New Music

I am excited to be playing Stephen M. Cormier’s “Modal Song'“ with Rhonda Buckley-Bishop on tomorrow night’s program! I have posted our latest rehearsal audio here.

This is my second attempt to perform his music, which is unique, in that he has evolved a modal harmonic system that is perfectly congruent with classical harmony, only based on the whole range of modal scales, (as far as I understand it). He has published the only real textbook on modal harmony, and although people gripe and complain about how hard it is to understand, they purchase it and read it - it is in its fourth English edition.

My previous attempt to play his music came to grief, at least temporarily, due to the great unfamiliarity of the harmonic language, in part. The writing was very contrapuntal, in ways reminiscent of fugal writing, but without the familiar tonic and dominant pillars to rely on. Furthermore, his writing makes great use of a peculiar quarter note triplet displaced by one eighth note, which sounds wonderfully jazzy, but requires some re-education to feel naturally. The piece was large, ambitious, and required coordination with a (!) trap set drummer. After six months I reluctantly gave it up, and welcomed this much easier example of his wonderfully unique music.

We have commissioned a new work for flugelhorn and piano, based on the writing of Josquin des Prez. (I begged him for a simplified piano part!) Looking forward to premiering it this season!

Noise

Although I find that listening to music does not interest me as much as it used to, I am quite fascinated by noise. Here are some random clips: 1) a gas pump advertising screen; 2) ventilation in a Halifax parking garage; 3) refrigeration motors in the freezer section of Mom’s grocery (perfect drone for their new age muzak, unfortunately not captured here).

Tattoos in Nova Scotia

We saw a number of greatly tattooed people in Nova Scotia.

Two young ladies at breakfast

North coast waitress

Couple at Annapolis Royal market

Halifax waitress

Mark

Music in Nova Scotia

We didn’t search out music on our vacation in Nova Scotia, but we did run into some that we really enjoyed (and some not so much). Here are two short videos: the first is a folk band at the public gardens in Halifax, a real contribution to the laid back, meditative spirit of the place. The female vocalist/fiddler seemed to embody the tradition.

The second is a street singer we encountered in Annapolis Royal, across from the weekly farmers market. The interesting thing is that we were the only audience, apart from one other lady on a park bench. I gave him CA$10 (to his surprise) and saw that there were only a few coins in his case. At the very same moment, right across the street, there was a singer hired by the town, playing to the crowded market, who was essentially unlistenable.

There was also a country/rock band, playing at a gazebo along the water. About 100 people, seemingly mostly locals, gathered to hear them, and one couple danced. They were very professional, and had amazingly good sound equipment. But I was bored, and we left to go to dinner.

I Hate Music

Music is everywhere: bathrooms, waiting rooms, crosswalks, cafés, airports, hotel lobbies... You can't get away from it. How many cafés have you been in lately that still recycle rancid Motown? Even in countries outside the US? It stinks.

This is the part that scares me the most...

emptywheel has written one of her typically lucid and terrifying columns:

“The mistake, in analyzing the Alaska meeting is not just about Ukraine.

Marcy Wheeler, of emptywheel

It’s about the United States.

It’s not just that Putin can bide his time in Ukraine.

It’s that the longer he holds out, the greater his true objective — turning Trump into his puppet and the United States into a dying kleptocracy that is child’s play to manipulate — comes into grasp.

Putin may still be fighting in Ukraine. But he has achieved far more than he probably hoped for in the US. He has all but defeated every nuisance the Main Enemy once stood for: rule of law, free trade, freedom of speech, science, human rights, reason.

It’s not just that Trump is welcoming a dictator on US soil. It’s that the dictator is coming to reclaim what Russia owns.”



"Great Men"

One day when our son was very little, we told him we needed to take our dog to the “dog doctor”. Gabe was strangely excited about this and very much wanted to go along. When we got to the vet’s office and the vet came out to meet Sirka, our son was clearly disappointed - it turned out he expected the “dog doctor” to be a dog.

I always wanted to meet a “great man”, who I thought could somehow answer life’s questions for me. I have come to suspect that there are no “great men” in that sense, and that the whole notion is a dangerous and fascist idea.

Indeed I have met a number of remarkable men and women, and some famous ones as well. But when you actually get to know someone, they turn out weirdly to be as human as everybody else (duh). This should be strengthening and comforting to us, I suppose.

I don’t mean that there aren’t people with exceptional gifts, talents, and abilities, and people who have life-histories that inspire reverence. But if you think anyone is better than you, you better think twice, because you are diminishing yourself in a needlessly damaging way.

As Dylan explains, “Each of us has his own special gift, and this was meant to be true. And if you don’t underestimate me, I won’t underestimate you.”

Marilyn Banner: New Work

Marilyn and I often work as a team to document and archive her work. Last night we added about 30 spanking new drawings to the Artwork Archive website. You can see them here.

#357

Program (redacted)

Program (redacted)

There is a weird phenomenon that I have noticed in the last few years: performers have stopped listing their program content in their PR for upcoming concerts. What does this mean?

Maybe they think that anything they mention is more likely to push people away than to attract them. Or that the audience has become so uneducated that they would not know one composer from another. Maybe they think that only the performers matter, with their stellar credentials. Who knows?

