kind of stress that makes me toss and turn when I know in my mind that I should be tired enough to fall right off to sleep.

At the moment, for example, here is my current ranking: 1. Health, 2. Professional Career 3. Social Life 4. Side Career 5. Music as a hobby. The reasons: health is 1 because I'm feeling a little off today from lack of sleep. Professional Career because first, I'm working extra shifts and freelance at Technicolor this week, and second because I'm job hunting…shhhhhh. Social Life is 3 because I've started seeing someone and I have a few friends that are moving away or leaving town soon. 4. Side Career should be two sub-categories, music and voice over separately. Right now, I've put VO on a small hiatus while I save up for some more seminars and coaching session. I'm figuring out if I want to do a new demo for audio books or commercial work as well. Music is on an even smaller hiatus because Mohammad and I are meeting today to talk about the first bit of music I've submitted to him (sans oud) and then we have to wait until we can finish anything else because, while I have finally come by an oud, it will be a few weeks before it is in my hands. My choir director has to get his oud from his parents' house in NJ. And then I might need to re-string it. 5. Music as a hobby is on a small hiatus because Lacy and I won't rehearse until next week and I'm skipping choir Sunday to help a friend move, a friend that helped me move in back in 2009. A move that involved three very scrawny people heaving a piano up 4 steps and down a short hallway. I think I owe this friend.

Anyway, things may change with that list in a few days, but I like the idea now of having a priority list like that. It means I can more easily tell myself that it's okay that I'm not doing everything. It acknowledges that I simply can't. And I should be okay with that.

Biking and Sailing....

Got into a cleaning frenzy today and all that could stop me was the prospect of finally having some time ride my bike. So, I just got back from a round trip to the library in Grand Army Plaza, up Prospect Park West and back through the park. It feels so free to ride your bike in the park, even with the idiot pedestrians (sorry, if you're a pedestrian) wandering diagonally across the path. I still don't understand this behavior. And it was starting to rain as I was heading back, though not pouring. It was just right.

Anyway, I took today off work so I could make it to see a concert, part of the First Acoustics series at the First UU Brooklyn. The Bob Cunningham Trio will be playing and I'll be taking a friend from work. The same trio is actually performing with the choir tomorrow morning as well for our annual jazz service. Should be fun.

I'm culminating this week with one part disappointment and two parts accomplishment. The disappointment was that I was so close to buying a Middle Eastern Oud off a guy on craigslist out of the budget from the film but the guy backed out last minute. His wife wouldn't let him sell it. But we (both Mohammad and I) are on the hunt for something else. It's looking more and more like I'll be the one to play the part on the recording. Which is totally fine with me. I'm, in fact, excited to do so.

I've gotten most of the work writing the rest of the music all but done. And that's one of the accomplishments from this week. I just edited together the beat I was working on with the subway sounds sample and the Muslim call to prayer sample mixed together and (I think) it sounds awesome! I just laid down a loop of some Darbuka playing to lead into that part as filler until I can actually lay down the tracks for the Oud part. It's all coming together!

The other accomplishment is that I sat with my VO mentor (I'm officially calling her that now) and asked some questions and got a clearer picture in my head of what my next steps should be. I've decided I'm going to keep up applying to jobs on voice123.com (even though I've had no luck) because I'm getting incredible practice out of it. Another thing she brought up is that the order of the cuts on my demo is not the best it could be, i.e. my best read is not up front. It is now. I just edited it together and cut out a glaring mispronunciation that was in one line of a museum audio guide script I read (I should be ashamed of myself). Miraculously the edit that cut out that mispronunciation somehow worked with the background music so that it doesn't sound disjointed at all.

Anyhow, I could stand to take a nap or clean more or eat dinner and I have no idea what I'll do. The sun is back out again and I have half a mind to go back out and soak it up. If only it had come out while I was still at the park. I don't get up there very often, in fact, I went the entire winter without wandering further west than 7th Avenue in Brooklyn. Sad. It's also a bit sad that I let the first three weeks of May pass without taking much advantage of the opportunities I had to get out and do things in the city. (!) I was planning on the Statue of Liberty (booked until September), the Guggenheim (missed my chance to with a friend because I was too busy that week), a boat ride of sorts (didn't have the money at the time for a Circle Line Tour at $36 for the 3-hour cruise around Manhattan) and countless other things. The boat ride keeps coming back to my mind, though, as the next fun thing. Mainly this time around because I just heard about my dad's little sailing adventure out on the Outer Banks of NC where he went to help a friend pick up a boat he had just purchased and sail it to where they were getting the bottom of the boat painted. I got a little jealous but mostly just enthused. I don't know where this desire came from. I think I've wanted to learn how to sail for a long time now, probably ever since the first time I looked on New York Harbor and saw all the sailboats out there in the summer time the first year I was here. I was talking to one of my yoga teachers about it before class the other day because there are always boats going past in the East River while I'm in class and I just struck up a conversation about it. He mentioned to me that there's a volunteer program where you can learn how to sail at the Seaport Museum by South Street Seaport, where two schooners are docked, the Pioneer and the Lettie G. Howard.

