Sent an email I was afraid to send this morning. I'm a "just stay cool & nice, don't make a fuss, it's all good!" person deep in my heart but sometimes you have to speak up on your own behalf a little. Feeling proud of myself for just saying the thing
Highly recommend having a nemesis in your brain that you don't tell anyone about! It's just so nice to have that escape valve, to offload all your negative vibes in the direction of that person & be able to bring positivity to the rest of your life. They never have to know! (& they never will...)
This is all a long way of saying
We need hearings
The government exists for this kind of accountability
We may not get it because republicans control the house and the senate
"With a judicial finger in the constitutional dike, It is so ORDERED."
Ahhhh my alma mater 🤮
Things members of the Everlasting Faint cast have told me (this week) that this opera’s music reminds them of:
Verdi, “Un Ballo in Maschera”
Joni Mitchell in general
Metallica, “…And Justice for All”
shape-note choral singing
Puccini in general
Radiohead, “OK Computer”
I COULD NOT BE MORE PLEASED
Also, uhhhh thanks(?) to mother nature for welcoming the cast & creative team, who are arriving today to begin rehearsals in earnest, with this “lovely” weather!
As of today it is officially ONLY THREE WEEKS until the premiere of my opera Everlasting Faint here at Madison Opera and as a heads-up I plan to be absolutely INSUFFERABLE for that entire time, brimming over with enthusiasm & nervous energy & generally talking too much. INSUFFERABLE!!!!!
Today I feel like I’ve MADE IT as a “real composer” because someone far away who I’ve never met is performing one of my pieces with ABSOLUTE DISREGARD for the meaning & style of both the music & the poetry it sets, and I’m just like…
Awwwww look at my baby all grown up and making bad decisions! 🥰
Ooh nice!
Starting in C because it’ll work for the baritone & I like the nod to Adam’s original key. Moving to D for the soprano’s verse 2 so it feels a little restrained, and ending in E-flat for the traditional (& well-loved) soprano high B-flat at the end, with many many harmonies
Currently composing the most over-the-top arrangement of “O Holy Night” you’ve ever heard, for soprano Lexi LoBianco, bass-baritone Kyle Ketelsen, the Madison Symphony Orchestra & the MSO chorus! This is going to be A DELIGHT. It has not one but TWO key changes!! Who needs subtlety?!?!
Single tickets are now on sale for Madison Opera's world premiere production of "Everlasting Faint"!!! Come see this huge, intense, beautiful opera that Sandra Flores-Strand and I have been working on for 4 years or so! Let's sell this theatre OUT, woooooooo!!!
www.overture.org/tickets-even...
Image of “Happy Bunny” from the 90s, smiling broadly with the caption “it’s cute how stupid you are”
As far as I can tell as an out-of-touch middle-aged GenXer, the appeal of the “labubu” is that it’s a cute bunny but also mean AF, and therefore I think I can pass on this trend because BEEN THERE DONE THAT 30-SOME YEARS AGO (in the early days of Hot Topic)
This month’s record purchases: The Keening, “Little Bird,” Ratboys, “The Window,” Willi Carlisle, “Critterland,” and Symphony X, “Underworld.” Okay okay I might have a little record-buying problem, but these albums are all SO DAMN GOOOOOOOOD I can’t help myself
Will never ever EVER EVERRRRRR get over how super cool it is to see things like this in PR materials! Oh, you know, Tchaikovsky, Gendel, Bizet, et cetera.
(Let this serve as another reminder to come to Madison Opera’s “Opera in the Park” at Garner Park, Madison, WI, on July 19th!)
oh so we should dissent peacefully?? through legitimate channels?? like by being elected to the united states senate and asking questions at a DHS press conference???
noem saying thery're going to "liberate" california from its leaders seconds before federal law enforcement restrains and removes one of the state's senators from the room—like what else needs to be said
Well this sums it up.
youtu.be/ULdUsHB-7VE?...
If this is how this administration responds to a Senator with a question, you can only imagine what they're doing to farmworkers, to cooks, and to day laborers throughout California and across the country.
We will hold this administration accountable.
Hot take: “in theatre, we’re a FAMILY!” and “in band, kids find a family” and similar statements made by arts educators are EXACTLY as cringy & misguided as bosses in the business world insisting that the workplace is actually a family. Jussayin’.
I’m always kinda bummed out when someone brings their own pianist to auditions I’m playing & I have to leave & listen in from the other room… but when it turns out it’s because they’re presenting an aria from LULU… I’m maybe not so bummed out after all 😂😂😂
insert hastily made cartoon with stock drawing of St. Peter at the gates of heaven, and a chorus of voices shouting from offstage, "NOOOOOORMMM!!"
(may his memory be a blessing)
I will never forgive them for what they did to “Big Yellow Taxi,” but… I think I’m enjoying the new Counting Crows album???
Just going by my personal tastes:
Shostakovich
Bartók
Schubert
Haydn
Villa-Lobos
Hovhaness
Bacewicz
Vasks
Yeah, with cello would probably be ideal. Or if we’re in a perfect endless-budget scenario… Mandocello!
Not that I want to put myself out of a job, but MAN wouldn’t it be cool to do a production of Don Giovanni where the recitatives are done on mandolin, since there’s already a mandolin player on hand for “deh vieni alla finestra”?!?! I’m convinced it would sound SO AWESOME.
We open our production of Don Giovanni here at Madison Opera this Friday (with the most wonderful cast) & ALSO the new Propagandhi album comes out this Friday (& the singles fuckin' RULE) so if you're a weirdo like me who loves many many kinds of things, it's going to be AN EXTREMELY GREAT MUSIC DAY
Currently fighting for “music stuck in my head” dominance:
1) the new Ghost album, especially “Lachryma” (delightfully cheesy 80s-style power ballads about the devil)
2) le poisson Steve (il est orange)
3) ALL of Don Giovanni (we open a week from today)
