Sarah and Lucy are on a plane and on their way to Michigan.

This morning I played through this Pavan and its Galliard.  I do love Byrd’s music. It is such a wonderful thing to be able to play coherently through this stuff. I am playing out of copies of the Fitwilliam Virginal Book I purchased on the advise of the instructions for assembling my Zuckerman harpsichord kit. Now at this age, I can sit and play successfully through most of the pieces in it. Cool stuff.

Yesterday I was thinking as I played through Back preludes and fugues from the second volume of Well Tempered Clavichord, that when I was about 20 or so and attending Ohio Weslyan U, studying composition, I told my fellow students that all the keyboard technique I really wanted at the time was to be able to successfully negotiate the Well Tempered Clavichord. It’s no exaggeration that I have that skill now. I am very grateful to be able to sit down and render these wonderful pieces. I also love thinking about what Bach does in them which is pretty amazing.

I was chatting with Brian Colye this weekend at church. He’s not that much younger than me. We were talking about Nate Chinen’s Playing Changes. Brian immediately understood what fun I am having pulling up the many albums mentioned and/or recommended in this work. It is an amazing time. We talked about discarding our CDs in favor of digital recordings. The conveniences of these things is amazing. Brian said he still has a few old vinyl records. I confessed to having more than a few and that I do return to them this morning from time to time.

This morning while cleaning the kitchen and making coffee I listened to my beloved Robert Johnson.

Post script: This blog has been sitting here all day waiting for me to post it. Consequently Sarah and Lucy have now safely arrived.

Life is good.