Paul Simon - from a few years ago - just for fun.

A romp down memory lane

While looking for something else. I found these.

Look who is back!

They seem unafraid of me now.

No raccoons today.

A Gitta-inspired breakfast...


Being a cool, overcast, almost rainy morning, I took a walk on Phinney Ridge to re-visit this plant.



Good conversation with D. Gunn about local gallery/corporate curator possibilities. Though she had no specific names, she emboldened me to consider some direct contacts.

Tomorrow night a few of us will be working with Jax on symmetrical scales - part of the work she brought back from the course in Spain earlier this month. That means I better get off the computer and go pick up the guitar.

More raccoon activities

Yesterday evening, as I prepared to meet Jaxie at Good Shepherd Chapel, the raccoons were having dinner under the apple tree in front of my car. The more I tried to get them away from my car, the closer to it they huddled.


When I returned home, there were three baby raccoon settled for the night in my doorway. It took a few minutes (and a bunch of hisses) to persuade them to leave.

The Phinney Ridge Tree

The seasonally decorated tree I often pass on my walk up Phinney Ridge was freshly decorated yesterday. Above are photos of what it looked like in preparation for the Fourth of July. Below, well... I'm, not sure what holiday is being marked by all the butterflies. But this household is sure dedicated to this endeavor. BTW, the tree itself doesn't look too healthy.



Caught sight of this lovely plant - which I do not know the name of - but I love the spiral feel it has.

Racoons!

OK, the other day I saw one of these babies scurry across the backyard. I thought, 'how cute!' Well, last night, his clan moved into the backyard and did their weird chittering noises until nearly dawn. That apple tree they are muNching on is the one that I park my car under. Mama Racoon is pretty mean (I encountered her this morning when I found their hiding place.) so I will need to take care when I enter and leave my car. At least I may have discovered who has been tromping on my watermelon plants!

Tuesday garden update

More job applications today. Friday's interviews were both positively strange - for different reasons. Not sure whether I'm the best fit for either job. I wish this process could be a little more predictable and not such a crapshoot.


The angel food cake that refuses to drop. As I was refining my understanding of how to make an angel food cake, Curt mentioned a memory of his mother making angel food cake- how she used to invert the tube ban over a bottle and as the cake cooled, it would slip out of the pan. As you can see, mine never seems to slip out of the pan. Tasty nonetheless. This one (made yesterday for last night's after-party following the last show of the season) came out particularly well. I'd added orange zest and a bit of orange extract and this gave the cake a nice flavor rather than tasting like something you wish you could have with strawberries.


The garden continues to grow. Someone has been trying to trample the Moon and Stars watermelon plants, but so far, they survive. The corn is looking perky, but I am not sure I have enough plants to ensure sufficient pollination. Lettuce, cherry tomatoes and green beens all look good so far.

Final Show of the fifth season

Click on any image to see a larger version.


The line of people waiting to get in as the doors are about to open.

Bowing after Music for a Found Harmonium

The Audience

Magic - fun deception!

The next to last show of the season...

As close to a performance photo as you'll see from this season.
(Click for larger image.)

...was absolutely grueling. Not sure if we were still wiped from the show at Good Shepherd this weekend or if some other factors were at play. I had long ago scheduled a photo session for this evening, which it seemed everyone was trying to forget about. And it was aborted mid-session in anycase. I managed to make this image during the bow after the encore.

A job interview is scheduled for Friday and several more pending applications...

The weather has been glorious. Perhaps even better than back in the Bay Area because the skies are clear and smoke-free. But, as the barista who served me this morning said, 'Enjoy it while you can...'

Rest & Relaxation, sort of

Yesterday was absolutely grueling, and I'm not even one of the performers! Preparations began with an electronic rehearsal at Travgor's from 10am -1pm.

With one brief break on the front porch for refreshment.
At 4pm, everyone was due at the venue where everything was ready and waiting for us. What a treat for the team that all that was required of them was to set up their stools and plug in their DI boxes.
Andy B., our sound engineer, coordinated a sound check.

