In September, the Low End String Quartet had a recording session at Inner Ear with TJ Lipple. I just got the mastered versions back from TJ. You can hear 'em on the myspace, and there's three free downloads on our website. Woo hoo!
October was a busy one... started the month with a few shows with Step Afrika, as part of the Ellington Jazz Festival. We reinvented "Nxt/Step" to incorporate The WES Group, a jazz quartet led by saxophonist Will E. Smith. They were great, and scheduling problems notwithstanding, the project was fun. We did three shows in the big theater at Atlas Performing Arts Center. One daytime show for kids, and two evenings. Turnout for the first evening show was light, it was the same night as the VP debate.
Cameron and I took a quick trip with my folks to Florida to visit my grandmother. We got to spend an hour or so on the beach, which was nice. I haven't been in the ocean since I don't know when. I saw a picture of my great-great-grandfather. I think I'm going to get a copy on the computer someday... but I'm not holding my breath on account of the older people using the internets and everything... When I do get it, I'll be sure to share. He was a grocer in Brooklyn, and it's a great picture of him in his shop.
On a Saturday afternoon, we rode our bikes the entire length of the Sligo Creek Trail (plus the mile or so from our house to the trail). Turns out it's slightly uphill the whole way up to Wheaton... but at least that made the return trip easy (and fast).
This past weekend we carved our pumpkins. The next day, I found out about yeswecarve.com. Oh well. I still like ours, it's simple. Nothing wrong with simple.
I did an informal show with the PlayGround at Joe's Movement Emporium last Thursday. Looks like they've raised some money to build out the theater there. I have mixed feelings. Joe's is a great community resource - but I'm not sure about the potential for quality performances. Oh well. The Meyer Foundation people love to put their names on buildings, so now they'll have a little community based theater space. This show was not our best, but audience was small and supportive. We're doing Millennium Stage at the Kennedy Center on November 17th.
This morning I went down to NPR for an interview with Neda Ullaby. She's doing a story about the "DC experimental music scene." Marc Masters' piece that ran in the last issue of Signal to Noise magazine made a good impression, I guess? I got a quick studio tour after the interview, and being an NPR junkie myself, I thought it was really cool. I saw cubicles with the names of familiar reporters on them, and I saw where the Morning Edition and All Things Considered people work. I think I caught a glimpse of Corey Flintoff? He's my favorite. The little production studio where we did the interview had three Neumann U87's. Nice. When I find out when the piece is going to air, I'll post something...
Other news from October was the big grant proposal blitz. There were loads of deadlines around Oct. 15 and Nov. 1 so I spent all my "artist" time this month writing proposals.
Fall is here, huh? We spent last weekend enjoying the nice weather. We went apple picking with Jen and Trav and Jen's dad, who was in town for a visit. Now we have lots of apples so it's time to learn how to bake pie.
We also took our bikes out for a nice long ride on Sunday. There are miles and miles of nice trails from our neighborhood up to College Park and vicinity.
Some good news (and also sad news): Oreo is adopted. Her new name is "Scout" and she's shown here with her new sibling, Darcy. She lives at Andrews Air Force Base now. It's so sad to give her up, but nice to know that she's got a great permanent home. We did an enormous amount of vacuuming this past weekend and now the house looks like the humans outnumber the dogs again.
I'm hard at work (actually not so much... I'm procrastinating right now) re-arranging the music for "Nxt/Step" - the piece I wrote for Step Afrika. We're doing a new version with a jazz quartet as part of the upcoming Ellington Jazz Festival. Shows are Oct. 2 and 3 at the Atlas Performing Arts Center.
For several years now I've subscribed to a magazine called Signal To Noise, a publication that bills itself as, “the quarterly journal of improvised, experimental, and unusual music.” They do a fine job covering this terrain, and as far as I know it's a labor of love run by lovely people and filled with the work of lovely people who surely aren't motivated by money. This is all to say, it's a great magazine, and whatever I have to say about it is not meant as a criticism. This essay, like most everything I do, is all about me.
