Laundry and Thirds.

Today I sold a ticket to Osvaldo Golijov's mother. Golijov is a locally-based Jewish/Latin-American composer who wrote a piece of regrettable minimalist choral music I sang at BCF, but also one of the songs about the moon which Lauren sang in this past year's recital, and a pretty sweet opera. Anyway, his mother was not responsible for any of this and is quite adorable and lives in Newton.

I am home today for a bit to do some laundry and learn 90 (yes, 90) pages of Christmas carol harmony. I am hoping it is basically singing Christmas carols .... only a third lower.

I read "Doubt" finally last night on the T. I was so riveted that I did the whole feet spread widely apart risk barrelling into dude next to me just to turn the page thing. It was a short play, but almost cinematic. Shanley is so good at showing through dialogue that I almost envisioned the whole thing set, as it is, in a drab Catholic middle school, but with secrets and desires and personalities and insecurities sort of floating around the characters all the time, like little tinkerbells. In this country, there are so many things to fight about, to care about, and to sacrifice oneself for. Sociologically, it is hard to imagine caring so much about some of them until someone like Shanley can literally plunk you down in the middle of things and force you to care, big time.

We had our first "holiday concert" rehearsal last night at CpM. I was afraid that I would, as has been the cast of the last 5 years, not really be ready to Feel the Spirit as they say. But the music we're doing it really legit -- Poulenc, Pinkham, Handel, etc., and if there is some kind of musical/mathematical formula for joy, they have to have discovered it and put it in there. I think the concert will be something that's really good for me to do. I have to find my own way to celebrate this time of year.