Powerhouse*

I'm going to have to BE a powerhouse this week and next if I'm going to get through it--and we're almost out of coffee at home. The schoolwork seems never-ending, and I don't know where to begin.  It's times like these that remind me of the old saying that it's even possible to eat a whole elephant--one bite at a time. So away I go--working on two papers for management class, prepping for a cataloging midterm, getting music ready for an SPSO performance, and this on top of everything I do for my family.

About the SPSO:  We're doing a program of American music at Arcadia University on Saturday, November 16.  Samuel Barber is represented twice:  the familiar Adagio for Strings and the lovely Knoxville: Summer of 1915 for soprano and small orchestra. We're also performing a piece written for Benny Goodman, Aaron Copland's Concerto for Clarinet and String Orchestra, and closing with one of the stranger pieces ever to win the Pulitzer Prize, the Third Symphony ("the camp meeting") by Charles Ives.  This will be the first time I've performed Ives since graduate school in the mid-1980's.  There's a killer trombone lick in the third movement (which is the only section of the program I play) so I need to be ready.  I'm going to move heaven and earth to give my readers some program notes prior to the concert, but if by chance I don't, you'll know why (see first paragraph).

Back to subject headings. 

Cheers.

*--Raymond Scott, 1937.  Carl Stalling used this tune in countless Warner Brothers shorts with Bugs Bunny, Marvin K Martian, etc. You'd know it if you heard it, trust me.