Vassar's announcement

Grinnell's announcement (now a permanent link)

Congratulations to Dad on his new appointment! It'll be a big change to say now that my parents (will) live in upstate New York, but I'll always be from Iowa...

My hair has been getting awfully long lately.


Too bad the Barber of Grinnelle is so far away...

=

?

I didn't want to spoil the ending of Tigrane for anyone before it went up, but now I can explain it. It went something like this:

1. I'm about to execute Tigrane for trying to kill Queen Tomiri (who incidentally is in love with him).
2. Meroe suddenly shows up, admitting that it was actually she who had tried to kill the queen to avenge the brutal death of her father King Cyrus; Tigrane had tried to stop her and ended up looking guilty in the process.
3. Seemingly from nowhere, the head guard brings in a letter confirming this. Tigrane is released; Meroe is captured.
4. Again out of nowhere, the Egyptian king Policare appoears, saying "Great news, Tomiri! Turns out Tigrane is your son!" Apparently he got this information from a dying pirate (!?) who had captured Tigrane as a baby. Proof is offered in the form of a previously-unnoticed royal mark on Tigrane's arm.
5. Tigrane confesses his love for Meroe, and Tomiri is so overjoyed that she orders Meroe released, giving up her rather Oedipal claim on her son.
6. For no apparent reason but this, Meroe decides her father doesn't need avenging any more.

And this is supposed to be a serious opera??

It reminds me of these sliding number puzzles:

Some people like to try to do these in the fewest moves possible. Those people might have been able to end Tigrane with only a letter and one unbelievable character transformation. Scarlatti, clearly, was unconcerned about the number of moves he took...

Tigrane goes up tonight! I'm pretty excited--I think it's a good show. I took a few videos the past couple of days, but I think they're too big to practically upload them here. Instead, here are some pictures (sorry about the fuzziness--my camera didn't really know how to deal with the theater lighting).

The first photo is from Tuesday, when we didn't yet have full wigs and makeup, and only the continuo was there from the orchestra:


Here's the same scene with wigs and makeup on Wednesday:


And here's another scene (the guard's costume is very similar to mine):



This blog may be picture-heavy and content-light for a while: to give my injured right wrist some serious rest, I'm doing virtually all of my typing with my left hand. Even a post like this can take a while when typing one-handed!

My most successful bagels and tortillas yet! This is what happens when you have lots of free time and a bag of Canadian whole wheat flour.

I'll be performing in the Bloomington Early Music Festival (BLEMF) opera, Tigrane, by Alessandro Scarlatti, in two weeks. I was originally recruited for the chorus because they were short of singers. Then at the first rehearsal, our stage director from North Carolina did a workshop on Baroque dance (which will heavily inform most of the staging), and then recruited me and several other singers for very minor dancing roles. Then today I got an email from the staging director telling us when we'd be needed in rehearsals and mentioning in passing that she was recruiting another singer and me for another 4 or 5 dance numbers. These could be very short--this is Baroque opera, after all--but I really feel like I've been sucked in! I also go the third of three separate and occasionally contradictory rehearsal schedules in this email. One was from the director, one from the staging director, and one from the chorus director. This is fairly typical, I think, for the early music department here.

Anyway, I'm excited for that, and actually for all the concerts that are part of the schedule! They're all listed here. One of the highlights for me will be a performance by a good friend of mine in his group Liber unUsualis--they're very good and do really neat repertoire.

...

Two days ago Sara took a day off and went canoeing. It was just a little bit cool out, but otherwise it was pretty much perfect. Sunny most of the time, excellent water level, riffles spaced just perfectly so that the river stayed fun for the whole 15 miles or so, and amazing scenery. Sugar Creek is supposed to be Indiana's most beautiful river, and I believe it.

We started at the first of three almost identical covered bridges along the route.


(Incidentally, Nate, this might be the first picture I've ever taken with that tripod you got me last year, only because I always forget it. It's really nice!)
The whole route was surrounded by limestone, new green growth, and lots of hints of purple flowers.


There was also this beautiful, vivid green moss growing at the bottom of the river, which was surprisingly clear for Indiana water.


The rocks were very cool the whole way, but this segment was particularly striking, between rust deposits, grey limestone, and moss:


I'm pretty sure limestone is one of the coolest rocks in the world.


We lunched in the middle of the river, after making some ducks very nervous.



Limestone is cool, and even cooler when it juts out over the river with a bridge across it.



The end!

