Soreness & Salonpas, Herbie Hancock, and a new numbers obsession
Sharon's Weekly Head Dump
I’m coming to you this week with incredibly sore shoulder and upper back muscles, because practicing this week got really big. In preparation for the concerto premiere in June (yipes!) I’ve started letting loose and working on the full-bodied sound you need to produce to be heard over a full orchestra, which translates to me really pushing into the piano. At one point this week I just went for it and banged out a rapid octave arpeggio passage so loudly that my ears were ringing by the time I finished.
In terms of solo repertoire I’m also working on some Liszt and Prokofiev works that are basically very noisy arm workouts, so my muscles and probably my neighbors really hate me right now. I’m writing this with multiple Salonpas patches stuck to my upper back like a bruised prizefighter, the menthol smell so strong that I feel like I’ve just speedrun myself into my inevitable future as a little old minty-smelling Asian granny.
Basically I feel like I’ve been doing this:
But the smell (and the tingling from the patches) suggests I’m this:
Sigh.
In other news, you’ve probably noticed by now that I’m at the Walt Disney Concert Hall so often I’m surprised they haven’t started charging me for utilities. (Hey, do squatter’s rights apply to performance venues? Asking for a friend.) The thing is that of all the literally dozens of times I’ve gone, I’d never seen a jazz performance, even though that’s a thing that happens!
So last last weekend, at my husband’s request (he’s a reformed jazz musician), we went to see Herbie Hancock, and I broke the seal on seeing non-classical acts at the Hall.
I…vaguely knew who Herbie Hancock was prior to this: he’s clearly a big enough name in jazz that I’ve heard of him. I also bought my piano from the guy who apparently supplies Herbie Hancock with his preferred instruments for performances, so up until now when my husband has mentioned Herbie Hancock, I’ve been like, “Oh, we get our pianos from the same guy!” like I am remotely on the same level with a piano supplier as Herbie Hancock.
I, uh, don’t go to jazz concerts, like, ever. I am so not used to how things are done and what the etiquette is, and I was reminded of this when I got myself a program (I am a religious program notes reader!!!) and opened it up and found the program listing for that night…blank.
I then looked up at the people filing in to their seats and realized it was a completely different crowd from the usual people at the classical concerts. First of all, the audience was a lot younger (and by a lot younger, I mean mostly middle-aged). Second of all, I spotted dozens of people wearing hats. Hats! In a concert hall!
After the first couple of pieces (magnificent! I was transfixed! why don’t I go to more jazz concerts etc.), Herbie Hancock introduced the other musicians he was playing with (they were all phenomenal!) with a few remarks about each of them. When he gestured to the trumpet player and introduced him as Terence Blanchard, my husband beside me uttered a little gasp. “Terence Blanchard is a legend,” he said reverently.
I thought, that’s cool, I feel like I’ve heard of him, and then immediately moved on in my mind.
Then, six days later, I saw a bunch of classical music folks posting about Terence Blanchard’s new opera, Champion, and I stopped short.
Wait, the trumpet guy was THAT Terence Blanchard??? The Fire Shut Up in My Bones composer Terence Blanchard???
I always feel like an idiot when I 1) don’t connect things I should know and 2) forget that people can be good at more than one thing, particularly if one of those things is playing the trumpet. (Offense to trumpet players absolutely intended.)
New number game for me to be obsessed with just dropped
Another sign that I might secretly be an old person (you know, in addition to the fact that I play classical music, write with a fountain pen, collect stamps, and print out emails): I obsessively play Sudoku via NYT Games, and might be very good at it at this point.
(If you absolutely must know: I have the weirdest coping mechanism when I’m stressed or overwhelmed or have ceased to function: I pick one pop song with a catchy hook and a hypnotic beat, blast it on repeat in my earbuds so I can barely think, and blast my way through a medium- or difficult-level Sudoku without thinking very much while listening to the one loud pop song over and over again. I explained it to someone else as my way of “microdosing being dumb.” It works wonders. Don’t judge me.)
On my way to my trusty daily Sudoku at one point this week, I noticed something called “Digits (Beta)” in the NYT Games dropdown menu.
Sudoku who? I don’t know her. I have left my former love behind like Romeo completely forgetting that Rosaline existed the moment he laid eyes on Juliet. I love Digits, it is like it was made for me, and if NYT Games was ever so cruel as to put this game behind a paywall, I would immediately fork over however much money it would take for me to get my Digits fix.
I cannot explain the chokehold this game has on me. It’s just…doing math. You get a target number you’re trying to get to, with a bunch of random-seeming other numbers and basic math functions, and you have to math your way to the target. I freaking love it. My new morning routine is: wake up, blow through Digits while having my tea, get each number exactly right, then be sad that I have finished all the Fun Math I will have for the day and there will be no more Fun Math until tomorrow. I might be even weirder than I previously suspected.
The only Easter story I will recognize from now on
Apparently this past Sunday was Easter (and Passover! and Ramadan! a truly blessed weekend for some of the world’s largest religions!) and in honor of the holiday, a friend shared “The 1969 Easter Mass Incident” on Tumblr, which is a hilarious tale in the fashion of the Old Internet.
The First Incident in January when, due to a serious cock-up by the church, all the hosts Father Pat received were moldering and spoiled and probably would have killed someone if he’d actually fed anyone them. But it was the first mass of the year, when a peak number of people came in after vowing to got to church more for new year’s. He couldn’t NOT have communion.
“I’ll bake.” offered Maria, the parish secretary and probably the best baker in the county. “So we have hosts. Jesus will understand.”
Father Patrick, not one to pass up the chance at Maria’s cooking, immediately agreed.
A Host is supposed to be composed solely of unleavened wheat flour and water, which is why they taste terrible. It’s a theological point of some importance relating to Exodus or something but Maria had an important theological counterpoint: Jesus both divine and loves all his children, ergo, Jesus would neither be a nasty bland cracker nor want his children to suffer as such and so instead, she made Mexican wedding cookies.
They were a SPECTACULAR hit. Many praises were heaped upon father patrick for the Much Better Wafers and that they’d be sure to show up next week as long as Maria kept making them. Father Patrick figuring that hey, anything that gets people in the doors is good and really, if it was turning into Jesus once inside the parishioner, did it really matter what the wafers were made of? So he continued to let Maria bake the Hosts, and encouraged her to try out new flavors, like nutmeg and cinnamon.
This went on swimmingly for a few weeks until The Bishop showed up for a surprise visit the same week Maria decided to experiment with rainbow sprinkles.
Dad remembers hearing the bishop through the windows roaring “THE HOLY BODY OF CHRIST DOES! NOT! CONTAIN! RAINBOW! SPRINKLES!”
Which love language is butter
It doesn’t matter how I found this (okay, fine, it was this joke article about what you could get fictional characters on Succession as a wedding gift), but I avidly read this power ranking of fancy butters and my god, I want it, all of it. I would like to try all the butters—all of them.
I have had many a wine flight, the occasional beer flight, and have even found myself in a restaurant with an extensive water menu (organized by minerality)—when will someone take me somewhere, anywhere, with a flight of premium butters???
That’s all for this week—I am going to go rest my sore-ass shoulders now. Have a lovely weekend! 🎹