Go(ing) Pro

 

I was inspired recently by Opera Southwest's use of the GoPro camera during rehearsals ... 

 

And my father bought a GoPro in order to record his drone helicopter flights. It’s a fun idea, actually. Another favorite TV show of late ("The Curse of Oak Island") featured these little cameras as some professional divers dove hundreds of feet in order to find buried treasure. 

I have been playing with this camera since I purchased it a few weeks ago. My favorite features are the “remote activation” (meaning you can take a still shot or a start-stop a video from an iPhone) and the fact that it is VERY small. Very practical for traveling and self-archiving ...

Today, it was a fairly open Saturday. I am hard at work on a project - re-orchestrating Mozart’s MAGIC FLUTE (more about that later) and of course, my regular practicing and score study.

Today I blissfully toggled between both.

On the “practice docket” this week is a work for violin and piano of Olivier Messiaen. Some of it is devilishly fast. The final variation is life-affirming, slow, regal, and seems to stop time. Being a big fan of his “Quartet for the End of Time,” and especially having played the cello movement many times in rehearsal, I am awed by the similarities of this final variation to that movement of the Quartet. Messiaen also seems to evoke a pipe organ, as he asks for HUGE reaches from the pianist (in reality: you have to get the bass octaves before the beat and catch them in the pedal) in order to play the chords where they need to fall.

Here is a video of the Messiaen ... 

My studio is so wonderfully nurturing these days - the light coming through the windows is, in a word, time-stopping. This semester feels like is has gotten almost to the point of a runaway train (Not necessarily bad. Just very fast). When I can take moments - to savor Messiaen’s slow-moving transcendent music, to “exist” in the light coming through my window - it is the best thing which I can do. 

 

 

Here's to slowing down a little, savoring the fall. Harmonies can change in an instant.

Here's to savoring the movement of time - vertically and horizontally.