Oracne's Brain Radio

No dayjob today because we're off for MLK Day.

It snowed all day yesterday, starting before dawn, but nothing stuck to the sidewalk until after dark, by which time it was still snowing and I was just not up for shoveling. Which meant, of course, that first thing this morning, after the overnight freeze, there was a layer of ice on the sidewalk. With a great deal of effort and about an hour in two segments (pre- and post-breakfast), I managed to break up and remove enough to make it reasonably safe. I hope. My hands were a little shaky at the end, which indicates I exerted myself more than I should have. Our house is not that wide, thankfully.

The temperature is supposed to go above freezing this afternoon, so hopefully that softens the remainder enough that I can scrape it up. Putting salt on top of ice doesn't help, it just melts the top so it can refreeze in a new and more slick state. Nope!

I have a free ticket for the Orchestra's MLK Day concert this afternoon; I was originally planning to attend with my friend who is now out of town because of a death in the family. We shall see if I recover from my exertions enough to attend. I am not worried about wasting a spot, they generally hand out more tickets than there are seats for these events, and tell you a seat is not guaranteed.

It's possible more snow will arrive in the coming week. Whee. If it does, I hope it doesn't affect our choir kickoff on Saturday, January 24th. Also, I hope the scores get sent out soon, as I need to make a trip to the library to print mine.

I'm back to the office tomorrow and Wednesday.

Making Messiah on Freakonomics. There's a transcript as well.

The podcast does have some advertisements.

1. I participated in Science! This involved an MRI of my right calf while at rest and before, during, and after doing a minute of movement. I got paid, and used part of it to finally buy the Shape Note song book a college friend (from choir) worked on. The next step is to try and make at least a few of the monthly sings in my neighborhood this summer, while I'm off from regular choir.

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I've performed Bach's B minor Mass twice so far, first in 2009 and again in 2013, so it's been eleven years since I sang it last, aside from doing the "Dona Nobis Pacem" on its own a couple of times, most recently in 2022 and before that as a 2020 Virtual Choir Project. I pulled out my score yesterday and flipped through; it's interesting what parts are indelibly memorized and which bits, sometimes as small as a couple of notes, have faded out, probably because I sang them fewer times, or used those measures to breathe instead of sing!

After singing along with "Cum Sancto Spiritu" yesterday, I now know I need to get my diaphragm going again, to get those runs back up to speed! Good thing we have time before New Year's Eve.

Since I'm in the office today and tomorrow, and I find it difficult to concentrate amid the ambient noise of other people, I decided to refresh my memory using Cyberbass, which breaks choral works into the component singing parts for learning purposes. The site owner uses a synthesizer to make the MP3s. I feel it's also fun for non-singers to hear what's going on in all the separate parts at the same time.

Hooray for singing!

1. Streaming free tonight, 12/5/23, 7:30 pm Eastern Standard Time (and for the following 72 hours)! Kuwento Mizik: Jean Bernard Cerin, baritone and Veena Kulkarni-Rankin, piano. "In Krik! Krak! Songs and Stories from Haiti, listeners will take a deep dive into the rarely explored world of Haitian art songs, solo classical piano repertoire, arrangements of traditional folk songs for the concert stage and Kuwento Mizik’s original adaptation of the Haitian folktale, Tezen." JB is a choir friend and this is a project he's been working on for several years. Highly recommended! Free! Donations accepted online.

2. My choir's Friday night Xmas concert went great! There were real lit candles in tall holders on the ends of the pews, and fake pillar candles all over the altar rails - very atmospheric. We had a good-sized, enthusiastic audience.

3. We have less than a month before our New Year's Eve performance of Monteverdi's Vespers of 1610; I've done the piece more than once, but am not necessarily singing the same voice part as before, depending on the balance of the individual movements, which are sometimes five part double choir, and include some cross-voicing for balance. For alto voices, sometimes we're singing in our lower range/chest voice (parts written for men) and sometimes we're beefing up second soprano. There are a fair number of people who have not sung the piece before, so last night was a little bumpy, but now that we know which parts we're on, those folks can practice and next week will be better.

