a midway bikelog

I spent a delightful afternoon Saturday taking turns attending a chamber music recital and playing with kids. The recital was organized by my friend Tracy, who played bassoon, and featured music from the Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos. The turn-taking was so I and another friend Lee could attend, and so our kids (who wouldn’t sit still for that long) could play together. The area around Ferguson Hall turned out to be a good place for kids to run around for a hour with art and snack breaks, and the plan worked great. I don’t have the program with me for the exact pieces, but got to sit in on the French first half with a bassoon/flute duo and a bassoon/flute/violin trio.

I’m not at all well-versed in chamber music; it’s sort of like my knowledge of wine, where i know bits that i like, but don’t necessarily remember where they’re from later on. I did enjoy this quite a bit. The bassoon was particularly interesting not just because i know the player, but because i don’t know if i’ve ever heard one alone in this sort of small group setting before. In many parts it greatly resembled a cello, as they share tonal ranges, but it also seemed to have a greater variety of tonal colors and overall sounded much more agile and versatile than a cello. I may be biased (and uninformed), of course, but it all sounded wonderful. I look forward to hearing the recording of the second half with the bassoon solo and the featured piece from Bachianas brasileiras, No. 6 for flute and bassoon.

Sunday was a lower-key day spent at home doing the usual sort of cleaning and fixing and playing around the house. I finally replaced the split (frozen, i was a dumbass and left the hose on) outside spigot so we could file up the wading pool. It was a beautiful day so we spent most of it outside, and the girls spent most of it covered in mud (see previous outside hose note). They made some beautiful mud pies and mud cakes and all sorts of mud-based creations.