Late Night Thoughts

Actually it is early morning. 12:38 to be exact. I am twenty-six days into the maintenance phase of therapy for multiple myeloma after having my stem cell transplant. I am counting those maintenance days heavily, because Darselex Faspro, an injected drug they use to keep my cancer from returning, is supposed to start leaving the system at twenty days. In my system, where my cancer level is now so low that it is not detectable, it causes me to wake up every single night with charley horse like pain in my legs after about two hours of sleep.

The only way I can withstand the pain until the Tylenol I take kicks in, is to take a hot bath. Then, after about a thirty-minute soak in the tub, which quiets the pain, it takes me around twenty minutes to dry off. I guess skin takes in a lot of water when you bathe. You would think that my hair, which has now reached the length of about an inch, would dry instantly, but it doesn't.

Some nights I go down to the kitchen and write in a journal. Some nights I bake. Some nights I read. As long as I am standing up, I can keep the pain at a dull tired hum.

My strategy tonight is to see if I can get evaporated enough to go back to sleep at around 1:00, thus losing only an hour.

Every night I have so much hope that I might make it through. Every night I try something new.

It is now just about 1:00. I'm heading back to bed. Wish me luck.

z z z * * * z z z * * * z z z

I was hoping there wouldn't be a part two of this post, but it is 3:27, and I was woken up again by pain in my legs. I'm hoping to make the time productive, so I have started cooking a pot of chickpeas, which have been soaking since yesterday morning. I'm standing up (and moving my legs) as I type because I need to wait until 4:00 to take Tylenol. I'll have it with a little coffee so that it gets to work faster.

May as well make all the morning coffee now, right? One Melita pot of Chock full o' Nuts, and an 18 oz. mason jar of Major Dickason's decaf takes the two of us nicely through the day.

Two minutes of standing, moving around, and doing kitchen things, and the pain is a little less intense. A hot flash is letting me know that my hormonal state is changing (I think that the hormone acting up here is cortisol--I'm too far beyond menopause for it to be the usual suspect).

The pot of water took six minutes to boil. (Make a note of that, Michael. I think the new burners speed things up.) One nice thing about writing on an iPad is that I can see the timings of things very easily. Usually these late nights are an unmeasured blur. I should have timed that hot flash, which is now over. I can rest assured, or not rest, as the case may be, that there will be future opportunities.

I'm now eyeing a bunch of potatoes of a certain age that look like they need to be boiled and made into potato salad. Why not do it now? Five minutes until Tylenol time. Maybe just the amount of time it will take to bring the pot I just filled with water to a boil.

Isn't this fun?

It's 4:00, and the potatoes took five minutes to come to a boil, just as I had hoped. Time to sit down to a small cup of real coffee and two Tylenol, and then enjoy a big cup of decaf.

I'll have some breakfast at 5:00, take my meds at 6:00, and then take a nap until 8:00. Rounding up the minutes, and counting the bath as resting tme, that will give me seven hours or so of cobbled-together sleep.

Beautiful Performace of Iyar by Viva Sanchez Reinoso

This is one of the Preludes I wrote in memory of my brother Marshall. What a lovely performance. Thank you Viva Sanchez Reinoso!

All the Way Down (a film)

A couple of years ago (May, 2024, to be exact), a film crew came to our town and the town of Marshall, Illinois to make a film about a Chicago-based composer who, having difficulties with an orchestral piece she is writing, returns to her downstate Illinois hometown to work. Dark things ensue.

The original title "Down Below," was changed to "All the Way Down."

The people making the movie wanted to use real musicians, so my local string-playing friends and I dressed ourselves in concert black, and we sat in our local concert hall holding our instruments and bows in playing position. We even provided a great-looking conductor.

The IMDB listing for the film has the cast and the various people connected with making the film, but it doesn't include the orchestra of figurants, and the few rows of audience members that appear at what I believe is a crucial part of the movie.

But we all got paid, and we all enjoyed the experience (not to mention the catering).

It was wonderful to witness the great Teri Wyble at work as she played a very intense scene over and over for the cameras.

And now the film is having its world premiere at the Austin Film Festival at the end of the month.

Penelope Knuth

My violist friend Penelope Knuth, the principal violist of the Chamber Orchestra of Chile, was killed in a bus accident Saturday night. It was after a performance of Mahler in Valpariso, and the driver lost control of the orchestra's tour bus on a steep road.

