Yesterday, Julie Powell asked me if I minded laying out a semester as a ballet accompanist. Her reason is a bit convoluted, but of course I said I didn’t. Maybe I should have insisted on playing Tuesdays and Thursdays. She told me I was her first choice if I wanted to play. But her reasoning was that she was attempting to increase the pool of pianists by offering two classes on Monday and Wednesday to a pianist driving from Muskegon to “make it worth her while.”
This pianist is someone from Julie’s past who presumably needs the money. I mentioned to Julie that this was the way GVSU permanently sidelined me as an adjunct, by offering me work that I didn’t want to accept (morning and evening classes).
Walking home from this conversation I realized that I felt a certain sense of relief. My energy pie seems to be shrinking a bit.
The ballet accompaniment is not a lot of work, however I often pour my heart and intellect into my improvising. That does take energy.
It finally happened that Songza introduced to me to music I hadn’t heard before but like. “Pavane” (original by Fauré) covered by Hubert Laws began playing yesterday from a songza playlist. Eileen asked me what it was. She and I both liked it.
It turns out Laws did an album in 1971 of just “covers” of classical music.
I’m listening to the entire thing right now on Spotify. I like it.
Besides the Fauré which begins the album the rest of the tracks are (in case you can’t read the pic above):
Rite of Spring (Stravinsky)
Syrinx (Debussy)
1st and 2nd movement of Bach’s Brandenburg #3.
This music totally fits my mood this morning.
I was thinking about Francis Jackson’s setting of Vaughan Williams tune for the text, “For All the Saints” (Sine nomine) this morning and realized that he refers throughout to other hymn tunes by Vaughan Williams including the melody for “Hail Thee Festival Day” (Salve Feste Dies) and “At the name of Jesus” (King’s Weston).
I think he does this with adroitness and beauty. I have been slaving over this particular little piece (12 pages). It was only this morning that I realized that many of the motives I like and recognize are not from the All Saints tune but the other tunes.
How ’bout that?
Frankly Speaking
I googled Jackson’s work to see if I could find an analysis that takes note of the use of other tunes and ran across this interview with him. Wikipedia says he was born in 1917. In two years he will be a hundred, eh? His music is youthful and engaging.
Everything Doesn’t Happen For A Reason — Tim Lawrence
Another article bookmarked to read. One of the people I “follow” on Facebooger put this link up. I read in it enough to bookmark it.
I’m sorry that Hope are being so unaccommodating. The twats. But if you get to spend a bit more time relaxing, that’s good. I love you. X
Hope would accommodate me but only on their terms (T,Th) and only if I would insist that I get work. So it’s not quite as hostile as it might sound. And I do see the dropping of the commitment as a relief. We’ll see if they ask me to work next fall and whether or not I will have gotten out of the habit of this kind of thing.