I am writing this entry during a short, self-imposed break from watching the movie Men, Women & Children while flying somewhere over the Atlantic in the course of my travel- an 18 hour journey on planes and at airports in between. I am going from a program with handful of musicians and the intimacy of a 300 seat hall to a 200+ chorus with full orchestra at a 2K+ seat auditorium. This is a must see movie. I won’t spoil it for you…all I am saying now is that people are different, fascinating, boring, engaging, well rounded, screwed up in different ways, and it is all “out there” in cyber space since the invention of the internet. This movie is comforting in a way because it tells us there is nothing new under the sun as far as human behavior goes. It is very honest about how people live more and more in the virtual world of Facebook and war games and dating sites. I guess this is what I am doing with this blog no different from billions of other people (Note to self: google the number of personal blogs in the world!). Creating a virtual copy of yourself and talking to a practically unknown audience (yes, I know I should track data on how many people and from where, are actually reading this) is an intellectually exciting thing to do. Realizing how many other people are doing the same thing all around the world is humbling.

Traveling often creates time that needs to be used in ways that don’t come into play with a regular day job. Reading, watching movies, writing a blog post off line and posting it later, thinking about stuff, making plans are all part of “being on the road”.
Trying to make sense of “lost time” while getting from A to B has become a lifestyle for me. It is a necessity and as always I am trying to make the best of it.
I just remembered a quote from American composer David Lang (Note to self: nice job connecting the dots and making this post more than just babbling!) “And time eventually will pass” [check quote!] The quote is from the notes to ‘Little Eye’ a movement from the 40+ minute chamber music cycle by Lang entitled ‘Child’. ‘Child’ is a very honest, naive, simple yet labyrinth like musical piece. UMZE Ensemble just played it under my direction as the second half of a concert with flutist Claire Chase at Budapest Music Center. I think programming this minimalist piece was a pretty good idea after listening 45 minutes of complex, difficult music by composers like Jozsef Sari, Peter Eotvos, Dai Fujikura or Gregory Vajda.
Letting your thoughts wander while listening to repetitive music is a liberating and also -to me at least- somewhat disturbing experience.

By now most of you are probably thinking, “Where is he going with all this?” or “Hello, we were promised some Verdi here!” All right, since this type of stream of consciousness blogpost cannot be finished, only stopped, I am stopping it right here.
Going from David Lang to Giuseppe Verdi with thousands of miles traveled in between is my reality. Very different programs with very different bands at very different places-yet similar and connected. There is a powerful pop music quality to the Verdi Requiem. There is a lot of pop music in David Lang’s art. Simple lines, repetition, basic musical ideas painted with plain colors. Raw power.
This physical reality however feels a lot like our virtual reality: seemingly random things interconnected with the help of search engines and our personal preferences. Bringing us back to the movie Men, Women and Children ☺.
Bang on a can Verdi.

Going from Lang to Verdi is natural after all. It is real life.