4. A friend in a different chorus had some free tickets for Sunday afternoon, so I attended, sitting with her husband and friends Michael, Marianne, and Jennifer. They did Bernstein's Mass in the first half, concert version, which I'd never heard live before; it's a cool piece. The second half included a jazz mass that fell a bit flat for me, and ended on what Marianna referred to as a "barn burner." The audience included more kids than I'm used to seeing - a lot of singer's families were there. One little girl in the front row was jamming out, I could see her dancing in her seat. So adorable!

5. This Friday night is a Piffaro concert, "Christmas in Southern Germany," featuring soprano Clara Rottsolk, who I've sung with several times, though not for a long time (I don't think we can afford her any more!). I'm very much looking forward to it.

Choir, with our new conductor, is kicking off with a Saturday rehearsal/retreat on September 9 before we return to our normal Monday nights. There's no rehearsal on the 25th because of Yom Kippur; the first concert is October 7, featuring three Bach pieces and Knut Nystedt's Immortal Bach which riffs on Bach, that we've sung before, but not for a long while.

We'll be singing motets "Singet dem Herrn," BWV 225 and "Komm, Jesu, Komm," BWV 229; and the cantata "Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott," BWV 80. The motets are both double choir; I did BWV 229 in grad school, but not since, and have never done 225, which should be fun.

We remain very short of altos, which is a bigger deal with double choir. I put out a call on my Facebook - anybody in the Philadelphia area who's interested and a good reader (or a quick worker), feel free to let me know and I'll put you in touch with the conductor.

1. I attended a bookstore screening of Judy Blume Forever last night and really enjoyed it, though my mask felt a bit uncomfortable after the first hour. I attended with drinkingcocoa and served as cake-carrier and snapper of photos. She got the cake at The Night Kitchen Bakery in Chestnut Hill; the fondant coating made it look like a paperback edition of Forever. I got home later than my usual bedtime, but I really did want to attend this event.

2. I have a different bag with me today, because this knapsack holds my oversized music folder, and I have dress rehearsal after work. I have my music and my Airgami mask for singing, and my Aleve/Tylenol pills for my joints, but I forgot my office keys in my usual bag! Security let me in this morning; I often chat with the ladies usually working the front desk in my building, and they know I'm not a random person.

3. Starting the week of May 15th, we only have to be in the office two days a week. I am happy about this. On Monday, we're learning how to use a system to help us schedule where we'll be sitting on those days. The last stragglers will clear out their personal items at the end of next week; we'll all be assigned a locker.

4. I almost signed up for a next-generation Moderna booster vaccine study, even going through a screening, but in the end I decided I couldn't guarantee being available for a year's worth of follow-up. I will get my scheduled second bivalent booster next Wednesday. Since I have sick time, I'm taking Thursday and Friday off in case of side effects.

5. I'm changing my health insurance starting July 1, and as part of that am spending down a pre-tax Health Savings Account. I wasn't able to get a convenient dermatology appointment as I'd planned, which would likely have been expensive, but I had plenty of other relevant expenses on a mental list. I've ordered a couple of air purifiers (good for allergies as well as viruses) and a fancy CO2 monitor - the linked review is from a very useful blog about masks, air purifiers, and CO2 monitors, and it had a coupon code. The monitor I chose is portable, so good for travel - I shall report back on it!

I finally left the house yesterday! The temperature had warmed up a bit and the sun was out, which was good since I was walking to dress rehearsal in the afternoon. Coincidentally, from my house to the church is exactly one mile, just as it is from my house to my office building.

The best part about a long concert is that the choir has seating, which means that in the performance, we're sitting down through many, many arias during which we do nothing, and we don't have to stand through the even longer rehearsals. I took advantage of seating whenever I could, as this is a marathon.

