May 25, 2007 22:50
the other day we went to see a chamber-opera at the guggenheim in ny, my dads friend tom was playing percussioin and got us comp ticks that otherwise wouldve been upwards of 35 bucks. it was really good, jsut a one hour one act, in english, and actually funny, entertaining, and musically amazing. also, it was the world premier of that particular opera, and the composer, louis karchin, was conducting. he lives in jersey and my dad knows him, so i got to meet him and talk to him for a bit. i also got to hang out with peter westergaard, another very well known composer. on tuesday my dad is playing at a memorial concert for his friend ron mazurek, who died suddenly a few weeks ago of a brain anyeurism. he was the composition prof at nyu, and a very good composer. all of his percussion worlks would be premiered by my dad, and they became very close. a week after he died my dad was conductin ganother concert, at connecticut college. he dedicated the concert to ron and added one of rons peices in the middle of the concert. turns out he was playing it at the exact time ron died a week to the day after it happened. the audio engineer had a glitch and lost a few seconds of it on the computers, literally within a minute of when ron died a week earlier. completely unexplainable, no power surge, no resource spike in the equipment, no nothing. my dad usually is the type of person that doesnt really go for that kind of wierd paranormal stuff, but this really freaked him out, in a good way. who knows what it actually was, but who knows? i usually dont go for that either but i am open to say who knows?, and im more then willing to say that theres plenty we dont. then again, software is buggy sometimes.
i had sometime to myself in greenwhich village while my dad was in a board meeting at nyu the other day, so i walked around for a while checking out cool shops, then stopped at the block with all the specialty chess shops. i watched and hung out with some old russian dudes while they played some incredible games, then went over to washington square park and played against one of the awesome old black guys that hussle you at chess. i lost both games i played (of course), but i held my own and did very good up until one point in both games, then lost hopelessly. but it was fun and only lost a few bucks.
on the same night my dad is playing the memorial concert my dad managed to score me a gig at the museum of modern art in new york, playing gong with two other people for a dinner thing. i have no idea. all i know is i bring a gong, play for 10 minutes with two other people, former students of my dad, and get ahundred bucks. i love new york gigs. then i have to haul ass down to washington square where the performance hall is for my dads concert, probably via expensive cab.
my dad has been saving up fo ra while to set up a MIDI studio in his apartment to help with composition and to play with, so today we went and spent whatever we needed to get what we wanted. we got beautiful studio monitors that sound fucking amazing, a 5 octave midi controller keyboard, all the necessary cables, and hoolked it up to my dad's mixing board. al told, its about 1800 dollars to guitar center today. not too bad considering what we got. also, becasue i helped renovate my grandpas old condo by atlantic city, my dad got me the exact same mixing board to run into my computer for my own recording stuff. awesome! and firewire into my sound card... 96,000khz of wonderous noise beaming straight to my rapidly filling hard drive. score.
i hate that i cant be in every band that i would like to. the bellmont asked me to play. i want to say yes and i really want to say no. maybe ill jsut record for them over the summer and then they can find someone else. sorry terry. i hate feeling bad for doing whats best for myself, but sometimes its soooo necessary to just say no sorry i cant. this whole system needs an overhaul,. 24 hours isnt enough tomake a living and make music. take out the make a living part, or give us more hours. then i can say yes to all bands. ever.
on a more positive note, i am loving playing with yaya boom. they are serious and organized without having to be dicks/pseudo-rockstars/egomaniacs, and best of all tehy are fun, nice, and pretty rockin. we have tons of shows in july, so i have a month to learn the rest of the music.
this paragraph has some serious dash usage action, unnecessarily.
i hung out with my crazy ass cousin michelle, who is awesome, last night. as well as her fiancee who im not all that fond of but can tolerate, and her awesome friend who i wish was her fiancee, jon. jon is an architect, and for his senior project he did this badass virtual walkthrough tour of part of newark, new jersey, except with real images compisted on this special high definaition panoramic camera. its kind of like playing myst, you click yourself through the landscape, except with this you can also look up and down and all around from wherever you are, and its all real pictures. you can also click on stuff for info. hes trying to ge ta grant from the newark city council to continue the project, which would be sweet. he also put the build in as sort of a soundtrack that playus as you walk through, and according to him everyone loves it, which is yet anothe rplus. i love multimedia. we also talked about another potential project, where i would write music adn then put his image-film stuff to it, and then edit it to match the music axactly, beat for beat. sweet! later that night we drove all the back up to west milford, where my cousins live, and gelati. then we went back to their house so we could see my other cousin, amy, whos also a badass. we smoked pot on their porch whicle it was beautiful-new-jersey-at-night-during-the-summer-weather, and it was really fun. then on the car ride back to my dads, michelle and i got to talk for an hour or so about all the crazy stuff involving our family that i can never find out about except from her, becasue no one else talks about it. i love it and hate it, and am most defiantely entertained by it. serious day time tv, but on hbo because its not appropriate kind of stuff. heres a taste: my grandpa's family, including my dad and uncle, had no house and rented a large basement area from some old lady for 10 or 15 years before my grandpa finally bought a house. and how did he buy it? he was a bookie, like a serious, old-timey movie-style bookie. then ge got wreckless and lost most of his money gambling at the race track, where he would go everyday until he died last year. and that doesnt even scratch the surface.
tomorow there is lots of music making via computer to be had, and then my sister flies into la guardia at 1030. i go back to the burque on wednesday to clean up the wreckage and tie up loose ends. i hate corny and cliche phrases, but really i think i can say 'oie life, whats next' and get a way with it. at least to me.
i have to write more about the house, since it is almost closing time...