I'm in between final exams (giving, not taking), and reflecting on the semester. It's definitely been my best semester of teaching. It's amazing how much there is to learn about teaching musical skills (sight reading, musical dictation, identification of chord and interval qualities, keyboard harmony). My first two semesters, often when I'd have a student who couldn't even tell when the melody goes up or down or whether it's stepping or leaping I'd just have no clue what to tell them. Now I feel like I have suggestions for any situation I could possibly be in. (Students are forever surprising, though, so I'm sure that's not quite true.)

So that, I think, is the success of my time as coordinator of this course. The things I perceive as successes of this semester stem from that and my always-increasing understanding of where the students are coming from, what their goals are (if any), and what my goals are. I know the dogmas that are important to me (for example, a consistency of approach: scale degrees OR solfege but not both, lots of structure in pace of learning, etc.) and when they're not useful. I often know when students will think material is too hard or irrelevant to them, and how to preface it in such a way that they understand its usefulness and how to approach it. Because of that, I have had very few student problems this semester. (That's not quite true. I had a few cases of academic dishonesty, and the inevitable attendance problems. But nothing directly relating to the content of the course or student attitudes towards me.) In the past, I've had students get very upset about my stances in the class: not allowing people to use perfect pitch as a crutch, using scale degrees instead of solfege, expecting them to do work outside of class. But I've had no big complaints this semester. What few I've had have been reasonable requests and presented as constructive criticism. That may be because the class is bigger than ever (about 70 at 8 AM and just under 100 at 10:10) and they feel less connected to me. But it could also be because I frame the material better now than I used to, or because I introduced myself one-on-one to at least a majority of them and they are more amenable to seeing where I'm coming from.

Most heartening of all have been comments from students as the end of the semester grows near. In all of my cases of academic dishonesty, I've met with the students, heard them out fully, and let them suggest an appropriate penalty before making my decision and sending it out by email. In response to that email, most of them wrote me back. That was mostly to tell me that they found my decision acceptable, but many also wanted to make sure I know that they got a lot out of the course. Today after the exam, another student came up to me and said, "I think I'm actually starting to get better at this aural skills thing. But I don't want to lose it over the summer. What can I do to keep it up?"

I'm sure getting my evaluations will give me a more discerning view of how the semester went and reveal both some good things and some bad things that I've overlooked. But right now I'm quite happy with how it's gone. I've learned a ton being in charge of this class, and I really look forward to bringing that knowledge with me next year as I teach honors sophomore music theory. Those honors students had better be ready to sing!

I decided at the beginning of the semester that I'd get to know all my students by face and name. I kind of ran out of steam about halfway through the semester, but still, here at the end, I'm up to 96 out of 166. Not bad! (Especially since a lot of those don't ever show up...)

Last night I woke up at maybe 5:30 to vibrating windows and bed. Being half asleep, I was astounded but had only the vague thought process "wow, I wonder if that was an earthquake... maybe it was someone driving by with their speakers on really loud... or a huge gust of wind" before falling back to sleep. But this morning I looked it up online--definitely an earthquake! 5.4, centered in Illinois.

Okay, I'm gonna get caught up on here. First some news, then some pictures. In the past week, I've:

1. registered to vote in Indiana
2. auditioned and gotten accepted into a vocal studio for next year
3. accepted a part-time job (pending approval) from the IU Center for the History of Music Theory and Literature proofreading Latin texts to be entered into the Thesaurus Musicarum Latinarum
4. cooked a delicious Turkish meal (red lentil soup, pita bread with hummus, spinach borek, iskender kabob, and--not made by me--rosewater almond pudding)

Two weekends ago, Sara and I went out to McCormick's Creek, Indiana's oldest state park. It was really beautiful.

We were there for (much of) the sunrise:


There were lots of little springs like this lining the river:


And lots of cool rock formations:


I have lots more beautiful pictures of McCormick's Creek, but there are enough pictures up here right now. And I'm caught up! So more maybe soon.

Nate and I told Claire that we wouldn't post till our blogs till she put up her first post. Well, that hasn't happened. I give in.

Spring break seems so long ago now. And I guess it was--three weeks ago. Sara and I headed to Iowa. (I guess there's just something about visiting family in the winter in a place that's colder than where you live.) I won't speak for her, although I think she agrees, but I had a terrific time. At the beginning of the week, we relaxed a fair bit. Sara met May (who goes "mmmrrph!" when you surprise her) and helped us finish a puzzle. We also biked around Grinnell, went inside the Jewel Box bank, went on a hike at the Krumm prairie Preserve, and got a nice tour of the college campus. Of course, since there was still a lot of snow on the ground, we had to head out to Hamburger Hill with our sleds:



And we went to the Neil Smith National Wildlife Refuge. They've got a terrific prairie learning center (geared a bit toward kids, but still interesting for adults). We went on a hike, where we saw (two kinds of) signs of the resident buffalo:



And then, on a drive through the fenced-off area, we saw the buffalo themselves. Pretty cool.
But as neat as that part of the week was, it was nothing compared to what was to come. On Thursday, Mom, Dad, Sara and I drove out to northeastern Iowa to prove that Iowa Ain't Flat:



You wouldn't want to be walking through a field and suddenly fall 200 feet.
First we walked through Lost Canyon, a beautiful canyon with a stream running through it. We had to cross this stream several times, and Mom made somewhat of a habit of falling in.



