by Modern Songbook Records | Oct 8, 2012 | Charlie's Blog, News
Is it so wrong to spend an ENTIRE day watching sports on TV? Yesterday I watched the Redskins lose. I followed the Ravens progress ( winning an ugly game against the Chiefs) at the same time
At 3:30 I struggled to follow the dismal end of the Redskins while watching the Nationals finally beat the Cards in the 8th inning. That was a happy happy moment. Big ups to Tyler Moore! Finally, I waited for the Orioles to start , but the rain delay forced me to watch the Packers starting at 8.
Somehow I felt weirdly well-informed and pleased about the way I spent a rainy Sunday.
by Modern Songbook Records | Oct 2, 2012 | Charlie's Blog, News
In 1415 Poggio Bracciolini writes this ( in Latin) :
” We are terrified of future catastrophes and are thrown into a continuous state of misery and anxiety, and for fear of becoming miserable we never cease to be so. “
Plus ca change , plus c’est la meme chose….n’est pas?
He is the guy responsible for rescuing the Roman poet Lucretious’ “The Nature of Things”. The book I’m reading is called The Swerve. An amazing piece of non-fiction writing by Stephen Greeblatt
It is dense, but well worth the time and trouble.
by Modern Songbook Records | Sep 25, 2012 | Charlie's Blog, Events, Gallery, News
I could not live in a small town. I know thqt because I grew up in a few of them. The smallest was 800 people living on the banks of the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania. But I love it when I am thrown, for an evening, into the center of a small town. We played a gig last week in Lexington VA at an outdoor theater in the woods called Lime Kiln. I think that every person in the audience knew everyone else. We were the only strangers there. At the first song they clapped politely, just feeling out this new friendship between town and band. By the intermission we were on a first name basis. And by the end of the concert I feel like we could have gone home for coffee and ice cream with half the crowd. Music is an amazing way to build a friendship. You can leapfrog the years and years of passing on the street, having kids in school together, working on the same block and go right to a powerful personal, albeit non-specific, conversation that would normally take 20 years of friendship to get to. I got the whole experience of knowing everyone in town in the span of 2 hours.
by Modern Songbook Records | Sep 12, 2012 | Charlie's Blog, Reviews
Cabaret Scenes Review – Gia Mora
Gia Mora constantly surprises with her many talents. The realization that she is a gifted singer is obvious from any song in the show, but she is also, by turns, a lyricist, a dancer, a comedienne, an actress and somewhat of an expert on theoretical physics.
by Modern Songbook Records | Aug 2, 2012 | Charlie's Blog, Home Page, News
I am the chairman of the board at Maryland Youth Ballet. How this came about is a long story. I have no qualifications for this position at all. And yet I am this, and being this changed my life.
As a career musician I always felt somehow untethered. Unattached to the place I lived. I always felt that if the right gig came along I would move in a heartbeat to Los Angeles or New York, or Austin Texas. I lived in Bethesda Md nearly by chance. My conncetion with my county, Montgomery County was as slender a thread as paying taxes and getting a discount at my Summer swimming pool.
I joined the board of MYB almost as a lark. I was thinking “what a hoot, me? on a board?” My reaction to being chosen as president was similarly light and ironic. As it has turned out this was one of the most important turning points in my life. Ove the past five years we have gone from having a dreadful facility and an organization teetering on collapse to having one of the best ballet studios on the East Coast and being one of Montogmery County’s largest, most financially robust arts non-profits. I am intensely proud of this.
On a personal level, this “job”, this labor of love has informed and directed the rest of my life.. yes, even as a composer. I now know most of my county council members. I know the Leggetts. I know my State legislators and my State senator. I live in Montgomery County in a connected way that I never thought I would. It is important to me where I live.
Last week I acted as emcee for the Greater Silver Spring Chamber of Commerce Awards Banquet. I looked out at the owners of businesses from all over Silver Spring, the business hub of Montgomery County and I was intensely proud to be one of them and part of this group and part of this County.
