to an afternoon of villanelle choruses at the Free School, after an evening of ten-minute plays at the Annex. Formalists? Formalists.
Category Archives: Baltimore
yesterday
I taught a chorus workshop to 12 students at SCT’s youth conservatory yesterday, and it was excellent. We had about an hour, and we did the process where they each bring in their own 4 lines of text and it ends in a chorus jam with all of them going from one text to another. I really liked it.
I had dinner with S at the end of the day, to celebrate the article, and I commented that I couldn’t believe how easy it was to make these workshops work now. It used to be so hard, and it feels so natural now, so straightforward. He said, “Well begun is half done.” I guess that’s so. After all, it has been a long time beginning, with many beginnings.
I also signed paperwork to become a Free School space steward / person-who-can-hold-a-class-there yesterday, so that Parallel Octave can rehearse there in the future.
the thursday rainstorm
came early today! Thunderous outside.
Thursday’s been my favorite day of the week for a long time (it is, after all, Thorsday / Fourth-Grade Art Class Day) and I like that the storm couldn’t wait to get it started. It is always an auspicious thing to wake up and find it raining, especially now that I no longer have to drive to work.
Who wants to walk down St. Paul in the rain?
||8ve article in Baltimore CityPaper
“Now taking place at the Baltimore Free School, Parallel Octave is poised to bring all sorts of Baltimore artists together—and perhaps create a new kind of art in the process.”
– from Rachel Monroe’s wonderful CityPaper article on the ||8ve chorus, “All Together Now,” just posted today. It’ll be in tomorrow’s issue.
If you’re interested in our project, please check out our website or course page on the Free School site, or email paralleloctaveATgmail.com.
good day,
sunshine! LA was wonderful: the ||8ve model is easily portable. Taught a week of chorus workshops at my old high school, using the Puck text from Midsummer, and led an ||8ve improv session for LA actors & musicians. We worked on (sound files at link) The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, a text that I’ve long wanted to record. One of the coolest things about it was trying to say the footnotes simultaneously with the principal text. Simultaneity is one of the principles I would like to develop more. I am interested in it, but seem to keep doing it again and again without really working out the logistics.
Great meeting today about furthering ||8ve performance / composition opportunities. I’m trying to meet with the members of the core group separately to discuss what they want to have happen. There seems to be a lot of interest in moving towards memorization, more structured work, etc., but keeping the improv work as well. I’m happy about all of this. “Happy” is an understatement.
And it is hot and sunny. And I saw ECLIPSE yesterday.
theater weekend:
saw TRAGEDY @ Single Carrot on Friday, and am heading to closing weekend of THE GOAT, OR WHO IS SYLVIA @ Rep Stage today. It’s the end for THE GOAT, but TRAGEDY still has performances left, through July 11, and is wonderful. It’s Will Eno’s absurdist play about the sun going down and not coming back up, as reported by a crew of bewildered newscasters.
I read THE GOAT the year it came out, but have never seen it. I’m very excited, especially since the man playing the lead is a friend.
sunny day:
very, very sunny. Wandering around Guilford taking pictures for incoming writers.
Parallel Octave improvising chorus meeting this Saturday, at 2 pm. More info here. Texts: Blake’s “London” and A.E. Housman’s “When I Watch The Living Meet.” Today, I’m going to get trained on one of the better sound recording systems that the DMC checks out, so we can use it for that session. Its name sounds a lot like “Moranis,” which I can’t help but confuse with the recently-reported-to-me news that there’s going to be a Ghostbusters 3.
This evening, it’s the 20th anniversary of Normal’s Books and Records here in Charles Village, and there’s a party at the 14K Cabaret.
word for word
(1) There is nothing like a dishwasher full of wine glasses to remind you that last night was good. Yesterday, we had a party for the return of C and D from their recent marriage.
(2) I was in DC today, meeting up with JK. Haven’t seen her since Wroclaw last year. We had breakfast in the mall by the Pentagon City Ritz Carlton, surrounded by hundreds of American star-striped banners, and then I spent some time in her hotel room reading various theatrical papers she had — an introduction to an anthology of new Turkish plays, an advertisement for the Polish Theatre Perspectives journal, a prospectus for a dance festival in Poznan and elsewhere.
The materials she had with her were so pertinent to my current chorus interests that, at one point, I stopped and copied out an entire article, word for word, in my journal. I’m not certain what part of it is actually the most important, or what I will need to go back to, but I didn’t want to miss reading a word of it.
I must go back to Wroclaw soon.
(3) (Bloomsday readings from Ulysses at the James Joyce this evening.)
keep your knickers on, it’s only a bloody play
Good, good ||8ve session yesterday: we worked on Dylan Thomas and revisited some Donne and Stevens. Piano and soprano saxophone. The energy of the group, yesterday, was much more about having the text function as one musical element in a sea of musical elements–a direction I don’t always go in, myself, but it was good to be pushed there. I think the results were wonderful. I left the session feeling really exhilarated.
After, went to JoeSquared on North Avenue and saw Second N8ture, a funk group (wonderful slow-paced cover of “Let’s Get It On”), and a horn-driven ensemble called the Chris Pumphrey Sextet. Their warmup reminded me of the experimental horn music Beth and I saw in Chicago, once upon a time — the three clarinetists in an art gallery, with everyone sitting around intently listening, and run after run after run of notes blurring together. But the actual set, once it started, was more traditional and programmatic — is that the right word? It had a lot of narrative elements, to my ear.. I liked them both. It’s good to be hearing more music.
Second N8ture plays at JoeSquared every second Saturday.
I also reread THE REAL THING (Stoppard) yesterday, which is what the title’s from. It’s Annie screaming at her producer into the phone, from a scene I directed for a class in high school. Scene 11. The first scene, I believe, I ever directed. With ED. I’m pretty sure. There are funny notes in my script, blocking and pacing notes. On the first page, someone has written (+ William Shakespeare) under the author’s name, (I think that was ED) and on the last page, “Kronk and Zadok Memorial Day,” after the oddly-named soldiers that Annie’s playwright lover is writing a bad television show about. (That was F.) The book is wrinkled and beat-up with weeks of rehearsal. It looks like what it is.
free yoga
In keeping with the previous post, the Mount Washington Baltimore Yoga Village has a free day of classes on Sunday the 13th.
Dara Weinberg 