The whole area was full of beautiful bluffs and caves:



We even saw some ice stalagmites! The cave kept them cool enough to be intact even on this relatively warm day.



On our way out of the canyon, we saw about 10 bald eagles circling high up in the clear blue sky. Pretty amazing. Once we were up, we looked over the beautiful Iowa landscape:



...before going to a point that, according to signs, was called "overlook." Sara and I didn't really know what to expect. We were walking through snowy fields for a while, then through a wooded area. Then suddenly you could see through the trees. It was rather dramatic: out of nowhere, a 200 foot drop into Whitewater Canyon. Pictures didn't really capture it; it was so surprising and amazing to see this view.



That night we headed to Dubuque and stayed in a retreat bed and breakfast owned by the city. It was a turn-of-the-century mansion, complete with servants' quarters, large fireplace rooms, and beautiful views out the bedroom windows to the Mighty Mississipp'. Turned out we had it all to ourselves: no one else had rented a room! We had the run of the place, and played card games (and Dad dozed) in front of a nice fire.
Here was our view:



Not bad.
The trip to the Dubuque area was definitely the highlight of Spring Break for me. The hiking through the canyon, amazing bed and breakfast, and the trip the next day to the amazing Mississippi River Museum were all truly wonderful.

We made our way after that back to Bloomington, by way of historic Galena, IL, and Chicago. But boy, I'd love to travel to Dubuque again!

(And Claire, this doesn't mean you're off the hook.)

I promised Mom a Maple post, and here it is.

The following picture, and some others on here, are misleading. She is usually sleeping, not playing. Be that as it May:



Here's a picture Nate took once. Now this is the quintessential May.



This also is pretty typical:



If we could only all be so blissful all the time. Or retreat from the world so well:



May likes to sleep on things (I think most cats do). Here she's not actually on the books, but she has clearly claimed the Baroque anthology for her own:



And, talented and musical cat that she is, she even enjoys reading Schenkerian graphic analyses:



I'll finish with a short video. We recently found that there's one thing she'll consistently play with. Here it is:

Holy cow, it's beautiful out! Above freezing and sunny....

One of the things I love about this school is the neat projects one can put together and participate in, if one makes the right contacts. Two days ago I sang in a Latin mass at a Catholic church in Ellettsville. A friend of mine in the Early Music Institute apparently sings there sometimes, and when they decided to put together a Latin mass (and got special permission to do so, of course) he contacted me and several other people and we sang several motets by Victoria, Lassus, and Pergolesi. Fun stuff! Now they're putting together a Latin high mass for the end of the semester, with a full mass by Josquin or some other such person.

I also got an email a few days ago about a conductor friend's project: he's putting together a group to do a concert that will go for a more "total" experience, involving lights and some choreography. He's putting together William Grant Still's oratorio "And They Lynched Him on a Tree." So I suspect it will be a pretty intense concert, but sounds neat.

Finally, I'm putting together a group for the Graduate Theory Association recital in April. We'll sing some Gesualdo and Zarlino--some really dense counterpoint, and that should be really fun.

Just a couple of days ago, it was beautiful outside. It's pretty cold now, and extremely cold with the fierce wind. Oh well. Sara and I managed to take advantage of the nice weather while it lasted: we biked out to Griffy Lake and went on a little walk. It was beautiful out, and the play of light and shadow among the trees was very attractive:



As I'm sure I've mentioned before, Sara loves trees, and she can always pick out particularly beautiful or striking ones. I was surprised and pleased at how well this picture turned out:



Speaking of growing plants, a few weeks ago I made an impulse buy at Kroger and got two packages of seeds: cilantro and parsley. Sara helped me plant them, and I've been keeping them well-watered and in the sunlight. The cilantro really popped up fast, and I was starting to worry about the parsley, but just this morning I saw the first parsley plant poking its little head out! Here they are, cilantro on the left, parsley on the right (the top left parsley is barely showing), and (in case you couldn't tell) the sun in the direction that they're all leaning:

Sara had the brilliant idea yesterday to make mochi with red bean paste inside. It was a lot of fun and pretty easy, so I figured I'd share. The only ingredient that is at all hard to get is the rice flour, but I think it might even be available (and overpriced) at big grocery stores, and you'll definitely find it for not too much money at Asian grocery stores.

