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 By far, the most common search string directing people to this site is “Charles Barr.” Charles was a member of the Cleveland Orchestra Bass Section and was tragically killed last summer, having been struck by a truck while cycling. Richard Waugh, CO violist, embarked on a project to cement the memory of his dear friend and named it Riding For Charles. Today, Waugh dipped the front tire of his bicycle in the Atlantic Ocean following a 17 day coast-to-coast ride to raise money for the Charles Barr Memorial Chair .
I haven’t even had a chance to read all the posts (Waugh posted daily, via phone dictation to people back home), but I have been deeply moved by this endeavor. It is so uplifting to see someone take up a cause so personal. It’s great to do charity events and arts events, but I believe that depth in our daily lives is achieved in the presence of our friends. Waugh poignantly reflects:
After I left the beach, I did break down for a moment. I’ve been focused on this ride for a long time, and now it’s over. I thought of Charles and the RidingforCharles project and how that project has also come to an end. It’s bitter-sweet. But the Charles Barr Memorial Chair will exist as long as the Cleveland Orchestra does, and through this ride I have come to know Eric and Cathy and am pleased to call them dear friends.
My best wishes to Waugh and the Barrs (pictured), who were able to visit with Waugh during some of the precious down time the riders had. Please consider contributing to the fund.
I’ve been gone. I’m back. You’ll be hearing about why and seeing my new project soon!
 The traffic on this site has nearly tripled in the last five days! I would love for this to keep up.
Look for musings on the recent work to my bass very soon!
 Many, many thanks to be.jazz for the link. I’ve discovered a lot of interesting reads through it. There are great photographs to boot.
Oh, and he linked the USF Jazz blog a while back!
 Win Hinkle veered from his usual topic of discourse to talk about amplification in jazz; recounting his experience at a Ravi Coltrane soundcheck. Win is a tells-it-like-it-is kind of guy and I don’t always agree with him, but his post makes a pretty strong point.
As a bassist, I find I usually need to amplify when playing anything larger than a duo/trio in a small room. Now, there are plenty of purists who go all-acoustic, but I think it’s realistic to use an amp. What I think is absolutely uncalled for is miking drums and horns in small rooms. It’s dismaying to see big-name pros bringing entourages of soundmen to club dates. As a musician, I spend so much time working on playing with sensitivity that I cannot imagine ruining that with trillion-watt sound systems.
Add Win’s blog to your reader; you may not always agree, but it’s bound to be a good read.
 I played a benefit for the the volunteers of WUSF this week at the USF alumni Center. You can see pictures of the event here. Not only does my right hand look awful, but I have a nasty case of bassface. ugh.
 DJA was last seen liveblogging the Bang on a Can festival in NYC. Art music with a punk rock ethos (whatever that means).
It’ amusing to read through Darcy’s posts and see the effects of time, caffeine, and sleep deprivation on his posts. It’s commendable to stay the course (oh, brother) for twenty-six hours of challenging music, but DJA stepped it up a notch by liveblogging it. Now, if he had upped his pictures live, too, now that would be the end of it…
 Apparently, I have had this link saved on my delicious since Halloween. It was just brought back to my attention by this thread at Talkbass. The generous webmaster of this site has compiled links to listening and purchasing sites (iTunes and amazon.com, chiefly) for every tune in the Real Book 5th edition. I am a firm believer (as it’s been taught to me) to listen to as many examples of tunes you’re learning and I have 3-10 versions of most tunes in the book, but this is a great place for a jazz musician with a small library to find recordings of tunes they want to learn.
It would be nice if the site had multiple (read: dozens, when available) versions of each tune and noted which were the generally agreed upon “definitive” versions. It could be detrimental to a player to only listen to highly-arranged/-stylized versions as their source material.
Bookmark this one in case anyone ever asks, “Where can I go to hear the tunes in the Real Book?”
