A.Word.A.Day -- AWADmail Issue 1134

My wife and I have performed for years as a guitar/accordion/vocal duo. We were booked to play at a small-town festival in Ohio. The venue was an outdoor amphitheater. We arrived and were pleased to see a good crowd of families in the audience. The act immediately before us was none other than Ronald McDonald. He did his thing and left the stage, and as we approached the microphones, psyched up for our big show, the entire audience exited the amphitheater and we did our set for a crowd of no one. Many of the musicians we know have a list of “gigs from hell”. This one is near the top of ours.
-Joel Knepp, Columbus, Ohio (joelknepp outlook.com)

As a professional pianist, I have released three solo albums in the last six years, including one featuring J.S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations. I have also performed multiple times at the Kennedy Center and at some fun venues and festivals with pop bands and opera singers in Europe. Although it’s not always the most steady of a career, I feel very lucky to do what I love.
-Anne Rainwater, El Cerrito, California, (aprainh2o yahoo.com)

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Please enjoy listening to these tunes that I made from this week’s musical words. The tunes begin by introducing the notes in correct word-as-notes order; they retain that order for the opening phrase, then mix them up, and eventually bring other notes in.
ADAGE March: song, score,
ACCEDE Tarantella: song, score
EFFACE Waltz: song, score
FACADE Waltz: song, score
BEACHHEAD Two-Step: song, score
Though I taught math in high school and community college, I remained active in the University of Michigan Gilbert & Sullivan Society, Ann Arbor Civic Theatre, Ann Arbor’s Comic Opera Guild, Ypsilanti Symphony Orchestra, Forest Winds Woodwind Quintet, and others.
-David Goldberg, Pinckney, Michigan (montedoro44 gmail.com)

I am a musician in the Vakili Band. Thus far, my love of words has led me to write poems, become a thespian (!), sit for the bar (and pass!), represent biotech startups (I adore ACGT), and lead a rock’n’roll band through three albums, two East Coast tours, and countless dive bars (not the legal kind).
-Lily Vakili, Montclair, New Jersey (lilyvakiliband gmail.com)

I live in a little-known city in Germany, Kassel, where the Brothers Grimm lived for some time and collected their fairy tales but also worked on their Deutsches Wörterbuch (German Dictionary). I have been making music my whole life. While my friends improved their English by listening to pop songs, I only heard the music. When they heard “There is a house in New Orleans” I just heard A minor-C-D-F.
Because in Germany, B means B flat, here is a little joke:
Which fish is farting one half note deeper?
Barsch (German for perch) because that fish has a B in front of his Arsch (German for ass).
After I figured that I am not a great singer and lyricist I asked my wife to fill this gap. Her mother tongue is Japanese. And although I don’t understand the words she is singing I enjoy the musical effort that the language is making to the songs I record. Take a listen.
-Philipp Hoffmann, Kassel, Germany (veaumort gmail.com)

I have been a professional musician these past 50+ years. Some countries use the solfege system to name notes. Wherein the major diatonic scale we know as C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C they name those notes as Do-Re-Mi-Fa-Sol-La-Ti-Do (in their “fixed-Do” system, not the “moveable Do” like here in America). You may have heard that Julie Andrews song. Which brings me to my contribution to this week’s theme. It’s the most musical city in America: Laredo in Colorado. You can plunk it on the piano as A-D-C.
-Joel Mabus, Portage, Michigan (joel.mabus pobox.com)

My primary occupation for 45 years has been piano tuning and repair. Many tuners these days use an electronic tuning aid for setting the pitch of each note, but I have always tuned by ear. While most pianos have 88 notes, there are usually more than 200 strings. Setting all these in the right relation to each other by ear is like solving an elaborate puzzle. It is actually the interference patterns between the harmonics of the strings that guide you in placing the individual notes precisely. It is fascinating to work within this complex world of vibrations.
When I attend a concert where a piano I have tuned is featured, it is satisfying to know that I am an invisible but critical part of the performance.
-Paul Glover, Smithers, Canada (pglover bulkley.net)

I’ve been hooked since I was 14, when during a working visit to my aunt’s sheep farm in Colorado, as I was in the barn shirking my chores, I came across a boxy shape. Opening the dusty case, I found a gold-plated King alto saxophone. Mice had nested in the bell, and the neck was missing, repurposed by my enterprising cousins as a cannabis pipe and then forever lost. Music abuse problems can be hereditary, it turns out. My grandfather had thrown his hard-earned silver miner’s wages away on the brand new instrument in 1925 and played it in ragtime bands in raucous mining town saloons and social clubs. My father, similarly afflicted, earned decent money playing swing tunes at high-school dances and weddings. I’ve since toured up and down the West Coast, sharing the stage with some recognizable names, performing at many venues of respectable size (if not reputation) and major festivals, including several memorable shows at Burning Man.
-Matt Nash, Whidbey Island, Washington (mattanash live.com)

Hearing the Harry James records my family owned, I knew by the time I was eight years old, I wanted to play the trumpet. So, I approached Mr. Barkman, the school’s music teacher and, that night, proudly showed my parents the brass beauty in the beat-up case he’d issued me. It only took days for me to realize how much I hated practicing and it only took a few weeks for Mr. Barkman to take the trumpet back, saying I didn’t “show any promise”. However, it took years for me to get the real lesson: there is a big difference between wanting to play the trumpet and wanting to learn to play the trumpet.
-Ken Kirste, Sunnyvale, California (kkkirste sbcglobal.net)