I'm going to have to look into this further. Sounds like good times. Anyway, I gotta get some dinner ready here and get ready for the concert tonight. Happy Weekend!

The beginning of another week...

Starting off another week here. The right way. Sort of. I pulled off a two hour nap after spending all of my morning and most of my afternoon at the church. It was our annual meeting today so I sat through that for two hours so I could vote on the budget at the end. After that, for the love of being outside after being cooped up for two hours, I walked with a friend one extra stop into downtown Brooklyn to Lawrence St./Metro Tech and then headed off to the co-op to pick up a few things. The 5th Avenue festival was apparently this afternoon, too, so I wandered through that for a few blocks, post co-op trip, until I couldn't stand being in the crowd anymore. Saw a band for half a minute but mostly just got grill smoke in my eyes and noted that everything there, all the food anyway, cost at least $5, more than I had in my pocket at the time.



By this point, the sun had come out and the humidity was on. So, I headed home and slept, but not before hashing out another quality to-do list for the week ahead. Items ticked off tonight other than napping: voice over! I submitted to another gig tonight (earlier, I had done one from my phone during the meeting because it didn't require a custom audition). I am potentialy meeting with a voice over friend sometime this week so we can pick each other's brains about our various processes. She's used voice123.com a lot more than I have and I come from an audio background so we should be able to help each other out a lot.

Beyond that, I'm diving into the score for Mohammad's picture tonight and the rest of this week. I'll be working mainly on the electronic part since the opening Oud solo will have to wait until our Oud player resurfaces or I can get my hands on an Oud of my own. I'm fully aware that I may be changing certain aspects of this piece to fit whatever I (or someone)end(s) up playing on the Oud. But probably no more than the key the piece is in. I have a slow, swung 4/4 beat running, with a low synth and cello playing an ominous ostinato and have been experimenting with layering samples of subway train sounds underneath (sounds awesome!). I have a sample of a call to prayer from a well known Muslim Imam that will signal the end of the animation and will segue into the electronic beat. So, it's mainly about placement of all those elements right now. The beat, I feel I need to work on choosing the sounds of my kit and the mix of everything. I may experiment with more parts other than the ostinato. Certainly the Oud will be in the mix but I'm also considering some clean delayed guitar. We shall see.

Saturday was another great open mic at Banjo Jim's. Lacy and I really rocked it out, bringing two songs that the crowd there had never heard, Vengeance is mine (which we only played once before at Pete's) and Silverback which was new for us this week. We arranged an acoustic version of the song last Wednesday at rehearsal that has a somewhat different feel than the album version which you can hear here.

Again, I love this crowd and the sense of community and camraderie they bring to the place. They have their regulars but are so supportive of newbies. Highlights were a Welsh girl getting up and singing with an electric uke and then reciting a poem she wrote, and then a brother and sister duo that covered I shall be released by Bob Dylan (the boy was 10 and sang and played piano).

The same 8 year old Asian girl came but we didn't get to hear her sing because I had to leave at 6pm. Lorraine Leckie came again (brought her dog into the bar) but we missed her performance, too. She was great last time.

The videos of our performance are here and here if you're interested.

Anyway, I had one of those stupid commutes tonight. It was just back and forth between good and bad train luck the whole time. First, I catch the R train right away at my station. Then I jump on the N train at Atlantic and before I know it, some urine smelling dude jumps on behind me and sits right next to me on a mostly empty train (I'm thinking, "thanks, dude!")...the next stop after Atlantic was over the bridge in Manhattan, too, so I'm pretty much stuck in this car until Canal St. Then I see the Q train on the next track over when we're in the tunnel and realize that our train has to stop to let that train go first over the bridge. If I had taken the R train one more stop to Dekalb Avenue, I might have been able to jump on that Q, go first and then bypass all the local stops and potentially not have to sit next to someone who smells like urine. Then when I get to Union Square, I just miss the L train and the next one won't come for 12 minutes according to the countdown clock. So, I try to grab the M14D bus but it's leaving once I get up into the street. The next one doesn't show and I figure, I might just have time to get back down into the subway before the next L train arrives. Sure enough, once I get downstairs, there's the L train rolling up. And I make it to work at 10:55. I guess the moral of the story is that sometimes it just doesn't matter what happens in between as long as you get where you're going on time. Even if you have to endure the smell of urine...which was what greeted me coming up the stars in the 8th avenue station.

Music filled weekend...

This past weekend started off with an hour long trip on the Q train to see my friend Tania Stavreva perform a program of modern and impressionistic works from Satie and Stravinsky to up and coming composer New York composer Scott Wollschleger. The concert was in Astoria at a little cafe called the Waltz-Astoria. An unassuming little venue that hosts a variety of musical acts and also charges a drink minimum, one I was particularly at odds with that night because my only option was to buy 6 cups of tea to make the minimum as I was not planning on drinking (my week back at home was a little rough). I still enjoyed myself. In fact, an important highlight of the evening was that I got to meet Tania's violinist friend who will likely be performing "The Death of September" with Tania at some point in the future, yet to be determined. The piece that her friend performed with her was magnificient and was held off until the end of the program as a closer. I will recall the title of the piece at some point and post it here.