For the bean paste:
1. cook (or rinse overnight then cook) 2/3 c adzuki beans
2. process beans in a blender or food processor until smooth
3. stir in 1/2 c sugar, then fry on med-low heat while stirring in 1/4 c oil until it thickens into a paste
4. put mixture into fridge

For mochi:
1. combine 2 c glutinous rice flour (mochiko) with 1 c sugar and 1.75 c water in a microwave-safe bowl
2. mix thoroughly until there are no lumps
3. cover with plastic wrap and microwave for 4 minutes or more, till set (it's okay to stir if it's setting unevenly)
4. the minute it's cool enough to touch, cover with a damp towel, get out the bean paste, and start the process below

To put the things together:
1. cover hands and serving surface with corn or potato starch
2. grab a golf-ball sized piece of mochi, roll into a ball, and flatten into a 3 inch circle, trying not to use too much starch (but also trying to keep it from sticking to your hands!)
3. put about a teaspoon of bean paste in the middle
4. pinch the edges of the mochi together around the bean paste to make a ball
5. set on starched surface, seam side down
6. repeat till it's all gone

The last set of instructions, just so you're warned, is ridiculously messy. Craig was kind enough to take pictures:



And lest you come away without some idea of exactly how sticky this strange substance is:



Here's the end product:



And the same plate with one or two less-than-perfect ones replaced for greater impressiveness:

Since IU takes Martin Luther King, Jr. Day off, Sara and I decided to take a nice weekend trip to Indianapolis to hear the symphony and to spend some time with my grandparents. Sara hadn't met the Kerns yet, so we headed over there after the symphony and were talked into staying two nights instead of our intended one and a meal at Uncle Chris and Aunt Lisa's. It was really nice to spend a lot of time with my relatives and Sara, even if Grandpa and Chris and Adam were mostly into the football games.

The most interesting part of the trip for me was the symphony. They started with Beethoven's 6th. We were surprised when an award winning actor came out and read a monologue as Beethoven. It was maybe a bit long, but certainly different. However, the intro to the second half, Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, was really great. It's a piece famous for its initial reception. To quote Wikipedia:

"The complex music and violent dance steps depicting fertility rites first drew catcalls and whistles from the crowd. At the start with the opening bassoon solo, the audience began to boo loudly due to the slight dischord in the background notes behind the bassoon's opening melody. There were loud arguments in the audience between supporters and opponents of the work. These were soon followed by shouts and fistfights in the aisles. The unrest in the audience eventually degenerated into a riot. The Paris police arrived by intermission, but they restored only limited order. Chaos reigned for the remainder of the performance, and Stravinsky himself was so upset on account of its reception that he fled the theater in mid-scene, reportedly crying... Stravinsky ran backstage, where Diaghilev was turning the lights on and off in an attempt to try to calm the audience. Nijinsky stood on a chair, leaned out (far enough that Stravinsky had to grab his coat-tail), and shouted counts to the dancers, who were unable to hear the orchestra (this was challenging because Russian numbers are polysyllabic above ten, such as eighteen: vosemnadsat)."

Before their performance, the ISO simulated this initial performance. It was really cool. First the actor, as Stravinsky, talked about the piece's conception and his collaboration with Nijinsky, and then, while the orchestra played about 10 minutes' worth of highlights from the piece, a dance troupe came out and danced what Sara told me was a recreation of some of the original choreography. Meanwhile, people stationed throughout the audience started yelling and booing. Soon a fistfight erupted backstage and a police whistle started blowing. They even had a character playing Nijinsky leaning out on the stage and yelling numbers.

The whole thing was really fun, but it was also really interesting. Sara and I discussed it afterwards; we'd both been able to imagine the scene somewhat on our own, but to actually be in the midst of it, with people shouting, being unable to hear much besides wild, exciting rhythms over the crowd, to feel the annoyance at hecklers, was really a new experience and made the riot much more real to us.

Two links:

First, here's a really nice write-up on the IU theory department. The PDF version is even nicer. And as impressive as the list of books/articles/presentations/awards is, it honestly misses a lot of impressive awards and lectures by current students.

Second, I found this post really interesting and funny. Gerschwin's welcome message to Schoenberg upon his arrival in the US would certainly raise many eyebrows today, as would the newspaper's take:

"Himself an exponent of the use of the modern, native idiom in composition, Gershwin was delighted to come to the aid of the man who has been one of the most daring musical experimenters of our time."

