Processing with Dr. Birky

I had my by-weekly meeting with Dr. Birky this morning. I am finding our talks very helpful. I feel a little guilty about paying him to chat with me, but what the fuck. This morning I talked to him about all the things on my plate. One of these things was waking up to find that the USA had bombed Syria.

It helped me to unburden on the poor dude. I thanked him for helping me understand myself better. Yesterday Dawn my cellist who is also singing under Nick Palmer for an upcoming sing-along Messiah mentioned that Nick had complimented me to the group when it was announced I was to be the harpischordist for the event. Nick told them I was “smart.” I thanked Dawn and then mentioned that Dr. Birky has helped me become more aware of this. I reported this to Dr. Birky as well.

Piano trio

My piano trio agreed to play the postlude at the Easter Vigil this year. That’s a load off my mind. I was having difficulty imagining how to do a postlude on the piano for that service. I am sure I could do it, but it will be much cooler with the trio. We decided to perform my recent composition, “Stirred Hearts and Souls.” We know it pretty well. All we have to do is get it back in our fingers.

Dawn, my cellist agreed to help out on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. On Maundy Thursday, we come up from downstairs to strip the altar in the church. This means I will have the piano downstairs for the parts of the service prior to that. All we sing upstairs is the Taize number, “Stay with me.” Usually I do it on organ with some viola obbligatos. This year I thought it would be nice to do it with guitar, cello and viola.  That’s now the plan.

Dawn also agreed to play on the prelude for Good Friday. We are going to do a piece from an organ score. It’s a slow tune by Herbert Howells that was originally composed for piano and violin but transcribed for organ. We are now going to do it with piano and cello on the pedal part. Amy, my violinist, toyed with coming and playing on this as well. But after we played through it, she decided that it might be a bit much for her schedule.

New music on the web site

This morning I uploaded the “Frenchified” Purcell piece I arranged for violin, cello, and organ.

It’s on my music page, but I thought I would put it here as well.

Dance of the Green Men – violin.pdf
Dance of the Green Men – cello.pdf
Dance of the Green Men – score and organ.pdf

I am now inspired to finish “Frenchifying” another movement by Purcell.

I will put up my piano trio, “Stirred Hearts and Souls,” soon. I would do it today but it needs some editing to reflect how we play it, especially the piano part which has some wrong notes in the score that I ignore.