More Folklife Pics

June 30, 2007 Reply
Tiny Oax­a­can
Dancer

My next batch of scanned pho­tos is from this year’s Folk­life Fes­ti­val in Seat­tle. I’ve added 33 pho­tos, which brings my total (includ­ing my first gallery of dig­i­tal pics) to 60. High­lights of this album include a retro-punk busker, a fam­ily that evi­dently got a dis­count on flo­ral cloth, a break­dancer, the adorable lit­tle girl seen at right, some soul­ful and well-dressed gospel singers, and my friend Jerin cap­ti­vat­ing the under-12 demo­graphic. Click the pic to see the entire gallery.

A Day in Sunny Seattle

June 7, 2007 1 comment
Puget Sound

Last Thurs­day was my one day to hang out and explore Seat­tle. I didn’t go too far afield, as I’d been on my feet all day every day for the pre­vi­ous eleven days, but I had enough left in me to do a lit­tle bit of walk­ing. I took a quick cruise through the Inter­na­tional Dis­trict, then went to The Elliott Bay Book Com­pany. Elliott Bay is quite large, and they have mul­ti­ple rooms of new books as well as a fairly siz­able used book sec­tion. They also have a cafe and space for author lec­tures and sign­ings (which I under­stand they have fairly often). After buy­ing too many books, I headed down to Pike Place Mar­ket My main tar­get there was the Peren­nial Tea Room. Annie, one of this year’s great Folk­life pro­duc­tion rook­ies, works there and sug­gested that I check it out. She wasn’t work­ing when I went in, but the guy I talked to was extremely knowl­edge­able and help­ful. I ended up with a cou­ple of dif­fer­ent high-quality loose black teas — a Cey­lon and a Dar­jeel­ing, each single-estate teas. After mak­ing my tea pur­chase, I grabbed a delec­table salami and havarti sand­wich on sour­dough bread from Three Girls Bak­ery and had lunch in a nearby park over­look­ing Puget Sound.

That evening, I met up with my friend Jerin, who’d actu­ally been work­ing at the fes­ti­val as well. We had din­ner at The Pike Pub & Brew­ery and then went to see the Seat­tle Sym­phony. There was an inter­est­ing pre-concert lec­ture given by Seth Krim­sky, the prin­ci­pal bas­soon­ist, about Bartok’s Bluebeard’s Cas­tle, which com­prised the lat­ter por­tion of the evening’s pro­gram — more on that later. The first of the two works in the con­cert was Martinu’s Dou­ble Con­certo for two string orches­tras with tim­pani and piano. I had never heard the piece before, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. I know almost nine of Martinu’s music, and maybe now I’ll explore some more of his works.

An Illicit Shot of the Chihulys

The most excit­ing part of the con­cert was Bartok’s Bluebeard’s Cas­tle, a one-act opera based on the tale of Blue­beard. The ver­sion pre­sented at the con­cert was one that they termed “con­cert staged” — not fully staged with the orches­tra in the pit, but with set pieces sep­a­rat­ing the orches­tra and vocal­ists on stage. The set con­sisted of seven very tall objects which appeared to be square cross-section boxes, with one cor­ner fac­ing out. These rep­re­sented the seven locked doors in Bluebeard’s cas­tle (refer to the link above for a plot syn­op­sis). As each of the first six doors were opened, the cor­re­spond­ing boxes were spun around, reveal­ing that each had two open sides and housed a brand-new glass sculp­ture by Dale Chi­huly that rep­re­sented the con­tents of that par­tic­u­lar room. Each time a sculp­ture was revealed, the audi­ence let out an audi­ble gasp. I thor­oughly enjoyed the per­for­mance, espe­cially the meld­ing of music, the­ater, and visual art. That sort of thing doesn’t seem to be done very often, but I think it’s a great way to attract a larger and more diverse audience.

At the end of the con­cert, I man­aged to snap a few pics of the sculp­tures. They’re kind of blurry, due to dark­ness, dis­tance, and my attempts to be some­what dis­creet. But, they’ll give you the basic idea. As the hall cleared out, I moved back (we’d been sit­ting nice and close to the stage) and to the mid­dle to get a shot of the whole stage, but an usher yelled at me. I guess my ini­tial dis­cre­tion was pru­dent.
We then went off to find the green room, where we met up with David Ritt, my cousin-in-law and trom­bon­ist with the Seat­tle Sym­phony. He intro­duced me to three of the four bas­soon­ists, then went off to change. Jerin and I hung out back­stage for a few min­utes, then the three of us walked to McCormick & Schmick’s to chat and munch on cheap (but tasty) happy hour seafood. We didn’t stay too late, as we all had things to do the next morn­ing, but it was a great end to a really nice evening.

Folklife Wrapup

June 2, 2007 Reply
A Samba Dancer from The
Lions of Batucada

This year’s folk­life fes­ti­val went quite smoothly for those of us involved in pro­duc­tion. The crew was great, vet­er­ans and Folk­life rook­ies alike. In my par­tic­u­lar area, sig­nage, I had two very capa­ble assis­tants — Matthew and Tim. Matthew is the son of one of my mom’s long-time friends, and he and I haven’t seen each other for about six­teen years. It was nice to see him again and do a lit­tle catch­ing up. But, I digress. The nature of sig­nage is such that you rush around before the fes­ti­val putting signs and ban­ners up, but every­thing gen­er­ally calms down by the sec­ond morn­ing of the actual run. Matthew was only with us for a cou­ple of days before the fes­ti­val, but Tim was there through the whole run. As a result, Tim and I had alot of free time to go out and enjoy the fes­ti­val. With two good guys help­ing out and four fes­ti­vals already under my belt, this year was quite stress-free. From what I heard from other areas (pro­gram­ming, spon­sor­ship, etc.), it seems as though every­one had a pretty smooth run.

