thirteen ways

No, that title doesn’t refer to the Carter Triple Duo, which we haven’t suddenly added to our repertoire. Nor does it refer to the meter changes at rehearsal letter A in Thomas Adès’s Catch (almost, but not quite). Nor does it have anything to do with counting ballots in Chicago or anywhere else — this post is officially an election-free zone (mostly, save one link in the first sentence of the next paragraph). I’m actually thinking about the programs we’ve been giving recently and the way this fall has shaped up. Maybe I’m also partly trying to describe why the blog’s been relatively silent, recently….

Last week we (well, most of us (Lisa was traipsing around the country playing Varese. Always a good thing to do with your time off)) were home in Chicago, where we rehearsed, voted, answered emails, ate/slept/showered, crammed a couple month’s worth of social life into eight days — basically we did everything except perform. That was the first week since September without a performance, and unusually for us, those previous four weeks featured four different programs. Our first week was spent in Chicago at the beginning of October, during which we prepared a program of Benjamin, Boulez, Messiaen, Ptaszynska, Levinson, and Takemitsu for University of Chicago Presents’ Messiaen Festival. Second week was in Richmond, preparing for and recording a disc of works by Benjamin Broening, one of our colleagues on faculty at the University of Richmond. Week three was spent going to and from Australia to play The Only Moving Thing, and week four we played our new program Meanwhile (works of Adès, Agócs, DeSantis, Donatoni, Etezady, Hartke, and Rzewski) in Arizona and Colorado. Then last week was off (see first sentence of this paragraph), so that makes this current week number six, and we’re back in Richmond preparing for the Third Practice Festival, where we’ll perform together and separately in works by Balter, Broening (a repeat from week two!), Chandler, Hird, Maltis, Mok, Saariaho, Stebbins, and Tulev (a world premiere) . Next week (seven), we go to Oberlin and New York to do our American Mavericks program for the first time (repeat Reich from week three and Rzewski from four, but collaborate with live musicians (current Oberlin students) on the Reich Double Sextet for the first time and add a world premiere by Rzewski to the mix), and then travel to Vermont to do Meanwhile. The following week (eight, if you’re still keeping count) we go back home to do our first Harris program of the season, our collaboration with Glenn Kotche (in addition to his music, we’re playing Rzewski (again!) and Andriessen (first time!)), and then we fly to Europe to play The Only Moving Thing in Liverpool and Rotterdam.

And then, believe it or not, we’re taking off the week of Thanksgiving.

So that’s seven different programs in eight weeks: Messiaen festival, Broening disc, The Only Moving Thing, Meanwhile, Third Practice, American Mavericks, and Kotche. Yes, there’s some overlap, but you get the idea. Don’t get me wrong, we LOVE being busy and playing concerts, but we’ve never had to do this many different concerts in such a short period before. It’s definitely not as easy as it used to be, with the travel and logistics not seeming to get any easier the more years (working on thirteen of those, BTW) we’ve spent on the road. On the other hand, that’s a lot of cities and schools that want to present us, and people all over the world who want to come to those concerts. Much of this rep is among the best that we’ve ever played: I’m particularly fond of the Adès, Hartke, Benjamin, and Andriessen. Doing a tour in which you get to play with a younger generation of students from your alma mater on one program and a member of Wilco on another isn’t too shabby. And if you’ve gotta fly thousands of miles, Australia and Europe are pretty cool destinations, after all.

So forgive us if we’re not blogging too much. There’s lots going on, and we’re trying to give great performances everywhere we go. We promise we’ll tell you all about them. Later.

Oh, and yeah: we’re all now premier members of United’s Mileage Plus program. Booyah.

(Nick adds: even the cello is a premier member. Yeah, you heard right.)