I have fallen in love with these pieces. I especially like the way Gintova plays them. There are more on YouTube. i have been using my Primephonic app to listen to them.

They inspired me so much that I decided to actually schedule some organ music by Telemann for this Sunday. I’m not finding his keyboard fantasies near as cool as the violin ones, but still it’s kind of nice stuff.

Yesterday was “date day.” Eileen and I were a  bit worried that since the county fair was going on that we might have difficulty getting to our usual beach spot. She suggested we go anyway. It was crowded but there was room for us.

When we have “date day,” usually my routine is to make us a picnic lunch. This is what I did yesterday.

Speaking of cooking I have been changing up my breakfast meals. We had several old bananas. I decided to mix in some egg to smashed and pureed banana to make a pancake batter. I found this very sweet by itself and quite good. The charring from the pan gives a nice frisson to this very simply dish.

This morning I decided to add some cooked blueberries to it for a syrup. I put too much water with the berries so it was runny. And it also was not sweet enough. Next time i will use much less water and a bit of maple syrup.

I ran out of fake gin a couple nights ago. More is on its way. I went back to drinking real martinis. I managed to keep it down to one drink a night and no snacks after a light meal. This is good. My weight and blood pressure are coming down.

I  finished Reed’s Japanese by Spring. I enjoyed but I thought it didn’t actually work well as a novel. Reed himself invades the narrative to the point that the ending pages are only about him. I’m interested in him so I didn’t mind reading it. I did notice that it made sort of a lame ending to the book.

Eileen noticed that I couldn’t read the signs in the grocery store when we stopped to pick up some stuff at the store yesterday. Today she suggested that I call and make an eye appointment. This is a very good idea since I not only cannot see signs well I sometimes have trouble reading music. They couldn’t get me in until the end of August.

I’m hoping I will be almost retired by then. I am meeting with Rev Jen today at her request. Maybe she’ll have some good news for me like they have hired someone.

Steve VanderVeen: The story of Holland’s first residents

Today’s random music.

I first heard this piece performed by Russian Renaissance.

They were amazing.

A couple of interesting articles in yesterday’s NYT.

Asians are represented in Classical music, but are they seen?

A Violinist on how to empower Asian musicians by Jennifer Koh

I was particularly pleased to see an article by an actual musician as a sidebar to the original. Click on Koh’s name above to go to her web site.

It pays to read the comments on both articles despite the inevitable racism in many.

Finally, once again Primephonic recommended an amazing album. It was perfect for morning stretches today. Here’s the YouTube version.

Evelyn Glennie rocks.

Apparently, Tower wrote the piece for her. The “strike” is the strike of a mallet or a drum stick. The “zone” refers to the fact that Tower wanted Glennie’s instruments strung along the stage so that Glennie moved from the dulcet sounds of the vibraphone to drums. Very cool. Couldn’t find a live performance on YouTube.