Life is what happens while you make other plans

I am embarrassed at the unplanned hiatus from writing new posts that has occurred.  The month of August has had me mired in things at the bottom of old Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs.  You know, the food/water/shelter kind of stuff.  Not even the fun items that appear twice on the pyramid, but mostly the shelter related topics.  There are times last month where I found home ownership and indoor plumbing highly overrated.

Things are definitely looking up.  The Detroit Jazz Festival is right around the corner, and I hope to again blog about my adventures each day.  The Artist in Residence this year is Pat Metheny, who is performing four different times at the festival in four different musical settings.  For those of you in the Detroit area, the music plays on all of Labor Day weekend, and admission is FREE.  Free fits in everyone’s budget, even those of us who have had large cash outlays for home repairs.

Pat Metheny, Unity Band, “New Year”

I have also found myself immersed in the music of Wolfgang Mozart in recent days.  I have to admit when I was younger, I didn’t pay that much attention to old Wolfy.  His musical language and idiom just didn’t have much for me to emulate/copy/steal for my own composition efforts.  I spent many more hours listening to modern music.  Last month I started listening to everything I could get my hands on by Mozart, and there is a great deal of music that he created in his short 35 years on this planet.  Operas, chamber works, symphonies, piano concertos, masses,  Mozart contributed masterpieces in each form. I am planning to write more than a few posts about the music of Mozart after the Jazz Festival concludes.  I hope some of you kind readers are still out there to see them.

Mozart, Overture to Don Giovanni