Curt testing the voice microphone...
Sound check and rehearsal until 6 - at which point everyone was given an hour to relax and chill. At 7, everyone transformed themselves into gig attire and the house team began greeting the arriving audience. And then the show, which of course I did not photograph. But at the completion of the gig, I slipped up to Meleah's lighting booth and took a few snaps during the bow and walk-off.

Today, a bit of studio work, laundry, and baked a 'welcome home Jaxie' chocolate cake and delivered it - but mostly trying to relax today.

Not very interesting, but meaningful

It is a dumb image, I know. But it means that after five months of looking for it, I found the CD for the Silverfast software I use with my scanner. For some reason, I couldn't get my scanner to work after the move in March. I'll spare the long story. Finally, today, I can scan again!

Moon Calligraphy

Emily Hoyer is one of the photographers who posts in the Photography conference on the Well. We currently have a theme going of color photographs that happen to have no color in them. Last night Emily submitted this beauty:

moon squiggle (12874) by ehoyer / © Some rights reserved.

Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license

Christopher DeLaurenti writes about Tuning the Air

Space is a crucial and often overlooked element of performance; you know a good space when you hear it. An acoustically lush venue can bless the most careless musician with a rich sound that magnifies the music, adding presence and depth. Of course, most venues have no acoustic signature: Shrewd musicians compensate by fastidiously arranging themselves onstage and calibrating their instruments. Carefully considering the listener's eyes and ears can make a good space sound great.

Seattle Circle, an octet of acoustic guitarists, use space masterfully. I caught their Tuning the Air concert series late last year at CHAC and a few weeks ago at their current home, the Fremont Abbey. Neither venue should win any prizes for design; both are boxy and functional. The Fremont Abbey has a ceiling that somehow looks lower than it actually is. Despite such flaws, Seattle Circle take sonic command of the space. The ensemble sit on stools placed on slightly raised platforms. All eight musicians ring the audience in a tight circle and envelop you in music.

I can't decide what is more impressive about Seattle Circle—their astonishing collective precision or how their seating arrangement transforms the music. It's like being inside a giant zither; strums, chords, and melodies not only sail over your head, but tilt and rotate around you. The sound moves with a method. Seattle Circle rely on virtuosic listening as well as on cues such as eye contact and gently pushing the guitar's headstock toward one another to "pass" the sound around the circle.

The music ranges from winning covers of "Kashmir" and Brian Wilson's inconsolable lament "In My Room" to pieces influenced by the classical guitar tradition, flamenco, progressive rock, and the avant. Seattle Circle always open with "Tuning the Air," a marvelous Steve Reich–like tapestry of meticulously picked notes. If you plan to catch the two remaining Fremont Abbey shows, arrive early for a plum seat in the center. If Monday is too early in the week for you, Seattle Circle will sound splendid in the spacious and acoustically lush Chapel Performance Space.

http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=616596&mode=print

The July 7th performance

Last night's Tuning the Air show felt like a milestone of some sort - and not simply because it was our largest audience (38) in this venue. The evening had a feeling of a milestone. For me, the audience seemed much less passive - as though they were beginning to accept that they have a role and can contribute more than just their listening, (though 'just' listening is quite a lot too.)

This season, we've been experimenting with seating and this experiment includes inviting members of the audience to shift the position of their chairs about mid-way through the show. It is a strategy that works well because the audience usually ends up huddling together - almost intimately - in a fashion they would be wary of submitting to if we had placed their seats in that jumbled arrangement to begin with. It is usually Jaxie that offers them the choice, and when we have had folks sitting on the perimeter of the circle, she typically makes it clear that this option isn't available to them and jokes that they should arrive earlier next time so they can get a seat in the center. This transition in the show is always a wonderful moment because you find people generously allowing total strangers to move into their personal space so they can share the delicious experience of the music in movement.

