Gather Ye Blossoms While Ye May (Part One)

Japanese Garden, Brooklyn Botanic Garden

The calendar turned to April, and we went in search of blossoms.

Crabapple

The News from Minnesota

On March 30 and 31, 2012, the Minnesota Orchestra performed the world premiere of a brand new orchestral composition.  The composition came about as the result of the Orchestra’s first MicroCommission.  Approximately 400 people contributed with donations ranging from 1 to 1,500 dollars.  I'm proud to have been one of them:  the composer chosen for the MicroCommission was Judd Greenstein, whose work I much admire.

Into the Dazzling Air

Herringbone is the one who set the light bulb off for me, when he wrote about Maxwell McKee’s Double Quintet:  “Double Quintet seemed to have a noticeable beat that you could groove too.  I could see Roger Daltrey grabbing the mike and belting something out.”

Some Days, Everything Is A Picture

Photography is always a subjective way to see the world, it is an art—you think about your composition, you omit, you choose a special detail, a segment or angle—in short:  you create.

—Brigitta Hügel

Ah, fine photographers.  They understand their equipment; they have patience and skill; they have the eye to spot the perfect shot.  My appreciation for them grows every time I venture forth with my camera.

City Sojourn

Grand Central Station at night

Just for All of Us

Young composer Maxwell McKee had a confession to make.  While he was writing a composition commissioned by Contemporaneous, he was suffering from an acute case of Ligeti’s Syndrome.  (György Ligeti, after whom this syndrome is named, is best known to many as the composer whose music appears in soundtracks of Stanley Kubrick films, including 2001: A Space Odyssey.)

In the Way One Poem Leads to Another

“As it happens,” poet Roger Mitchell wrote to a group of friends and colleagues, “I lived for a year almost 50 years ago in Szymborska's home town. Never met her, but that didn't keep me from writing the attached.”