The following day, Lacy drove up from Philly again and we played Banjo Jim's open mic as I previously posted this weekend. Then, Sunday morning, as I also mentioned, the Brooklyn UU choir performed my piece (which I've just posted on the new site complete with program notes and soon there'll be a link to buy the score!).

The whole weekend was capped off by a voice recital in a church near Union Square. Remember a few months ago when I told the story of how I ended up sharing a livery cab with several stranded straphangers on a Sunday morning? Well one of the women who was riding with me is a singer and we keep running into each other on the train, heading to and from work and at random times of day. The other day I was coming home from Tania's concert and ran into her on the train platform at Dekalb Avenue. We had chatted before about her recital when I ran into her on the street a few weeks ago and she mentioned it again then so I decided I'd go instead of trying to get into one of the last few showings at the Tribeca Film Festival (next year, I guess). The recital was at the First Presbyterian Church on 5th Avenue and 12th Street in Manhattan. So, on Sunday, after having a brunch with a friend of mine in Brooklyn Heights and subsequently wandering over to Fulton Street in downtown to kill time there, I headed into the city to check it out. My friend performed Debussy's Chansons de Bilitis, all 10 of Samuel Barber's Hermit Songs, some Rossini and then finished out the afternoon with some Cole Porter.

A good weekend is one that is filled with live music, and a very diverse array thereof. Or so says I. I enjoy how I can so easily surround myself with opportunities to both see and take part in live music, these days. It does a lot for my psyche, to tell you the truth. Seven years ago I was doing nothing of the sort and living in Raleigh, discontent in my job and my home life. Now I'd say almost 50% of the extra-work activities that I take part in are of a musical nature. I count myself lucky that experiencing things like this is not outside the realm of possibility for me. And that it's sort of becoming par for the course! Anyway, there's no hustle here at work like there was last night but I'd better get back to archiving video.

Wherever you Go...

Yesterday morning, the choir at the Brookly Unitarian church premiered my choral piece, "Wherever you go." The choir did a terrific job despite having only seen the piece for the first time that morning at rehearsal. Luckily, my director brought his handheld recorder so we were able to get a recording of the performance and the last run through in rehearsal. Here is the recording from the service:



It is a live recording so be prepare to hear all sorts of chatter and bumps in the background. Adds to the character of everything.

Seriously, though, I feel incredibly blessed to be a part of this choir and this church. And I'm incredibly grateful to them for lending their talents to the realization of this piece. I was positively giddy all morning getting to hear the piece performed by performers of such a high caliber. Hope you all enjoy the recording!

More musings later on on what turned out to be a very musical weekend. Now, it's back to work. It's been a long night, what with the news of Bin Laden's death!

Banjo Jim's...

Just back from another open mic night in the East Village with Lacy. Open mic afternoon or evening is more like it. This one was at Banjo Jim's on Avenue C and E 9th Street. I've been to the bar before to see an old friend play with a blues band the first year I lived here. Historically, The East Village and Alphabet City has been one of my favorite neighborhoods and one that is still, in my mind, a quintessential New York neighborhood. There's something about it that's simultaneously edgy and homey, and the sense of history in it is everywhere. Some of my favorite New York adventures have taken place there, including the time I went to that speakeasy with Norah Jones' producer.

And I love the people in the East Village. This particular open mic had a really great neighborhood feel to it. All the musicians seemed to know each other well, like old friends, and they even knew each others' songs. Some of them started to sing along in harmony as the last few musicians got up to sing. You kind of got the sense that these guys had been supporting each others' careers for years.

At one point, an 8 year old girl got up to sing a song, a capella, that she had written. I found it very brave of her and in fact, touching, that someone that young could write something so heartfelt and get up and sing it in front of tons of other musicians. And everyone loved her!

We ended up having to go pretty early because there were some 20 people already signed up when we arrived. Our songs went over well though, I think. And we're getting better at playing together and more comfortable. We've kind of talked about how it'll be beneficial to start playing certain open mics over and over so we'll feel more and more comfortable with the crowd and be able to really rock things out. This is one of the ones I think we'll probably repeat a few times. Eventually we're talking about doing full sets as well in some of these places.

After the open mic finished up, we went to a great restaurant on Avenue A called Yuca where we sat outside despite the cooling temperatures. Mexican and Peruvian inspired cuisine. I had half a chicken and ate the whole thing, washed it down with a margarita while watching the bustle of Alphabet City breezing by. All in all a great evening that we capped off with a long-ish walk down to W. Houston Street to meet another good friend of mine at XR bar for one last drink before Lacy had to get back to Brooklyn and her car so she could head back to Philly.

