Meadow near Logan, Utah
I had only been home about a week when I found myself making arrangements for a trip out of state. Over the last few years, my conductor friend, Barbara Day Turner, and I have been trying to record one of my best pieces, Choose Life, Uvacharta Bachayim. Finally, all the planets seemed to line up in the right places and we were good to go for the end of August. Making a recording of a huge piece like Choose Life requires many, many meetings to go over every detail of the music and players’ parts. Recording time is expensive, musicians are expensive, recording engineers, also expensive. Gee, when you get right down to it, I am expensive! There is no time to waste figuring out anything while you’re on the scoring stage. This piece calls for a full orchestra, actor, two choirs, and five soloists. Yikes! Why then, am I going to Utah?
Barbara is conductor for Utah Festival Opera in Logan, Utah. She’s not going anywhere. I was sitting in San Jose with the big pile of music and a laptop. I snapped up the last seat on a plane that resembled the Spirit of St. Louis and headed out to Utah for a fun-filled four-day session of attending to musical minutiae. Why am I writing about an extremely technical and dead boring business trip? Because of the hotel.
First Trout
I stayed at the charming heritage hotel, The Providence Inn. (www.providenceinn.com). I’ve stayed in many heritage hotels in Germany and India, I just had to show everyone the great place available here.
I called my room “The Trout Quintet” but it was really called “Mountain Stream”. I guess there are lots of fish in a mountain stream, but STILL. I had five statues or paintings of fish in my little suite. Here’s one of the best, and no, I will not show all five! There were two trout in the bathroom. If you have never heard Schubert’s “Trout Quintet” you must listen to it. My favorite is the 4th and most Trouty movement.1-04 Trout) Quintet D. 667 in A major – Andante (Tema con variazioni)
Logan is a relatively small city that increases its population during the summer for mountain sports activities and the Opera Festival. I got the last room for miles and miles. It was the height of the wedding-sports-vacation season. I was soooo lucky. I couldn’t stay with Barbara, she had no room in her tiny digs. Here’s a picture of my room:
My Room at the Providence Inn
Cute? Yes. Here is another shot of the room completely littered in music. I spare you by showing only a small portion.
Masses of Music
The whole room looked like this table. Even the bed. Especially the bed. Barbara and I managed to get through the entire stack and even had time for a little sight-seeing. She drove up, up, up to a beautiful lake and a field of flowers. We walked around the lake, sniffed the flowers, took photos, and got home in time for dinner.
BDT and the Mountain Lake
No comments yet.