I have it on good authority--it really was live music!

The big spring concert for the Tehachapi Community Orchestra was yesterday. It has been some time since I've attended one of their concerts, but was looking forward to this one, not only because they were to have a guest performer, Christopher Parkening, a classical guitarist of some note, but one of their selections was written by Elmer Bernstein whose movie scores I find particularly enjoyable. As things turned out, the orchestra had a healthy dose of support; as "curtain" approached (except that there wasn't a curtain), the ushers had to start turning people away. There wasn't a seat to be had in the main hall. Luckily there was still a side hall. The sound here was creditably good, though the view (above, for your edification) might be said to be a bit restricted. The orchestra began with a piece by Chadwick (though I rattle the name off debonairely, I had never heard of him before yesterday, and even now I am getting all of my information off the program), then Mr. Parkening came out and played Bernstein's "Concerto for Guitar and Orchestra". To sneak furtively into the desk of a critic, it was a very exciting piece. Though it wasn't notable for its themes (it always seemed to be going somewhere, but never quite got there), it was pleasant listening, nicely executed by all concerned; I don't think I would have minded had it gone on twice as long. I had never noticed the interesting use Bernstein makes of percussion, a rattle of snare here, a single clack of wooden blocks there--to say nothing of the gong! (I am told) the three percussionists were dashing madly about to supply all the required musical punctuation on the required beat.
When the Bernstein piece was ended, the orchestra took a well-earned rest, and Mr. Parkening played a solo, unexpectedly, "My Country Tis of Thee", with all the art and ornamentation appropriate to the guitar. He followed this with something (though the music was audible the announcements were not, and his solos were not in the program) either Turkish or composed by somebody traveling through Turkey. . .anyway, it was insane, breathtaking, and delightful. I wish I knew the correct terminology for the droning that is so effective on a guitar, anyway, in practice, the player hits one of the low strings over and over again while he somehow manages to play a tune on the higher strings. This was a whirlwind of a tune, and Mr. Parkening never missed a note of the drones while still managing to hit every one of the capricious sharps and flats Middle Eastern music demands. It was over entirely too soon.
The second half of the concert was Edward MacDowell's "Suite No. 1 in D Minor" (yes, I'm looking at the program again). It was a definite disadvantage to be unable to see the performers as the piece demanded such an interplay between the sections, sometimes anchoring on the brass, other times weaving the strings and woodwinds inextricably together. Again, we couldn't hear the announcements, and , at the close of the suite, all of us in the side hall assumed that that was the end, since nothing was left on the program. Everyone had just enough time to begin sidling for an exit when the orchestra pulled a rabbit out of their hat in the form of the theme from "The Magnificent Seven". A bit of an electric shock ran through the entire building at that; to say it is a stirring piece is The Magnificent Understatement. My sister said later that she's been thinking for years that that was the piece the orchestra needed to play. . .I'm glad she appreciated it, though I had at least one advantage over her in the matter. Various responsibilities had kept her home from the concert--at least I heard it!

Here we go again!

I was driving a friend home from rehersal earlier this week and was jerked from my late-night ennui by the sight of something delightfully entomological up near her porch light. Of course, I had to get out for a closer look. Despite the violent extremes of the weather lately, there are evidently a few hardy moths wandering around. This is a Pacific green sphinx (Arctonotus lucidus), about as winterish a moth as we're likely to see here. There is a little more information on it here:
http://www.butterfliesandmoths.org/species?l=3455

If you scroll about halfway down this page,
http://natureali.org/piutes.htm
you can see some examples of Clarkia, which are supposed to be the host plant for Arctonotus. The leaves must come out much earlier than the flowers--as my Dad pointed out, the most noticeable Clarkia around here ("Farewell-to-Spring") doesn't bloom until May or so.

Websites

My breaks at work usually consists of a busman's holiday--looking things up on the computer as opposed to. . .looking things up on the computer. When the links are interesting enough, I save them for later. It occured to me yesterday that some of them might be interesting enough to pass around to other folks, so here are a few; hopefully something for everyone in here!

James Graham’s new CD
http://www.footstompin.com/artists/james_graham
My favorite Scots Gaelic singer; I happened to catch him singing on Traveling Folk, a BBC radio program* a few years ago in a great live recording of the Young Scottish Traditional Musician of the Year competition. I've been meaning to write up a review of his CD's one of these days, but I think the reviews on Footstompin' Records pretty well cover anything I could say--he's good! And for the language fans out there, his CD jackets include both the Gaelic words and an English translation. James Graham also appears in the beautiful recording on the very bottom of this page, though it's group singing:
http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/nq/resources/musicofscotland/GAELIC/agaelic.htm
(This page is a nice introduction to Gaelic singing in general, too.)

Freddie Green
http://www.freddiegreen.org/
Quite a different sort of music! Freddie Green was the long-time rhythm guitarist for Count Basie's band. I have some aspirations of learning to play this style of guitar (it would help if I would practice) and admire his views on the role of a rhythm guitarist, not to mention his playing.