And now here I sit typing this. Should be in bed though because tomorrow morning, the choir at Brooklyn Unitarian is performing my piece, "Wherever You Go." I promise a recording soon. I'm out for now!

Blurb #24

They're planning on performing my choral piece, titled "Wherever You Go," next Sunday the 1st of May or perhaps two Sundays later on the 15th of May at the Brooklyn UU. I guess I'll know for certain in the next few days but it all hinges upon whether the director decides that we need an extra Sunday to rehearse it. If that's the case, it'll have to happen after the weekend of the 6th through the 8th, as I'll be back in Raleigh then for a good friend's wedding. I'm traveling so much lately it feels like. Toaster just dinged and I want bread with nutella so stand by for more updates later in the week. Just wanted to get this info out.

Open Mic at Pete's Candy Store...

Well, the open mic night was a success. Good turnout and the songs we performed were pretty solid. Overall, I was pretty pleased with the experience.

We got to Pete's at about a quarter to 5, me with my guitar and Lacy with all her luggage in tow. Before the open mic, some sort of church service goes on in the music hall section of the bar (something called the Revolution Church...a Christian church aimed at those with alternative lifestyles). So we had to wait out in the bar area but eventually the hall cleared out and the clipboard with the open mic signup sheet surfaced. So, I signed us up for the number 2 slot while chatting with one of the people who was there for the church service. The crowd of guitarists and other performers was growing slowly as I finished my first beer, so I eventually took a seat in the music hall with Lacy. She had already grabbed us a seat and, in the process, met one of the other performers, Macy, who agreed to video us with Lacy's phone.

We played two songs, opening with "In the Garden" and closing with "White Lion," (one of the audience members thought Lacy said "White Line," but we assured her it was not a song about cocaine use). Lacy may post audio at least from one or both of the songs as the video was a little blurry.

I stuck around until Macy performed but left at that point because I had to take care of some things before leaving for work and wanted to meet Lacy back in the city for a drink before she left town. So I got to see a handful of the other performers, very few of whose names I remember. The opener, who went before us, I had seen last time we went. He played guitar and harmonica and sang (a bit like Bob Dylan, in fact he covered a Bob Dylan song, too). We were followed immediately by a fellow playing guitar by himself and doing some fancy alternate tuning slappin' and tappin' guitar playin' that I was pretty impressed with. I wish I had gotten his name as one of his tunes was exceedingly catchy. There was a rather tall Indian gentleman who's last name was Gandhi and who was in a band named Gandhi. He sounded a bit like Cat Stevens or Donovan. After him, there was an older gentleman who played some folky Simon and Garfunkel styled stuff (he also covered a Simon and Garfunkel tune). And of course, Macy did really well. She played a few original tunes in her soft sultry voice that were rather captivating.

Anyway, it was great getting to perform along side these folks and get out some of that energy. It's been something I've needed for a long time and hopefully we'll be doing more of it pretty soon. We're hoping to play another one in April.

Next weekend is the jazz choir concert and my folks'll be in town as well. The concert will be pretty big I'm hearing, with tons of other acts besides us and a half hour long intermission (something that tells me the whole night might go on for 3 hours). If you would like to come it's in the chapel at 7pm Saturday, the 26th of March at the Brooklyn Unitarian Church on Pierrepont and Monroe Sts. in Brooklyn Heights. It's a $20 donation to support the youth group and there will be dessert and drinks there, I'm thinking maybe even dinner but I can't remember. I will find out for sure and add a comment to this post.

For now, I've gotta get going on studying some Middle Eastern music theory for the next project! Wish me luck!

Sword Dancing, and nightlife...

I forgot to mention the 26th annual New York Sword Dancing Festival that I saw some of last week. Every year a few of the troupes come to the Brooklyn Unitarian church and perform after the service. Last year I skipped it, it being right after church and lunch somehow being more compelling, but this year I actually attended and was glad I did.

Sword Dancing at BK UU

The groups ranged in age from teenagers to older folks and either danced with long swords or "rappers," the latter's distinguishing feature being that they are more pliable swords. They were not sharp, thankfully, and the dancing itself was pretty spectacular and involved. A few of the members of the troupes would get up and explain the history behind these dances before each number, most of these dances started in pubs in England. Each troupe had their own music accompaniment as well which made it doubly exciting to have live music included. Highlight of the afternoon was when one of the younger kids, who I'm assuming was with this particular troupe, marched out onto the dance floor and stood between all the dancers who, while still dancing, circled around him, placed their swords on his shoulder and proceeded to swipe, after which the kid rather believably falls to the ground. Hilarious part is we all start clapping as the dancers march off and leave the kid, still feigning death on the floor. He was all right, of course.