March Fourth Hula
Hooper

Despite the rel­a­tively low-key nature of this year’s fes­ti­val, it still wore me out. I was there usu­ally between seven and eight in the morn­ing, and never left before six, although some nights I was there con­sid­er­ably later. On Mon­day, Tues­day, and Wednes­day nights we par­tied too, first cel­e­brat­ing the end of the fes­ti­val proper, then var­i­ous stages of the take-down process. On Wednes­day night (the biggest cel­e­bra­tion), some of my co-workers started pes­ter­ing me to come back out to work at Bum­ber­shoot, an arts fes­ti­val that takes place over Labor Day week­end. I guess I won’t be in school yet then, but it’ll sort of depend on the pay and what I’m up to in Madison.

The Masses on Saturday

With all the free time I had, I was able to snap quite a few pic­tures. I’ve posted a num­ber of dig­i­tal shots, but I have a few rolls of film to develop and scan, as well. At the moment, my gallery con­sists largely of pics from two groups — March Fourth, a punk march­ing band with stilt-walkers and a hula-hooping anti-cheerleader, and The Lions of Batu­cada, a samba bate­ria from Port­land. There are also a few other pics show­ing var­i­ous other things, includ­ing the crowds, a herd of hurdy-gurdies, and some of the more provoca­tive pro­pa­ganda being car­ried around the fes­ti­val grounds. Any of the thumb­nails above will take you to the gallery.

Back at Folklife

May 22, 2007 Reply
Vin­cent in the Boom Truck

I’m in Seat­tle once again, work­ing at the North­west Folk­life Fes­ti­val, which hap­pens over Memo­r­ial Day Week­end. I’ve writ­ten about the fes­ti­val before. I arrived Sat­ur­day evening, fol­low­ing a bus trip from Madi­son to Chicago and a flight to Seat­tle. I think that if I do this again next year, I’m going to seri­ously look into tak­ing Amtrak the whole way. I love trav­el­ing by train, and I’ve never seen most of that part of the coun­try, except from above. The trip would prob­a­bly take a cou­ple of days, although I think it would be a nice relax­ing way to get across the coun­try. But, I digress.
This is my fifth year work­ing as the Sig­nage Coor­di­na­tor for the fes­ti­val. So, I pretty much know every­thing that needs to be done and have a pretty good idea of how to do it. Thus far, it’s been pretty easy­go­ing, and I think I’m even a lit­tle ahead of sched­ule. The pro­duc­tion team (who I’m tech­ni­cally a part of, even though I func­tion on my own most of the time) seems to be really knock­ing out their work, too. Tomor­row will be the start of the big push, as the fes­ti­val opens on Fri­day morn­ing. I also get the first of my two assis­tants tomor­row, which will be quite nice.

So far, I’ve been mostly sort­ing out my stuff and work­ing with Vin­cent, one of the Seat­tle Cen­ter’s boom truck oper­a­tors. The lat­ter task involves alot of stand­ing around and occa­sion­ally say­ing “to the right a bit,” “up a lit­tle more,” “try tying it to the other branch,” etc. It’s amaz­ing how tired you can get just stand­ing around out­side all day. Vincent’s a great guy though, so I don’t mind it too much. Tomor­row, I’ll start car­ry­ing signs and lad­ders around and climb­ing on things. Thurs­day will be a mad dash to fin­ish putting every­thing up, with a lit­tle more time on Fri­day before the fes­ti­val opens. Once the fes­ti­val itself gets going, I usu­ally have a fair amount of free time to wan­der around, lis­ten to music, peo­ple watch, and take pic­tures. I brought both my lit­tle dig­i­tal cam­era and my ‘real’ film cam­era with me. So, I hope to have some decent pics that I can post right away, along with some more inter­est­ing ones to post after developing/scanning/etc.
Well, it’s time for me to shower and crash, so I can be up and at ‘em early tomor­row morning.

Easter in Milwaukee

April 18, 2007 1 comment
Veron­ica and me in front
of the Mil­wau­kee Art Museum

Over Easter week­end, Veron­ica and I went to Wauwatosa (a sub­urb of Mil­wau­kee) to visit her fam­ily. We went over on Fri­day, and arrived just in time to say hello and good­bye to her dad and two sis­ters, who were headed to the air­port. Then, Veronica’s aunt Terry treated us to lunch. We went to a place called Garfield’s 502, from which one of Terry’s favorite radio shows was broad­cast­ing that day. We got some looks as we walked in — being the only white folks in the place. But, once peo­ple saw that we meant to be there and were enjoy­ing the music — a mix of blues and R&B — we were treated pretty well. The place was packed and it took awhile to get our food, but it was tasty. I had the ‘502 Bas­ket,’ which com­prised fried cat­fish, fried chicken wings, onion rings, and french fries. Not exactly a healthy meal, but a sat­is­fy­ing one.

Ban­gin’ Nails at the
Hof­bräuhaus

That night, we met up with some of Veronica’s friends for din­ner and bar hop­ping. We ate at a Mex­i­can place in Wauwatosa, then headed into Mil­wau­kee proper. Our first stop was the Old Ger­man Beer Hall, also known as the Hof­bräuhaus. It’s (sup­pos­edly) mod­eled after a por­tion of the 400 year old Hof­bräuhaus in Munich. Wait­resses in dirn­dles serve Ger­man beer while a small band plays polka. The Essen Haus in Madi­son has a sim­i­lar sort of atmos­phere, but this place has some­thing I’d never seen before. In a cor­ner sits a big tree stump with another large sec­tion of log on top. On first look, the top piece seems oddly spot­ted. Closer inspec­tion (includ­ing the ham­mer chained to the stump) reveals that the spots are actu­ally the heads of scores of nails, dri­ven flush with the surface.