Fascinating!

I'm jealous of Nate for his amazing trip, Claire since she gets to go to Turkey, and Sara for her amazing schedule that actually gives her time to clean her apartment (ah! what a luxury!). However, I have something that those people don't have: this video of Maple.

The class I teach, MUS-T132 Musical Skills 1, requires textbooks from three sources. Virtually every semester one of them has been a problem, but this semester, unbelievably, all three have failed. I really, really wish I were in charge of getting my own textbooks for this reason, but I only have any control at all over the last one. Anyway, the gory details:

1. The students need to buy sight-singing and rhythm books from the bookstore. However, when I went to the bookstore the other day, neither of these books were on the shelf, and neither was even listed on the little tag for T132! I sent an email to the head of the aural skills curriculum and the head of the department. It turns out that the former was supposed to order these books, but since this was the first time he would have had to do so, he wasn't aware. Okay, I can excuse him, but anyway, my students won't get these textbooks until probably late this week (maybe even later).

2. My assistant instructors (AIs) need the same two textbooks; the company has sent the department desk copies, which they loan out to the AIs. This semester, however, when I checked, the department had none of one of the books and two of the other, and I have seven AIs. Part of the problem is that people don't always remember or get around to returning loaned out texts from previous semesters, but also last semester there was only one big course using these texts and we ran short then; this semester, there are two big courses using these texts. So if we ran short then, it's no wonder we're short now. I don't think the department has gotten around to ordering more--I think they're hoping a few more will come out of the cracks, as it were, if they send more emails.

3. Finally, I create a course packet that is published by a local company. I submitted the materials about one day before they say you have to have them in, which admittedly is not giving them a lot of leeway. (But I've turned things in later in past semesters and had no problems.) I'd heard nothing about getting desk copies by Thursday, and didn't see any for the students in the bookstore, so Friday morning I called the guy at the publisher's that I correspond with and left a message. He called back a few hours later to say he was out of his office but he'd call back later. When he didn't, I called him and left the message that I had a staff meeting scheduled the next day (today) at 2 and I'd like to be able to hand out course packets (something!) to my AIs. He called about 1:45 today and left a message, since I was already in my meeting. I checked it after the meeting: apparently the course packets haven't even been made yet, and he said he'd get them to me by Monday morning. Yes, the first day of class. My AIs all teach on Monday, and I won't see them all until Tuesday. So I guess they have to wait to see the syllabus, the exercises, the requirements, etc.

This mass failure has me really baffled.

One more post today. It was amazing to be in Iowa in the run up to the presidential caucuses. Virtually all of the candidates were crisscrossing the state; apparently many of them had already visited Grinnell. It's so different from the rest of the nation, where you only get a chance to see candidates on TV ads or the news. It's really great, because you realize it's not, for example, just a choice between Ms. Clinton and Mr. Obama on the Democratic side (the media's portrayal notwithstanding). Iowans also take their role really seriously, and my family and I spent hours educating ourselves about candidates: going to campaign stops, watching videos on Youtube, reading the Des Moines Register, talking to friends, and looking up position sheets. I managed to see Hilary Clinton up very close in Pella (40 minutes away):



Claire and Dad saw Barack Obama (in Tama, I think). We all also managed to get to Joe Biden's second stop in Newton (20 minutes away), and were completely converted. He seems, to me, the only candidate that sees the world as it is, rather than as a list of issues to have campaign promises about (1. Iran, 2. China, etc. etc.). He impressed me with a strong stand on Sudan, a clear knowledge of world events and realities, and a spontaneous, inspiring speaking style. Too bad I can't vote for him--I'm already in Bloomington, and the caucuses are tonight.

Speaking of caucuses, I don't know how many of the people who read this know how they work, but they are insane. They are wonderful in that they allow for interaction and don't allow people to just walk in and brainlessly push a button for someone they decided on months ago. However, they're really bad in that you absolutely have to be there to vote (ie, many policepeople can't make it, and neither can deployed members of the armed services, people who are on vacation, or people who work evening shifts), they take hours sometimes, and the "arcane rules" lead to a lot of political maneuvering. Non-viable groups caucusing for a candidate might promise their delegate to members of another group in exchange for more people (and thus viability)--in so doing they don't actually gain any more votes, but the results of the caucus as they will be reported on TV (all that actually matters from the Iowa caucuses) look a little better.

It'll be crazy, and exciting, tonight. I kind of wish I were still in Iowa--in Indiana you hardly even see any signs up for candidates. It's a different world.