Whew! Today around 12:30PM I played my final notes of my fifth of five concerts in six days! I was at the Lower Colorado River Authority office complex (for those of you in Austin, that’s on Lake Austin Boulevard across from Hula Hut!) in their lovely board room (I’ve been there once before – story below*). I played a 45 minute show today for around 45 people (of the 650 or so employed at LCRA in that location), who chose to spend their lunch hour listening to classical guitar music. As with all of the performances I’ve had this week, I was also given the opportunity to talk about ACGS and our giant upcoming festival and also take a number a terrific questions. I had a wonderful time and I’d like to thank David Marchman and Gina Jerram, in HR at LCRA, for setting this up.
Last night I played for the first time at an Alamo Drafthouse! Glenda and I went to the south Austin location on South Lamar to the 72nd edition of Dionysium – an every-first-Wednesday-night-of-the-month event at the Alamo which is like an academically-oriented variety show. Last night’s began with a lecture from “Perfesser” Kurt Hildebrand on Grammar, then we heard a story about adult laser-tag by Austin author Stoddard Smith, then there was a debate between, again, “Perfesser” Hildebrand and a combatant Mike Daross, about whether or not the REAL ID act of 2005 should be repealed (turns out it should!)… then I took the stage and played Sunburst (Andrew York) and Tango en Skai (Roland Dyens) and talked about ACGS and the fest (of course), then we saw the second runner-up animation submission to SXSW presented by one of the SXSW judges, and animator, Lance “Fever” Meyers – with commentary. It was awesome – called “One Rat Short” by the guy who did the “You might think” Cars video way back in the early-mid eighties, and that was it! Oh, the entire thing was MC’d brilliantly by Buzz Moran and LB Deyo, Chairman and President of the Dionysium (respectively) – - and the Debate was moderated by the moderatrix Dawn Youngs. And, perhaps best of all, brilliant Austin composer and pianist Graham Reynolds (from the Godlen Hornet Project) played organ all night as a sort of incidental music live sound track – I have NO IDEA how he does it, but its extremely cool. (BTW Graham is the composer we commissioned to write the piece that the kids are going to premiere at the youthfest finale of our giant festival – small world!) See what I mean? An academically-oriented variety show. Afterwards, all the players, and some fans too, went next door to the glorious High Ball lounge for drinks. The High Ball is fabulous – extremely classy, and you absolutely must go if you’re in Austin and you have not yet been! (the High Ball is also owned by Alamo owners Tim and Karrie League, by the way, its their newest (?) project.) BTW again… Glenda has been wanting to go to High Ball for her birthday – she wants to do Karaoke there! Plus – while on the subject of Glenda/High Ball – Glenda was particularly fashionable last night, leading our friend Graham (Reynolds) to comment about Glenda, over his deliciously complex scotch: “I’m diggin’ that crazy outfit with that hat” (which I interpret as high praise!).
* So the last time I was in the LCRA board room I was also performing… the short version of the story is: by tennis partner Mike Blumenthal invited me to do a lecture and concert for the Austin Translators and Interpreters Association. At the time I was very excited about “poetic-musical synthesis” in art song through the ages. That is, the discussion of how composers “interpret” texts with music through song. So I prepped a lecture-recital with songs from renaissance England, 19th-century Spain and Italy, 12th-century Germany, and modern America and sang/played them and then offered commentary about it. In the audience was a young woman from the Russian speakers association of Austin. She asked if I would consider doing the same lecture for them at their meeting in a few months. I said sure, but that I didn’t know any Russian songs and it seemed odd for me to do a lecture and recital in four languages for Russians speakers – without doing anything in Russian. SHe assured me, however, that it would be taken well. So a few weeks passed (we had set a date), and I decided I just HAD to do something in Russian. So I called my contact, and asked if she would coach me for a month on Russian, so I could passably sing two songs in Russian. When the time came for me to present my lecture-recital, I went to the LCRA board room, where they met, and did my recital more or less as I had before, and then ended with my two Russian songs. The Russian speakers became extremely enthusiastic at the point that I attempted singing in Russian, but nothing could prepare me for the warmth and generosity that flowed during the reception following my presentation. They had prepared an abundant feast with great variety of delicious items and we traded stories for quite some time. A wonderful evening indeed.