Our Nails Await Their Fate

This appa­ra­tus is used for what one could imag­ine is a centuries-old strength test/drinking game (I have no knowl­edge of the his­tory (or lack thereof) of this activ­ity, but it sounds good). First, you assem­ble a group — six seems to be about as many as you can crowd around the stump. Then, you pur­chase old-fashioned square nails from the bar­tender at $0.25 apiece. Your group gath­ers around the stump and you pass the ham­mer around, each per­son set­ting his or her nail. Once all the nails are set, the real dri­ving begins. Each per­son takes one whack at his or her nail, then passes the ham­mer on. If you miss, too bad. The object is to drive your nails flush with the sur­face of the wood in the fewest blows. Other groups had sub­tle vari­a­tions (you have to start with the ham­mer on the sur­face of the wood, money is thrown into the mid­dle of the stump, etc), but the core of the game remains the same. It’s amaz­ing how much enter­tain­ment can be derived from such a sim­ple lit­tle game (espe­cially with the inclu­sion of good Ger­man beer). The place was packed, and we only man­aged to get in one game before head­ing off to The Hi-Hat, a trendier sort of bar. We hung out there for awhile, then called it a night.

The Quadracci Pavilion

On Sun­day, we went to church with Veronica’s mom, then headed off to the Mil­wau­kee Art Museum. The most rec­og­niz­able part of the museum is the Quadracci Pavil­ion, which was com­pleted in 2001. This new struc­ture houses a cafe, meet­ing rooms, and the spe­cial exhibit areas, while the old build­ings still hold the museum’s per­ma­nent col­lec­tions. The ‘wings’ atop the build­ing are known as the Burke Brise Soleil (Burke Sun-break). These ‘wings’ weigh 90 tons, have a max­i­mum wingspan of 217 feet, and can move up and down via hydraulics.

Detail of Moder­nity Circa 1952
Josiah McEl­heny, 2004

We spent a few hours at the museum, and saw nearly every­thing. There were a few gal­leries we just sort of breezed through on our way to some­thing else, but there wasn’t time to see it all. The museum’s col­lec­tions are quite impres­sive, espe­cially in the realm of mod­ern art. The gal­leries are set up well, dis­play­ing dif­fer­ent con­tem­po­rary form of art side-by-side. I took a few pic­tures, but most things wouldn’t have pho­tographed well with­out flash and/or tri­pod (both of which were pro­hib­ited). One of the gal­leries I found most inter­est­ing was the one devoted to folk, self-taught, and out­sider art. I also liked the fairly large col­lec­tion of mod­ern sculpture/installation art.

After leav­ing the museum, we went back to Veronica’s family’s place for a deli­cious Easter din­ner pre­pared by her brother Alex and their mom. We hung out for awhile after din­ner play­ing board and card games, then hit the road back to Madi­son. The week­end was a really nice end to our spring break. Going back to school the next day was def­i­nitely a rude shock.

Minneapolis and Bassoons

March 6, 2007 Reply

In the Test­ing Room

This past week­end, Veron­ica and I took a trip to Min­neapo­lis. Our orig­i­nal rea­son for going was so that I could spend a few hours at Mid­west Musi­cal Imports try­ing out some new bas­soons. But, Veron­ica has some friends in and around the Twin Cities, so we made a week­end out of it.

We hit the road Fri­day evening. The roads weren’t in the best con­di­tion, so it was sort of slow going. We made it with­out inci­dent, but it was 11:30 before we man­aged to check into our hotel. On Sat­ur­day morn­ing, we hunted down a cof­fee shop, then went right to Mid­west. I’d called ear­lier in the week to make sure that they’d have the bas­soons on hand that I was inter­ested in, as they often send instru­ments out for tri­als. They didn’t have all the instru­ments from their cat­a­log on hand, but they had plenty for me to try out.

I started out play­ing my bas­soon (thanks to my teacher’s advice), so I could get a feel for the room. Then, I tried a suc­ces­sion of Fox pro horns — 201, 660, and a cou­ple of 601s. A cou­ple of them I rejected out­right, due to lack of res­o­nance or insta­bil­ity of pitch. After the Foxes, I moved to the instru­ments in which I was most inter­ested — two Püch­n­ers. They had a 4000 series and a 5000 series, and I liked them both. The 5000 has some extra bells and whis­tles — E-flat trill key, A-flat/B-flat trill key, bal­ance hanger, “gentleman’s cut” long joint, etc. It also has a spe­cial fin­ish called “Alte Veldt” (“Old World”), which is (I think) sup­posed to emu­late the lac­quer of older Heckel bas­soons. I liked both of the Püch­n­ers quite a bit. I went back and forth between them and my favorite of the Foxes, and they were both superior.

Rack o’ Bassoons

So, I now have the two Püch­n­ers on two-week trial peri­ods. I’ll alter­nate between the two and play them both in ensem­bles. I’m hop­ing also to set up a blind lis­ten­ing test in one of the recitals halls — have peo­ple lis­ten and make com­ments while I play the two behind a screen. Now back to the trip…

After spend­ing a few hours at Mid­west, we headed off to Ikea to meet a bunch of Veronica’s friends from Luther Col­lege, where she did her under­grad. Once every­one had arrived, we walked across the street to the Mall of Amer­ica to find some lunch. I won’t say much about the MoA, but it’s huge and ridicu­lous. After lunch we walked back over to Ikea and spent a cou­ple of hours brows­ing around. I picked up a few small things (mostly kitchen stuff), but noth­ing major. By the time we’d fin­ished at the assemble-it-yourself par­adise, it was evening. So, we all went back to our hotel to hang out, eat pizza, and make use of the pool and hut tub. All in all a very fun day.

