D L & Co.: Of late...

Do you really want to hear about what I've been doing of late? About metacrusis and the harmonic lattice and audiation?? Probably not, hey? It's all very interesting... if you're into choral conducting.

Okay, I know you're probably not interested in choral conducting, but I'll just tell you a little bit about school. I have one week left, and then summer 2 of 3 will be complete! It's been busy, and mostly fun. This week, I have my regular schedule of classes and rehearsals, plus my voice jury, an instrumental conducting exam for which I have to have 40 pages of Stravinsky's Firebird Suite memorized (I'm 16 pages in), 2 dress rehearsals and 2 concerts. And then, I need to get closer to a final topic for my thesis and recital for my third year. Any ideas???

And here's the rest of what's been happening in pictures:

Art in the Garden at the Arboretum - a huge structure out of branches that you can walk through. Elysse called it her house.

My girls from school - Thania (actually Athanasia, from Greece) and Grace (from LA). These girls are amazing - we have so much fun together. This was the day Grace and I did a big presentation, and we were so happy because A) we were the first ones doing our presentation and therefore the first ones to be done our presentation and B) Dave was coming the following day and Grace was leaving for Hawaii the following day. That definitely calls for a pink lemonade!

Yay! Dave was here for a week, and Elysse was thrilled! Of course I was too, and Chanelle was once she stared at him for a bit and remembered who he was.

This is not a good picture... I actually can't believe the guy took it this way. You'd think I asked him to please get a shot of our family, and make sure you get the strollers in there, too. And a few feet of sidewalk in front of our feet... But anyway, here we are at Disneyland. We had a great day!

Elysse playing in the sand at Newport Beach (this was the weekend they were having 30 ft swells just down the coast a bit at the Wedge - someone actually died there this day).

This was at a special banquet for our guest composer for Festival Week. Kirke Mechem is 84 and absolutely hilarious. He is a phenomonal composer and is actually still active composing. He has a huge output - we sang a bunch of his choral stuff at a concert on Friday, but I think he's most known for his opera, Tartuffe. At this dinner, we had 9 courses of Chinese food. It is apparently one of the best Chinese restaurants in Monterey Park, which is densely populated by Chinese people. I tried almost everything, including fish ball soup, in which they roll fish stomachs into balls. It was actually better than the boiled peanuts - those are discusting. When we were walking out of the restaurant we noticed a "C" sticker in the window - apparently this is the grade they have been given on the state inspection. WHAT?! Can you even operate if you're below A?? I was appalled and felt ill the rest of the night...