I'd've blogged about that last Sunday when it happened but I've been crazy swamped with all the things I've taken on. I'm in fact starting to reconsider my continued involvement in all of those things. The jazz choir is too fun and anyway, I think we'll be stopping rehearsals after our concert on the 26th of March. I'm finished, for the most part, arranging "Sermonette" and we had our first preliminary rehearsal today after church. But I was too tired from a combination of having been out last night and the fact that after a year of working this overnight and trying to do church as well, I'm so used to sleeping in the afternoon on Sundays that I get tired no matter what after church. Which is why church choir is probably the one thing that I might take some time away from. Additionally, I realized that I can feasibly put the choral piece on the back burner for a bit until I get Collapsing Elbows really done. I made some strides this afternoon.

Anyway, it'd be nice to have a few weeks where I can just sleep in on Sunday and enjoy some of the day instead of having to get up early and nap later in order to adjust to being up all night. Last night was too fun anyway for me to have had to ditch at 2am and come back to Brooklyn to sleep. I was hanging out with my friend Adrienne in the East Village and with a few more friends that we met up with on Avenue C, later on. We tried going to Death and Co. first but it was way too crowded. The door man takes down people's numbers and calls when space opens up in the bar. I've been in there once, two years ago on an OkCupid date, and it's really cool. It's a rather small, prohibition themed concept bar with a ton of creative cocktails on the menu. I was just reading about some of the beer cocktails they make too. Check out the menu. I was a little disappointed we couldn't get in but Adrienne suggested a wine bar up the block where her friend ended up meeting us. But it was too crowded as well. So, moving even further down the classiness ladder we opted to go to a dive bar on Avenue A called Lucy's. Lucy is an 80 year old Polish woman who still runs the bar. Seriously. She's incredibly spry and it was fun to watch her maneuvering the crowd to fetch bottles and glasses from around the bar. Apparently, her daughter and grand-daughter were tending bar with her. Grade A people watching at this place too.

As we chatted and caught up, we kept getting cryptic text messages from our friend Sava, who was out with her boyfriend Bruce and a friend of theirs from India, with whom we were planning on meeting later. The friend from India also happened to be friends with one of Norah Jones' producers and they were off hanging out with him in the East Village as well. The cryptic text messages were updating us on their potential movements should we want to come and find them. Things like, "we're here now but we might go to this place over here." Eventually, when we finally got a straight answer out of them as to where they'd be next, we wound up on 10th Street and Avenue C, standing dumb on the corner looking for a speakeasy (theme for the evening apparently) which no one is supposed to be able to find without the address and which no one can get into without being a member or a guest. We finally got that address from Sava in a text message and walked down half a block to find a single door with the word Speakeasy painted above it on the awning. Inside the door there was a long staircase with two iron gates, one halfway and one at the top, and a gentleman at the top checked our IDs and let us right inside. I'm assuming he knew we were coming and who we were with as he didn't ask if we were members. Inside it was kind of a dive but in the good, edgy kind of way. Pool table, DJ, and good looking people dancing, but I think someone was smoking a cigar in one corner which contributed to my pseudo hangover like headache the next morning. I danced for a good bit, having been dragged onto the dance floor intially by Sava's friend. She wanted to teach me some Latin dance moves but I was a little on the clumsy side last night. We hung out until about 2am and then went our separate ways. NJ's producer fetched us a cab out on Avenue C and told the driver to wait until we were inside the door before driving off, which I thought was nice of him.

I love those impromtpu NYC nights where it feels like just about anything could happen and you really get to see the underside of the city and it's history. I'm pretty sure this speakeasy had been around for a long time and catered to the neighborhood folks. There wasn't anything special about the drinks there, no draft beer, plastic cups for the liquor drinks but it had a spirit and a history to it, just like Lucy's did around the corner, one that you could feel going into the place.

Anyway, more on the music this week as I complete the score for Collapsing Elbows and start on some new things...there's even a surprise on the horizon.

Brooklyn is home and Merry Christmas...

Christmas night. Unlike last Christmas, which I spent almost entirely alone, I was able to spend my afternoon and evening with some friends from the church, having dinner and sitting by the fire in my friend's brownstone apartment (firewood provided by yours truly, which I picked up from the bodega on the way). My friend Dawn invited me and some others to what she called an "orphan's Christmas" as it was mostly comprised of people who had no place to go for Christmas. We had Tofurkey and mashed potatoes among other traditional turkey dinner trimmings.

