Tod Brody

We did a new piece of his with SF Chamber Orchestra last spring, and he’s been getting a lot of performances around here in the last two years. I found him extremely likable and articulate, and his music is pretty good too.

what music is this?

(Still Ostler) I looked it up: In his 12-year playing career, Posey struck out looking only 168 times, and all 168 were bad calls. He believes in taking his cuts.

A wee sample: Seriously, this is a stroke of genius by Posey. He's not only thinking outside the box, he's thinking outside the warehouse where the boxes are stored. That's not surprising. Posey might look and sound like the guy who does your taxes, but he's got a bold streak.

Learning to love an out-of-the-box hire Learning to love an out-of-the-box hire

The great Scott Ostler's got a great take on this.

Keeps your music from being cluttered with information you no longer need.

I'd say do whatever it takes to learn the music fastest and most deeply. I adopted a principle that my primary teacher strongly suggested, which is: once the thing you've written down (presumably because it was going to help you learn fastest and deepest) is internalized, erase it. I recommend this.

Now use it nearly every time. It used to work really badly -- now it works well. My math is all about "do I want to wait in line for 5 or more minutes, or do I want to get out of here right now." The reason for the wait is that they've reduced staff, so yes, hateful. I'm in a selfish hurry.

As one who has done a lot of writing that needed to maintain a diplomatic tone while expressing important principles clearly, I thought this was an exemplary letter. The sub-messaging that you drew out of it didn't come across to me that way.

That's right -- it was the first half repeat.

He said -- and he may well have been making this up, I don't know him well enough to know if he's reliable on things like this -- that Brahms said that that repeat was for the premiere, and now that everyone knew how the piece went, it was unnecessary. Seemed sus to me.

The conductor I worked with this past weekend claimed that Brahms instructed the orchestra in the third or fourth performance of his first symphony (the piece we were playing) not to do the second-half repeat of the first movement.

Contributor: As Trump's reign implodes, tell MAGA 'I told you so' Treat Trumpists like adults and confront them with how wrong they have been. Americans who are still connected to reality owe it to their right-wing neighbors to be honest.

Very good op-ed in this morning's L.A. Times. Well worth taking a few minutes to read.

Notice the quotes around both the words "liking" and "music." I like me some music, quite a lot of it, in fact, but not so sure about that "music."

Ouch -- I know the feeling, never fun.

I'd vote for that

It can be either, but contextual clues keep us from being too confused. Usually the interjectional form has the hint of an exclamation point after it.

Come on, do the math!

I hate this kind of stuff, though -- tells me that the composer (or publisher, or editor) couldn't be arsed (as your 20-year old sis likes to say) to give it even a cursory examination before putting it out there.

I think you're right, that they're just residue of that other section with the real quarter-note triplets. They're clearly lined up with the 16ths in the right hand as eighth-quarter-eighth.

That was fun, and then it wasn't

YouTube video by Luciano Pavarotti - Topic Puccini: Tosca, SC 69, Act III: E lucevan le stelle

This. The most luscious clarinet solo ever gets first crack at this one, with vocal interjections from the singer, then classic Puccini-style tenor hell breaks loose.

He probably gets 5000 emails a day -- I'd be seriously shocked if he reads mine. I'm sure, though, that I won't be the only one calling him out for this.

I'm going to write to Alastair Campbell and see what he has to say for himself about this.

Alastair Campbell is a Brit politician, best known for being Tony Blair's communications director, and currently the co-host of an excellent politics podcast (The Rest if Politics). Pretty confident he's not a grifter.

I find this story quite demunctuous.

This is astounding! I'm amazed I've never heard of him before.

I love this more than I can possibly say.

This designation was in regular use when I was first learning the lingo.

Thanks for getting me thinking about the discovery of voles, whatever that would be!