When each issue arrives, I eagerly flip through it. Quickly, I start to get bitter and defensive. I undergo a Kafka-esque transformation and soon resemble a certain fox. It gets harder to flip the pages with furry paws and no thumb, but I'm stubborn and I stick it out until the very last page. Muttering and grumbling over each glossy photo, and every superlative-laden blurb about every unshaven hipster doofus that they gush over for one reason or another. Sour grapes.
At long last, this cycle has been broken! The fall issue arrived in my mailbox this week, and in it there are two lovely features about me. No sour grapes necessary. There's even a glossy photo of me. Me me me. Finally.
Seriously, though... Marc Masters wrote a nice feature story about the DC “experimental scene,” and I'm included as well as many of the other people who, honestly, have a lot more to do with the scene than I do. But I'll happily take some credit. I am a sucker for acknowledgment.
There's also a short review of the DCIC cd included as well... and it's a pretty good review, I think:
DCIC is a guitar/electronics-reeds-drums trio with links to underground rock – guitarist Jonathan Matis recently toured with Fugazi bassist Joe Lally, drummer Ben Azzara was in Delta '72 – as well as jazz – they have performed with Greg Osby. They play in a hybrid language, slipping in the occasional rock chord as easily as they slide through textural explorations. Mike Sebastian's horns, and especially his exotically pitched saxello, are what makes their music stand out. He's as adept at tying knots in his own lines like Roscoe Mitchell as he is at reeling out an imploring, klezmer-tinged lament. At close to an hour, their debut overstays its welcome a bit, but there's enough happening here that I'd be happy to check them out if they came to my town.-- Bill Meyer
I've been in the studio for the last two and a half days with the Low End String Quartet. We're recording at Inner Ear with TJ Lipple. I like TJ, but it sure is expensive to hang out with him.
Our tracking day went more smoothly than I expected. We got through everything with a little time to spare. The air conditioning wasn't working, so things got a little swampy. The string players had some interesting troubles with that. It turns out that bass rosin gets extra sticky; and one of Jodi's tuning pegs got stuck at one point. My bandmates were really great about it. We got through the day with nary a complaint about the heat, and everyone really worked hard.
Mixing is going well too... although it can be a tedious process. In a few weeks, hopefully, we'll get the mastering done and then I'll have some hot stuff to share.
I am embarrassed to admit that it is only recently that I've learned to make the distinction between these two concepts (as they apply to myself and my own work). In retrospect it is kind of hilarious that I was operating previously with these things conflated.
Happily, I have come to realize that what I really want to accomplish musically has something to do with having people like the work, but has nothing to do with needing people to like me. Ah, what relief. Of course, I do still need people to like me, but that's an entirely separate matter. Understanding that this is an entirely separate matter is a wonderful thing!
At the same time, I am more and more clear about the fact that all people will not like the work. In fact, most people will probably not like it (or at least not care about it). However, there are some people who will actually like it and be enthusiastic about it. This is nice.
Having learned these simple things makes it much easier to swallow a lousy review (like the one that was published on Monday in the Post), because my self esteem isn't all tied up in whether or not people liked the music. People responded quite positively to the show - and I think that has a lot to do with the potential for the group and what we're trying to accomplish, even though I've got some work do to as far as getting the music where it needs to be. Carl told me today that he thought about 75% of the music didn't really work, but the other 25% was really exciting. For our first time out with this project, I'll take that. Ok, so we didn't knock one out of the park our first try, but we'll get there...
The Low End String Quartet's concert on Saturday went quite well. I was really happy with how things went. We had a great audience, the "early show" experiment at Velvet Lounge worked out, and we made it through our set without any major troubles. Considering all of the technical things that could go wrong (especially with my poor old laptop running the show), I'm pretty psyched about how it went.
Of course there are technical / execution things that can be improved. This was our first time performing most of the music, and we can use some more rehearsal. I need to find a better system for dealing with Andrea's violin pickup - the sound we're getting now isn't so hot.
The Post sent a classical music critic, and she really didn't like it. Oh well. I had hoped we'd get a good review that we could attach with grant proposals and add to our press kit and whatnot, but this one ain't it. Oh well. Fortunately the other group members escaped unscathed. She only harshed on me - and particularly my compositions. I can understand that viewed through the lens of post-classical minimalism (Reich, Glass, John Adams, Terry Riley, etc) my work would come off as a bad imitation.
