To the Blue Carp

On my way to purchase mailing envelopes yesterday morning, the dewy air was freshened by shopkeepers hosing down the pavement in front of their businesses on Annagasse---a narrow lane reminiscent of what Vienna looked like in the 18th Century. Looking up, always a good thing to do in Vienna, I saw Zum Blauen Karpfen, a former hotel, rebuilt in 1814, with striking reliefs by Josef Klieber. A noted architectural sculptor of the first half of the 19th century, he had many commissions from the Austrian, Bohemian and Hungarian aristocracy.

I’ve not written much about the substance of my work in these daily updates, perhaps because the four projects that loom before me are all works-in-progress. But the news of actual performance dates this summer in Los Angeles, for SUCKTION (a theatrical song cycle I’m writing for the group soNu) means that the whip is snapping like crazy now. The other compositions – my opera, CRESCENT CITY (with the writer Douglas Kearney, also true of SUCKTION), BREATHTAILS, for string quartet and shakuhachi, to texts by Charles Bernstein, and THE SILENT STEPPE CANTATA, for orchestra and chorus in Kazakhstan, are simmering along.