Gaeilge quiz
http://www.daltai.com/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/daltai/quiz/index.cgi
This is Irish Gaelic, and I haven't tried it yet, but it looks useful.

Vaquero expert
http://www.elvaquero.com/Rawhide%20Braiding%20History.htm
Again, one of those sites which I saved since it was full of information, but haven't had a good look at yet. The vaqueros are, to my way of thinking, among the most interesting figures of California history.

*Which reminds me--BBC Radio Scotland is great fun with its "Listen Again" feature; you can stream the week's archived shows. Traveling Folk has a lot of variety, if you are in a folksy mood, but my favorite is Pipeline, the bagpiping hour. It has a *lot* of good music, as well as interviews with the great pipers. http://www.bbc.co.uk/scotland/radioscotland/

SO last week

I went out to go to work the other morning and found my car covered in frost. I wish I hadn't been in such a hurry--it was a regular gallery of designs--but I was able to stop and snap a picture or two.

Today, by contrast, the weather must have been up in the 70's. I found a beautifully easy reed lurking in the depths of my pipe case and spent a very happy hour in the shade of an oak tree (yes, it was the sort of weather where you actually wanted to stand in the shade!) paying attention to some long-neglected tunes.

Cold Comfort

When we were growing up we had a picture-book version of James Herriot’s story Moses the Kitten. Though it was a delightful story, the thing that made the biggest impression on my young mind was the rather grim line:

I had driven about ten miles from home, thinking all the time that the Dales always looked their coldest, not when they were covered with snow, but as now, when the first sprinkling streaked the bare flanks of the fells in bars of black and white like the ribs of a crouching beast.


For some reason I have never since been able to look at the hills north of town without recalling that comparison. Above you can see them as they looked last week—ribs and all.

We are currently in a “winter storm warning." We woke up to the heaviest and most delightful rain that has blessed these parts in quite some time. I attempted a bit of a jog early in the afternoon and got an eyeful of the black of trees, the grey of rocks and the white of the hills. (At one point, I also got an earful of sleet--very unpoetic, not to mention uncomfortable.) I must have been in a literary mood this week because when I passed a great flock of sparrows huddled together on the telephone wires singing away like mad, I felt a reminder of something tugging at my brain. After a hot shower at home, I found this in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight:

“. . .with many birds bleakly on the bare twigs sitting
that piteously piped there for pain of the cold.”
(translation by J.R.R. Tolkien)

Nothing about telephone wires, but it does capture the feeling of that rather forced cacaphony in the sleet.

Quote of the Week

Earlier this week, I stumbled across 41 Stories By O. Henry. Browsing through the titles, I discovered that I had read very few of them, which gives me a good deal to look forward to. (I've been a great fan of The Ransom of Red Chief from a tender age). I'm reading it in pieces. Sometimes I read a story, sometimes I just pass the time with a paragraph or two. Below is one of my favorite pieces so far, a bit from "Hostages to Momus":

"We was waked up in a yellow pine hotel by the noise of flowers and the smell of birds. Yes, sir, for the wind was banging sunflowers as big as buggy wheels against the weatherboarding and the chicken coop was right under the window."

???--ology

The study of other people's studies is always entertaining. There are probably in this world, people who are not merely linguists, but who are experts on Old Irish verbs. There are probably other people (in fact, I know there are people, because I read it in a book a few months ago) who specialize in cranefly taxonomy (this is important, because there are more than 1,000 species of craneflies in North America, and somebody should be able to tell them apart). Today on the phone I met a man with a specialty that was startlingly delightful. He was an expert on bottle necks. I came away dazed with the realization that there was that much to know about bottle necks and that someone had taken the time to learn it all.
A few months ago, in an evening of deep study I myself discovered that an empty Redbridge Beer bottle produces a rather sharp F# if you blow across the top (Jacobite Ale, which comes in a fatter bottle, gives you a somewhat truer, but still slightly sharp, F#). The gentleman who called the shop this morning was also interested in the musical qualities of bottles, but from quite a different angle. He sells handmade slides for guitars; you can see them here:
http://gerryglombecki.com/Sliders.html
Since I am in the music sales business and since I have heard the term "bottleneck guitar" applied to some types of blues, I should have presupposed the existence of such an expert as Glombecki. I did know (because, by weird and inexplicable coincidence I had to look it up just yesterday for a customer) that different players will wear their slides on different fingers; I also have been alive on this earth long enough to notice that different people have different sizes of fingers. Still, I was amazed (amazed is really too mild a word, but my brain is tired, probably from being so amazed, and I can't think of a more amazing synonym) at the expertise it takes to fit the perfect slide. Glombecki knows which brand of liquor comes in a bottle with a neck to so many sixteenths of an inch, so that if he gets a request for a custom-made piece, he can accomodate it. The story that really floored me was about a blues guitarist who called him with a request for a slide made of some extinct sort of tequila bottle--and Glombecki knew right off that it was extinct. He can dremel out the inside of a neck to make it larger, of course, but he has to keep his eyes open for bottles which might accomodate slender fingers.
Now I must admit I know more about slides than I know about how they are used, but I suppose if I sit by the phone long enough , I just may learn that too.