Anyway, we've got work to do. We have two rehearsal days this week before we head into the recording studio on Monday night. So that's two work days this week where I get to have super fun and call it work.
I wanted to write this up two weeks ago, and then got behind... but I think it's going to repeat tomorrow, so I'm happy to revisit.
I've been complaining a great deal lately about my dayjob(s) and stress related to money, etc. That all took a backseat a few weeks ago when I had a daytime rehearsal for the Low End Quartet.
I started this project about a year and a half ago. I threw together a few pieces, found interested players who were willing to do a couple of rehearsals and one show for free, got us a spot opening for a friend of mine, and we did a little proof-of-concept. It worked quite well. The music was well received, we made some rehearsal recordings, and I was quite insipired to write more music for the group. Instead of writing said music immediately, I wrote grant proposals. And then some more proposals. Then I got really lucky and some of those were funded.
So here we are, I've got this thing going as a paid gig. I was able to take a few months at the start of the year to focus on composing, and I've got the budget to pay the performers (including myself) for a handful of rehearsals and a show or two. Plus we're going to spend three days in the recording studio in September. Exciting stuff...
Of course real life didn't unfold according to plan and some of the details in my proposals have been changed. I had to hire a new bass player, I didn't finish writing the pieces I needed in the time alotted, etc., etc... but we've got a show coming up this weekend, and the recording session is two weeks away. And here's the best part -- our rehearsal days are paid for. It's literally my job to rehearse with the group. Not as much as I'd like, but we're devoting a couple of days to it - six hour blocks of time, which is quite unheard of in my experience with other bands.
So a few weeks ago, I set up the basement for us and sure enough we spent the better part of the day playing new music in my basement. We didn't cover as much material as I'd hoped, but I'm always putting too many things on my to-do list for any given day. This was no exception. We took a short break for lunch, and played some more. A photographer for the Express came by because they're running a feature about our upcoming show. We got to get acquainted a bit more with one another during lunch, and we got to get acquainted a bit more simply by playing together. (The cat's out of the bag, as far as my skills as a performer... the other members of the group are pros and I'm not quite up to speed when it comes to playing chamber music ;-)
At the end of the day, I was awfully content. I put my coffee down at 9am and forgot to drink it, I was so absorbed in what we were doing all day. When I found it again after the rehearsal was over and everyone had left, I realized that I'd just had the best work day ever. We'd worked hard, but it was seriously fun the whole time. Maddening at some points, given that my music is repetitive and we have to count bars carefully, but fun!
I can't wait for rehearsal tomorrow.. and the show on Saturday should be a blast. Check out the Express on Thursday (I think that's when the feature will run), and I think the Post is covering the show so a review should be in Monday's paper...
don't take my word for it, the Washington Post's "Going Out Gurus" picked our show as a hot one... tomorrow night at Velvet Lounge.
I haven't really done much publicity for our upcoming Low End String Quartet show at the Velvet Lounge (Aug. 23rd at 8pm, it's gonna be awesome and you should totally come), but the wheels seem to be turning nonetheless.
I got an email from the arts editor at Washington Post Express - I don't think I sent her anything about the show, but honestly I can't remember... and they sent a photographer over to my house to take some pictures during our rehearsal yesterday.
Also, we got a mention in the Post yesterday, at the end of a review of the Section Quartet's show at Iota (they were doing an evening of Radiohead covers).
Does this mean that there is some buzz building and I don't have to push so hard to generate it myself? That would be sweet.
I spent most of July working for the man, and now I feel a little less anxious about money. Getting my total net worth above zero makes a difference. Imagine that.
Now my anxious-ness has shifted focus from money to the other side of the same coin: time. Now that I'm committing the majority of my time to earning money, I'm running up against some real obstacles when it comes to accomplishing the things I think I'm supposed to actually do with my life. For whatever reason(s), one of those things is to write string quartet music that rocks. And I've got a deadline, since we start rehearsing again next week... but when do I finish the piece I'm working on, and how will I ever get the score and parts done before Thursday morning? And, oh crap – shouldn't I be doing publicity stuff for our show, now that it's less than four weeks away?! And on top of that, my list of grant proposal deadlines is pretty long for September and October, so I have to get started on some of that work during August, or I'll really be in trouble...
