March 22 - Holy Saturday!

Sleep is running rampant, robbing time.

Meanwhile Napa beckons yet yet again, as perfect short getaway.

Pressing a button on the cellphone, cut to Harriet making coffee, answering emails, the dark blue screen of one of the domicile's workhorses glowing brightly, sometimes beeping loudly, ringing the years.

"Is it not time for our ennui killer?"

We interrupt our scheduled Metropolitan Richard Wagner morphing (Tristan und I-Sold-Out), and if it was a violin, answer the telephone.

Upon hearing of schemes, push a button, bust a Shakespeare rhyme, open a door and a bookcase, reading about polar opposites. Slip-sliding, mountainous in the flick of a light, switching to the car. Animated.

In full costume, we set out, Mark in the driver's seat.

Harriet would be unlikely to say, "Atomic batteries to power, turbines to speed."

But I could respond, "Roger, ready to move out" and we two race off out of the Platonian Cave of Appearances at high speed.

As the Toyotamobile approaches the mouth of the freeway, a hinged light drops down green to allow the car to enter on to I-80.



After passing The Wine Guy, the initial discussion leads us back to dynamic Dry Creek Road conducting Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress .



A meeting with local gentry in unbearable brightness,



being the getting away further on the Mayacamas meander, utimately back to Marin, only to come back and walk again later Sisyphusianly.



Here, we recapture heroically senza deathtrap or cliffhanger, vetting our discontent,



and all is resolved at the intersection of Orchard.



At least temporarily, in Napamatic splendor, in test estate.



A related pattern has cycled each day at length, although a portable cycle has circled in a pinch, which way are we going to Stag's Leap,



vineyard?



Yes, she said. Yes, she will read in the sun, angelically, patiently,



but first sleep, sleep; dream-drive north of Yountville.



Napa poppies,


leaping, soaring.


Operatic soirree chez Peter Kuperman in SF thereafter, with folks from San Francisco Contemporary Opera (a.k.a. SF Cabaret Opera), San Francisco Opera, Merola, Golden Gate Opera, Wagner Society of Northern California, and San Jose Ballet.



Much later, record Vocal Sonatina No. 1 ("Spitzer"): III. Only the Lobbyists (instrumental version, paradoxically)

March 17 - Cameo Sutro

Writing up Alban Berg for markalburgermusichistory.blogspot.com, then, on the way to the next Napa walk, hit upon the notion of the rest of the Vocal Sonatinas, as follows

Vocal Sonatina No. 1 ("Spitzer")

Vocal Sonatina No. 2 ("Vatsyayana")

Vocal Sonatina No. 3 ("Conforte")

Vocal Sonatina No. 4 ("Muhammad")

Vocal Sonatina No. 5 ("Angier")

All gently, whimsically reflecting on life, the universe, and the oldest life-form practice. Begin sketching out third movement of Vatsyayana, to whom the Kama Sutra is attributed. Somehow this three-movement piece will reflect Muzio Clementi's Sonatina No. 2, Philip Glass's Satyagraha (Act I, Scenes 1 and 3; and the final scene of the final act -- but not necessarily in that order), and an Indian improvisation from alap, through the introduction of tala and gat, to a finale of increased energy.




Ah, yes, the walk, first driving by the wine guy again (someday one dreams of a decent shot)



and the Great Grove of Eucalypts



(Altenburger Leader Picture-Postcards at an Exposition?).



Then, shall we say a gentle, utilitarian stroll



through the northern remainder of Buhman Road, pretty much subsumed by development,



save for stark hillocks,



with eucalypts,


sheep,


and the moon,


fences


and a shed.


The moon a polished


diskette hockey puck.



It will be blood red on the trees as the sun sets


or bone white (the ghost eucalyptus south on 29 at the Imola exit);



the darkness will creep like the fingers of forest folliage near Skyline Park.



And, as final nonsequitur, seemingly as titulatorily promised, a cameo appearance, through windshield glare, of San Francisco's Sutro Tower, with the fog destined to blow in and cover it all up. If not today, some day....

January 27 - There We Are

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 Tunnel

arriving 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....