It was a rather nice dinner and great company besides. Made me happy to be in New York. Of course, I'm always happy to be here, though. I've felt particularly connected to the borough in many ways in the past few weeks. Take what happened last Sunday, when I was running late to choir rehearsal because of the train (for a change, ha!). After waiting on the platform for ten minutes, I started to notice people wandering toward the turnstiles from the far ends of the platform and, when I took my headphones out, I could hear a muffled sound on the PA. So, I headed back toward the entrance myself and found the station attendant addressing the throngs of people (the first sign it's been a while since a train has passed is an unnatural buildup of people on the platform). Apparently, the R train was stuck at 36th Street for some unknown (or undisclosed) reason and we were being told to either wait or that we could get a train at DeKalb Avenue (for those of you non-Brooklynites, DeKalb Avenue is 5 stops away from where I usually catch the train at 25th Street). I thought, "to hell with this, I'll either walk to 4th Avenue/9th Street and get the F or G or try to catch a livery cab or go back home and sleep." The last option, I hoped not to do because the choir was having one of its last rehearsals before the Christmas Eve service. Thinking there'd be no way I'd be on time if I walked 13 blocks to the F train and then waited, I started to crane my neck out into traffic and scan for any kind of cab I could spot. A passerby, who had obviously been in the train station previously, saw my familiar maneuvering and asked me if I was getting a cab. When I told her I was, she asked if she could share one with me and we began discussing our various paths (She had to go to Manhattan). Before I knew it, another two people had come up and asked us if they could ride along as well. We all talked it over and agreed, and luckily just as we had come to a consensus that we could all benefit from the same cab ride, despite our wildly different destinations, a livery cab drove up and I deftly flagged him down. We all hopped in and got chatting and it turned out that the two girls in the back seat with me were also musicians and one was even also on her way to a church choir rehearsal. Imagine that. I even ran into the other choir singer a few days later on the R train and we exchanged info, agreeing that us musicians should stick together for networking's sake at least. She's a music teacher and an opera singer.

I just loved that spirit of New Yorkers banding together when the system fails us. It just made me love this city even more, that total strangers can trust and help each other in a situation like that. Even more thrilling was the fact that, more so than anywhere else I've lived, musicians and other like-minded artistic and creative people just seem to pop out of the woodwork here. I've made so many connections just by being where I am than I have trying to go out and specifically meet musicians and filmmakers. It's beautiful.

Tonight, as I was heading back from Dawn's apartment, I spotted someone smiling at me on the train platform at Bergen Street and then it dawned on me after boarding the train that it was one of my neighbors. She lives in my wing of the building but two floors up and I've never spoken to her except for a few smiles and occasional hellos on the way in and out. So when we both made the same train connection at 4th Avenue/9th Street we started chatting. She's really nice and it turns out she's a vet tech and we both work overnight shifts so we got to laughing about that. She's lived in the building all her life and knows everyone here. It's always interesting to me when I get to talk to lifelong New Yorkers too and compare living in the suburbs to their lives growing up in a huge metropolis like New York.

I felt bad because I didn't initially talk to her, not tonight on the platform, or even all those times I crossed her path on the stairs. And then I find out how nice she is. I realize that a lot of outsiders in New York move into places with people who have lived there all their lives and see the newcomers as signs of gentrification and sometimes with a little bit of mistrust or suspicion. It's too bad and my shyness ends up playing into that. Yet, I'm at the same time curious about their lives and, without exception almost, every one that I have met here is very kind and outgoing and helpful. The guys at the corner deli (who I found out are all brothers) who always say hey, how's it going? when I go in there before work, Frances upstairs with her granddaughter that she's always apologizing for stomping on the floor, even the quiet Chinese man, who works in the laundromat downstairs, helping me with my bills in the change machine. Brooklyn is feeling like home to me because of all of these things coming together.

And I love it.

Tonight, I'm running on a few hours of broken sleep, which ended abruptly at 5 this morning when I had to go in for an odd shift covering for a coworker who had covered me a few weeks ago when I had two concerts in one week. Tomorrow I do the overnight so I'm pushing myself to stay up and sleep late tomorrow. I'll go to the Vespers service at the Unitarian church tomorrow to sing but I'm definitely sleeping until at least 1 or 2 in the afternoon.

Beyond that, I've not been doing much since I got home. Just wrapping presents and organizing my thoughts on my next couple of projects. As usual my mind is full and I now have to empty it out and try to sleep. More to come. But for now, I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Tania Stavreva...

The concert at Fez Art Cafe was a hit. It was sort of unique in that it was in such a small venue. I said "small"...I meant tiny. I walked in and my first thought was, "I bet there's a room in the back with a piano in it." As soon as I had thought the word "piano" though, I saw the actual piano and it was in that same tiny room right next to the bar. Not what I was expecting at all but hey, cool, right? Tania was playing a lot of music that was originally meant to be performed in salons (Debussy, Chopin, Satie...me.), so it fit the venue.

In addition to those and my piece, she performed a few pieces by another living composer named Scott Wollschleger, who was also in the audience and whom I got to meet. One of his pieces, my favorite of the two had one of those interesting graphic scores and entailed a whole lot of smashing the piano and leaning elbows on the keys. Pretty fun to watch. There was also at least one piece by Mason Bates, which had some electronics (a track that was played back on CD along with the piece). She planned to play the whole set twice so that all of her friends could get a chance to hear it, although, most of the people who were there when I arrived at 7pm were there all night. One of my friends showed up with his wife but they couldn't find a seat so they had to leave unfortunately. So it was at least a good turnout.

