USA Projects

What now?

There's a new promo video for "Dan Plonsey's Bar Mitzvah" that's pretty funny, even if it doesn't quite explain what's going on.  It's at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsh5_PYNwLE

It's odd to not know whether I'll be able to go ahead with this Concerto for Eugene Chadbourne and Lots of Other Stuff... Normally I just decide what to do, and then I do it: the advantage of being my own...

Tonight I'm writing a math test instead of composing.  I should actually be writing two tests, but I think I can work on the second one while my morning Honors Geometry students are doing their test (on trigonometry, through Law of Sines and Law of Cosines).  Today I mentioned that we would play around some more with spherical geometry after the test.  We're going to follow up on a problem...

In addition to sitting around waiting for people to read this blog and respond (and occasionally writing, or not writing, music), I also teach math at Berkeley High School.  I've become very distressed by a series of articles that have appeared in recent weeks in the NY Times Sunday Magazine.  Today's is a pretty vicious attack on teachers. Entitled: "Are Teachers' Unions the Enemies of...

It's easy not to write music.  But it's also not so hard to write music.  The trick is just to not not write music.  But tonight I've been updating various computer files, including this one, so I'm not not not writing music.  Which is also pretty easy to do.

I'm having trouble finding time to write right now - teaching is a consuming task, and leaves me drained and often a combination of frustrated and humbled.  Or just humiliated and angry.  Not the right frame of mind to try to write music, nor to be a father, but I can't escape from that role.  I just do a bad job of it. I think that that's why I hate music which is polished, and contrived.  Or...

I posted the following link to facebook:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Uj-ZDL8c30

It will take you to a youtube video promo for "Dan Plonsey's Bar Mitzvah."  Eric Kupers, the choreographer/director made it.  Good work, Eric!  As for the piece itself, it's heading into its second weekend.  Eric, Mantra (my wife, who also plays my wife) and I met on Monday to discuss a few changes, which I...

I just came back from a performance of "Dan Plonsey's Bar Mitzvah." I play myself, that is, Dan Plonsey.  It's not so hard to do.  Eric Kupers, who is the director and choreographer, has me making the gestures and movements I'm known to make, and my wife Mantra wrote some lines for me which I have actually said and will probably say again.  And I wrote and played the sort of music I tend to...