Catching Up

So it's been two months, I've been quite delinquent, I think it's time to bring the blog back. Life has always seemed much less hectic when I've kept a journal or blog of sorts. It's a good thing to reflect on the day's activities and thoughts. The Pythagoreans lived under a strict discipline that incorporated review and reflection; upon waking, the Pythagorean would review the events of the previous day and plan for the day ahead before taking a meditative solitary morning walk.

Back at Vanderbilt and quite in the thick of things. Tonight I performed a Partita by Hertel on Baroque oboe with Professor Smith on his harpsichord recital, quite the honor. I played on modern oboe with organ at his church a few weeks back as well.

I'll bring the blog up to speed with a quick summary of my projects for this semester and prospects for the next.

I'm the orchestra manager for the Vanderbilt Orchestra China tour this December. We'll be gone from about December 20-January 3 or so. I have to deal with the visa applications, vaccination paperwork, bus scheduling, etcetera etcetera. This Wednesday I made a list of everyone's full legal name and passport number. 95 people, 9 digits for each passport number.

That's 855 digits that had to be perfect. Not a low-stress job, and with the harpsichord concert today, it's been a rather rough week.

Also, I'm helping Professor Ploger with her research. Right now I am compiling an extensive survey of the literature that has been written on musical intervals, from 500 B.C. to the present. For each article, I am also either copy/pasting the abstract or writing a brief summary. So far the document is a hefty double spaced 80 pages, and I have miles to go. But I'm starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel - now when I look through the bibliographies at the ends of the articles, they're mostly articles I already have with only one or two new possibilities to look into.

I've decided to do a thesis next semester, so I'm talking with Dr. Rose (who will be my adviser) this semester and doing some preliminary research. The thesis will be in the spirit of my independent study last year, pulling together trends in philosophy, visual art, literature, and poetry with musical modernism. Still need to pick a central piece to focus on...

Oboe lessons as usual, musicianship as usual, performance class as usual, recital attendance as usual, orchestra as usual, Alexander technique as usual, reed class as usual...

Chamber music, but not as usual - Baroque chamber music! Caroline (violin) and I are working in a trio with Lillian, a staff accompanist. It's been a lot of fun, but I've been so frustrated with reeds (fixed now, thanks to the pressure of the CSmith recital and Prof Hauser's help) and finding the time to practice Baroque oboe. It's a bear switching back and forth, but I need to face that a little more boldly.

I'm in conducting class as well this semester. I feel silly.

And lastly but not leastly, my philosophy class is Phenomenology. We're reading Heidegger's Being and Time and Levinas' Existence and Existents. I absolutely love it, have been doing extra work by accident (of course), and the professor is SO cool. She's brilliant and lets me write papers connecting Heidegger's thought to music instead of just summarizing/explaining his concepts, which is the weekly assignment. I've only done one paper so far along those lines, relating H's concepts of Understanding, Interpretation, and Meaning to music performance, but

I'm looking forward to a 5-7 page paper every two weeks doing this sort of thing. It's fun!

And the Morgan is fabulous with Valerie and Shelby of course. Shelby and I came out victorious in a bidding war on ebay today for an antique toaster. Bear and 'Pard (aka Cleanser aka Sluggo) doing well, as you can see in the photo.

Now that we're up to speed, I'll start posting more interesting things!

L