February 17-18, 2024 UCLA & The Village

The Sunday of Presidents' Day Weekend was officially announced as the new concert date. As my health floundered in October, I didn't feel I could spend time raising money for that either. Jonathan Allentoff had already bought his ticket. We had already engaged some musicians. Parents had already made plans to come in.

As we ideated further, we realized we should keep the date, and do a recording session instead. Unintended stroke of genius.

We were going to bring in essentially one player for every section of the orchestra.

Our musicians included previous mentors Rebecca Schlappich (violin 1), Emer Kinsella (violin 2), Jennifer Wu (viola), Maksim Velichkin (cello), Igor Kogan (double bass). [Yes, I could have just said all the strings.] Ashley Jarmack (flute), Kristine Llanderal (clarinet), and Javier Oviedo (sax).

New musicians to us included Joe Stone (oboe), John Mitchell (bassoon), Jeff Bunnell (trumpet), Rachel Berry (horn), Hiram Rodriguez (trombone), Samuel Adam (tuba), Marcia Dickstein (harp), and the amazing Bryan Pezzone (piano).

We had worked with Bryan before at our Jazz Workshop, but this was a different puppy, and he is always who you want recording your piano parts.

Austin played trumpet 2 on one piece, and Ralph added a second trombone. I played piano on my Rhapsody. MB Gordy would record all the percussion separately at his home studio a couple days later.

In the booth were Lucas Fehring (engineer), Austin Ali, Tommy Faragher, Eiko Jin, and me. Also...

ASMAC President, Gayle Levant, once again joined us. (We paid her as the contractor, but she was essentially producing.)

Jonathan Allentoff flew in from New York to conduct as Chuck had a flute orchestra engagement that day. This made more sense anyway, since Jon was with us the entire season.

Jon conducts more orchestras in Rochester than I've had hot dinners. He came in on a Thursday, and we worked through every score... slowing down tempi, simplifying orchestration, and adding in some dynamic markings. Of course the parts were already printed, so we had to handwrite any changes in. (There were a lot of cross outs.)

The other reality is that I was Zoomed out.

Over a beige marble background, 16 Zoom squares with mentors and composers. All photos are askew. Text reads: From Zoom

I decided not to tell any union stories because I love the AFM so much except that it was so awesome of them to send over a VP to "network" (monitor).

We ended up having a complete Inception weekend with almost every composer in person, except for Luke who was on the college interview circuit.

On the 17th, we did a rehearsal at UCLA for strings, piano, Javier, and our internal horn players, Ralph and Austin. It gave everyone a jump on the music, and a chance for us to talk through any changes that were made with our composers.

Caption reads: Day One. Multiple Images on beige marble background. 1) Jordan and Lundy in front of a sign reading UCLA MAKING 21ST Century Music. 2) Javier on sax rehearsing with pianist Bryan Pezzone. 3) The entire Frishman family poses with Jonathan. 4) Austin plays trumpet and Ralph plays trombone. 5) Jonathan conducts the string players and pianist. Akira and Lundy review the score on a music stand behind Jonathan. 6) All the composers and musicians from rehearsal posing. This is the same picture from earlier.

That evening, some of us made it to our favorite crepe place, La Table de Sophie. And, of course, Inception's favorite donuts were donated by James Choi of Cafe Dulce for the earlier rehearsal.

On Sunday, we went to Studio D at the Village Studio in Westwood, home to too many recordings to list.

We weren't supposed to be at the Village. We had booked the Silent Zoo, the same studio we had done our winds session. BUT, L.A. got a rain storm the weekend before. It didn't seem that serious except that we got a call, and the audio board and wiring had all shorted out at the Silent Zoo because of the rain, and they had no expectation of fixing it in time for our session.

I actually didn't freak out, but just started calling studios (maybe frantically) and asking people for referrals. Somehow we landed on the Village Studio.