I have known Penny since 1975, when she and my brother Marshall were Tanglewood fellows. You can see them [click for a larger photo] sharing a stand on the far right of the above picture. Penny has long blond hair, which obscures much of my brother's face, but I could recognize both of them in this photo from the Boston Symphony Orchestra's archives.

Norman Lebrecht, always wanting to be the first to report on the death of any principal violist, made a post that didn't have the whole story.

You can read an accurate report here. An article in The Strad has more links.

Forty-two years ago today

Right after our wedding (forty-two years ago today), my Aunt Phyllis told me that everything begins now. At the time I didn't understand. Michael and I had been living together for a while before we were married, and lots of things had happened in my life.

Now I understand intimately what she meant: life as a "we" begins when you get married. It is the beginning of a team effort, where two people form a new family that is stronger than its component parts. And going through life with someone who always has your back helps to make enduring the difficulties we all encounter (health, government, cruelty, unfairness, etc.) possible.

Thank you for being my safety net, my hype man, my partner in parenting and grandparenting, my fellow traveler in bloggery, my reading partner, my partner in all meals, and my partner on walks in all seasons in all places.

Local Music

It just dawned on me the other night (at Rebecca and Cara's concert), that I have written just about all my music and just about all of my arrangements in our 1,500 square foot home that sits on a little hill in our small Illinois town. And then I started thinking of places that I have lived, and how different every place sounded.

I associate memories of Newton, Massachusetts with the sound of my father practicing Bach, and recordings: Bach Cantatas from Germany (DGG Archiv), music from the Renaissance that was being recorded by the pioneers of historically informed performance, Brahms and Schumann chamber music recordings from the small collection of old recordings that my parents kept in a small cabinet, recordings of music by Charles Ives that “smelled” of New England, the great 1970s popular music that was played on radios in every store, and in every car (except for our car when I wasn't driving), and my own constant practicing.

I don't remember much in the way of birdsong, but I do remember reading that Sibelius felt that birdsong influenced the way music sounded in various countries. Even though our house was located on the edge of a park, the only birds I remember hearing were robins and crows.

Beyond Newton, there was the music of the trolley (now called the “T”), and those sounds accompanied me as I traveled to concerts and rehearsals. Many of the concerts I heard included atonal music, but I mostly associate atonal music with Tanglewood, where I spent my summers. The “brown” mixture of twelve-tone music, avant-garde music, orchestral music, and the din of many different people practicing is oddly comforting to me. The memory of that sound is somehow married to the memory of the smell of the Tanglewood mud that has been permeated over the decades with cigar smoke. I wanted to be a composer when I spent time at Tanglewood, but I knew that I couldn't be creative in avant-garde or twelve-tone ways of writing. I hoped, even then, that tonality would return to be an acceptable tool for writing music.

The sounds of New York were mostly sounds of my own practicing and the hum of the Juilliard heating and air conditioning system. I found New York to be the place I lived with the least room for creativity, but the best place I have lived for learning about the creativity of others. The music that filled the air in the parks and in the streets vibrated with excitment and rhythm, but it usually drowned out whatever original ideas I thought I might have had.

But I did start to write my first piece there. It was an Elegy for a dear friend who had died. We had been studying Bartok String Quartets in a class, and I guess the idea of setting the musical idea I had in my head for string quartet seemed right. I believe my “piece” was sixteen measures or so. I finished it in 2003, when I had the space to develop my ideas.

The next place I lived was Schladming, Austria. I remember walking in the woods there, and “hearing” Schubert in the trickling of the streams, and in the Enns river. The birds might have even been singing Schubert songs. It was my first experience hearing local music that I felt came from the earth. When I moved to Vienna, I heard different music in the air. I wrote about it in a post from 2005 (two decades ago!), and will share an excerpt here:

Music is hanging around the air in Vienna. It always has been there, and it probably will always be there. Fritz Pauer told me that it has something to do with the water that flows in the underwater canals. Even in the silence of the night in Vienna, there is a certain musical rhythm in the air. Anyway, one day while I was walking in Vienna I started singing a tune. I figured it must have been something that I heard, but I couldn't place it. I sang it for Leo [Leo Wright], and he had never heard it before either. He helped me harmonize it with jazz chords, and I let it rattle around in my brain for about 20 years until I turned it into a piece for string quartet that I called “Good-bye to Vienna.” Of course I dedicated it to Leo, who is no longer alive in body, but will always be alive in spirit.

