Thursday, January 17, 2008

Violin concerto

O.K. Here it is.
The violin concerto.
Just click on the mp3 links.
I think I have them in the right order.

I got a call from David this morning cancelling my class, but I went downtown anyway.
You know about the coffee.
Listened to Gamalan Pacifica at city hall, then came here.

More about the disgusting Seattle Symphony in the latest issue of the Weekly.

Nice humane piece by Mark Fefer.

Same story but I enjoy a chance to offer my pathetic moral support to anyone else suffering that sick organization.

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5 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hallo, Euch Voelker!
The "oe" in the greeting shows I'm now in Seattle, not Schwerin, where keyboards have the "o-Umlaut" (an "o" with two dots on top of it). I'm here for medical reasons, including having some cancerous flesh scraped out from under the skin of my nose on the 15th. The operation went surprisinglyu well, and I'd recommend Dr. Craig Birkby to anyone else needing skin-cancer surgery!! He and his staff are GREAT, the opposite of the hacks in Schwerin who awkwardly repaired the LL's cut finger at the beginning of January (which required three stitches, but she's now ok, too. I miss her muchly!
Hope all is well with you all, my fellow FFTL readers!
Tschuess (the US keyboard also doesn't have an "S-Zet, which the Germans have for a double-s)
-- Anonomann

4:10 PM  
Blogger Glenn Buttkus said...

What a creature of habit you are, down, down you go for the coffee and cookie, deep into the swarms of crowds, the concrete steeples rising to touch the dark belly of the Northwest's sky; sun breaks here and there, and you like a child skipping between them, and into them; and that smell the city has, Seattle being part port, part megaopolis, part old town, part Jetsons,--kelp, moss, ancient timbers holding up the piers, ancient concrete holding up the viaduct, canyons of glass, with the wind whipping around skyscrapers like blowing cumulus adolescents, making Doug Palmer put up his collar, and squint, tense as he walked past Fortress Benaroya.

Gamelan Pacifica, under the direction of Jarrad Powell, will premiere several new works commissioned especially for this anniversay occasion by the Paul Allen Family Foundation. Special guests will include Javanese musician and composer Sustrisno Hartana, Wayne Vitali, director of the Bay Area's renowned Balinese gamelan Sekar Jaya, and Padma Sari, a Balinese gamelan sekaa from Seattle, founded by I Wayan Sinti.
Members of the Seattle Harmonic Voices will perform, Ketawang Harmonic, a compostion for overtone singing and Javanese gamelan. Ketawang Harmonic features an interlocking vocal harmonic style based on the elaboration patterns of the Bonag instruments.

SHV Performers: Stephen Fandrich (director)

Scott Adams
Stephen Fandrich
Jeppa Hall

Posted September 11, 2006
Mark Fefer Named Editor in Chief of Seattle Weekly

Source: Village Voice Media Press Release

September 11, 2006 -- Veteran Seattle journalist Mark Fefer has been named editor-in-chief at Seattle Weekly. He will officially take the chair on October 3.

Fefer's hiring represents a second homecoming for a man who has spent his journalistic career in Seattle and New York City.

Raised on the Eastside, a mile from where the Microsoft campus is now, Fefer graduated from Harvard in 1987 with a degree in English and moved to New York, where he started as a fact-checker at the satirical magazine Spy. He spent almost five years as a staff reporter for Fortune magazine before returning to Seattle the first time and signing on with the Weekly.

He was a staff writer at the Weekly from 1995 to 2001, and also was the paper's jazz critic. He served as the Weekly’s arts and culture editor from 2002 to 2004 before returning again to New York City, where he worked most recently as an editor for Bloomberg News.

"I'm thrilled at the chance to build on the Weekly’s history of excellence," Fefer said. "This city deserves great journalism and I can't wait to lead the paper's talented staff in delivering it."

"Mark shares our vision of the Weekly as a paper committed to tough investigative reporting, lively magazine-style feature writing, and smart, edgy arts and music coverage," said Andy Van De Voorde, executive associate editor for Village Voice Media. "This was an easy choice."

Looking at the online Seattle Weekly today, I could not find the piece on SSO, but then that's me.

Now as to YOUR long awaited, often referenced VIOLIN CONCERTO, I think it might be your best work yet. It really pleased me to be able to hear it, knowing that I will not probably feel up to the drive north on the 25th, after 4 hours of sitting with an IV in my arm. Your three mpg's seem to add up to about 18 minutes of music. Is that about how long the whole piece would be in person? There are several other instruments on the track. How will you solve that when the piece is played in concert with just the two violinists?