We headed back to Madi­son on Sun­day morn­ing. We’d thought about doing some sight­see­ing, but we had to check out of the hotel, and I didn’t want to either carry three bas­soons around or leave them in my car. I’d meant to take pic­tures of our trip, but I some­how man­aged to leave my cam­era on the floor of my room. Luck­ily, Veron­ica brought hers and snapped a cou­ple of pic­tures at Mid­west for me. I’ll keep you posted on whether I decide to buy one of these instruments.

Fotos de Brasil

February 26, 2007 Reply

Finally, my Brazil pic­tures are up. I man­aged to sort through them last night, and post them this after­noon. I have them some­what cat­e­go­rized. Under the main Brazil gallery, you’ll find gal­leries for Mas­ter­classes, Rehearsals and Con­certs, Trav­el­ing, Par­ty­ing, Jaraguá do Sul (the city in which the fes­ti­val was held), and Flo­ri­a­nop­o­lis (the island to which we took a day trip). Since there were so many, I didn’t take the time to enhance, crop, or really alter the pho­tos in any way. I may go back later and improve some of them. Also, I’m hop­ing to write a bit about the trip, which will serve to explain some of the pho­tos a lit­tle bet­ter. But for now, you can just check out the gal­leries linked above.

Climate Shock

January 31, 2007 Reply

As I write this, the tem­per­a­ture dif­fer­ence between Jaragua do Sul and Madi­son is 72° F. It’s a bit of a shock, to say the least. I have many more pic­tures of Brazil, which I will post even­tu­ally. I also have quite a bit to say about the trip, and I hope that I’ll get the time to write every­thing I want to. I’m going to have to sort through my pics first (I took 471 on the trip) and pick what to post and how to cat­e­go­rize them. I’ll try to get to that soon, but I need to catch up on my lost week of school first.

Joaquina Beach, SC, Brazil
 ← Last Week
This Week →
Lake Men­dota, Madi­son, WI

Concerts Galore

January 24, 2007 Reply

This week is full of con­certs. Last night, I per­formed with the dou­ble reed ensem­ble. We played an arrange­ment of a Bach Cha­conne for solo vio­lin, arranged and con­ducted by Alex Klein. The group was huge, with some­thing like 18 oboes, 3 Eng­lish horns, 12 bas­soons, and 2 con­tra­bas­soons. Last night’s con­cert was all huge ensem­bles of like instru­ments. The high­light was prob­a­bly all the horns (some ungodly num­ber, I’m not sure exactly how many) play­ing Bohemian Rhap­sody. It was quite hilarious.

Tonight, the Panamer­i­can Octet (Mad­Winds — Chelle + four South Amer­i­can musi­cians) is play­ing a move­ment from a Mozart ser­e­nade. We haven’t had as many rehearsals as we might like, since every­one is run­ning in dif­fer­ent direc­tions all the time. But, it should go pretty well. Tomor­row, Mad­Winds are play­ing a run-out social con­cert. So far, we have no infor­ma­tion about where it’ll be. Last week we played in a bank, but other groups have gone to nurs­ing homes, parks, and malls. Fri­day, I think I have an orches­tra con­cert (they’re a lit­tle short on infor­ma­tion around here), and the bas­soon quar­tet I’m play­ing in is per­form­ing on another con­cert. Sat­ur­day, Mad­Winds is play­ing again. The orches­tra con­cert may be that day too, I’m not really sure.

In any case, I’m get­ting lots of play­ing time in all sorts of dif­fer­ent ensem­bles. I’m going to try to play a solo in mas­ter­class tomor­row or the next day, too — prob­a­bly Villa-lobos’s Ciranda das sete notas. I fig­ure that I should play some­thing Latin Amer­i­can while I have the oppor­tu­nity to work with Latin Amer­i­can bas­soon teachers.

Semana Dois

January 22, 2007 Reply

We actu­ally have some time off this after­noon. We had a pretty busy week­end, so the break is nice. Sat­ur­day was much like a week day, with mas­ter classes in the morn­ing, a dress rehearsal in the after­noon, and an orches­tra con­cert in the evening. The con­cert con­sisted of Beethoven’s fifth piano con­certo and the Rite of Spring. I played only on the Beethoven, and sat in the hall for the Stravin­sky. Most of the pro­fes­sors played in the Rite of Spring, along with enough stu­dents to fill out the sec­tions. The group only had a week to put the piece together, but it cer­tainly didn’t sound like it. The per­for­mance was much bet­ter than the only other live per­for­mance I’ve seen, which was with the Phoenix Sym­phony. The bas­soon solo at the begin­ning was gor­geous, and sounded com­pletely effort­less. The other var­i­ous solos — most played by pro­fes­sors, but a few by stu­dents — were great, too.

