Listening to Rent

Unwinding after a...well, a pretty light day :) I practice about 5 hours a day here, but I'm hardly ever ragged and turned topsy-turvy like I constantly was in Boston. I used to run around like a chicken with no head and certainly no caloric break/sustenance from classes to rehearsals to work to gigs to errands to Whole Foods to Back Bay Yoga to Harvard in order to squeeze in some time with Lakshmi to Symphony Hall to NYC for the weekend to the MFA for a cultural 'break' to Music Espresso to NEC for lessons to the freakin' Cape for a concert to...where, the moon???? Yes, all that in one day. Whereas in Detmold, I wake up, do my hour of yoga, shower, enjoy a nice breakfast, and practice from 10-1. The siesta here from 1-4 annoyed me at first, but I actually really like it now. It literally forces me to make time to eat, read, study, cook dinner for later that night, and just enjoy my life. For example, I sat outside under 70 degrees of warm sunshine in the beautiful garden (I think that my house was planted right smack in the middle of Frances Hodgson Burnett's "The Secret Garden"...well, minus the whole English rose garden thing) and read Harry Potter in Spanish for two hours. I can't remember the last time I did something like that. It was probably in Chicago; definitely not in Boston. Busy bee Boston. It's often warmer outside than inside the house! This isn't because of the American tendency to keep the house air conditioned to the point of creating an icebox. The walls of the house are up to 1.5 feet thick, requiring an immense amount of heat to keep the entire place at a comfortably warm temperature. I live in a real Valhalla fortress. Consequently, I have to prance around the house in sweaters and legwarmers. Such is the price to pay when you don't actually pay anything for your rent. It ain't so much to ask. We had a quartet meeting today at my place over tea to figure out who our second violinist should be. Our first violinist revealed that she was actually dismissed from her teacher's studio in Detmold and therefore has to attend a different Hochschule come next autumn. She spoke in such fast & heated German that I wasn't sure if I got all the details, but I think there was some misunderstanding with a former student in the studio, and it resulted in her getting the boot via an SMS from the professor. An SMS...geez, what a jerk. He didn't even have the decency to call her in person! I can't imagine how I'd feel if I was in that position. For her sake, I hope we'll have a good quartet experience. My quest for a violist in our Brahms Piano Quintet group still continues, because I certainly don't have the viola chops to play that viola part, and nor do I want to. An early Beethoven quartet is one thing - a mid-Romantic massive Brahms piano quintet is an entirely different sort of beast. I'm listening to Rent at the moment ("Ginsburg, Dylan, Cunnigham, and Cage...") - what memories it brings back! I feel a bit sad sometimes, in a nostalgic way, knowing that these years and scenes of jumping around the house with Neetu while lip-syncing all the words perfectly are more or less a figment of the past. We do, however, manage to keep the kids inside of us alive by still fighting over borrowed sweaters/who does the dishes next :) My latest website find is Hilary Hahn's online journal (www.hilaryhahn.com/journal), a record of a 'nomadic musician...a modern day troubadour.' I've always respected her as a musician, a mature, seemingly-down-to-earth human being (uncommon among famous concert artists), and now, as a lyrical writer. Unlike many concert artists involved in the solo act thing, her journals and attitude towards people makes her quite approachable and 'normal.' She also has good string player practice tips, too, for those of us who need them (I always do). I bid thee farewell by offering a parting blessing for the wonderful Kurt Vonnegut, who passed away today at the age of 84. "God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian," is one of the last books I read before moving from the States, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. We'll miss you.