paulde @ MindSay

a different kind of practicing.

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piano

funeral

brahms

intermezzo

monday evening at around 6:30PM, a longtime family friend of ours passed away, due to complications from unexpectedly quickly advancing colon cancer. her husband, knowing for some time that this was inevitable and at best simply a matter of time and that she may go at any moment, had previously asked my father to sing an arrangement of "danny boy," i.e. "londonderry air," along with a traditional chinese song, at her funeral. he, in turn, asked me to find an arrangement of it, and i stumbled upon this one through google..which i found to my liking, as it was arranged for piano as accompaniment to vocals, and was elegant but not terribly difficult to play.

upon learning of her death, my father callled, and relayed to me that her husband would like me to choose some soft music for what i assume he meant was the viewing/wake. not having an extensive collection of sheet music (and wanting to avoid anything particularly popular and/or moving that i do have sheet music for, i.e. my heart will go on, seasons of love, various jazz selections and disney, etc.), my only immediate thought was back to a brahms intermezzo i'd attempted on my own before, op. 118 no. 2, from his shorter works. i'd previously played no. 3 from the same opus as a high-level solo in festival competition, and the substantial difference between it and the piece before was always remarkable to me (when a page of music is almost more black than it is white, you know you're in for months of practicing and hammering out music absolutely RIFE with accidentals). the sections of the piece after the first however, take on a somewhat dramatically changed sound, so i've decided to restrict myself to that first section and perhaps the bridge. if anyone has any suggestions of course, i'm more than open..

on a somewhat lighter note, got back in touch with erin, chatting on the phone for a while regarding her stay with me at the new house, the night before we fly off to convention (coming up from lynchburg, about two and a half hours via any major route). being that this will be my first year in secondary membership—been a while for them—along with the lack of the return of many old faces this year and the coming of many new ones, i'm curious as to how things will pan out. suppose we'll soon see..

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