Yes­ter­day we had the day off from music, but it was still a long day. A travel agent had orga­nized a num­ber of trips to var­i­ous rel­a­tively nearby places. Mad­Winds picked the trip to Flo­ri­a­nop­o­lis, an island south of Jaragua do Sul. We loaded up buses at 7am and headed out. It was nice to see the coun­try­side in day­light, since it was dark long before we arrived here last week. We drove along the coast for much of the trip, which was nice. When we got to the city of Flo­ri­a­nop­o­lis (which lies par­tially on the island and partly on the main­land), we picked up a tour guide. She told us a bit about the island, and about the spe­cific places we were going. We ended up going to three dif­fer­ent beaches, with 40–60 minute bus trips in between. I kind of wish that we’d gone some­place where they could have just dropped us off and picked up up at the end of the day. None of the places we stopped really had enough to do to jus­tify stay­ing there all day, though. Oh, well. At the first beach we went to, the water was pretty rough, and the life­guards weren’t let­ting any­body out in it. I swam briefly at the sec­ond beach, but there was almost no surf, so it was kind of boring.

Well, I just got the one minute warn­ing on my com­puter, so tschau!

Muito Quenche!

January 18, 2007 Reply

Good lord, it was hot here today. The ther­mome­ters topped out at 40 degrees Centi­grade, which is 104 degrees Fahren­heit. That may have been the mea­sure­ment in direct sun­light, but it was still a scorcher. We do a lot of walk­ing here. I’ll guess that it’s about half a mile from our hotel to the school where the wood­wind classes meet, and a mile and a half or so from there to the arts cen­ter where most rehearsals take place. The three are in a big tri­an­gle, and we gen­er­ally make many trips through­out the day. That com­bined with the heat and humid­ity mean that we’re basi­cally sweaty all the time. I’ve about got­ten used to just being dirty all the time. Cool show­ers at night are a must, both to cool down and to get rid of all the sweat, dirt, sun­screen, and bug spray accu­mu­lated dur­ing the day. Unfor­tu­nately, we don’t have access to a pool, so we can’t cool down that way.

Today, Mad­Winds per­formed at a bank branch in down­town Jaragua do Sul. The bank, HSBC, is one of the spon­sors of the fes­ti­val. The gig was a lot of fun. We set up in the lobby next to a wall of ATMs and played for a half hour or so. The bank staff came out to lis­ten to us, and we drew a sur­pris­ing num­ber of peo­ple off the street. At the end, the man­ager gave us all HSBC ball caps and told our inter­preter that he’d like us to play again at another loca­tion next week. I’m hop­ing that will work out, espe­cially if that means we get to be dri­ven around more of the city. Our daily trav­els cover the same ter­ri­tory all the time, and we haven’t seen much else.

Well, my hour at the CYBER HOTT inter­net cafe is about to run out, so I’ll have to end it here. More later.

Bom dia de Brasil!

January 15, 2007 Reply

Well, we’ve manged to find an inter­net cafe near our hotel. It only charges BR$2.50 per hour — about US$1.25 — but the con­nec­tion isn’t exactly the fastest. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to post any pic­tures from here, but I’ll give it a try another day.

Any­way, our trip here was fairly rocky and ended up tak­ing us about 38 hours, all told. When I get back, I’ll explain in more detail. We’re hav­ing a pretty good time so far, although the orga­ni­za­tion of the fes­ti­val leaves some­thing to be desired. Things seem to be get­ting bet­ter as we go, though. It’s a lit­tle tough get­ting around, as none of us speak Por­tuguese, and not all of us have back­grounds in Span­ish. We’ve made it work, though. The peo­ple here are quite friendly, and always seem will­ing to help break through the lan­guage barrier.

I’d write more, but we’re about to head to a con­cert by an Argen­tin­ian wind ensem­ble. They’re play­ing some stan­dard band stuff — Vaughn Williams, Fes­tivo, etc., but they’re also play­ing the theme from Schindler’s List and a Star Wars suite. The rep com­bined with the gen­eral con­cert expe­ri­ences we’ve had so far (more on that later) should make for a fun time.

Adeus!

Tchau Estados Unidos, Olá Brasil!

January 11, 2007 1 comment
Mad­Winds

I’ve been pretty lax about post­ing lately, partly due to lack of new pho­tos or inter­est­ing trips to write about. That will all change soon, though. Fri­day morn­ing, the Mad­Winds (my wood­wind quin­tet, pic­tured at right) are trav­el­ing to south­ern Brazil to par­tic­i­pate in a music fes­ti­val. The Fes­ti­val de Música de Santa Cata­rina is a two-week fes­ti­val that takes place in the city of Jaraguá do Sul, Santa Cata­rina, Brazil. We, along with a num­ber of other grad­u­ate quin­tets from Amer­i­can uni­ver­si­ties (includ­ing a brass quin­tet from UW-Madison) were invited by Alex Klein, the festival’s direc­tor and for­mer prin­ci­pal oboist of the Chicago Sym­phony. We’ll be par­tic­i­pat­ing in the festival’s orches­tral pro­gram, serv­ing as instruc­tors in the band pro­gram, and per­form­ing as a quin­tet. I’m hop­ing that we’ll get some free time to expe­ri­ence Brazil, as well.

So, I should soon have a wealth of sto­ries and pho­tos suit­able for post­ing. I don’t know yet if we’ll have reg­u­lar ‘net access while we’re there. Even if we do, I don’t know how much free time we’ll have. If I can’t post dur­ing the trip, I’ll be sure to do so after­wards. I’m set up to take a ton of pho­tos — I bought two new bat­ter­ies for my dig­i­tal cam­era and a new 1 GB com­pact flash card — so I hope to end up with lots of good shots.

Adeus!