I dressed for a frigid church, given the temperatures earlier this week, but they must have absolutely cranked their heat because it was comfortable - I only wore my wool cardigan for maybe half an hour. I'll be going for lighter layers today; we're expecting a frightening high of sixty-seven degrees Farenheit, ahead of the weekend's rain. Not at all typical December weather in this area; it's more like Gulf Coast weather, and makes me dwell rather a lot on climate change. It is clear I will not be wearing my nice black cashmere sweater for the performance, or my warm fleece-lined black boots. 2016, the last time we did this piece, was definitely a wool and boots concert!

We were set for 3:30 pm to 10 pm, with a dinner break, but we actually got out early, and we're cutting down the time for today. My call wasn't until 4 pm, and the choir got released around 9. I'm not risking restaurants so I sadly did not go out to eat with fellow singers as I've done in previous years; I brought crackers and cubed cheese and a protein bar, and ate that outside before re-masking, going back into the church, and reading for the rest of the break. It was okay.

We weren't going in order - we did Cantatas IV, II, and V to make the most of the instrumentation, so people only doing a couple of cantatas didn't have to show up both rehearsal days. Exciting news - it appears we have replaced the horns in IV with oboe da caccia, played by local musicians rather than imported. I finally got to see the now seventeen-month-old baby of a Piffaro couple. One of them was playing oboe da caccia, while the other just followed the baby on his explorations.

I'm due back at 4 pm today.

Only a small minority wore masks, including a married couple I know well and several of the soloists. My section (alti) had the highest proportion of mask-wearers, oddly. One of our bass soloists had to be replaced on Monday as he caught covid - this is someone I know, so I really hope he's doing okay. New guy (Chris) sounded excellent and is excited to do the whole piece, as he's only ever done portions before. He had to do some serious cramming! He's fairly new to the area as well. Now he'll be totally hooked into the early music scene. We have musicians from both Piffaro and Tempesta Di Mare participating in this concert as well as our usual loosely-affiliated Bach Collegium.

I miss our previous two bass soloists, one of whom moved to upstate New York for a new job, and the other who moved to Austin, Texas with his boyfriend. I'm glad I can see what they're up to on Effbook. On the good side, one of our former altos, who moved to DC, is back visiting family for the holidays and is singing with us, as is one of our tenors who moved to Princeton for a new job. This helps out a little as there are always people traveling the other direction for holidays who can't do this concert.

I hope all goes well. I am not taking my mask off at all, except outside, and that briefly.

Sunday, the high temperature was fifty-five degrees Farenheit, which to me is officially chilly enough for wool. I went out in the rain to the Variant Six concert (walkable distance, this time), wearing jeans, a button-up with cashmere cardigan, wool scarf, and my faux-leather biker jacket, which sheds water admirably and also has zipper pockets. I warmed up as I walked, but I was not too warm, and since the church was chilly, I never got too hot. Before the last piece, I even put my jacket back on.

Variant Six teamed up with local violinist Min-Young Kim, who played both ordinary violin and electric in this concert. My favorite piece was the closer, "musicologist Helga Thoene’s interpretation of Bach’s Chaconne for violin, composed after the death of his first wife, interwoven with "hidden" chorales sung by the members of Variant 6." It was gorgeous and let me hear the violin piece with new ears, made more enjoyable because I recognized all of the chorales. (For those who don't sing in a choir that does a lot of Bach, the main ones had been sung a capella earlier in the concert, interspersed with contemporary works by Zosha di Castri, Gabriel Jackson, Cecilia MacDowell, and Santa Ratniece.)

One of their two founding tenors left the group at the end of least season to focus more on his solo career; this time, there was a guest baritone, though they will also have a guest tenor later in the season.

Their February concert is in Germantown, which would require a train ride; I can wait a little to decide if I'm going. Their April concert is back in my neighborhood.

My choir starts rehearsals tonight for Schütz's Musikalische Exequien, a German language requiem, which I have sung before and deeply love.