The great majority of readers of this blog arrive here looking for discussion of East Asia, but, from my perspective, they are a cultivated bunch who don’t mind a few references to French musical impressionism, Dmitri Shostakovich, or German musical romanticism.
For local readers in particular, I’m offering here a prospectus of my upcoming solo performances, putting some more ballast behind the latter word in the title of this blog:
Oh So Live Concert Series
Friday and Saturday, January 22 and 23, 2009
2013 Bethel Ave., Olympia, WA
Program:
Beethoven: Sonata No. 1 in F for Cello and Piano, opus 5 no. 1
Nadia Boulanger: Trois Pieces for Cello and Piano
Johannes Brahms: Sonata No. 1 in e for Violoncello and Piano, op. 38
with Robert Jorgensen, piano
Sunday Classical Series
Sunday, January 24, 2009, 3 pm
5102 N Pearl St, Point Ruston (North Tacoma), WA
Program:
Same as September 22 and 23rd: Beethoven/Boulanger/Brahms
with Robert Jorgensen, piano
Seattle Metropolitan Chamber Orchestra
Saturday, March 6, 7:30 pm
St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, Seattle
Program:
J.S. Bach, Brandenburg Concerto No. 4 in G major
Aaron Copland, Appalachian Spring Suite (chamber version)
Holocaust Remembrance Concert
Saturday, March 20, Noon
Pacific Lutheran University, Scandinavian Cultural Center
Program:
Ernst Bloch, Pieces from Jewish Life
Max Bruch, Kol Neidre
with Robert Jorgensen, piano
For readers who don’t give a damn about my performing career, that’s absolutely fine, and all to the good: I will continue to work assiduously to provide you with ample food for thought on this blog and in those printed peer-reviewed journals that continue to churn out their arguments in spite of their manifest lack of hyperlinks and arpeggios.
Update: I just ran across this little hortatory excerpt from one of my favorite blogs, “Dial M for Musicology,” maintained by the highly-productive musican-musicologist-published author Jonathan D. Bellman, a Schumann/Brahms/Chopin specialist who is a professor at University of Northern Colorado. It’s about how to make it in music:
But no, I won’t give any advice about you and musicology, you and music…you and this or that Canadian University. It’s down to you, now, whatever choices you want to make, and you might just take a deep breath and make this decision on your own, and then go all out to make it the right one. Rear up on your hind legs and get something going. For decades, the people who have become successful are those who have forced it, with weirdly checkered backgrounds, atypical skills, and (above all) prevailing diehardism, as I called it years ago. Somehow, we squeezed through a crack, or forced out way in. If you want to get anywhere even remotely associated with music, you need to adopt this mindset and stop asking for guidance. What is more, prepare yourself for failures, reverses, and disappointments—if you can’t deal with those, music is not a good place for you. (I’m not saying you have to like failure; just withstand it and learn from it.)
Adam Cathcart 