Selling the Piano, part deux

Since we’ve had absolutely zero inquiries from the posters about the piano for sale, I decided to esca­late it a bit. It’s now listed on Craigslist. I tried to base the list­ing some­what on the poster (left out some of the mar­ket­ing, which to me always looks cheesier on web pages). If this doesn’t work, we’ll have to esca­late to the next level, which will be, I think, the Boston Globe clas­si­fieds. I’m hop­ing it doesn’t come to that, but we’ll have to see.

Also, more doc­u­ments have arrived, notably a sealed tran­script from the Uni­ver­sity of Cincin­nati. That leaves the let­ters from HR Depart­ments, pass­port pho­tos, a com­plete phys­i­cal and the noti­fi­ca­tion from the Cam­bridge Police Depart­ment. I’m not too wor­ried about any of these except for the last two (and of those two the very last one for sure). Oh, and all the forms for Cana­dian immi­gra­tion filled out, which is pretty mam­moth as well.

I’ll be in Van­cou­ver again in about 3 weeks, this time for a Multimedia/Technology/Internet con­fer­ence at the geo­desic dome that houses the BC Sci­ence Cen­tre. Ah, what a plea­sure it is to spell that with the ‘r’ before the ‘e’ again (takes me back to my days as a British student).

Remembering a Famous Conductor

When I was grow­ing up in Bal­ti­more, the con­duc­tor of the sym­phony orches­tra was a man with the impres­sive name of Sergiu Com­mis­siona. I found out that he died sud­denly yes­ter­day of a heart attack in Okla­homa. He’d been guest con­duct­ing all over the world and I’m guess­ing that when he didn’t show up for morn­ing rehearsals, they found him in his hotel room.

I’m prob­a­bly what one would call a ‘sym­phony brat’. I used to hang around for rehearsals, and after con­certs, I’d go back­stage to the Green Room and talk to the per­form­ers (some­times get­ting an auto­graph to add to my col­lec­tion). I got to see Mae­stro Com­mis­siona on a fairly reg­u­lar basis. It’s not that I was par­tic­u­larly drawn to the sym­phony; it was a fam­ily affair. My father was the orchestra’s staff pianist — that’s the pianist who plays the piano parts in non-concerto pieces, includ­ing pieces like Saint-Saën’s Organ Sym­phony and Respighi’s Pines of Rome, as well as the celesta solos (like the Sugar Plum fairy in the Nut­cracker Suite and the like). My mother was an occa­sional vocal soloist with the sym­phony as well, and opened one sea­son singing in the last move­ment of Mahler’s Fourth Sym­phony. If you’ve never heard it, it’s a big part, more a sym­phonic lieder than a move­ment from a sym­phony. Between their work with the sym­phony and my inter­est in the music (and per­haps some of the glam­our) I was as reg­u­lar as a 14-year old kid can be at sym­phony con­certs. Com­mis­siona was a good con­duc­tor, if a bit eccen­tric. He could make old chest­nuts like Beethoven Piano Con­certi or Dvo­rak Sym­phonies sound like new again. He was not par­tic­u­larly clear or pre­cise, which made him mad­den­ingly dif­fi­cult to fol­low (as my father would have to report after gru­el­ing rehearsals). How­ever, when it came time to make the orches­tra give an inspired and grip­ping per­for­mance, you could count on him every time. As the sym­phony brochures would quote from some critic years ago: “Light­ning has struck the podium.”. While I wouldn’t quite go that far, I’d def­i­nitely say that he had inter­est­ing musi­cal ideas, along with a ton of pure charisma, and he wasn’t afraid to use it.

