{"id":1041,"date":"2009-03-14T11:23:29","date_gmt":"2009-03-14T16:23:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nicomuhly.com\/?p=1041"},"modified":"2009-03-14T12:05:21","modified_gmt":"2009-03-14T17:05:21","slug":"a-good-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nicomuhly.com\/news\/2009\/a-good-week\/","title":{"rendered":"A Good Week"},"content":{"rendered":"

This last week was a good week “\u201d a very pleasant saturation of activity and eating and drinking and writing. And, it’s the first week after the L-word finished! And I started aggressively Twittering! And I bought a Time Machine and am backing up my computer! And am packing for Niceland and am ordering burritos over the internet.<\/p>\n

The most exciting things that occurred: I finished a spate of arrangements for Thomas’s upcoming album, including one track with seven layers of piccolo, flute, and alto flute playing these outrageous scales over a very, very slow drone. It’s like Daphnis<\/em> meets Terry Riley. Thomas paid me with a meal at Masa, which was transcendent and surprising. I think it’s pornographic to go into much detail here, but basically, the food hit the bottom and worked the middle.<\/p>\n

Last week, I saw Meredith Monk perform Ascension Variations<\/em> at the Guggenheim. I just love her. It’s music that works much much better live than recorded, but isn’t done live nearly enough. So, if you hear that she is doing something near you, run don’t walk. Here is one of her most successful recordings, Memory Song<\/em> from Do You Be<\/em>:<\/p>\n[audio:07 Memory Song.mp3]\n

And here is what it looked like:<\/p>\n

\"img_0794\"<\/p>\n

Last night, Jessica Rivera premiered a new song cycle I wrote for her at Carnegie Hall. This is her warming upp:<\/p>\n

\"img_0813\"<\/p>\n

This is the first concert I’ve had in a good while where I haven’t had to do anything at all “\u201c\u00c2\u00a0usually in New York I find myself sort of “in charge” of the evening “\u201c either playing, conducting, or being traffic cop. In the more traditional model (where the composer just sits on her ass in the audience), I can’t tell if I feel more or less engaged, more or less stressed out. Watching Jessica sing last night, I realized not only that I was out of control of the situation but that she was singing as if I were dead: she had claimed the music for her own. This is a beautifully estranging and disembodied moment, like watching one’s own funeral.<\/p>\n

I’m organizing my bag for Iceland right now; I have learned to make space for all the gifts Ices here want to send to their Ices there!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This last week was a good week “\u201d a very pleasant saturation of activity and eating and drinking and writing. And, it’s the first week after the L-word finished! And I started aggressively Twittering! And I bought a Time Machine and am backing up my computer! And am packing for Niceland and am ordering burritos […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nicomuhly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1041"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nicomuhly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nicomuhly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicomuhly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicomuhly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1041"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/nicomuhly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1041\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1049,"href":"https:\/\/nicomuhly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1041\/revisions\/1049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nicomuhly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicomuhly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicomuhly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}