Dubuque

November 11, 2006 1 comment
The Mighty Mississippi

This week­end, I’m play­ing with the Dubuque Sym­phony, just across the Mis­sis­sippi River from the Wisconsin/Illinois bor­der. I’m play­ing con­tra­bas­soon (and a lit­tle bit of Bas­soon III) on an all-Shostakovich con­cert — Fes­tive Over­ture, Suite from The Gad­fly, and Sym­phony No. 10. I drove over and back for rehearsals on Tues­day and Thurs­day, then came back Fri­day after­noon for the week­end. We have one con­cert tonight and another tomor­row afternoon.

My Room at Shalom

The sym­phony is putting me up for the week­end, in a place called the Shalom Retreat Cen­ter. It’s an inter­est­ing place. I’m not sure exactly what it is, but from what I can tell, it’s a Chris­t­ian non-denominational meeting/spritual healing/retreat space. None of the inte­rior doors lock. When I arrived last night after rehearsal, I punched in the code for the com­bi­na­tion lock on the outer door, found a card with my room assign­ment on the front desk, and ven­tured out to find my room. I didn’t see a sin­gle per­son, even when I ven­tured out later to find an alarm clock that had been going off for quite awhile. I found the clock in the cafe­te­ria in the base­ment of the build­ing, turned off the alarm, and went explor­ing. There must have been peo­ple there some­where — the park­ing lot was full. But, I saw no sign of any of them. Bizarre. Stand­ing in my room, it was so quiet (after I found and silenced the alarm clock) that the sound of blood flow­ing through my ears seemed incred­i­bly loud.

Star Brew­ing Company

Today after our morn­ing rehearsal, I ven­tured out to explore the town a lit­tle bit. I bought a cou­ple of clas­si­cal records from a lit­tle thrift shop, then ven­tured down to the Mis­sis­sippi. I passed the National Mis­sis­sippi River Museum & Aquar­ium. I didn’t go in, but I walked around out­side to look at some of the river­boats they have on dis­play. I walked along the river for awhile, then ran into a cel­list from the sym­phony who also hap­pens to live a cou­ple of blocks away from me in Madi­son. We con­tin­ued up the river, and checked out a cou­ple of his­tor­i­cal build­ings — the Star Brew­ing Com­pany, and a Civil War-era shot tower. Shot tow­ers were used to pro­duce lead shot with the aid of grav­ity and sur­face tension.

After walk­ing along the river, we parted ways and I then walked back up to the down­town area. I’ve been parked in the Mis­sis­sippi Mug cof­fee shop for a cou­ple of hours now, drink­ing tea, lis­ten­ing to live jazz, work­ing on a travel grant pro­posal, and surf­ing the web. But, the shop closes soon, and I should get back to Shalom to don my tux, any­way. I didn’t bring my real cam­era, but I shot a few dig­i­tal pics. Click the thumb­nails above, or check out the rest of the gallery here.

Folklife Festival

June 12, 2006 1 comment
Samba Olywa Parade

I finally man­aged to have my pho­tos from the Folk­life Fes­ti­val in Seat­tle devel­oped. I’ve posted a few of them, and I’ll take this oppor­tu­nity to do a fes­ti­val wrap-up post. I didn’t take as many pho­tos as in pre­vi­ous years. This was largely due to the fact that it rained three out of the four days of the fes­ti­val. It wasn’t pour­ing that whole time, but it was cloudy and dark, mak­ing the light pretty crappy for flash-free photography.

Signs Galore

I guess I’ll start with what I was actu­ally doing at the fes­ti­val. This was my fourth year work­ing as the festival’s Sig­nage Coor­di­na­tor. What that means is that I’m respon­si­ble for hang­ing signs and ban­ners all over the cam­pus of Seat­tle Cen­ter (where the Space Nee­dle is). The pic at the left shows most of the pre­ex­ist­ing signs — all the signs along the wall are stacked 4–8 deep. Every year, there are also a bunch of new signs and ban­ners (which hadn’t yet arrived when I took the pic­ture, to cover new and dif­fer­ent venues and spe­cial one-year events or appear­ances. The first two years, I was pretty much on my own. In each of the last two years, I’ve had good help from Tahoma and one other person.

Funky Gospel Bass

The nice thing about work­ing sig­nage is that most of my work is done by Sat­ur­day after­noon (the fes­ti­val always starts on the Fri­day before Memo­r­ial Day, and runs through the Mon­day hol­i­day). So, I get plenty of (paid) time to walk around and enjoy the fes­ti­val. I have to carry a radio in case some­one needs me, but it clips nicely to my cam­era bag.

Peru­vian Buskers

I caught parts of quite a few shows. I saw a num­ber of dance groups: tango, fla­menco, salsa, Zim­bab­wean, Irish, belly, samba, etc. A num­ber of these used canned music, but the few who used live musi­cians were the most inter­est­ing. I heard a wide vari­ety of music (in no par­tic­u­lar order): Taiko drum­ming, jazz, Irish tra­di­tional, punk, klezmer, rock­a­billy, gospel, Afro-pop, reg­gae, blue­grass, folk, etc. Some groups were quite good, some were ok, and some were just down­right weird. One such group was a polka band who played noth­ing but Johnny Cash cov­ers. I didn’t catch their name, which may be for the best.

Artis the Spoonman

Aside from what’s hap­pen­ing on the var­i­ous stages (21 of them this year), there are always lots of inter­est­ing buskers dis­trib­uted through­out the grounds. Since the fes­ti­val doesn’t pay the per­form­ers (there’s also no required admis­sion charge, just a sug­gested dona­tion), alot of groups will set up on the side­walk to make some money before or after their shows. There are also pro­fes­sional buskers who usu­ally work down­town Seat­tle, groups or bands who aren’t actu­ally play­ing at the fes­ti­val, and high school (and some­times younger) kids who want to make a few extra bucks. Most buskers are musi­cians, but there’s always a vari­ety of inter­est­ing and bizarre per­for­mance art — human stat­ues, human video games, acro­bats, worm-eating, etc.

