How falling in love led to the worst arts and crafts project

I don’t know how other people do it. I see performers and scholars out here churning out papers/articles, touring, writing books, working on music, releasing recordings, teaching full loads of students, winning grants…and here I am, flailing around trying to figure out if I can get special dispensation from the universe to somehow get an extra 6 hours in the day just to catch up on all the work I need to do. Because I feel so behind: there is work on the Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel concerto I’ve left outstanding for months longer than I’d like, meetings I haven’t set up and emails I haven’t sent, patchwork I need to do in the recording studio, music I was supposed to start learning ages ago but haven’t started, performances I haven’t gotten around to booking…aaaarghhhhh.

[throws blanket over head and crawls into corner]

So why did I start embarking on even more time-consuming work this week? Let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start.

Back in 2021 Samantha Ege released her album Fantasie Nègre: The Piano Music of Florence Price and I fell in love. Specifically, Price’s Fantasie Nègre No. 1 made me feel feelings in a way that I hadn’t experienced since the first time I heard Chopin’s Ballade in G Minor as an angsty teenager. The section that starts around 7:14 in the video below grabbed me so fiercely I felt chills.