After Vienna I lived in Hong Kong, which “sounded” like New York to me. And whatever creative expression I might have had when I lived there was drowned out by a great deal of struggle and a great deal of artifice. I returned to Boston, and was happy to see (and hear) that the city sounded pretty much the same as it sounded when I was growing up. It looks different now (forty years later), but the T still makes the same sound, and there is still a feeling of musical possibility in the air.

As much as I would like to hear music in the air in Chicago, it has never happened for me. But when visiting Los Angeles (where our daughter used to live) the air seems to vibrate with major seventh chords. Even if I could afford to live there, I would never get any work done if I did.

My home in Illinois (for the past four decades) has given me the greatest creative space I could ever ask for. The local natural world, with its various bodies of running water, like the creek in our backyard and the Embarass river, reminds me a little of the music in the air in the hills around Schladming as well as the music below the surface of the earth in Vienna. The bird life around here contains a universe of songs. Every imaginable migrating species seems to pass through our area, and our yard is lively with birdsong at every time of the year. The landscape sings to me, particularly in late August and in September.

I wrote a piece called “Coles County August” which grew out of the kind of light and natural excitement that happens here every August. And I am happy to share a performance of it by Coles County pianist Kara Huber. She grew up here in rural Illinois, and now has an international career as a solo pianist.

This area has also given me more playing opportunities than I could have ever expected from the other places I have lived. I had the opportunity to remake myself as an instrumentalist, because I have had the time and space to practice and learn. I enjoy playing in orchestras, in string quartets, and in an early music group. I also get to write arrangements for our local Summer Strings orchestra to play for the community. Making a dozen or so new arrangements every year for practical use by local string players keeps me challenged and stimulated year after year. I have also been able to write music for some terrific professional musicians in the area, some who live within driving distance (some even within walking distance), and some who have passed through, and moved away.

The Third Time is the Charm

The (twice-cancelled) concert of flute and piano music written by women that Rebecca Johnson and Cara Chowning are playing tonight is being live-streamed. The concert begins at 7:30 Central Standard Time.



On the program (see below), is my transcription of Florence Price's "Adoration," as well as my Piccolo Sonata.

Reality Check

The UK-based Donne organization just put together a report concerning performances of musical works programmed during the 2025-2026 concert season by a large selection of professional orchestras from all over the world. Here are a few images from their report:

[click the images for a larger view]

You can find the whole PDF here.

Portrait of my father's Breschian viola

Violists Masumi Per Rostand and Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt have devoted a half-hour-long video (with lovely close-up images) to the Breschian viola my father played during his career as the principal violist of the Boston Symphony Orchestra that is now owned by Pajaro-van de Stadt. Make sure to watch to the end to hear the instrument's amazing C string!

Kol Nidre for Yom Kippur

Whether you celebrate Yom Kippur or not, the Kol Nidre prayer is a prayer of release and renewal. It releases us from the vows and unfulfilled promises we have made, and allows us to move forward with a clean conscience. Louis Lewandowski's melodic setting of the prayer (even without the words), provides a kind of catharsis for me when I play it, and, I have been told, provides a kind of catharsis for people who are listening.

I have put transcriptions of it on this page of the IMSLP for solo violin, solo viola, solo viola d'amore, and solo cello, as well as a duo transcription for instruments that are unable to play double stops.

A lot of my published music is now being sold through J.W. Pepper

Music published by Subito is now being sold through the J.W. Pepper website, and that means that the eighty pieces of mine published by Seesaw, that are distributed by Subito, are available to buy there.

Also Trevco, the publisher that specializes in double-reed music, stopped its operations earlier this year, and their inventory was taken over by Subito. That means my contrabasson music is now available through the J.W. Pepper website.

J.W. Pepper also sells music published by the International Music Company, so all of the arrangements, transcriptions, and editions I worked on for IMC are there as well.

You can see what they have of mine through this link (I already put the search in for you).

Conventional Wisdom on this Rosh Hashanah Eve

I have been thinking about this bit of conventional wisdom from Rabbi Hillel the Elder, who lived in a world where mass communication meant talking to a roomful of people, or writing something down on a single piece of parchment that might be read out loud to a roomful of people, some who may have been scribes.

If I am not for myself, who will be for me?
If I am only for myself, what am I?
And if not now, when?

