we made it

Last night's concert went better than most of our rehearsals would have led one to expect. We premiered two pieces, one of whose composer (Michael Eglin) came up onstage after hearing his piece. I knew that the other composer (Zachary Wadsworth) is only 25 years old, but it turns out that Eglin is a young dude too! If he's over 35, I'll eat my hat.

Aha. It also turns out that Pacific Chorale's composition competition (say that ten times fast) was specifically a "Young Composers" competition. Somehow, that fact never made it into my brain.

Here's a review -- it's from the Orange County paper. Doesn't look like the L.A. Times covered us, since young Maestro Dudamel is performing with the Philharmonic this weekend. Worth noting -- Carver Cossey, the soloist who gets the lion's share of the reviewer's praise, deserves every bit of it. Carver is my friend, and directs the church choir I used to sing in before I moved up to Long Beach, but I believe I still hear him sing with an unbiased ear. He's just a stunner.

I thought I was going to have to miss the first rehearsal for our May concert, since I have an immovable work obligation on Monday night. But Monday night's rehearsal agenda has been revised to work on Daphnis et Chloe, which I bowed out of because of work conflicts with the performances. So, tomorrow night I still won't be there, but it won't matter. :-)

I expected to have to go to work today too, because it's the last day my current production will be in the rehearsal hall. They're off tomorrow, then Tuesday they start working onstage. Usually that last day involves a run-through, but the director decided to devote the day to scene work based on notes from yesterday's run-through. So, I decided not to go in today. After an intense meeting at the Church of What's Happenin' Now, I came home to do laundry, cook and lie low. I was in a terrible mood earlier today and I think its root causes were the usual matter/antimatter combination of not getting enough time alone, and feeling lonely because I'm with other people all the time but it doesn't feed my soul because it's a working context rather than a context in which my companion(s) choose to be with me for my own merits.

In other news, I scheduled a week of vacation in July! Cleverly timed to follow the three-day Independence Day weekend, it will mean I have a good-sized chunk o' discretionary time to play with.

In the comments, brainstorm with me some ideas for what I might do with that time! Keep it cheap if you can, since I'm working away at my goal of paying off the last of the backlog of debt that built up in the financial maelstrom of my move to CA a couple of years ago. I should be free and clear of all non-mortgage debt by the end of the year... but not if I take that luxury cruise through southern France that you're thinking about. :-)

Let the Cheap, Creative Vacation Fantasizing begin!