Hannah Baldwin

Our friend Hannah Baldwin has passed away. She was quite a heroic, remarkable, and delightful person! She and her husband Felipe Tejeda frequently attended our house concerts.

Here are some words from her obit:

Hannah Maxine Baldwin passed away on November 7, 2024, in Takoma Park Maryland, at the age of 78. The cause of death was congestive heart failure, which was a complication of her bone cancer from over 30 years ago.

Hannah was born in Stayton, near Salem, in Oregon. Her parents, Clarence Richard Baldwin father, and June Helen (Sophy) Baldwin mother, are both deceased, as is her beloved younger sister Rachel. She is survived by her husband Felipe Tejeda; her daughter Malado Francine Baldwin-Tejeda; her son Francisco Richard Baldwin-Tejeda; two brothers, Daniel and Samuel; and several nieces and nephews. She leaves behind several adopted African sons, daughters, brothers and sisters in Senegal, Guinea, Mali and Namibia, as well as African grandchildren bearing her name.

Ms. Baldwin, with a Ph.D (abd) from Indiana University’s Folklore Department, spent many years living and working world-wide as a development professional, focusing her time in Senegal, Mali, and Guinea as a USAID program director. She served as a director of training for diplomats in francophone studies at the US Department of State’s Foreign Service Institute, and in Namibia as Peace Corps Director.

Hannah met her husband Felipe in Senegal as Peace Corps Volunteers in 1969, and lived and worked there for seven years, gaining a passionate love for her new-found friends. She spoke French and Wolof well, loved mafe and yassa, and listened and danced to mbalax music.

Hannah came from a family of creatives and continued throughout her life to add to her repertoire of artistic talents. She was primarily a print maker, ceramicist, and painter.

Please consider donating to a Senegal-based NGO, Tostan (Tostan.org), which works in West Africa and was dear to Hannah’s heart.

Crisis in Our Neighborhood

We have lived in this lovely, friendly neighborhood of Takoma Park, just north of Sligo Creek, for 16 years. We are proud that many of our neighbors are former Peace Corps volunteers, who went on to jobs with USAID, VOA, or related NGO’s that took them overseas, to exotic, though sometimes difficult places - Honduras, Ghana, Mexico, Kenya, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, and others. They speak multiple languages and are intimately familiar with an array of cultures and economies. All of these neighbors are suddenly unemployed, with no severance or safety net. Many have college age children and mortgages. Just on our block, there are three families we know in which BOTH parents lost their jobs, each family with two teenage children. Another couple are Haitian citizens, who cannot return to their country, but have nowhere else to go. One family across the creek had one partner with German citizenship, and so are emigrating to Germany with two teenage children.

This is serious, even tragic. We were somewhat in denial at first, like something will have to work out, but nothing has. I asked one neighbor what they will do, and they just don’t know. Maybe move in with a sister. Another thought maybe they can get certified to teach public school (after years of high level specialized employment in the government). It is like the great Depression here.

And it is not just USAID families. A tenured scientist at NIH who lives just down the street quit her job, because the NIH environment has become unbearable.

Our neighborhood has always been friendly, and is showing solidarity and support. We do not want to lose our friends and neighbors! It is good that people are talking with each other and aware of the challenges of the times. People walking their dogs stop to chat and share their lives. We find that the house concert/potlucks serve as a gathering place, giving meaning to the “right of assembly”. In person contact is vital right now, and we are all aware of that.

Zippy

Zippy

I have been reading Bill Griffith’s “Zippy” cartoon forever. In fact, when the Washington Post dropped the strip in 1988, I cancelled my subscription in protest (so I didn’t need to do it again after Bezos took over). I am amazed and grateful that Bill Griffith puts out a new and wonderful strip EVERY DAY!

Bored and impatient when I couldn’t practise this morning because Mar was still asleep, I finally took the plunge and said, wow (zow!) I could own one of these, so I ordered a print.

Here is the strip I ordered:

I think Griffith is about my age, and recently lost his wife, so mortality is up with us.

Update: Bill Griffith sent me a beautifully packaged, fabulous signed print! (Appropriately, it appears to be a randomly chosen one, not at all what I ordered - but I love it!).

Icons & Relationships

I have put together a collection of Marilyn’s recent drawings, from 2025, and called it “Icons & Relationships”, because that is what they mostly look like to me. Single figures appear to be like icons, and those with two or more figures suggest relationships.

Relationship 1: #325

Icon 2: #326

Relationship 2: #308

Icon 1: #314

My Solo Work

When I was a child, I was confident that I had a future as a touring concert pianist; but of course, life had other plans! Nevertheless, throughout my long life, I have derived considerable solace from the piano and its vast and profound literature.

For most of my musical life I have focused on ensemble music, chamber music to be precise. It is less lonely, more popular, and very satisfying! Times do change (as we septagenarians very frequently notice!), and it has become much more difficult (not just for me) to assemble a chamber music ensemble. I have more and more in recent years found myself with no other option than to perform solo.

Carl Banner, in Hawaii

But what is that old expression from Br’er Rabbit? “Please don’t throw me in that briar patch!”

Since the pandemic, I have performed 14 solo house concerts, almost all of them sold out, sometimes weeks in advance. This may have something to do with the associated potluck dinners, of course; but you know, if people didn’t like the music, they would probably rather just go out for a pizza.