After Tania's two sets, another singer/songwriter named Natti Vogel performed a set. Natti and Tania are good friends and Natti is such a strong personality that the whole room was pretty much taken over by a different, more comfortable vibe at this point. Natti is like a male Tori Amos but a lot more theatrical and histrionic even, with a little bit of a cabaret singer feel. Somewhat goofy and eccentric and quite the show stealer. Since the show was so intimate anyway, and most of the people in the audience were friends, at one point, the show boiled down to Natti playing covers of Mariah Carey songs and rehashing a Bulgarian Idol contestant's version of "Without You." Even before I could make that comment about Natti being a male Tori Amos, we got talking about Tori during a break and before I knew it, we were all singing along to this and that Tori Amos song. Of course, he's a fan. Later, because it was Tania's birthday, the owners of Fez Art Cafe brought Tania a cake of which we all had some and finally left at around midnight.

A fun night all around and I was proud to be surrounded by such fantastic musicians. This evening I'm taking some of that creative energy and putting it towards my own music. I spent the evening finishing up a piano sketch that was started in the spring of 2008 and never finished. I'm glad that this is moving along now because it's the last of a series of piano pieces from that era that never got finished. Now, I have a handful of other chamber pieces floating around that I'm going to dive into and then, the untitled electronic piece I initially wrote for Jahna Bobolia's Collapsing Elbows but which didn't end up fitting with the project. I've been meaning to polish that one off and submit it to a few places. Needs a title too. Maybe I'll put it to some of my friends?

At noon today, I sang with the jazz choir (tentatively named the Uni-Tones) at the Brooklyn Unitarian Church's yearly fundraiser, Unifair. That was a lot of fun. We sang two jazz arrangements of popular Christmas songs (one of them, "White Christmas," arranged by our director Bob Bero, and the other a jazzy arrangement of "Let it Snow") and then invited people shopping at the fundraiser to sing carols along with us. By the end of the day, though, I think I'd had my fill of Christmas music.

Right now, I'm debating staying in for the night and getting more done or just taking it easy. Might be time to do the latter.

A weekend full of music...

Time to update on one busy and exciting weekend. First, there was the performance with Teletextile on Saturday night and then the world premier of my piano sketch titled, "The Way We Dream" at the Brooklyn Unitarian Church service Sunday morning.

The weeks leading up to the Teletextile show were so much fun. Practicing and bonding with a band again was really amazing. As I may have mentioned, I came in originally to arrange all of the vocal parts and to help Pamela with translating the recordings to the stage. I ended up singing in the backup group and playing Pamela's Wurlitzer on "I Don't Know How to Act Here." The show went well too and the group was really tight. The whole band consisted of myself and two to three other backup singers, also playing percussion, claps, foot stomps, etc., a guitarist, Pamela on vocals, harp, violin and guitar and a friend of Pamela who was brought in last minute to trigger samples and backing tracks...all of us wearing a motif of gold and feathers as per Pamela's request. Pictures might be forthcoming, though I'm not sure I saw anyone other than one person taking photographs in the crowd. One of my friends did snap this one though:



Other than playing most of the new EP, Pamela also played a few new songs, one called The Unknown, which had a pretty extensive backup vocal part. Another new one, called Fistfuls of Fire, had to be cut because the sound guy at Pianos was a bit of a stickler for time. Watch for this one at future Teletextile shows though, because it's really good.

I'm really excited to see where this goes, playing and helping out with this band because I'm meeting all sorts of musicians through Pam and already have some prospects for future jam sessions. More to come on that.

On Sunday morning, Bill Peek, the Brooklyn Unitarian Church's choir director premiered my piano sketch as a prelude to the morning service. It was quite exciting to hear it live. This particular piece is one of a handful that I wrote the same semester in graduate school when I was beginning my thesis and studying for my comprehensive exam so it, unfortunately, got swept under the rug for a while, as I was focusing on those two projects intensely. It took the possibility of it being performed to get it finished this year a few months ago and I took it to Bill about a month ago. He graciously accepted playing the piece for the church and took a few weeks to practice and solidify the piece. He played it very well. It was a nice interpretation. I'm always talking about how a piece always seems more real once it's been actually performed instead of just played back by a computer or plunked out by yours truly. Now this piece has life and hearing it yesterday morning makes me want to really work hard at getting the other piano sketches finished. "Quivering Filament of Incandescent Bulb," another of the three sketches written about the same time, was finished in early 2009, and revamped earlier this year while I was recovering from my computer virus. The final one, "Misery Pages," I now have incentive to finish because it will make the three into a whole cycle which can be performed together. So, that's my next project.

And with any luck, Tania, the pianist, will be playing them at one of her concerts soon. The upcoming one, on December 2nd at Fez Art Cafe in Brooklyn will feature my piano sketch no. 1 - "Snowfall" which will be its Brooklyn premier (having had its world premier at UNC Greensboro in the fall of 2005). If you're in New York, I expect you to try your hardest to make it to this concert, it's looking like it'll be a good one. Take a look at the Facebook page for Tania.

For now, I gotta run. Heading to work and thinking up more ideas for the new website. Coming soon. I'll be in touch.

