My composer friend Jeffrey Lindon reports that the premiere performance of his solo-piano interpretations of my Urban Haiku was a smashing success! Here's an excerpt from his "report":
Urban Haiku opened last night's composition department recital, to great success. In addition to the pianist (Nicholas Ong, who did a superb job), I worked with a reader, Nimrod Weisbrod. Nimrod contributed the idea of acting the part of a different city character when reading each Haiku. For Broadway Crazy Man, he was the crazy man (walked along like normal; then stopped and acted paranoid; then cursed at himself, slapped himself, then stopped one hand from slapping himself with the other hand). For Midnight in the Park, he was a detective type person wandering and dictating notes to himself on a hand-held recorder. For A Pigeon's Death-Throes, he was a commuter who noticed a dying pigeon by the curb and left the scene. For Old Woman Crossing, he was a taxi driver, complete with Indian accent. For How Many Will Live, he was an environmentalist protester. For Fighting Traffic Noise, he was a construction worker (complete with prop hard-hat and imaginary jack-hammer). And for Orange City Glow, he was just a normal guy, and he walked off the stage and exited down the center aisle of the room as he recited the text. Between the others, he went to the small backstage area.
The audience laughed at most all of the humor, and was dead quiet during the serious moments. The applause was ample. And I received, both last night and today, high praises from many quarters, including my teacher, the department head, and several students whose opinions I value.
I wish I could've been there -- sounds fun! Jeffrey has promised to send me a CD of the evening's festivities, so I'm looking forward to that.
In other music news, I've been thinking lately about buying an electric bass. I've got my eye on a four-string Corvette model from Warwick. Those Warwick basses are simply beautiful and they play as sweet as they look. I'm also starting to research home-recording equipment in a more serious fashion so that I can finally record the music I've written. As I've been saying since at least 1995, one of these years....
Oh yeah, and I've been listening to this new Kasey Chambers CD all the time recently. Kasey who? Well, she just happens to be a great young Australian singer-songwriter whose musical styles seemingly stretch all the way from Alanis Morissette to Lucinda Williams to a bit of Sarah McLachlan. The critics call her alt-country, but as Haim Ginott used to say, "labeling is disabling" -- so stop worrying and just enjoy the music already. ;-)