So here I am in anxious-land, nervous about how I can make time to do the things I “need” to do even though I “need” to pay the bills and I also “need” (and importantly, want) to spend time doing some leisure things – spending time with Cameron, and the dogs, and fixing up the yard and the house, etc.
I heard this sermon a few years ago, about looking at our calendar through a spiritual lens... not surprisingly, the big conclusion is to find a purpose in life and do things with that purpose in mind. Then the frenzied activity goes away, or at least feels rewarding rather than frenzied since it's all in service of the grand purpose.
Ok, but I still want to write this string quartet music that rocks. Is that my grand purpose? I don't think so, but maybe writing and playing music is... in as much as it serves a grand purpose like inspiring others or somehow expressing the inexpressible, you know, like music can do sometimes... or maybe it's more about allowing music to create the opportunity for people to come together and simply have a shared experience – one that may occasionally be a moving experience? I think I learned a little bit about that playing with Joe last May. He seems really clear about his purpose - which I interpreted as being all about bringing people together. And that meets the Henry Moore test as mentioned in that sermon I linked to, about having a purpose that is totally impossible. It is definitely getting harder and harder to bring a group of people together for any kind of shared experience. (And I'm part of the problem here... I'd much rather stay home and watch TV with Cameron and the puppies than go out and do something with people – hey wait a second, I hate people. I've been using the “so so so fun test” to say no to all kinds of activities; if it's not going to be so so so fun, then I'd rather just stay home. I haven't found much that passes the “so so so fun test.”)
Even with that aside, so let's say we're close to my grand purpose – to use my creativity to create something that brings people together for some kind of special experience (let's pretend I find a way to get over the fact that, in general, I hate people). Or something like that. Now what about the money? Am I just too chicken to really take the leap and live my purpose because I don't know how the money can possibly work out? I tried it for the first five months of this year – I wasn't doing very much in the way of unrelated day-jobs, and I wound up broke without much in the way of future earnings on the horizon, so I headed for the temp agency. So now what?
July has pretty much come and gone. Most of my time went to day-jobs. Accounting is fun! (That's what I'll keep telling myself anyway). There have been some rewarding little things... like:
Meet Oreo! She's our new foster puppy and she is ridiculously adorable. Like our previous foster puppy, she arrived with a ripe odor and kennel cough. Over the weekend she got a bath, and her cough is improving steadily.
Honestly, I'm a little worried about how crazy she's going to be once she gets healthy. We're so spoiled by Wickett who is totally mellow and super well behaved. But who cares? It's a super cute puppy! What's not to love about a super cute puppy?!
I've got a handful of performances coming up this weekend. Saturday and Sunday, I have a piece in the Source Festival (more on that later). And on Sunday night, DCIC is performing at Electric Possible with a handful of other bands.
Electric Possible is monthly concert held at George Washington University. The focus is on experimental music of different kinds. This month's lineup includes some good stuff. We're performing along with PRV Trio (Anthony Pirog, Ed Ricart, and Scott Verrastro), Seventh Ring of Saturn (from Atlanta), Cash $lave Clique, and maybe others.
DCIC will have a rehearsal before this show, which is something I'm looking forward to. We haven't played together since our in-store at Crooked Beat back in early May. So this will be fun, we get to play together on Thursday night in Ben's basement and then again on Sunday at GWU. Twice in one week! Woo Hoo!
The details:
Phillips Hall,
801 22nd St, NW,
Rm B120 (in the basement)
(22nd and H Streets/GW Metro)
George Washington University
8pm, $5
And now about this Source Festival thing... I was assigned collaborators as part of the festival's "Interdisciplinary Mash-Ups" initiative:
Mash-ups are the pairing together of artists from at least two different disciplines each with the goal of creating, in under three month’s time, a new interdisciplinary performance piece 15 to 30 minutes long.I got paired with two dancers. This gig doesn't pay very well, so we had to address the conflicting issues of making a substantial (15 minutes long is substantial as far as I'm concerned) new work when we aren't being compensated for our time, while simultaneously we don't want to present something that's totally weak. Laura and Stephen were also keenly aware of this conundrum so we looked around for material that we already have on hand, that would be available to use as a starting point.