I work very hard at what I do. I practice, write music, make arrangements, teach, and rehearse. I try to advocate for myself as a musician, and I do what I can to make the fruits of my work available for people to play. I believe that the purpose of my work in music is to share my love for it, and I hope the material I write and arrange can inspire other musicians to communicate with one another, and to be comfortable expressing themselves while playing together.

I believe that doing what you do as well as possible to make work that speaks for itself leads to a fulfilling life. Coleridge wrote, “Nothing can permanently please, which does not contain in itself the reason why it is so, and not otherwise.” I wrote a post about my experience with that statement in 2012, and I stubbornly still believe it is true.

I have met a great many people in and out of the world of music who have made it their business to tell me just how accomplished, successful, and important they are. I guess they would fall into the "If I am only for myself, what am I?" category. I decided early on that this was not the kind of person I wanted to be.

That "only for myself" way of thinking casts a large a shadow over the "If I am not for myself, who will be for me?" concept, and, as a result of the conflict, I often hesitate to advocate for myself in the larger musical world. When I do, I am often disappointed by not getting a response (even from publishers I work with). I suppose business people are selective about who is worth their time, particularly when there are so many people and computer-generated entities vying for their attention.

Hillel's last question, "And if not now, when?" has never made sense to me in the context of the first two questions. 

But it stands alone as a great piece of wisdom.

Speaking of standing alone, Hillel's explanation of the Torah while standing on one foot: not to do anything to your fellow man that is hateful to you, is, perhaps, the best conventional wisdom of all.

L'shanah tovah

The Wannabe Classical Music Aficionado

This 254-page book, published by Soncata Press, is a well-organized guide to classical music aimed at enticing the novice listener to abandon their preconceptions and fears, and give concert-going a try. It is divided into forty-six well-organized "insights" that help the reader learn the vocabulary used to discuss classical music, understand the roles of instruments found in orchestras, chamber music groups, and choirs, and learn a little about some of the best-known composers that a concert-going novice might encounter.

There are insights (chapters) that discuss the concert experience: what to wear, where to sit, when to clap, etc., and insights that explore ways of deepening the concert experience. I particularly like the insight about going to concerts alone, and how rewarding it can be.

The book includes a hefty section about chamber music, and suggests ways of paying attention to how people in a chamber ensemble communicate. In addition to a section that discusses how musicians live and work (i.e. practice, rehearse, and perform), there is a section about the economics of musical organizations. We also get a glossary of terms as well as an index.

The ideas in the book come from Allan Schiller, who played in the violin section of the New York Philharmonic from 1964 (he got his position when Leonard Bernstein was the music director) until 1999, but the writing and the organization is by Ann Marie Sabath, a person who has a great deal of experience writing books that introduce people to matters of investing, managing money, business etiquette, and even writing books.

I think that this pairing of a seasoned professional musician with a professional writer (who is not a musician) is very successful. The book is very well written, extremely easy to read, and the pages are beautifully designed. Each chapter (insight) begins with an excellent and appropriate quotation, and ends with a meaningful statement of "wannabe wisdom" that is applicable to the experience of a person new to classical music as well as to a person who has been listening to classical music for decades.

You can find out more here.

Sister Beatrice, coming out of hiding

Subito Music, the publisher of my 2003 opera (revised in 2006) Sister Beatrice, asked me for audio and YouTube links for the pieces I have in their catalog, so I revisited this piece recently.

I spent the better part of a year on this opera, and, as with the other operas I have written, have never had a chance to see or hear it performed. It is published, but publication doesn't guarantee much of anything, only that the music can be purchased.

If you do a quick google search for "Sister Beatrice," you will find her as a character in a Netflix series called "Warrior Nun" that I have no intention of watching.

Maurice Maeterlinck wrote "Sister Beatrice" sometime before 1900 as an opera libretto. For this libretto Maeterlinck made an adaptation of the old English legend that inspired John Davidson to write his 1894 poem “A Ballad of a Nun.”

Bernard Miall, who translated the play from French to English, mentions that Maeterlinck wrote it with the idea that a composer named M. Gilkas would write the music, but I guess that didn't happen. "Sister Beatrice" was published as a play without music in 1902. It was first produced by the New Theatre in New York in March of 1910, and then at the Globe Theater in New York (Sarah Bernhardt's company) on June 19, 1911. The Russian composer Alexandre Gretschaninoff immediately set it as an opera, and it was produced at the Paris Opera Comique in 1912.