Boe Odd­ysey

Folk­life offers really good people-watching oppor­tu­ni­ties, as well. It being a free fes­ti­val, peo­ple of all sorts show up. You see peo­ple of all ages, eth­nic­i­ties, reli­gions, socio-economic sta­tuses, sex­u­al­i­ties, and var­i­ous other lifestyle choices. When­ever I tire of walk­ing around, I’ll just stand or sit some­place and watch the crowd. That can pro­vide hours of enter­tain­ment. One per­son who stands out in the crowd every year is Boe. I don’t know Boe’s whole story, but he vol­un­teers for Folk­life (dur­ing fes­ti­val set-up) every year, and I think he did too much of some­thing in the 60s. He always wears a brightly col­ored skirt, pas­tel scarves, and a bell around his waist. He can be seen at out­door shows of all descrip­tions wav­ing around bunches of his scarves, which he bungee-cords to each wrist. He’s bizarre, but he seems to always be hav­ing fun.

Well, that prob­a­bly should have been split up into mul­ti­ple posts, but I had to make up for post­ing almost noth­ing when I was actu­ally in Seat­tle. Each of the pic­tures above links to a larger ver­sion of that par­tic­u­lar pic, but you can see all my pho­tos from this year’s fes­ti­val here. Also, check out my gal­leries from past years: Folk­life 2003 Folk­life 2005. I worked the fes­ti­val in 2004 also, but I got strep and mono part-way through and had to go home. So, no pic­tures from that year.

Voices

May 28, 2006 Reply

I can hear them. The voices. They’re in my head.

One prob­lem that has to be addressed at a fes­ti­val like the one I’m cur­rently work­ing is com­mu­ni­ca­tion between staff mem­bers. This is com­monly solved with walkie-talkies and occa­sional cell-phone usage. The walkie-talkies that we have are set up like the ones emer­gency per­son­nel often carry — the main unit clips to your belt, while a small hand­set clips to your col­lar. My pre­ferred con­fig­u­ra­tion is radio behind me with the cord run­ning up my back to the hand­set, which is clipped to the left side of my collar.

I’ve been work­ing 12–16 hour days lately, with the radio turned on at all times. Even with dif­fer­ent chan­nels for dif­fer­ent parts of the staff (pro­duc­tion, pro­gram­ming, admin­is­tra­tion, etc.), there’s alot of radio chat­ter. You can get so used to the con­stant noise that at the end of the day, when you take your radio off, you expe­ri­ence a bizarre phenomenon.

I call it “phan­tom radio,” but I’ve heard it referred to sim­ply as “radio­head.” Appar­ently this phe­nom­e­non man­i­fests itself dif­fer­ently for dif­fer­ent peo­ple. Some peo­ple hear just a buzz or hum. I hear actual trans­mis­sions. I don’t always hear words, but I def­i­nitely hear mul­ti­ple iden­ti­fi­able peo­ple talk­ing. Since I keep my hand­set clipped to the left side of my col­lar, only my left ear is affected.

It usu­ally takes me a cou­ple of days after the fes­ti­val is over to get rid of the voices com­pletely. Until then, I’ll just try to ignore what they try to tell me.

Deception Pass

May 20, 2006 Reply
Decep­tion Pass Bridge

After arriv­ing in Seat­tle on Thurs­day, I went down­town to meet my dad, who was there for a con­fer­ence. From there, we drove north to Mount Ver­non to stay with Becky, one of his Irish music cohorts. Yes­ter­day, we drove around a bit, explor­ing the town and the sur­round­ings. One place we went was Decep­tion Pass, a steep and nar­row pass sep­a­rat­ing two of the San Juan Islands — Whid­bey and Fidalgo. We parked first on Pass Island, which lies in the mid­dle of the pass, con­nected to each island by a bridge. We walked around there abit, then con­tin­ued across the sec­ond bridge and took a longer walk. We saw a cou­ple of bald eagles and one seal, but not a whole lot else in terms of wildlife. Click the pic for more shots of the bridge and the pass.

Fort Morgan in Widescreen

May 7, 2006 Reply

I whipped up a panoramic col­lage from my trip to Fort Mor­gan in Alabama. This view is from atop the south­east­ern bas­tion, look­ing back into the fort. The semi-circular objects in the fore­ground are parts of gun emplace­ments. The gun car­riages swiveled, with a small wheel tra­vers­ing these arcs. The dark con­crete struc­ture in the mid­dle of the pic­ture is Bat­tery Dupor­tail, one of the addi­tions made to the fort around the turn of the twen­ti­eth century.

Click the thumb­nail for a slightly larger ver­sion. From there, you can click the “View Full Size” link in the upper right-hand cor­ner to see a huge ver­sion, if you so desire.

Fort Morgan

April 22, 2006 1 comment
Case­mates Across
the Court­yard

Tonight is my last con­cert with the Mobile Sym­phony. I drove over on Thurs­day and had two rehearsals that day. I have a dress rehearsal today, and the con­cert is tonight. Yes­ter­day how­ever, I had the whole day off. At my mom’s sug­ges­tion, I decided to drive down to see Fort Mor­gan at the open­ing of Mobile Bay. Unfor­tu­nately, I didn’t have my “real” cam­era with me, so I had to do my best with my dig­i­tal point-and-shoot.

