Well, dear readers, I am sitting here on a Saturday evening as the midnight hour approacheth, listening to the piano concerto of Homer Keller, an American composer of American classical music of the classic era. We reissued his amazing third symphony on Bay Cities, and I got the loveliest note from him – he was so happy to have it available on CD and was thrilled with the sound. So many of these amazing composers went almost completely unnoticed and still are, but thankfully we do have the handful of recordings that were made. I’m not sure where I got the piano concerto from – probably YouTube – but don’t know if it was an officially released recording or a radio broadcast or what. All I do know is that it’s terrific and unmistakably American in sound. It would be so nice to have a great new recording of this concerto and one other piece I have that I think was some concert on the radio – a piece for clarinet and strings. If you’ve never heard Keller’s third, I’m sure someone has put it up on the Tube of You. Otherwise, yesterday wasn’t much a day. I had a very rough night of little sleep, but when I did finally fall asleep, I slept eight hours. Once up, it was already one-thirty. I answered e-mails, caught up on a few things, ordered fried catfish for food, ate that when it arrived, ascertained that I wasn’t in good enough voice to record anything, found out that the Group Rep show would go on and so decided to first-act it to hear the alternate leading lady sing. They’d had to cancel Friday night’s show due to the pianist being in the hospital, but they were able to find someone to come in and attempt to get through the show. There were only about thirty people in the audience. The gal I went to hear was, I thought, very good and had a nice voice so we’ll definitely want to audition her for Drat! The Cat! The pianist did as well as he could, and it certainly wasn’t the disaster it could have been. After the show, I stopped at Gelson’s, got a small Caesar and some hot dogs and attendant buns. I came home, made a hot dog, ate it, had the salad, listened to music, and here we are as Mr. Keller’s piano concerto is wrapping up. Since there was scattered applause at the end, we can surmise it was a radio broadcast of some sort.
Today, I’ll be up by eleven or thereabouts, I’ll do whatever needs doing, and then I’ll mosey on over to the Fine Arts to see a 70mm showing of West Side Story. Not an optimal theater to see 70mm in – almost pointless, really, since I don’t think their screen is larger than forty feet (it’s actually thirty-three feet). The whole idea of 70mm was to project it on a super large screen of eighty or ninety feet. Still, I haven’t seen West Side Story in a movie theater for over thirty years, I think. After the movie, I may eat in that neighborhood, since I’m rarely down that way anymore. Of course, I do like to drive around the old neighborhood, since the Fine Arts is a mere two minutes from where I grew up. We shall see. Once home, I’ll see if I’m to recording two songs again so that I can be done with that and send it on its merry way. Then I can watch, listen, and relax.
This week is very busy with all manner of things, including a trip to the Arboretum to see where we’ll be performing. Sound guy will be with me.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, be up by eleven or thereabouts, do whatever needs doing, see West Side Stor in 70mm, eat somewhere fun, then come home and watch, listen, and relax. Today’s topic of discussion: It’s free-for-all day, the day in which you dear readers get to make with the topics and we all get to post about them. So, let’s have loads of lovely topics and loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, having reported that Saturday was not much of a day.