All posts filed under: Random DJB Thoughts

This is where I put anything that is not easily categorized…

18 Years, Yet Seems Like Only Yesterday

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Today began a new era.  Today was the first day after Andrew and Claire’s 18th birthday. The twins were born mid-day on a Sunday.  At the moment of their birth I happened to be singing There Is No Rose in the church choir for the last Sunday in Advent in 1992.  Because we adopted Andrew and Claire, we didn’t know they had been born until the next day after receiving a call from the adoption agency.  Eighteen short years later, Andrew, Candice and I were spending December 20th sitting in the Strathmore Music Center listening to Claire and her high school choir join the Cathedral Choral Society in a wonderful Joy of Christmas concert (blackberry photo at the top…don’t expect to see great detail).  It seemed a fitting bookend:  they came in to song, and they entered “adulthood” singing. When friends ask how it feels to be the father of 18-year-olds, I don’t offer any profound insights.  I usually say, “It seems like only yesterday…”  or “Time flies….”  The years and the associated memories have …

Running Dog Guitar Ought-3

Fretboard Journal: The 20th Issue

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The 20th issue of The Fretboard Journal showed up in my mailbox a couple of weeks ago.  Any time a big package shows up in the mailbox these days, the kids get excited as they wait to hear back on their applications to college.  But I’m the one who shouts for  joy when I see the package that turns out to be my favorite magazine. I’m glad to see The Fretboard Journal make it to 20 issues, as I wasn’t sure they could sustain this model.  But the editors keep putting out the best guitar porn on the planet, with stories about both players and builders. Readers who like North Carolina’s Avett Brothers will want to check out this issue.  As always, there are great introductions to builders and players I’ve never heard of (see the Joe Veillette article and his beautiful creations).   I enjoyed a Bobby Long piece about how Dylan’s Gibson J-200 on the front of Nashville Skyline (see photo at the top of the post) inspired a life-long passion.  Paul Mehling, founder …

A Celtic Yule

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On a blustery, cold evening in suburban Washington, a full crowd was warmed by the 11th annual Celtic Yule concert of Robin Bullock and Amy White & Al Petteway.  Hosted by the Institute of Musical Traditions (or IMT), this annual concert is like much of the holiday musical scene – familiar yet welcome. Bullock has a wonderful tone coming out of his Taylor guitar and sounds better with age.  The second half opened with his haunting In the Bleak Midwinter/The First Noel/It Came Upon a Midnight Clear medley.   His solo mandolin pieces exploring the Bach unaccompanied violin and cello suites are a new (for me) part of his show, and they demonstrate his impressive chops.  The Cello Suite #4 is technically demanding (the E-Flat major transposes into B-Flat major on the mandolin), but Bullock made it sing on his beautiful Gibson A-style mandolin from the 1920s.  Check out the video below of Bullock playing solo guitar, and then imagine that it sounds twice as good live. Al Petteway and Amy White played holiday tunes (including …

Music of the Season

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Among the treasures of Washington are the musical offerings at local churches and synagogues throughout the city and at all times of the year.  Today, the Madrigal Singers from Andrew’s high school sang a Music of the Seasons concert at St. John’s Church, Lafayette Square – the “Church of the Presidents” across from the White House. It was a beautiful 30 minute concert that was captured live on the Episcopal Church website.  Click on the link and you can see the entire concert which begins with O come, O come, Emmanuel, moves through Riu, riu, chiu and includes beautiful music by Holst and Parsons.  The mood shifts with the Thomas Dorsey Precious Lord, take my hand and the moving spiritual Ride on, King Jesus.  The Christmas Song and It’s Beginning to Look a Lot like Christmas round out the set. Although I didn’t know it when I arrived for today’s concert, Andrew had a few solos.  I wouldn’t be the proud father if I didn’t point out that you can hear him kick off Riu …