Com­mis­siona was an impres­sive man to meet as well. He was from Roma­nia and hence had an accent sim­i­lar to Bela Lugosi’s. He was tall with a hawk nose, wild wavy hair and flashy clothes. He talked fast, and moved swiftly, almost brusquely. He was mar­ried to a bal­le­rina (also Roman­ian) and they were cer­tainly in every sense, jet-setters. As Barry Levin­son shows in his films, Bal­ti­more in the 60s and 70s was a pretty provin­cial town, so these Euro­pean cognoscenti were quite the celebri­ties for us. Like many, I was partly in awe of him, but that changed over time.
When I went away to col­lege in Cincin­nati, Com­mis­siona would some­times come to town to guest con­duct the Cincin­nati Sym­phony. On those vis­its, I would take time off from my classes and go to many of the rehearsals. What bet­ter train­ing for a young music stu­dent who was even doing a lit­tle con­duct­ing him­self? ( but not much yet, as I really didn’t con­duct much until grad school) I’d meet him in the morn­ing, go with him to rehearsal (car­ry­ing his scores), and aft­ward we’d go to lunch at his hotel. We talked about music a lot. We were both big fans of Scri­abin, and I was thrilled to hear that he liked his music too. Being a Scri­abin fan is like being in a small secret club; Scriabin’s music is exotic, com­plex and idio­syn­cratic. Peo­ple tend to either love it or hate it. Although I played the part of a young and eager aide-de-camp at his side, we enjoyed each other’s com­pany, and I looked for­ward to his vis­its.
He was kind of funny, too. Once when he was rehears­ing Bartok’s Piano Con­certo No. 2, he had just fin­ished rehears­ing the first move­ment. As they fin­ished the read-through of the move­ment and took a breath, he imme­di­ately called out ‘Strings too loud!’. The string sec­tion chuck­led; They hadn’t played a sin­gle note. Bar­tok scored the first move­ment of that con­certo for piano and winds alone.

With our upcom­ing move to Van­cou­ver, I was look­ing for­ward to see­ing Sergiu again, this time as an adult. He had been the Van­cou­ver Symphony’s con­duc­tor until 2000 or so and I was hop­ing that our paths might have crossed again there. It would have been nice.
Instead, I’m left with some nice mem­o­ries of the grande Mae­stro who I got to hang out with as a stu­dent. I’m happy I have those, at least.

Create yourself as a South Park Character. Sweet!

I guess this is what I’d look like if I did a guest appear­ance on South Park:

You can make these at the Plan­ear­ium (if you have to ask why I left out the ‘t’, never mind), South Park Stu­dio (ver­sion 2) Dude, this is hella-good!

<update: I hear that this may be some­thing that many have seen already. Oh well, let’s hope it’s not so 1990’s for everyone.>

Back in Town

Back from a visit to my par­ents in Bal­ti­more, and try­ing to get caught up on email and snail mail. The doc­u­ments needed for our immi­gra­tion to Canada are now start­ing to flow in. So far I’ve gotten:

1. Birth Cer­tifi­cate
2. Mar­riage Certificate
3. Sealed Tran­script from Cam­bridge University

Now the remain­ing doc­u­ments include:

1. Sealed Tran­script from the Uni­ver­sity of Cincin­nati (for my under­grad degree). Have sent away for it, but noth­ing yet.
2. Let­ters from the HR Depart­ments of my last 3 jobs attest­ing to the fact that I did in fact work there (on Com­pany sta­tionery). I have to get mov­ing on this.
3. A form from the Cam­bridge, Eng­land Police Depart­ment con­cern­ing my stay there as a stu­dent in 1983 (I don’t have a clue how to pro­ceed here).
4. Passport-type pho­tos. That should be easy.
5. Results of a com­plete Phys­i­cal. Have to get this sched­uled soon.

That’s most of it, I think. That’s not includ­ing the port­fo­lio of my work that I’m try­ing to put together. I’ll be back in Van­cou­ver for a Multimedia/Internet con­ven­tion at the end of the month, and hope­fully should be able to deliver some of these doc­u­ments as well as my other infor­ma­tion to the offices of our lawyer there at that time.
Slowly but surely.

writ­ten while lis­ten­ing to: Tubin — Sonatina in D minor — ii. Andante sostenuto, quasi largo from the album “Tubin — The Com­plete Piano Music” by Vardo Rummessen