Yesterday after Ballet class I looked in the accompanist slot to find a copy of the piano reduction of Prokofiev’s ballet, “Romeo and Juliet.”
In a discussion with the chair of the department who had asked me for music by Prokofiev and Rachmaninoff for class, we had agreed that her request covered a bewilderingly large corpus of music. She told me that she had a piano score of “Romeo and Juliet” and would loan it to me. I suggested she put it in the accompanists’ slot for me. I checked several times thereafter and it wasn’t there. Subsequently I interlibrary-loaned a copy. I had it with me yesterday at class but there was not an opportunity to ask her which scenes she wanted me to learn.
She did not mention to me that she had done what I had asked and put her copy in the slot where I find my time card. But there it was. And she had marked which scenes to learn. The music is pretty difficult, but I will do what I can to learn the scenes. I started working on them immediately yesterday.
My piano trio rehearsal was different yesterday. My cellist has a full week of symphony commitments and begged off. I invited Deb Coyle, oboe, to join Amy and me and play through a volume of Canzoni by Frescobaldi I recently purchased.
We did so and as I suspected the music is charming and would serve as lovely music for a prelude and postlude. There is also a part for the cellist. I played it yesterday on a bit louder stop and did the realized continuo part on a quieter stop (for the most part – occasionally I played it all loud to assist the reading process of the other two people).
After Deb left, Amy and I read through two Violin Sonatas by Mozart. This is something I have wanted to do for a long time but have never found a violinist interested in doing so. The music is amazing.
In the evening, I met my friend Rhonda Edgington and John Boody the organ builder for coffee and a chat.
I found Boody interesting to talk to. After a bit he pulled out his laptop and treated us to an abbreviated version of a talk he gave this week for the American Institute of Organ Builders 2012 Convention on Monday in Lansing.
The subject of his talk was a description of one of their current works in progress, Opus 65, being installed in Grace Church, New York City.
As you can imagine this was very cool. Boody is a craftsman and artist. It was a joy to listen to him and look at his power point presentation.
Here’s a link to his firm’s web site: http://www.taylorandboody.com/index.html
I continue to be amazed at my life here in little old Helland. Many thanks to John and Rhonda for including me in their conversation last night!
