I got a lot done yesterday, although no blogging. The morning started with a trip to the dentist for an 8 AM teeth cleaning. I have to do this every three months because the radiation treatments burned out my salivary glands and left my teeth unprotected. Hard to complain about such things when the alternative was death… And there’s always an upside: the dentist’s office manager bought a copy of “Men, Women, and Girl Singers” as a Father’s Day gift.
Anyway, I hurried back to my home office and set up to record a phone interview. In 1998 we installed 4-line phones throughout the house, but GE’s proprietary wiring or whatever prevents me from simply plugging in my recording device. I use an inexpensive single-line princess phone coupled with a Telephone Recording Control (both purchased at Radio Shack) that plugs into my minidisc recorder.
At precisely 9:30 AM the phone rang and my long-awaited conversation with Sir Simon Rattle began. Because of his hectic schedule, and the time difference, it took months to arrange this call. But again, I cannot complain because we spoke at leisure for just over an hour and he was gracious to call me on his dime. (Granted, he has more dimes than I do, but generous nonetheless.) He was calling me from Berlin and had just concluded a rehearsal that he said was hard work but went well. He told me how the Classic Ellington project came to be, described the fear and the excitement experienced by all parties when the Birmingham Symphony joined together with some heavy-weight jazz artists (Clark Terry, Joe Lovano, Regina Carter, Bobby Watson, Joshua Redman, Geri Allen, Peter Washington, and Lewis Nash) to perform a complete program of Luther Henderson’s orchestrations.
While I was transferring the recorded interview to my computer, I started filling out worksheets given to me by the folks at ArtistShare. I mention ArtistShare on this blog from time to time, usually in reference to Dad or Maria Schneider or Bob Brookmeyer, but I don’t think I’ve told you that I have been thinking about launching an ArtistShare site of my own. It’s been on my mind for some time now, and it will soon be a reality. ArtistShare is all about sharing the creative process, but planning the experience is a well-thought out and intricate process all its own…hence the worksheets.
I am actually planning to launch three projects, if not simultaneously then in quick succession, but I will not be going it alone. One of the projects will be a new CD by Clairdee, to be recorded in September at the Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild. John is Clairdee’s personal manager so I asked him to start on the worksheets for that project while I tackled the other two projects (more about those soon).
At some point yesterday I took a break from ArtistShare to check the audio levels on the recorded interview and when satisfied, I sent the file, via the Internet, to my trusty transcriptionist. I took other breaks — one for a brief phone conference with a client who needed me to edit a press release, another to re-write a Nancy Wilson press release, and lastly to cook and eat dinner — but it was after 11 PM when finally I emailed one set of worksheets to my Project Coordinator and toddled off to bed.
Today is a new day and this morning my reward will be to go horseback riding. Hi ho, Silver, away……….