Wonder of wonders: I just found it in the IMSLP! And it is in both Russian and German.

My setting of Sister Beatrice is in English, and I have prepared my own libretto from the original French and from Bernard Miall’s 1901 English translation. Both versions were published before 1923, making all the material in the public domain.

The story is set in a 13th century French convent. At the beginning of the opera (Scene I) Sister Beatrice is praying to the statue of the Virgin. She confesses that she is about to commit mortal sin, that she is going to leave the convent with Prince Bellidor who told her that he loved her. She is torn between her love for the Virgin and her love for the prince. When the prince arrives, he uses 17th century musical language to seduce Beatrice into coming with him. He removes her veil and her mantle, which she leaves at the foot of the statue of the Virgin, and they run off together.

Immediately after they leave (Scene II), the statue of the Virgin comes alive. She puts on the veil and mantle Sister Beatrice left on the floor and assumes Sister Beatrice’s duty of giving alms to the poor. Allette, a young girl, comes to the door and says shyly that the “poor brothers” are not coming because they saw Sister Beatrice riding away with the prince. The Virgin kisses Allette, and soon Allette believes that the Virgin is Sister Beatrice. They hear a chorus of pilgrims approaching. The pilgrims sing a medieval pilgrim song with words that (as pilgrim songs do) praise the Virgin, but they do not realize that they are singing it to the Virgin herself. The Virgin, dressed as Sister Beatrice, forgives all their sins and gives them garments that turn into radiant jewel-covered robes.

After the pilgrims leave, the Abbess reproaches Sister Beatrice for forgetting to ring the matin bells, and when the Abbess notices the statue of the Virgin is gone, she blames Sister Beatrice for not guarding her properly. Furthermore, the Abbess notices that Sister Beatrice’s garments have a glow about them. She removes Sister Beatrice’s veil and mantle and condemns Sister Beatrice for “stealing the image” of the Virgin. A chorus of nuns joins her as they command Sister Beatrice to speak, but she does not answer. They call the Priest, who tells the nuns to take off their belts and beat Sister Beatrice with the rods of penance. They take her offstage. Immediately there is a chaotic cacophony from which emerges a six-voice setting of the “Ave Maris Stella.” The nuns enter holding flowers, and the stage is full of flowers. Sister Beatrice turned their belts and rods into flowers. Everyone proclaims that Sister Beatrice is holy.

Twenty-five years pass, and Scene III looks exactly like the end of Scene I—the statue of the Virgin is in place, and Sister Beatrice’s veil and mantle are on the floor. It is winter. Sister Beatrice, now old and sick, enters the convent and throws herself at the foot of the statue. She tells the statue of the Virgin what has happened to her, the scandal that her life became out in the world, and that she has come back to the convent to die. She finds the veil and mantle and puts them on. The sisters enter and they think that she has aged overnight. They also notice that the statue of the Virgin has returned to them.

Sister Beatrice is confused. She asks her sisters to pardon her. She tells them that she left the convent with Prince Bellidor 25 years ago, that he left her after three months, that she became a prostitute, that three of her children died, and that she killed her fourth child herself so it wouldn’t suffer.

The sisters do not believe her, because they know Sister Beatrice was with them every day. Sister Beatrice does not understand why the sisters are not angry with her. The opera ends with her words: "I have lived in a world where I did not understand the aims of hate and misery, and now I die in another world where I do not understand the aims of mercy and love.”

The opera has about 85 minutes of music. It is scored for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, one percussionist (who plays tubular bells, xylophone, marimba, snare drum, conga drums, and temple blocks), harp, two violins, viola, cello, and double bass.

There are six soprano roles, four mezzo-soprano roles, one tenor, one bass-baritone, and four additional choral parts.

Much of the music is tonal, most of it is influenced by medieval music, and everything is written in conventional notation and conventional meter.

You can listen to the Ave Maris Stella section of the opera via YouTube:



You can listen to more of the opera via a set of computer-generated files you can find here, and the reduced score can be purchased here from Subito. The parts for the full score can be rented: see above for the instrumentation and distribution of voices.

Vienna Philharmonic Concert Tonight on PBS Great Performances

It's the concert from June 19, 2026 that includes my arrangement of Florence Price's "Adoration."

The local PBS station, WILL, has an article about it in their Clef Notes blog. You can find it here.