It’s spring break and for the first time in my life I’m in San Francisco. Here’s a great shot of the family vehicle arriving in the Bay Area:

From a student’s homework. I must’ve been talking about okonomiyaki in class…

Three levels of analysis for the last phrase of Telemann’s “Trumpet Concerto in D: III. Grave”: 1. Original engraving with figured bass added 2. Realization analysis 3. Schemata reconstruction #musictheory #nerd

<bed starts shaking> Me: That’s it, it’s the Big One! Dive for cover! Hang on! WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE! … oh, sorry, false alarm. The cat was just scratching her ear.

Concerto for Trumpet and Strings, Movement 2 “Allegretto” has reached its double bar!

Away party beam up/beam down zone

My son has become obsessed with the William Tell Overture and, I gotta say, that piece is a banger.

Drop a movie that traumatized you as a kid:

Drop a movie that traumatized you as a kid: The Land Before Time, need I say more?

Little known fact, but Hercules’s thirteenth labor was to eat the recommended amount of daily fiber.

Making salad toppings: garlic/herb labne, pickled onions, and crispy shallots

1, 5, and 9. Though 6 could make for an interesting flight.

It’s the end of the weekend I’ve made it to the halfway point of the second movement of my Concerto for Trumpet and Strings for @aztrumpet.bsky.social!

Fake news. Everyone knows Chuck Norris is immortal.

Hotel California. Or anything by Elliott Carter.

How long will it be, I wonder, before I get mowed down by one of those two wheel electric scooters so common on campus?

Also, why do people stock absolutely every kind of creamer except half-and-half?: A biography.

Oof. Started this week‘s tango off on the wrong foot.

Conductor posts an AI image of themselves as a wizard for an upcoming Harry Potter concert. Where do you even begin with that…?

Too many stressors right now, so here’s a cat. (NB, she is not for sale)

Still the most frightening book I’ve ever (sight) read.

We have just discovered that, thanks to Bluey, The Lad has learned some idioms in an Australian accent. We discovered this because it took us a hot minute to figure out he was saying “pass the parcel.“

It’s been a cool week 🧵: I found out my trumpet concerto for @aztrumpet.bsky.social was funded by the Canada Council for the Arts (commission, performance, and recording!) /1

“Endless Expensive Mediocrity” is the name of my next punk band.

Picking up a prescription for a sick kiddo, and am apparently waiting behind a wizard, a Ghostbusters, and a ne’er-do-well teenager from the 1980s

Of the many great sayings to originate in my adoptive province of Québec, perhaps the best is the one that describes people being pretentious: They are said to be farting higher than the hole.

One of my grandpas had scarlet fever as a kid that left him with a heart condition that prevented him from fighting in WWII, he sold color TVs. My other grandpa fled the Soviet advance in Hungary and ended up selling brooms in West Germany for a while.

I used to be a funeral director and once made arrangements for a woman whose mother died. When I told her that the default container for her mother’s ashes if she didn’t buy an urn was a cardboard box, she replied icily that cardboard “would be good enough for her.”

Not that this is important in the grand scheme of things, but some composers need to lay the fuck off of the suspended cymbal. Using it at every minor climax/texture change is not as dope as they think it is.

Your irregular reminder, that competitions pretty much only reveal who is good at competitions. They rarely reveal who is good at what the competition is purportedly about.

What I think I look like vs. what I actually look like

I am become antelope, prancer of worlds

Sabbatical = denied Reasons = 1) no travel funding (my research and neither requires nor needs it) 2) people with more years of service get priority (many have 20+) By my read, I’ll be in the running in about two decades after attrition has had a chance to do its thing. This one burns.

TFW a composer on another platform brags about this totally new way they have for harmonizing melodies and it turns out to be counterpoint. Like, the-thing-we’ve-done-since-the-Notre-Dame-School-in-the-12th-century counterpoint. 😑

The Lad: <snuggling as I lie with him until he falls asleep> Daddy, please stop breathing; it smells bad. Me: 😑

Archive is the new delete.

Oh hello, wrong side of the bed, so glad to have woken up on you.

“The rocket made climates, and summer lay for a brief moment upon the land ...” -Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles

I just heard southern Italian cuisine described thus by a restaurant owner: 1) it is homemade 2) it uses various sauces There’s a reason that one of the central things I try to pass on to my students is how to be specific and convey meaningful information.

Doing mindless administrivia is so much better with a good soundtrack.

There’s cursing, and then there is cursing while making parts. The difference is in the depth of conviction in your soul.

Candid shot from Friday’s practice.

Random insight while walking to the car late at night: When you lose a kendo competition, you always walk away having viscerally learned some important lessons. When you lose a composition competition, you walk away with no particular insights. This is why I love the former and hate the latter.

<Family chats quietly with Grandma on the iPad while I am washing dishes> Me: <subito F> IT MUST HAVE BEEN LOVE, BUT IT’S OVER NOW-OW-OW Family: <slowly turn their heads and look at me silently> Me: 😁

Love is dragging your bony old lady cat out of her condo, shoving a pill down her throat, then proceeding to give her 11 ml of tuna water with laxative in it with a syringe, and ultimately being overjoyed that she pooped on the hearth.

FYI: from a friend, “A heads up to anyone who has kids in Ann Arbor Public Schools or who are teachers in the schools, ICE is scheduled to be there tomorrow (Thurs), during parent drop-off and pickup, trying to forward this on to folks who may have connections to families in both Ypsi and A2.”

<my spouse gets cut off in the school parking lot> The Lad: How come that person was so rude? They’re not even driving a pickup truck! My Spouse: Stop listening to your father! *** Y’all, my work here is done.

I am trash

Some classic Route 66 signage in Glendora, CA