This past weekend, I was hired to help out with a big baking project. Cameron got a gig baking a wedding cake (and cupcakes and cookies) for her boss' daughter's wedding. I did lots of dishes. We made an enormous amount of icing. We also learned how to stack cakes. Turns out that the secret is dowels. Looks good, huh? It's a vegan red velvet cake with butter cream icing. It's crazy delicious.
The cake was accompanied by five dozen coconut cupcakes and one zillion Mexican wedding cookies.
We borrowed my parents' kitchen to do most of the work, which was crucial to our success. Having two ovens, two mixers, and all that counter space really paid off. I don't think we could've done it in our little kitchen.
I would very much like to develop a new relationship to money. Perhaps this would be easier if I had a little bit more of it. Towards this end, I am back to work selling my accounting skills. Temp-ing. My current assignment is at the Lincoln Theater. I got the gig through Accountemps. I do not think highly of Accountemps, so I met with another recruiter last week. We'll see if I get a better offer.
This morning, I got to work about 45 minutes early (Cameron needed to get to her office early, and I had to take Wickett to doggie day-care and then metro down to my new job site, wasn't sure how long all that would take). So I took a walk around the neighborhood (14th and U street). It's really crazy how much 14th street has changed - even in the last year or so. Lots of construction is now completed and the street is lined with upscale retail that makes me laugh. They got all of these ridiculously expensive stores open just in time for the economy to take a nose-dive. The absurdity of human activity is spilled out onto the sidewalk and I couldn't help tripping all over it. I've been thinking about the absurdity of human activity because temp-ing brings out the absurdity very efficiently.
I will say this: it's awfully nice having very little accountability. I promise to actually show up and do some work each day. I will not leave my client in worse condition that when I got there. Happily, I also will take on no stress related to the state of their financial management. It is not my problem. If it becomes my problem, I can, quite literally, walk away. Additionally, I have now re-joined the ranks of so many other white-collar workers: those sitting at a desk, bored at work. Gee, now I have time to make a blog post. Perhaps you too are bored at work. Why else would you be reading this?
Yesterday, Cameron and I performed with Daniel Burkholder/The PlayGround at Bladensburg Waterfront Park. It was nice doing the show outside, along the water. The weather cooperated, the rain that was in the forecast didn't arrive until after we got home and unloaded the gear. The show went fine, I guess. I think my interest in modern dance is waning. Maybe "has waned completely" would be more accurate. I will probably feel better about the project after I get paid.
We got our notification from the Arts and Humanities Council of Montgomery County. Once again, the Low End String Quartet has been rejected for a "Creative Projects" grant. At least this year I had the good sense not to observe the panel as they discussed the proposal. Unfortunately, they were no more enlightened this year than last year... I will no longer waste my time applying to AHCMC for funding. Too bad, though, I could've really used the money. Oh yeah, better get back to the bookkeeping...
I got four pieces of news on the grants front this week... first one I mentioned already, Creative Capital invited a full proposal. Neato. Then I got two rejection emails: American Music Center's "Composer Assistance Program" and Meet the Composer both said no. But tonight I got a nice phone call from Carl Banner at Washington Musica Viva -- our joint proposal to have the Low End String Quartet join up with his group for a series of concerts in "alternative venues" during 2009 was funded by the Argosy Foundation Contemporary Music Fund. Now we have to find matching funds for something like $6,000. That seems like a nice problem to have...
None of this takes care of my short term money problem, but it sure is good news! And there's a possibility that I'll do some future grant writing for Carl, for money, so that'll help.
Unrelated, I went to my first yoga class today since the tour ended. Turns out that sitting in a van for two weeks, eating badly, and drinking beer every night makes for one hard yoga class.
It's now been a few days since the end of my two week tour with Joe Lally. I think it may have been a strange dream... I got to play music with Joe and Ricardo every single night for two weeks straight. Did that really happen? Yes, I think it did...
