What’s been happening
Greetings friends (if anyone is listening). It has been many weeks since an entry in this journal and I am resolved to start entering weekly. Hope you will come back for the occasional bit of news and some opinion here and there on the state of things. I have been ill for some time now with some sort of cocktail involving depression and anxiety. I’m being treated by a cocktail of medications – recently simplified – and regular visits to a physician and to a psychologist. This business will BEAT YOU UP and the reason I mention it here, is that I am surprised and somewhat consolled by the number of friends who have told me they have suffered similarily. After four weeks of intense symptoms, I have started playing saxophone again (and thanks to a tune up by the expertly patient and thorough Ken Fornetran) my horn is playing very easily. Also ventured out to the symphony last night to hear a couple of Beethoven piano concertos, the fourth and fifth. Couldn’t help but reflect on the enormity of these compositional accomplishments while he was going deafer and deafer. Apparently he played the 4th concerto in public (badly but passionately) and that was his last go at it. He never played the most famous 5th (The Emporer). Reports from the perfomance of the fourth concerto performance is that he was slightly improvisational rather than literal in his rendering of the piece, but that wasn’t too far off the norm for him anyway. INSPIRING! And here is me battling away at my little disease. Nothing…I tell you….nothing in light of what Ludwig went through. Perhaps because he was so legendarily contancorous that his personality just fueled his ambition and confidence, even when his diminishing physical attributes dictated he should hang up his spurs, so to speak.
I am looking forward to getting back to the university. It has been a month and I have many friendships to renew and new ones to develop. We should be getting in some of the Renee Rosnes material for our January concert with her fairly soon. I can’t wait to put that concert together. Should be fun. Just have to get stronger and build up my resilience so I don’t act so erratically when I get back there.
Hope you will keep checking in now and again. The Scott Robinson project (The Heart of Summer on REACO Recordings) is still available and can be purchased in a number of means including on PureTracks and in the very near future, I am told, it will be available on iTunes as well. Saw Scott in New York in August. Trish and I stayed at his and Sharon’s home over in Teaneck, NJ after attending his regular C-Melody gig with Eddy Davis at the Cajun. Both Trish and I sat in despite some serious symptoms of the the current disease, I apparently played well (or so Trish says).
Peace and good will
Paul