The Good Musician

“Meme” sounds like a soprano warming up.

by csnowden on April 8th, 2008

Bad joke. Hang around music departments long enough, and you’ll hear all of them. What’s the difference between a violin and a viola? A viola burns longer. Is that not just cruel? It’s an egalitarian type of dark humor, though. The original voice part of the “mi-mi-mi” joke was a tenor, so see? Spreads the joy.

Back to meme. My second meme, to be precise. My first was from Kay at Kay’s Thinking Cap, and the challenge was to name five things you know now that you never dreamed of twenty-five years ago.

Scott from Metal Martyr tagged me, along with these bloggers:

Dexie at Pop Music Scene,

Stacey at Hippie Sounds

Ana from Austin Sound check

Here are the “rules” (I prefer “guidelines” for keeping the meme alive.

1. Link to the person that tagged you, and post the rules on your blog.
2. Share seven random and/or weird things about yourself.
3. Tag seven people at the end of your post and include links to their blogs.
4. Let each person know that they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

Since this is the Music Channel, I will share random and weird things about my life in music. When I get the hang of dropping in images, you’ll see many more random and weird things.

1. Peak experience: sitting in the Green Room of the Opera House, having an early osso bucco dinner. Gazing at the sailboats in Sydney Harbour, preparing to sing William Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast with John Nelson conducting the Sydney Symphony. Check out the huge plate-glass windows facing the Harbour, tucked in the angle between the two sets of sails, or clouds as Utzon describes his sweeping roof lines–that’s the Green Room. Not bad, eh? The Ballet, Orchestra, and Opera Houses converge in that gigantic room. Of course that’s where the bar is.

2. Singing Tchaikovsky’s Mazeppa with Princeton Pro Musica and the Opera Orchestra of New York. In Russian. At Carnegie Hall. With my daughter. How cool is that? Here’s a photo of me, my mom, and my daughter after this particular concert.

3. Making last chair flute in All-Region Band, 1962. The second chair eventually became the first flutist in the Dallas Symphony. I didn’t. But I have managed to cobble a career playing in bands, wind ensembles, orchestras, and chamber groups for four decades, from one coast to the other, and everywhere in between. That’s instrumental. I have an equally long vocal career.

4. I’m a stickler for tuning. If it wobbles, it hurts my ears. If it continues, I become nauseated. If the offender does not straighten out the pitch quick, I threaten to throw up on them. Works like a charm.

5. Some of the most beautiful sounds I’ve ever heard are bird calls, both in the city and in the wild. Chicago has it’s night hawks in the summer, soaring through the skyscrapers, feasting on the flying insects attracted by the powerful lights on the buildings. Australia has its warbling currawongs, cackling kookaburras, and shrieking sulphur-crested cockatoos.

6. I love to listen to people’s voices. Speech is full of music. I hear all kinds of melodic and rhythmic patterns. Life is full of music.

7. It’s freaking hard to make a living doing nothing but music. For a long time, I couldn’t face the reality of doing whatever you have to do, including the quotidian job you take to pay the rent while you’re waiting for your break. There’s a wise bumper sticker rolling around Austin: “Real musicians have day gigs.” There is integrity in that (see No. 3 above).

So I’m tagging these folks: Bruce Houghton at our digital music, Bryan Alaspa at Jazz and Blues Lounge, and Derek Griffin at Industrial Addiction.

POSTED IN: Listening Lessons, Uncategorized