Scott Gendel

Today I feel like I’ve MADE IT as a “real composer” because someone far away who I’ve never met is performing one of my pieces with ABSOLUTE DISREGARD for the meaning & style of both the music & the poetry it sets, and I’m just like…

Awwwww look at my baby all grown up and making bad decisions! 🥰

Ooh nice!

Starting in C because it’ll work for the baritone & I like the nod to Adam’s original key. Moving to D for the soprano’s verse 2 so it feels a little restrained, and ending in E-flat for the traditional (& well-loved) soprano high B-flat at the end, with many many harmonies

Currently composing the most over-the-top arrangement of “O Holy Night” you’ve ever heard, for soprano Lexi LoBianco, bass-baritone Kyle Ketelsen, the Madison Symphony Orchestra & the MSO chorus! This is going to be A DELIGHT. It has not one but TWO key changes!! Who needs subtlety?!?!

Single tickets are now on sale for Madison Opera's world premiere production of "Everlasting Faint"!!! Come see this huge, intense, beautiful opera that Sandra Flores-Strand and I have been working on for 4 years or so! Let's sell this theatre OUT, woooooooo!!!

www.overture.org/tickets-even...

Image of “Happy Bunny” from the 90s, smiling broadly with the caption “it’s cute how stupid you are”

As far as I can tell as an out-of-touch middle-aged GenXer, the appeal of the “labubu” is that it’s a cute bunny but also mean AF, and therefore I think I can pass on this trend because BEEN THERE DONE THAT 30-SOME YEARS AGO (in the early days of Hot Topic)

This month’s record purchases: The Keening, “Little Bird,” Ratboys, “The Window,” Willi Carlisle, “Critterland,” and Symphony X, “Underworld.” Okay okay I might have a little record-buying problem, but these albums are all SO DAMN GOOOOOOOOD I can’t help myself

Will never ever EVER EVERRRRRR get over how super cool it is to see things like this in PR materials! Oh, you know, Tchaikovsky, Gendel, Bizet, et cetera.

(Let this serve as another reminder to come to Madison Opera’s “Opera in the Park” at Garner Park, Madison, WI, on July 19th!)

oh so we should dissent peacefully?? through legitimate channels?? like by being elected to the united states senate and asking questions at a DHS press conference???

noem saying thery're going to "liberate" california from its leaders seconds before federal law enforcement restrains and removes one of the state's senators from the room—like what else needs to be said

YouTube video by Takes™ by Jamelle Bouie Kristi Noem's threat to do a Jan. 6 to California and the arrest of Senator Alex Padilla

Well this sums it up.

youtu.be/ULdUsHB-7VE?...

If this is how this administration responds to a Senator with a question, you can only imagine what they're doing to farmworkers, to cooks, and to day laborers throughout California and across the country.

We will hold this administration accountable.

Hot take: “in theatre, we’re a FAMILY!” and “in band, kids find a family” and similar statements made by arts educators are EXACTLY as cringy & misguided as bosses in the business world insisting that the workplace is actually a family. Jussayin’.

I’m always kinda bummed out when someone brings their own pianist to auditions I’m playing & I have to leave & listen in from the other room… but when it turns out it’s because they’re presenting an aria from LULU… I’m maybe not so bummed out after all 😂😂😂

insert hastily made cartoon with stock drawing of St. Peter at the gates of heaven, and a chorus of voices shouting from offstage, "NOOOOOORMMM!!"

(may his memory be a blessing)

I will never forgive them for what they did to “Big Yellow Taxi,” but… I think I’m enjoying the new Counting Crows album???

Just going by my personal tastes:

Shostakovich
Bartók
Schubert
Haydn
Villa-Lobos
Hovhaness
Bacewicz
Vasks

Yeah, with cello would probably be ideal. Or if we’re in a perfect endless-budget scenario… Mandocello!

Not that I want to put myself out of a job, but MAN wouldn’t it be cool to do a production of Don Giovanni where the recitatives are done on mandolin, since there’s already a mandolin player on hand for “deh vieni alla finestra”?!?! I’m convinced it would sound SO AWESOME.

We open our production of Don Giovanni here at Madison Opera this Friday (with the most wonderful cast) & ALSO the new Propagandhi album comes out this Friday (& the singles fuckin' RULE) so if you're a weirdo like me who loves many many kinds of things, it's going to be AN EXTREMELY GREAT MUSIC DAY

Currently fighting for “music stuck in my head” dominance:

1) the new Ghost album, especially “Lachryma” (delightfully cheesy 80s-style power ballads about the devil)

2) le poisson Steve (il est orange)

3) ALL of Don Giovanni (we open a week from today)

I should give it another shot, when I listened I ADORED the sound of it but the songs weren't sticking with me... maybe I just wasn't in the right frame of mind

Pro tip: I already love tofu, but eating it is 198% more fun if you call it Toad Food.

“What’s for dinner?”

“Stir-fried tofu.” (grade: C+)

“Stir-fried toad food.” (grade: A, all it needs is Frog to bring it up to an A+)

Letter from Dem Senator Chris Van Hollen (MD) requesting a meeting with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele
To discuss MD father Kilmar Abrego Garcia's return

"If Kilmar is not home by midweek – I plan to travel to El Salvador this week to check on his condition and discuss his release."

Close-up of a grey cat staring longingly out the window, with his tongue dangling out of his mouth

EXTREMELY PLEASED to learn this morning that, in the same way that I stick my tongue out a little when I’m focusing really hard on a task, Ham sticks his tongue out when long-distance stalking a robin out on the lawn

Best Passover songs:

1) Dayenu
2) Creeping Death (Metallica)

I hate everything about him but… is this an infrastructure thing? Is he going to invest tax dollars into water infrastructure (in the creepiest way possible)?!?!

This is Utah in case anyone’s wondering how pissed off people are. I have never seen anything like this.

what booker is doing right now is an example of what i mean when i say things like “we need more ambition right now.” there is room in american politics right now for people with ambition to take big stands and reap the rewards. he’s doing it!

I grew up in New Jersey and I live in Wisconsin. Both places have their problems, and I know this feeling will be short-lived, but today I COULD NOT BE PROUDER OF MY TWO HOME STATES