Images in Black and White

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I’ve always loved black-and-white photography. In college I learned my way around a dark room and can still remember the thrill of seeing a photo appear on a blank piece of paper submerged in a tray of chemicals. So naturally, I was overjoyed when our daughter Claire – then a freshman in high school – expressed interest in learning old-style black-and-white photography. Over the course of the past three years, she’s produced some wonderful pictures.  She has a great eye and has become more adventuresome each year. Now as she wraps up her work in high school, she’s put together a small gallery of 12 photos from her class.  Click on the link and you’ll see what she’s posted. And I’ll end below with a photo of Claire’s that’s now on prominent display in her school’s gallery.  This is a picture she took this summer at Mohonk Mountain House which looks like a time piece out of the 1940s. Can you tell…I think she’s great! More to come… DJB

Ave Verum Corpus – Music Made for a Cathedral

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Yesterday Andrew and Claire were confirmed in a magnificent service on a beautiful fall day at the National Cathedral. There’s so much I could cover:  The pageantry.  The three bishops.   The time spent with godparents and their families.  The wonderful discernment process that our Assistant Rector, The Rev. Jered Weber-Johnson, led the twins through over the past two years.  The personal thoughts that ranged from a baptismal service with two infants some 17 years ago to confirmation with two beautiful and talented young adults whom I admire for their thoughtfulness and integrity. Instead (no surprise) I want to talk about the music. The Cathedral Singers – comprised of women sopranos and gentlemen in the counter tenor, tenor, and bass roles – were in residence for yesterday’s service.  Their work was beautiful throughout. But when they sang William Byrd’s Ave Verum Corpus, I just closed my eyes and listened to the wonderful melodies that come together in that magnificent piece reverberate around in the acoustics.  When they finished, I turned to Claire’s godfather and said, …

Bush, O’Brien and Froggy Bottom

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Two of my favorite musicians – plus one of this era’s best guitar builders – are all featured in the Fall 2010 issue of The Fretboard Journal which landed in my mailbox last week.  Let’s begin with those musicians. I’ve been listening to New Grass Revival founder Sam Bush (on the right in the picture by Thomas Petillo at the top) since about 1973.  A few years later I began to hear Hot Rize member Tim O’Brien in a number of venues.  Both are multi-instrumentalists who have stretched the boundaries of bluegrass since coming on the scene. The Fretboard Journal has a laid back yet informative “conversation” between Bush and O’Brien as the cover story of the most recent issue.  The topics are wide-ranging, from playing with jazz pianist Bill Evans at the Blue Note to the night when Bush and Mark O’Connor joined the Hot Rize alter ego band Red Knuckles and the Trailblazers for a set. When the conversation turned to hearing someone for the first time, my mind went back to the …

War Horse

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I saw my first London theatre production this evening.  Wow!  I picked a great one to start. A colleague on the Executive Committee of the International National Trusts Organisation (INTO) pulled together a group of six of us to see the New London Theatre’s production of War Horse, at the end of two days of meetings at the National Trust’s London headquarters.   After a late afternoon tour of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (motto:  it is amazing what you can build when you have the world’s treasures at your disposal), we walked past St. Martin’s in the Field, the National Gallery, and into the theatre district.  London is a great place at night! War Horse is an incredibly moving story of horses conscripted to fight in World War I, told in a remarkable way with life-sized puppets.  The trailer that I’ve attached to the end of the post gives an idea of the realism these actors and puppeteers achieve, but seeing it live tops any video.  As one of my colleagues said, “I knew I …

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

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My daughter Claire goes to a wonderfully creative and nurturing school, where the administration and faculty are especially thoughtful as they work to bring important issues before the students and their families. Which is how I came to read The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. At the beginning of the summer, the Head of School sent out a letter to the entire school family – faculty, rising freshmen, and high school students – and asked everyone (faculty, students, and parents) to read The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot.  This is not the type of book I would normally read.  As a former history major I generally run from books about science.  (I still remember my high school biology teacher grabbing my ears in class one day to demonstrate to my classmates how ear lobes differ from individual to individual.  I wasn’t in favor of involuntary testing on human beings then and I’m still not!) But I’m so pleased we were “required” to read The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks because this is …