Because Jaxie is in Spain this week, Curt made the invitation. Curt doesn't like to do the talking. Rather than referring to it as 'addressing the audience' in the setlist review, he called it 'yakity-yak' and it is clear he'd rather not. So his delivery lacked Jaxie's sure and direct approach. He told everyone they could move their chairs. So they did. Nearly everyone. And that included the people on the perimeter who huddled their chairs into the center of the room. It was borderline mayhem for a moment as people tried to optimize their position without stealing too much from the others, but in a few minutes, the audience had clearly found a new equilibrium and settled, ready and waiting for more music. This new arrangement included packing the performers entrance/exit aisle on one side of the circle. Curt was utterly gleeful as he watched the scramble and grinning hard, muttered something like 'Be careful what you wish for.'

This was also a clapping audience, they clapped after every piece where there was enough of a pause for them to do so. And at the end of Music for a Found Harmonium, when the lights came back up for the performance team's departure, they clapped and gave the team a standing ovation. Curt rewarded them with an encore of Where it Goes (SteveT's request) and 49 Notes. I wondered how this exuberant audience was going to handle the stillness of 49 Notes. They were impeccable.

~~~~

In November if 2005, when I sat in a Tuning the Air circle for the first time, I thought, 'People must know about this.' Last night, as I drove home from the show, I found myself thinking, 'People now know about this.'

~~~~

Now to prepare for Saturday's gig. A special Seattle Circle presents Music from Tuning the Air presentation at Good Shepherd Chapel. The team will be performing from a stage in the more conventional arc configuration. I have to figure out a way of describing how this show will be different from a Tuning the Air performance without making them feel gypped. Wish me luck.

ZENN=Zero Emission No Noise

The ZENN car. Made in Canada.




This is the first production model and is limited to a top speed of 25 MPH. (Which is why the only Canadian Province you can buy one in is British Columbia. Available throughout the US.)

My little garden

The corn, which I planted in a burst of optimism, is doing better than anything else I planted. You can't see them because they have just emerged, but there are sugar peas planted at the base of each corn stalk. Kale seedlings - all volunteers - are coming up everywhere.


As you can see it is a gray, gray July 4th here in Seattle, with little hope of the clouds parting. Nonetheless, a barbeque is planned at the Golden/Garcia/Snyder compound this evening.

Green beans, cherry tomatoes, oakleaf lettuce, watermelon and a canteloupe.

~~~~

As I work on the new Tuning the Air press kit, it is a struggle of what to say - how to describe this amazing project. And not raise expectations. Not that they can't be met, but that to have them will inhibit listening. I came across this in Oliver Sack's Musicophilia this morning:

The power of music, whether joyous or cathartic, must steal on one unawares, come spontaneously as a blessing or grace... ("The Arts are not drugs," E. M. Forster once wrote. "They are not guaranteed to act when taken. Something as mysterious and capricious as the creative impulse has to be released before they can act.")

At least I know I have a consistent vision

On Monday I found a front yard full of (what I believe to be) Queen Anne's Lace and made this image.


I liked this photo and decided to go back the next day and play with this plant form some more. I hadn't noted what front yard it was in, and I rarely take the same route through Phinney Ridge twice, so it took a little hunting, but I found it. And among the photos I made was this one:

Which - considering the chaos of a front yard of plants - is remarkably similar to the one from the day before.

Look what I found?

Lordy! Life was simpler then.

Rick Smolan: A girl, a photograph, a homec

Fall 2008 poster

Getting closer to a final design.

July!

Found this in a front yard during my morning walk....




Earl and Giselle are in town this week and last night was the only free night they'll have, so I took the night off from Tuning the Air and went to dinner with them. After dinner, we went to the show and I got to be an audient for the evening! E & G were both impressed with the show. It is very nice and very validating when my conviction about this project is borne out by others.




Finally got a press write-up this season

I can't decide what is more impressive about this group—their astonishing collective precision or the seating arrangement of eight guitarists surrounding the audience. It's like being inside a giant zither; strums, chords, and melodies not only sail over your head, but tilt and rotate around you. The music ranges from winning covers of "Kashmir" and Brian Wilson's inconsolable lament "In My Room" to pieces influenced by the classical guitar tradition, flamenco, and progressive rock. Arrive early for a plum seat in the center.

-Chris DeLaurenti
The Stranger