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Mmm, Babylon. Tonight's seminar closed with it, and it's the first real commitment to a piece I've felt here, where you get involved so far it blanks out everyone and everything else in order to keep the constant adjustments of balance and tuning and intensity inside the same concept as everyone else. It's beautiful, Waters of Babylon, set by some friend of a friend of Laura's. So far, it's the best thing we've got going for us. That, and Christian's arrangement of a Basque carol with clanging bell dissonances and irrelgular time signatures, which I don't get to sing because it's in the same breakout as my Piazzolla (which will be in better shape tomorrow, though it's going all right).
I do enjoy the English Country Dancing. Every day at 4ish, Grant comes to the stage and whoever feels like it learns Medieval and Renaissance dancing from him, and whoever feels like sight-reading on an instrument plays in a dance band. Today we had a bassoon, an oboe/flute switcher, a violin, a Medieval fiddle, and a bandoneon (don't ask me why a participant at an a capella workshop brought a bandoneon, but it's pretty cool). Grant is on the top five list of sweetest men I've ever met, and learning archaic line dances from him is such fun I can disregard the complaints of my knees and arches in order to set, turn single, pinell, cast off, hands four, slip left, and perform other such actions with quaint names.
Grant's the one who plays lute or theorbo when some group needs continuo (Bob is fiddle and gamba man). Now, you all know I'm a sucker for lutes, and when you combine that with foofy shoulder-length hair, long bones nearly Afri's build, and the restrainedly enthusiastic dorkitude of an early music scholar, you've got a mix of familiarity and friendly respect that's ideal for a teacher of any kind. And then later you get to chortle to your gay friend that Grant was wearing his short shorts (I've never seen him in shorts, let alone cutoffs with the pockets hanging out from under the fray; it was the most serenely unselfconscious thing I've ever seen in an adult). Anyway, Grant's cool, and good, and I'm glad he exists. Especially here, since I think his father just died and he was at the funeral over the weekend.
However, I still miss Alan and Robert Puleo. I would like to have that kind of vocal and personal bond here again. It's taking more work this time.
I do enjoy the English Country Dancing. Every day at 4ish, Grant comes to the stage and whoever feels like it learns Medieval and Renaissance dancing from him, and whoever feels like sight-reading on an instrument plays in a dance band. Today we had a bassoon, an oboe/flute switcher, a violin, a Medieval fiddle, and a bandoneon (don't ask me why a participant at an a capella workshop brought a bandoneon, but it's pretty cool). Grant is on the top five list of sweetest men I've ever met, and learning archaic line dances from him is such fun I can disregard the complaints of my knees and arches in order to set, turn single, pinell, cast off, hands four, slip left, and perform other such actions with quaint names.
Grant's the one who plays lute or theorbo when some group needs continuo (Bob is fiddle and gamba man). Now, you all know I'm a sucker for lutes, and when you combine that with foofy shoulder-length hair, long bones nearly Afri's build, and the restrainedly enthusiastic dorkitude of an early music scholar, you've got a mix of familiarity and friendly respect that's ideal for a teacher of any kind. And then later you get to chortle to your gay friend that Grant was wearing his short shorts (I've never seen him in shorts, let alone cutoffs with the pockets hanging out from under the fray; it was the most serenely unselfconscious thing I've ever seen in an adult). Anyway, Grant's cool, and good, and I'm glad he exists. Especially here, since I think his father just died and he was at the funeral over the weekend.
However, I still miss Alan and Robert Puleo. I would like to have that kind of vocal and personal bond here again. It's taking more work this time.