March 30 - The Journey Out

Time to leave the Vaca Mountains and English Hills again, at least for awhile,



turning and getting on I-80, the northside of the Lagoon Mountains as a bumpy dark green horizon,


the south side of the Poverty Hills starting to sere out against rogue cumuli.


Harriet's driving, so I get to take slightly better pictures than normal of some of the 680 sights, including Long Barn and its backing fingers of vegetated canyons reaching up to the Sulfur Springs summits,


Eden,


the Hovel Hills,


and Horse Farm



On beyond, approaching cloudier conditions near Orinda,



up to


and through the Caldecott Tunnel



for another rehearsal of Antigone: III-V and San Rafael News at Berkeley's Chamber Arts with Eliza, Kristin, Beth, and Janet;



then to the City for a brief practice with John Partridge, checking the Goat Hall mail, dropping the PHNH key off with Erling, lunching in the chill of Connecticut Yankee, and checking out the Phoenix Theatre near Union Square (an interesting 49-seat venue six floors up in the Native Sons Building) -- ultimately heading to Marin, approaching the Rainbow Tunnel



through the 101 Headlands Canyon,


down the Waldo Grade with Mt. Tam rising.


Stopping at the Strawberry Starbucks yields views north to Horse Hill,



west to an outlying eminence in greater Mill Valley,



and south back to Marin City and the highlands beyond.



It's Symphony night, but we're early, so we take our leisure by driving the long way around China Camp, three-quarters circling San Pedro Mountain,



past the Brick Yard,



to the heroic viewpoint at Rat Island Cove, where Mt Burdell looks great



at any distance.


So does the isle itself


(just offshore of the picnic area),


a spot of singularity,


as distinctive a presence as the shadowy Turtleback beyond.


We arrive at the Civic Center, with Frank Lloyd Wright's singular spire,


and views of the north slope of San Pedro Mountain (across from the druid-circle-flowers of the duck pond's artificial island),


the eccentric light sculpture in the round-about (one assumes Frank Lloyd Wright's own?), and


Mt. Tam glowing in the half-light beyond the parking lot.


Concert is fine (and in color, live) and will be reviewed tomorrow, appearing in Commuter Times this Friday, and excerpts at 21st-centurymusic.com and 21st-centurymusic.blogspot.com.


Page 4 of Variations on Americana orchestrated upon return.

March 2 - Berkeley SF Double-Header Seconds

Off and on again through the Contra Costa Hills to a


rendezvous with Harriet and


other San Francisco Cabaret Opera folks (Janet Lohr, Beth Henry, and Kat Cornelius) at Chamber Arts in Berkeley for second rehearsal of


San Rafael News,


Antigone: III-V, and


The Fire from The Bald Soprano as part of the final two


Horsewomen of the Apocalypse shows at St. Gregory's in San Francisco (markalburgerevents.blogspot.com): The Red Horse and


Black Horse / Gray Horse


Lunch with Harriet and Vicky at Pasand in Berkeley, then blitzing over the Bay Bridge for


San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra March Madness concert (8pm, 3/8, Old First Church, SF, info and pictures at above) second rehearsal, with, among others, Clare Twohy, Katrina Wreede,


and Victor Flaviani (with Tom Prosek looking on).

February 12 - Botticelli Rain in the Sunshine

Music History: Baroque / Classical / Romantic printing in the morning (some of it is online at markalburgermusichistory.blogspot.com).

Costanzo Festa's Quando Ritrovna (When I Find My Shepherdess) for Theory Dictation -- interior passage which can be interpreted in D minor or F major.


Home, briefly, past a semi-pastoral scene, shall we call it Martinez Refinery Hill?


Evening class is going for Baroque, including more arguably agrarian music from Claudio Monteverdi. Doug says he doesn't recognize this portrait (neither did I until several days ago), so, OK, here's the more famous one.


He was evidently a sick man by this point (1640 for this pic, 1597 for the earlier), but you wouldn't particularly know it, although another depiction from the same year shows the situation perhaps more honestly.

What Doug does know, and I don't until the very minute, is the MacBook's ability to zoom, by depressing Option/Apple simultaneously with left fingers, while controlling minus/plus with right. This will be a minor revolution in displaying visuals in class, perhaps also helping generally vis a vis my apparent growning blindness, or at least, more reasonably, increasingly fuzzy vision. Not that I'm complaining....


Home late, and late for a little recording of 12 Preludes and Fugues ("Topical"): 4a. Death Is the Rain (Prelude).

February 11 - Theory and Reality

Josquin des Pres's El Grillo for the Music Theoreticians.

realized on two staves only, with blocky harmonizations of bass line at this point.

Is this C: IV V ii I V II V I? Sure, with the II as secondary dominant to V.

Probably not G: bVII I v IV I V I IV, but interesting to think of it this way, too.

Authentic and plagal cadences, and it is time to end, so the return is via California 4, through the Contra Costa Coast Range,


to Cummings Skyway, with its distant views of Marin's Mt. Tamalpais (down a foreground, of -- shall we indelicately call it? -- Refinery Canyon -- beautiful area, but seems to be off limits given adjacent ownership)


and Solano's Vallejo.


Over the Carquinez Bridge,


past Vallejo Cliffs (How long will this land remain free? Ominous signs to the west of the freeway....),


St. John Mine Hill on-the-fly,


the treed copse memorialized in the volumes U.S. 40 and U.S. 40 Today


(not bad for shots clicked out the passenger side while dutifully keeping eyes focussed on the road ahead),


with the southeast quadrant of the Sulfur Springs massif stretching out languorously.


Right. No sentence there, just a very long fragment, zipping past suspicious precipices near Cordelia,


to a detail of so-called Paradise Valley (again, suspicious) on the outskirts of Fairfield. Same problem, there.


It's again in the 60's, the high temps for the last several days by now, and the California early spring seems to be upon us, hallelujah. Green hills and leafless decidous, an interesting and characteristic combination (There again! No more worries.)


Lagoon Valley (may it be preserved -- not likely, given the empty-heads in the local burg). North Lagoon Mountains (same. same.)


New recordings today are 12 Preludes and Fugues:


8b People Can Fall Down (Fugue)



and


10b Rock His World (Fugue)