Prepared the second and third pages of Mice and Men: Act V C, "Jus' feel that hair" for publication, then sped off to Kinko's to print up copies of Flying Out the Mouth. Rendezvous with Harriet, and we fly down the freeway, moderately in moderate rain, for rehearsal in SF.
No, that wasn't exactly how Lynch Canyon, in the Sulfur Springs Mountains, looked as we passed it in the glowering gloom, but we can dream, can't we?The weather was more like this...
...but that was last weekend, along Route 29 in Napa, part of a personal Bay Area Ridge Trail, and we can be non-linear, n'est-ce pas?
And digress, over the Carquinez Bridge
to the Bay Bridge and Yerba Buena Tunnelarriving in plenty of time (we try to allow for two hours for the hour-trip-when-there's-no-traffic) to San Francisco
specifically, Potrero Hill, just south of the city (Thick House Theater -- where my operas on Tennessee Williams's Camino Real and Robert Browning's The Pied Piper of Hamelin were premiered, along with selections from San Rafael News and Waiting for Godot [after Samuel Beckett] -- is on the bottom floor of the high-rise in the valley to the right).
Lunch at Jay's Deli, formerly Klein's, with this view north to town...
Then, at last, it's off to rehearsal at Goat Hall, undergoing serious renovations, where we are admitted by Douglas Mandell.
The place is a mess and unheated, as we were warned, due to construction, but we are deeply grateful for our accustomed central location, and all goes well.
There we are -- Harriet, Sarah (with new longer locks), Kat, and Suzanna.
With notes on the music as follows:
FLYING OUT THE MOUTH
I. Hide and Seek (adding Charles Ivesian bitonal, birhythmic collage of "A Tisket")
II. After the Movie
III. Yonder in the North (two voices to this Northern Plains Rabbit Dance / Sweetheart)
IV. When I Was Three (Sarah singing)
V. All the Dark Birds (Sarah and Kat - 8va? - on Navajo Ribbon Dance)
VI. Prayer (Sarah vocalise while Kat and Harriet offer contrapuntal children's prayers)
VII. Flying Out the Mouth (Sarah and Kat on Yurok Women's Brush Dance)
VIII. LSD
IX. Here I Am (restored, unrepeated with hilarious, idealistic 3-part overlaps)
X. Mice Skins (still out, although Kat tempted by the twisted overtones!)
XI. Wolf Song (still out)
XII. New Jerusalem School (in, but skipped for now, given previous performances)
XIII. Ringaround (Ivesian nursery-rhyme overlay)
XIV. The Woman From the Sky (Kat, w/Mark call-and-response in this Creek Gar Dance)
XV. Wind Song I (Sarah and Kat duo on fragmentary Seneca Alligator Dance, echo below)
XVI. Cross This Bridge
XVIIa. Wind Song II (Sarah and Kat duo)
XVIIb. Then We Find Out
XVIII. Wind Song III (Sarah and Kat solos, possible need for less eliptic accompaniment)
XIX. Yoda (Harriet verse 1, Sarah and Kat verse 2)
Suzanna is game for all, as we read two Little Prince (after Antoine de St. Exupery) excerpts
(originally premiered by Deirdre Lobo [Flower] and Heather Gavin [Le Petit Prince]), 
and Mice Suite No. 2 (after John Steinbeck) -- first given by Deborah Kavasch
at the Newport, Oregon, Performing Arts Center,
as part of the Ernest Bloch Music Festival
Directed by Greg Steinke.
Suzanna and I also go over some oldies from Halfway Mark and before, including "June's Song" from Henry Miller in Brooklyn (after Mel Clay) -- first performed by Jennifer Ashworth
and later by Leticia C. Page (here with Elaine Romanelli, Jeanne [top], and Ric Richetta, Henry) --
and "Block Twelve" from Camino Real (after Tennessee Williams)
for the recording of which we are all indebted to Karl Coryat.
And, yes, we'll do "Brunnhilde" from Cats, Dogs, and Divas (after Harriet March Page) again, this time as a solo (visual from the January 2007 Women on the Way Festival at Dance Mission, SF -- the pole dance on Valkyrie spears routine).
So, that was about it. Stopped at Erling's
to get updates on the repertory for the San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra March 8 concert at Old First Church
and here they are, still evolving:
Alexis Alrich -- Fragile Forests: II Cambodia (8:00)
1111 1100 3Perc 11111
Michael Cooke - Sun and Moon (15:00)
2113 1100 Pf 3Perc 11111
Philip Freihofner - The Bell Field (5:00)
0100 0000 Tape 00000
Martha Stoddard - A Little Trip to Outer Space (12:00)
2112 1100 Pf2Perc 11111
Dan Reiter -- Toccata and Fugue (15:00)
3124 2000 11131
Erling Wold- Mordake (15:oo)
2113 1100 Pf3Perc 1111
Run into Lisa Scola Prosek, who just happens to be passing by.
Still kind of rainy, so we don't head to The Connecticut Yankee,
but instead take the great leap home, avoiding all faults, almost to Lake Berryessa.
Harriet watches ice skating
and we take in a little of the new version of Jane Austen(1775-1817)'s
Mansfield Park (1814)
with one eye on
Just uploaded The Wind God: II I've a Crick (after Harriet March Page) to myspace.com/markalburger
So will check email and dreams, with good fortune, better than Henry Fuseli's The Nightmare, below
which, by the way, was the image for this year's Christmas card, with the sheet music to The Nativity: VII. "And Being Warned by God in A Dream," right up there with the most inappropriate pictures for holiday greetings ever....