Postern Through Glacis

The fort, which lies on the east­ern side of the entrance to Mobile Bay, was built between 1819 and 1834 as part of the US’s Third Sys­tem of forts. These forts were con­structed fol­low­ing the War of 1812 to secure south­ern and east­ern ports. By the start of the Civil War, these forts were largely obso­lete due to advances in rifled artillery and steam-powered ships. Fort Mor­gan man­aged to sink only one ship in Admi­ral Farragut’s fleet at the Bat­tle of Mobile Bay. This one ship, the iron­clad USS Tecum­seh, hit a mine (then called a tor­pedo) laid at the entrance to Mobile Bay. This prompted Farragut’s state­ment which is often mis­quoted as “Damn the tor­pe­does, full speed ahead!”

The fort took a severe beat­ing dur­ing the Bat­tle of Mobile, but was rebuilt after­wards. In the 1890s, con­crete bat­ter­ies were added, on which were installed much larger and more mod­ern weaponry. The fort was manned dur­ing the Span­ish Amer­i­can War, World War I, and World War II. It was deac­ti­vated in 1946 and turned over to the State of Alabama.

Case­mate Arches

The fort is quite inter­est­ing, not least because of the dif­fer­ent peri­ods of con­struc­tion lay­ered on top of one another. A num­ber of can­non rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the fort’s first incar­na­tion are there, some of which sit in com­plete car­riages. A few of the weapons are even the fort’s orig­i­nal pieces, although they had been removed and later recov­ered. Much of the fort is open to explo­ration, even some unlit (and win­dow­less) rooms in the later con­crete struc­tures. I had only a key-chain LED light, so I didn’t ven­ture too far into these. A few signs are scat­tered around the fort, but the park brochure is the main source of inter­pre­tive infor­ma­tion. Some more infor­ma­tion would be wel­come, espe­cially as there are many essen­tially empty rooms with space for signs.

Snake

When the fort was ren­o­vated in the 1890s, a large con­crete bat­tery — Bat­tery Dupor­tail — was built inside the fort, essen­tially cut­ting off one point of the fort’s pen­tag­o­nal lay­out. After walk­ing around inside the fort, I decided to walk around between the outer walls and the glacis (a tall earthen berm sur­round­ing the fort). From the out­side, I dis­cov­ered an entrance into the small sec­tion adja­cent to the iso­lated ver­tex. This entrance had obvi­ously been cre­ated later, prob­a­bly after the sec­tion had been iso­lated. I wanted to ask if this area had been used for any­thing after con­struc­tion of Bat­tery Dupor­tail. Unfor­tu­nately, I couldn’t find any park per­son­nel — even in the small museum. As I was leav­ing this sec­tion, a fairly siz­able snake was com­ing in. I gave it the right-of-way, but man­aged to get a cou­ple of ok shots of it. I’m not up on my her­petol­ogy — can any­one iden­tify the species?

Newer Con­crete Battery

Out­side the main fort com­plex, there are two con­crete bat­ter­ies, the names of which I failed to record and can’t find online. They’re both removed from the coast a bit more than the fort, which makes sense for later, longer-range artillery. Both are fairly dilap­i­dated, and one is closed to the pub­lic. The other is open, but the rooms are unlit. A sign advises: “DANGER: Explore rooms at your own risk.” Again, hav­ing no good light source, I didn’t ven­ture very far inside.

I took quite a few pic­tures, and uploaded about forty of them (a lit­tle less than half!). Click the thumb­nails above to see those par­tic­u­lar pho­tos, or visit the whole gallery by click­ing here. Oh, and for once, I actu­ally labeled them.

Essen Haus (Madison, Part 2)

February 13, 2006 Reply

The Boot

Sat­ur­day night after my audi­tion, Les­ley and Keith made some won­der­ful chili, and we watched Kill Bill Vol­ume 2. I’d only seen it once before, even though I’ve seen Vol­ume 1 four or five times. After that, we went out to a Ger­man restau­rant called Essen Haus. The place has a bunch of good Ger­man beers on draft, wait­resses in dirn­dles, wait­ers in leder­ho­sen, a polka band, and The Boot (more on that later). There, we met up with some of Les­ley and Keith’s friends: Amber, Dave, Susan, and Brad. The polka band, which con­sisted of accor­dian, guitar/banjo, and drum­set, was pretty cool. The guy’s accor­dian dou­bled as a midi con­troller, so he could pro­duce all kinds of sounds — it was a lit­tle con­fus­ing until we fig­ured out what was going on. In addi­tion to actual polka music, they played some other songs set in a polka style. Noth­ing too off the wall or Richard Cheese–esque, but it was still funny. I learned the basics of polka, but didn’t want to bounce around too long with a stom­ach full of beer.

Speak­ing of beer, I must explain The Boot. The Boot is some­thing to be enjoyed by a size­able group of peo­ple. It’s a glass boot that holds two liters of beer. But, the phys­i­cal man­i­fes­ta­tion of The Boot is sec­ondary to the rit­ual involved. Once served, The Boot can­not touch the table while it still con­tains beer. The first imbiber flicks The Boot, drinks his or her fill, flicks once more, and passes The Boot to the next par­tic­i­pant. This flick, drink, flick, pass pro­gres­sion con­tin­ues until The Boot has been drained. There is some strat­egy involved, how­ever. If you are the last one to drink from The Boot with­out fin­ish­ing it (i.e. the per­son right after you pol­ishes it off), you are oblig­ated to pur­chase the next Boot.

With Brad as ring­leader, we went through three Boots. I man­aged to deliver the coup de grâce to the third one, after the other Dave (who was directly before me in the rota­tion) bested the other two. It was a good night for Daves.

Later: the audi­tion itself.

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