Daily Doings   (2015Sep05)

Saturday, September 05, 2015                                          6:19 PM

My last few posts are not of the type I admire or enjoy—I don’t know why I post them. They feel right at the time—but in the rearview, they always seem kinda mean-spirited—as if I catch the meanness from the meanies I rail against. But time will take care of them—time makes everything seem less urgent, less dire—and it doesn’t need me to do that.

I’ve been too distracted lately to interweave my posts with anything other than my anger. Today I present a recital, warts and all—fairly representative of my usual morning’s doings. There are works by Mendelssohn, Bach, and Brahms—unedited, with all my slip-ups, and a nice little two-minute improv at the end. I would have preferred to edit the page-turns and the garbled notes—for the sake of you, dear listener—but today you get the real deal, just by way of full disclosure. I have also appended some videos which I left out of recent postings. No pressure—watch’em when you want the musical equivalent of ‘peace and quiet’ and you won’t go far wrong.

Morning Recital (Mendelssohn, Bach, Brahms)   (2015Sep05)

Improv – Delicatito   (2015Sep02)

Improv – Family Time   (2015Sep03)

Improv – Weavers Dance (2015Sep02)

Blizzard Fail   (2015Jan27)

Tuesday, January 27, 2015                                        3:37 PM

The weatherman predicted the worst Winter storm in history for last night and the majority of today. The mayor of NYC made emergency announcements at 7 PM last night. I expected to be snowed in, without power, and who knows what else might happen.

Being a coastal storm, and heading northward, it trashed Long Island, Boston, and Maine, as predicted—sorry about that, Down-Easters—but here in Somers, where the initial forecast was one-to-two feet of snow, then just one foot—I’d be surprised if the official measurement reached six inches. It looks more like four or so.

Which means I was allowed to shoot, edit, and post four videos today—I shot the whole room in hopes that the weather outside would appear frightful, but all the video shows is a white glow where the windows should be windows. Unluckily, that left me with very dark videos, which I have tried my best to brighten with my video-editing controls, but it’s still a pretty lackluster show—just a dark room with my head peaking up from behind the piano.

I took some stills for the Titles and Credits graphics, too—in the “Mendelssohn – Songs Without Words No. 25”, you see where Claire couldn’t catch the cardinal  outside our window (you can just see a bit of red). In the “Mendelssohn – Songs Without Words No. 24”, you can see a wren at the same window (it’s a very popular sill). The improvs just show pics of our yard covered in snow.

The two Mendelssohn pieces, as usual, are posted more as proof that I can sight-read/stumble my way through with minimal mistakes than as any competition for the real pianists out there—but that’s where I’m at—what else can I do? I’ll let you judge for yourself what sort of voice I’m in with today’s two improvisations….

 

 

 

 

 

Finally, here are some of today’s stills, on their own…

20150127XD-Improv-BlizzardFail (1)

 

20150127XD-Improv-BlizzardFail (2)_02

 

20150127XD-Improv-BlizzardFail (3)_02

 

20150127XD-Improv-BlizzardFail (4)

 

20150127XD-Improv-BlizzardFail (12)

 

20150127XD-Improv-BlizzardFail (14)

 

20150127XD-Improv-BlizzardFail (16)

 

20150127XD-Improv-BlizzardFail (18)

 

20150127XD-Improv-BlizzardFail (20)

Songs without Words (2015Jan14)

Felix Mendelssohn wrote a collection of piano pieces entitled “Leider ohne Worte”, which is German for Songs without Words. The collection is one of my favorite playbooks. They are challenging for me, so these aren’t good examples–though I’m sure YouTube has many other performers playing it much better. Anyhow, here’s my latest playlist of my most recent recordings from the book:

(One short note: the photograph used in these videos shows the Superman® socks my daughter gave me for Christmas!)

And the obligatory piano improv:

 

Enjoy. and good night…