Like, whoa

Like, whoa, man, like, it's over, like, whoa.

I can hardly believe it. Our last week just flew by, and now it's over until next summer. But what a great season it has been! Stephanie and I really set ourselves some challenges this year—a lot of really hard new music that's hard to put together under festival conditions—but it all worked out in the end. I will admit that I had a few doubts along the way... that I wish we could have had another day or two of rehearsal on some pieces... and that I wish we could have performed some works a couple more times. But you know, unless you set yourself challenges like this, you just don't know what the limits of your abilities actually are.

Our third week was a special challenge because we had a larger number of guest artists to take care of than in any other week. And all of those guest artists were from out of town, which makes it even a bit more complicated. I had to move out of Edenfred to make room for the others, so I had to factor in at least one forty-minute round trip every day. (I was staying downtown with Tom Terry this last week—admittedly not a hardship!) But we had a really wonderful and interesting group of musicians, so the whole week was quite fun. John de Main was so great to work with as the narrator for The Four Seasons of Futurist Cuisine. What a ham! Such a natural! And so rare to work with a narrator whose acting chops are so terrific AND who completely understands the music. Kernis notates precise complex rhythms for the narration at many points in the piece, and John was always right on top of them.

Anyway, when we finished up Sunday night, we were all happy but completely exhausted. We drove back to Edenfred, had a celebratory party, compared notes about the rest of the summer (I'll see a number of our guest artists at other festivals this summer), said our farewells, and turned in for the night.

It was the first night of untroubled sleep I've had all season.

Stephanie and I have already decided on the theme for next year. 2009 is the 200th anniversary of the death of Haydn. Haydn was probably the best-humored composer EVER. He is the epitome of "serious fun"—music that is beautifully written, challenging, profound, and yet shows a real enjoyment for life. We thought we'd honor him by naming our season "Haydn Seek"—the idea being that we're seeking the spirit of serious fun that Haydn exemplifies in chamber music of all eras. Our programs will be named after games—titles like "Twister," "Pin the Tail on the Donkey," "Truth or Dare," "Follow the Leader," "Go Fish," "Crazy 8's," etc. If any of you have great ideas, be sure to let us know!