I belong to a 100-person, auditioned, mainly classical singing group, the New Haven Chorale. When the pandemic struck, there were almost immediately news stories about the dangers of spreading Covid within a singing group, placing singing in a special category of seriously dangerous activities. We suspended in-person rehearsals and went virtual.
-Linda Waldman, Guilford, Connecticut (walss aol.com)

I’m a writer and drummer in New York City. I don’t play much these days; instead I’m writing about drumming. My book-in-progress is about my unlikely 1970s teen dream of playing drums in a rock band, setting me on a collision course with my dad who said “Girls don’t play drums” and with my own naivete about marching to your own beat. It’s about choices--convention/security versus rebellion/risk--and learning that following your heart ultimately leads you home. More (and clips of me on drums) here.
-Robin Eileen Bernstein, New York, New York (robin robineileenbernstein.com)

I founded and lead the Reno/Tahoe group The String Beings. A caller wanted to know how many players were in my quartet. I paused for a second, then replied, “One more than a trio and one less than a quintet.” I don’t recall being hired for that one.
-Van Vinikow, Reno, Nevada (stringbeings aol.com)

One of the highlights of my life as a composer was the Soo Line March. As a member of the clarinet section of the Stevens Point (Wisconsin) City Band, I played many summer concerts in the park adjacent to the railroad tracks. Over the years, it was amazing how many times trains would come noisily through town just at the time that the band was playing a piece with a clarinet cadenza.
In 1978 I decided to write the locomotive into the score, and asked the Soo Line to have an engine beside the park at concert time. Then I wrote a march in traditional form, adding a cadenza for three clarinets and locomotive whistle and bells as the break strain in the trio. We sent a band member to the locomotive to play it at the proper time, following cues from the director, since in the cab of the train, the noise of the idling engine masked the sound of the band. Great fun was had by all, and next year the Soo Line March was again performed with the locomotive. However, when we contacted the Soo Line office in 1980, they sent regrets; they couldn’t afford to repeat it that summer. It turned out that the track by the bandstand was the main line through that section of Wisconsin, and rescheduling all the trains had been an expense in thousands of dollars.
The city built a bandstand on the banks of the Wisconsin River, and I rewrote the locomotive part of Soo Line March to be played by the percussion section. We played it once or twice, but it just wasn’t the same.
-Eugenia Schuler, Kerrville, Texas (mushillsschuler gmail.com)

Neither my wife nor I have a shred of musical talent. Yet somehow, the four-letter DNA alphabet you reference managed in our case to recombine in a way that produced a musical daughter. As a young adult, she labored in obscurity for 14 years as a total unknown trying to make it as a musical theater actor in New York. Then the stars freakishly aligned in her favor. Two years ago she landed the part of understudy for Fanny Brice in the Broadway revival of Funny Girl. This is the role that made Barbra Streisand famous. Still, she was only the understudy, with the hope of going on perhaps a handful or two of times over the course of a year or so.
When Covid and other illnesses and issues made first one leading lady and then the next unavailable, she was thrust into the limelight and wound up playing the role over 180 times. She won critical acclaim as well as various awards and was approached for TV, magazine, and newspaper interviews. She was named by various publications as Broadway breakout star of the year. Within the small world of New York theater, suddenly she became a name.
Here she is two weeks ago headlining a Broadway benefit concert for LGBTQ health and social services: video (5 min.)
-Steve Benko, New York, New York (stevebenko1 gmail.com)

I’m a singer/guitarist. I play all types of gigs and styles of music: weddings, divorces, birthday parties, proposals, bathroom remodels (true story!), memory care, retirement homes, busking, and more. I’ll even write comedic/satirical songs for the featured birthday person. Half off for any previous bride or groom that used my services for their first wedding.
-Bruce Brill, Oakland, California (bruce.bruce sbcglobal.net)

“Play your own way,” said Thelonious Monk, and that’s what I’ve done. I’ve used at least one word I learned from you, scamander, as a composition title. It’s on my album “Covid Variation”, which you can hear HERE.
-Denman Maroney, Durfort, France (denman denmanmaroney.com)

I combined my two careers as writer and musician in authoring The Musician, a novel that captures the life as shared by musicians everywhere, from immersion in their craft to the joy of playing music well and with others to the frustrations associated with committing a lifetime to such an unstructured and typically unrewarded career.
-Mike Shaw, Atlanta, Georgia (shaw shadecommunications.com)

I’ve been a cellist for 50 years and have performed in Woodstock 25, Attica State Prison, weddings, small halls and clubs, etc. For the past eight years I have played with the United Nations Symphony. But my favorite has always been playing chamber music with friends just for fun.
-Charles Baldwin, Darien, Connecticut (charlesbaldwin yahoo.com)

I play the guitar and trumpet, and have recorded a CD. I never got famous from it, but it’s a record of my songs that I’ve written, and maybe something that my daughter will care for when she gets older.
-Bruce Nash, California (Brucefnash outlook.com)

I am a singer-songwriter, who has been writing at least one song a day since 2012. I have 20 solo albums.
-T Five Valladares, Boulder, Colorado (tfiver hotmail.com)

I have been creating music for over 50 years now, starting with piano miniatures when I was 19. I have continued to create and release music to this day. Most of what I do is experimental, “avant garde” as in the advanced music of the 1960s-70s.
-Tom Furgas, Youngstown, Ohio (tofu4879 gmail.com)