The last few nights of the trip were strange, in different ways. The DC show was odd for Joe, he said he was nervous about it - playing to a room full of people he really just wanted to sit and talk to, rather than be on stage playing songs. Turnout was a little bit lighter than I expected, but there was certainly a nice size audience and the set went just fine. Ricardo was disappointed with his playing that night, but Ricardo on an off night is still pretty awesome. Philadelphia was a strange one because it was an early all-ages show at a venue in an odd neighborhood. A 7pm show on a weeknight feels odd to me, but we had a roomful of people listening - and they were there to listen. Very quiet. The soundguy was very stoned, which made me nervous but he did a fine job. There was some unfortunate lighting at the end of the show - and then we had to hustle and get our gear out so the club could switch over to DJ night which began immediately when we were done. Baltimore was strange too. The club recently moved into another club. There was a dance party upstairs and booming bass rumbled the room where our show was going on. This proved to be distracting, but not an insurmountable obstacle. In the end, our final show felt anticlimactic. I made a handful of mistakes which seemed extra frustrating since we'd been playing together so intensely for weeks - I thought I would've been able to get it right. Then we said goodbye and that was that.
Returning to home life was abrubt - and wonderful. I am eating about four million calories per day now. Hopefully that will get back to normal. Home cookin' rules. Vegan desserts are also nice. We made asparagus lemongrass risotto last night for Cameron's birthday and it was mighty delicious. I'm a little bit jet lagged. I had gotten onto a late night schedule and now it's back to the land of the workin' folks. Except that I need to find me some work now... which is strange since I'm as busy as ever, only I'm not getting paid for most of my work. I have a batch of grant proposals to write, so hopefully that will bring in something later on in the year. But that won't help me get out of debt now.
I got some great news yesterday: I had applied for Creative Capital, which is a very competitive national grant program for individual artists. Turns out I made the first cut, and I've been invited to submit a full proposal. This is very exciting. But now I need to clear a few days to sit down and get the proposal done.
I'm also supposed to be working on a new piece for the Source Festival. They set up a series of "interdisciplinary mash-ups" (their term, not mine). I'm performing in early July with two dancers: Laura Schandelmeier and Stephen Clapp. (What an exciting mash-up! Music! and dance!) We're supposed to create a new collaborative work that is 15 - 30 minutes in length. If they sell 60% of the tickets to our three performances, I will get paid about $300. That means we need to create this new 15 - 30 minute piece in approximately zero hours, but I suspect this will not be possible. Especially since I would like the piece to not suck. Not sure why I said "yes" to this gig. Probably because it was by invitation only, so I was all flattered to be invited. I am such a sucker.
Now I'm also supposed to be finding another day-job because I owe Cameron a bunch of money for our household bills over the last few months. When I am actually going to work at this new job is a bit confusing to me at the moment, but I guess I need to figure out how to make it happen... because I really need the money.
This new as-yet unnamed day-job also needs to be fairly flexible. Joe invited me to do some more touring in September, and Step Afrika is supposed to hire me for some work in the fall as well, so I might be a full-time musician again in September / October. For a little while anyway.
Relationship-land is going nicely. I was worried about how touring would play out, with Cameron stuck taking care of everything at home while I was out having fun and not getting paid enough to cover my share of the bills. Money aside, I think we were able to discuss the various issues that came up and not have things get ugly at all. Realistically, I won't be touring much at all in the near future since I don't have any road-ready or seaworthy ensembles at the moment. Maybe in 2009 I should get the Low End Quartet out of DC to start building audiences elsewhere, but we'll see. I probably have to hire a whole set of new players for that, so it seems difficult, if not unlikely. So, I think it's actually much simpler than I had feared. I do enjoy living at home, in a house, with only one other person (and a pet). I do enjoy having a car, and a yard, and health insurance. Since I'm not really in a position to even try to make a living as a touring performer, the real issue to be solved is only money. What I want for myself, and what Cameron wants for herself, in terms of creature comforts, are really pretty similar. There's only so much lower I'd be willing to drop my overhead expenses... so I don't think there's going to be any conflict there.
Being away only helped to highlight how much I miss being at home. Even though I did reaffirm that I'm a sucker for acknowledgment and validation, I also reaffirmed that I'm super lucky to have what I have at home and I don't want to trade that for anything...
Now to figure out that money problem...