Teletextile...

Did I mention I've been busy? Yes, of course I have. Of all the projects on my plate, one that I didn't mention last time and one that is starting to take precedence over everything is that I'm currently doing some arranging for one Pamela Martinez and her band Teletextile. It's been a fun project so far, mainly arranging her background vocals for her rehearsals. Her recordings are well produced and rich with instrumentation and harmony so she's been looking for a way to get that translated to the live show. On November 20th at 8pm, the band is playing at Pianos on the LES, so if you're in New York you should try to come see it.

Excitingly, and as previously mentioned, that same weekend on Sunday morning, Bill Peek will be playing a piano sketch of mine titled, "The Way We Dream" as a prelude to the morning service at the First Unitarian Church in Brooklyn. Service starts at 11am sharp for those interested in coming just to hear the piece.

This morning I'm working the second to last overnight shift before I go back into my regular schedule. And I'm lacking a great deal of sleep right now but I feel pretty alive nonetheless. Quite surprised actually to not be rubbing my eyes as I type this. It's been a struggle to manage my time over the past few weeks but I must say that I'm coming out on top of that struggle. All thanks to the sense of routine that my yoga practice has instilled in me. It's remarkable how dedicated you can find yourself to something if you're paying for it...and here I was avoiding getting a gym membership thinking I didn't want to pay for something I wasn't sure I'd find the time for. Then I realized that simply making time for something that grounds me in some kind of routine helped everything else to fall into place.

Now, I don't know how much I've said about the Anusara Yoga studio in DUMBO that I've been a member of for almost two months, but it's a great place and all the teachers are really nice and experienced too. The location is nice too (I can gaze out at the Manhattan skyline from the Manhattan and Brooklyn bridges on up to the Empire State Building and the rest of midtown from the wide windows on two sides of the studio). I've been deepening my practice as well and finding out I can do things I never imagined I could do...like Wheel Pose or Urdhva Dhanurasana for example. The first time I got up into that pose, I just felt this incredible rush and I was so aware of my body when I came out of it. Also, learning about proper alignment in these poses has really helped me get around problems I've been having with my knee. I'm finding that it's the best form of exercise for me, much better than running or lifting weights or even doing yoga on my own at home.

Another part of my routine is the Park Slope Food Co-op, catering to my need to be environmentally conscious and at the same time, not pay too much for organic groceries. It's not too far out of my way, in fact, closer than Trader Joe's and much more convenient to post yoga class grocery trips. I've worked two shifts there so far stocking and processing produce in the basement and enjoyed it both times, despite being so out of it the last time from having just woken up that I knocked over a box of mushrooms and spilled an entire crate of hot peppers within the first hour of my shift. Yikes, right?

So, my new routine has certainly helped with productivity and I've even had some great networking opportunities in the past week alone. On Sunday, my friend Anne, the co-owner of Tate Street Coffee House in Greensboro, NC, came to the city to run the NYC Marathon and later took a bunch of old coffee house employees out to dinner in the East Village. At the dinner I met the wife of one former employee who is an actor/dancer and we chatted for a long time and exchanged cards.

On Monday, I went with a friend to a silent auction for Forward Motion Theater and met another UNCG Alum who is a choreographer. Also exchanged cards.

And working with Pamela's band I've met some talented musicians too. I'm excited because any number of these connections could be beneficial and I can see new projects popping up everywhere.

Anyway, tomorrow morning, er, afternoon, when I wake up, I'm going to jump right into finishing the background vocal arrangement for Pamela and will probably meet with her at some point to go over some things. For now, I get back to work. And sleep is thankfully not far off either.

It's good to have ideas...

It really is. I've been buzzing the past few days with them and trying to write them all down. Not just piece ideas but about new ways to realize pieces and perform pieces. I won't say much more because it's a new idea that I don't think anyone else has tried. But I will say that it's gotten me salivating over new software synths and hardware controllers.

But beyond that, I'm still in a stage where I can't get those things yet so I'm biding my time writing more music. Working on currently, and simultaneously: a new piece for Tania, the pianist, finishing an orchestral minimalist piece that was started earlier last year (this one is based on a simple rhythm that I derived from the sounds that water in a tea kettle made one morning after I placed it back on the stove top), the last part of a three song piano cycle, the first of which is being played on the 21st of November at the Brooklyn Unitarian Universalist Church and lastly a handful of electronic music ideas that are hanging loose and unfinished.

This is, believe it or not, how I prefer to work. It may not be very efficient but the combination of small steps on several projects and the prospect of having several options for what to work on on any given day, keeps my momentum up and keeps me from getting distracted.

Also, happening, is the new website...to be revealed soon. Hoping to get that off the ground soon because I've been out advertising that I do voice over now. I went to Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic the other day to see about volunteering there recording audio books for the print disabled. That seems like it'll be fun.

This'll have to be a short one because I'm heading off to work now. But more to report soon, for sure. It's getting cold in the city.