I call your concerto:
SOUTHWEST SUITE

First Movement: THE CANYON 5:10
Moving along the rushing river, skimming its muscular waves as it carves rocks, and bellows its way through hundred foot high cliffs; stone that it beat down and slashed out of its way over the millennium; cliffs of rainbow rock, sandstone and granite. You and I are winging along the corridors, spiraling on the updrafts, fighting against the downdrafts. You are the hawk and I am the crow. Listen, above the sound of the water, and the groan of granite, can you hear that? Something is calling us, something forlorn and far off, a coyote, a wolf, a canine pack of street corner warblers and growlers. So we rise up, flapping hard to catch the crest of a thermal, blasting us out of a canon past the red-yellow rock toward the ribbon of the sky above.

Second Movement: THE DESERT 6:10

The wind caresses our tailfeathers as we sweep out of the canyon and behold the vastness of the desert plateau, punctuated with monoliths, red-brown in the morning light, neath an electric blue sky, dotted with popcorn white cactus clouds, arms of mist stretching out thin and long, the air pregnant with sorghum and sage and alkaline, and we wing together high, high up into a hot thermal, to get a big picture, the wide shot of the southwestern tableau, and we barely hear brother coyote, his mournful howls beat down by the thunder of thousands of moccasined feet, lost in a yellow cloud a mile distant, gray-blue and shimmering in the late morning. We fly toward it, attracted by the rolling thunder beneath clearish skies, and then we realize--that there are human legs, leather breeches, loincloths, buffalo robes, skin wraps, wool blankets, eagle feathers, and Winchesters all populating the dust; Apaches, a band of them, rag tag, faces white from the dust, white with black eyes piercing through, straining to see ahead, to possible sanctuary, their white masks looking odd, like zombies, like shuffling Noh players in some kind of traditional dance, dance of flight, and the thick dust is also full of horses, dappled, spotted, short, strong mustangs, paints, and Appolosas, and dogs of every kind and color, yipping in response to the gray ghost brothers who slink along parallel, looking for scraps and stranglers. And yo-hey, what a day, because out in front is a magnificent white tall stallion, its long tail and mane throbbing and whipping in the wind, and astride is a short muscular dark warrior in a pure white shirt, loin cloth, black bear moccasins, a buffalo skin vest, and mule deer leather britches, wearing a red bandanda around his black short-cropped shoulder length hair. God in heaven, it's Geronimo, on the run.

Third Movement: THE RIVER 6:31

Two miles behind Geroniomo's tribe, his band on the run, is another dust cloud, pure white alkaline, white hats, white faces, silver buckles, scabbords, and officer's swords, bushy moustaches, hard white eyes, the Seventh Cavalry, with another short warrior at the fore, leading them in pursuit. It is Custer, back from the dead, eyes dead, arrows still sticking out of his chest, thighs, back, calves, and shoulders, bristling with Sioux feathers, wood stubbles like a hair shirt, like a porquipine in a white deerskin shirt, hatless, scalped, angry, sword protruded and pointed at the sadness of the fleeing Apaches, the white scourge bearing down on the red menace, barroling down, like 400 hooves tearing at the hardpan and clay and deep arroyos, dipping, swerving, but coming on, coming on strong, ever coming on.
We wing west, hawk and crow, and there is Geronimo, astride his magnificent steed, watching like a parent, as his tribe crosses the wide water, the Rio Grande, escaping to Mexico, to the Sierra Madre, to the thorn bushes and dark skinned brothers of the soil; and the tribe forded, swum, paddled, thrashed the water, horses whinnying, with children clinging to their tails in the fast rapids, babies held high as mothers did side strokes, warriors all straining to look at their back trail, to see if Custer would bring his ghost riders, his bloody gang of white spectres down upon them, clutching their spears, bows, and rifles; ready, at the ready, forced to be ready. The last to enter the water, to make the last crossing was Geronimo himself. He did not look back. He was not afraid of white ghosts or white bullets. His medicine was strong. His people were safe, for now.

Glenn

8:15 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Oh My Grand Douglas Dearest:

How wonderful to hear your violin concerto before its public performance, even with the mp3 speakers sounding a bit thin and tinty, still your composition took me places I have never been before. How thrilling! How magnificent! The musical floodgates are yawning open now, and the Palmer compositions will rise like a grandiose body of water, ready to make the levy sweat, ready to serenade the world; and boy are we ready!

Emily

8:19 AM  
Blogger Lane Savant said...

It's the violin Duet that will be performed at the salon, not the concerto.
you're right there are more instruments in the concerto, about $8000.00 worth

11:05 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hallo, Lane (on Fr., 18 Jan.08):
I look forward to the world premier of your violin duet next Friday (only a week away!)!
Toi, toi, toi!!!!
-- Anonomann

3:24 PM  

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