 (I am posting this link as soon as I read it in order to beat Jason Heath to the punch. Jason is a wonderful, prolific blogger who posts things with such speed and regularity (at least way more than I can muster) that I find many things tagged toblog in my delicious on his blog long before I even get the chance to read the whole thing. I hope to say I beat him to it just once!)
Michael Hovnanian’s blog climbed to a new height in my book today with a candid look into the day-to-day workplace issues of life in one of the world’s great orchestras. the CSO has been without Music Director for an entire season and the musicians have worked (sometimes dealt) with a series of guest conductors this year.
Michael relates an amusing story (with a protected identity) culled from this week’s rehearsal. I will only give you a teaser:
The grizzled old principal dragged his eyes from the crossword bedeviling him the past three rehearsals. “Maestro,†he drawled.
Eyes rolled in the orchestra and a kind of ‘here we go again’ sigh started up, just what a weary old-time saloonkeeper might do when he knows his place is about to be busted up and there isn’t darn thing he can do about it.
You owe it yourself to read the rest of this.
 I have been in ensembles where things have come just to the brink of falling apart, but I have never found myself in a situation of on-stage restarting. It is comforting to know, however, that I would be in good company if and when that situation arises. My number one, the Cleveland Orchestra, had a restart on-stage recently, as noted by Vivien Schweitzer in Playbillarts: “There must have been something in the Midwestern air last Thursday, as performances in Detroit and Cleveland both came to a grinding halt.” She goes on to quote some of the Donald Rosenberg story in the Cleveland Plain Dealer:
Anyone who has ever played an instrument or sung knows the uncomfortable feeling that creeps in when things don’t quite go as the composer planned.
Listeners aren’t always aware of these discrepancies, but the Cleveland Orchestra’s audience Thursday at Severance Hall was abuzz at intermission about the two interruptions during the last movement of Alban Berg’s Chamber Concerto for Piano, Violin and 13 Wind Instruments.
The piece was moving along when everything suddenly collapsed and music director Franz Welser-Möst uttered, “Sorry.” He took the ensemble back a bunch of bars and tried again, to no better effect.
“You see how difficult this is,” the conductor said to the audience. “It worked this morning.”
Finally, Welser-Möst got his meters straight, and the music proceeded to its inevitable, touching end. One suspects the weekend’s remaining performances will go more smoothly.
Berg’s score deserves the attention. It is a masterpiece of construction and emotional content, albeit one of the most intricate works in the repertoire. The composer flirts with 12-tone techniques as he incorporates hidden codes and the musical names of his close Viennese colleagues Schoenberg and Webern into the fabric.
The opening theme and variations introduce the primary motives and develop them. The second movement is a palindrome that also serves as an impassioned memorial to Schoenberg’s first wife, Mathilde. Material from the first and second movements are combined in the finale, whose tricky textures and rhythms — the cause of Thursday’s distress — are major challenges.
Despite the discomfort, the performance wasn’t an outright disaster, though it also wasn’t very good. Mitsuko Uchida’s forceful, alert pianism and concertmaster William Preucil’s silken violin solos gave vibrant voice to Berg’s profusion of ideas even when the interplay of solo instruments and fine winds failed to achieve coherence or urgency. Welser-Möst’s helpful comments before the performance about the work’s “meaning” often didn’t transfer to the music-making itself.
How mortifying.
Coincidentally, the music (and more) blog, Dragons and Princesses, posted a similar story this week:
Big applause the other night, but the conductor kept going. Low strings didn’t…violins did for a couple notes.
Awkward short silence, then huge cue which most of us correctly understood to be the next forte entrance-so we had skipped a few bars. Fun. Maybe that’s the musical equivalent of things getting lost in cyberspace.
We finished the act, and conductor waves hands in front of face…but we couldn’t figure out if that was an international gesture for “You should really watch me closer next time”, “Something strange just happened on stage”, or “I’m sorry, that was completely my fault”.
It’s only a matter of time for me.
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