Caption reads: The Village. Over a beige marble background, 1) a photo of The Village Studios building. 2) A brick wall with seventeen platinum record awards framed. 3) The Village hallway lined with multiple albums all the way down.

Sometimes days like this whiz by, and I'll admit staying out for crepes the night before when I still had the heart thing going maybe wasn't one of my brightest ideas.

Justin was no longer in the composition program, but was delivering Music History. In May and June last year, we worked and reworked his "Symphony of Psalm". There was lots of iteration around where to start the piece, but we ended up with a storm segment up front, and it worked really well. Justin's piece contains one of the most beautiful horn lines written in Inception, and Ashley Jarmack holding a low flute note that gives you goosebumps.

One of our scholarship students, Kristian, recorded his "W Symphony". It had complex rhythms. It also came together after switching the back half with the front half.

Caption reads: Into the Studio. A photo of all the musicians in their seats, and composers behind the orchestra posing for a photo.

Two families, equalling four supportive parents and four young composers including Jordan and Lundy Frishman, came into town. The Frishmans each put up two pieces. Jordan's second composition, "Las Mariposas" featured a merengue rhythm that she researched. The story she was writing for featured some of the military from the Dominican Republic. The merengue, the national dance, was used.

Ralph Watkins orchestrated a song that his future mother-in-law wrote for her wife. He contained it to strings and piano, and it was beautiful. (Anything is beautiful when Bryan Pezzone is playing your piece.)

Caption reads: For an experience they never imagined. Photo collage: 1) Lucas, Ralph, and Gayle at the board 2) Bassoonist John Mitchell shares a laugh with composer Kristian. Ralph plays trombone behind them. 3) Akira wearing a grey hoodie, kneels next to a young composer wearing a long sleeve grey sweater, and a red skirt matching her red framed glasses. 4) Eiko makes the thumbs up sign behind Akira and Jordan sitting at the Board. 5) Lundy experiments on the grand piano. 6) Jonathan conducts while Akira confirms with Kristian during rehearsal. 7) A young composer in a suit watches Lucas, Akira, and Gayle at the Board. 8) Austin confers with Lundy about a score.

I'll admit it. We went overtime. And although we had wanted to record Jason & Abby Lee's pieces, they were sitting out this cohort, so we scrubbed them to capture Austin Ali's piece, "Enchilada", sorry "Enceladus, the Bright" and the "Piano Rhapsody".

If you haven't heard Austin's music, you are missing out. Currently a Doctoral candidate in music composition at UCLA, his music continues to mature and explore. He's one of the contemporary talents we'll all be talking about in the future. "Enceladus" is a duet between soprano sax (Javier Oviedo) and piano (Bryan Pezzone). Email me for a link to this. it's a stunner.

Caption reads Day Two. Over a being marble background, four images 1) Jonathan conducting piece with musicians playing 2) Lucas, Akira and Gayle confer at the Board. 3) From behind, Jordan listens to her piece being recorded. Lucas, Akira, and Gayle are at the Board. 4) The control room with Lucas, Akira, and Gayle at the Board. Eiko, Phoeobe, Austin, Tommy, and Miyeko sit on the couch behind everyone.

Sometimes I feel like the kids think of me in this light: "Those who can do, do. Those who can't, teach." Once upon a time, after my college film scoring session of "The Norwood Homicide", I told my video editing mentor that I was going to write a piano concerto.

Thirty-five years later, I did a short version of that and called it a "Rhapsody".

I took a little inspiration from Christopher Lee and declared I was going to write in the octatonic scale. That's really all I had when I got on a plane at the beginning of June 2023. With a book of blank manuscript paper, some pencils, a ruler, and Garage Band, I wrote out the opening few phrases and motifs mid-flight. I essentially paid tribute to all the piano concerti I had played: Tchaikovsky, Liszt, Rachmaninov, Gershwin, Shostakovich (shoot that's not very many), and my favorite film score, "The Untouchables", by Ennio Morricone.

I finished it just before I was admitted to the hospital. (I'm not going to say getting sick made me productive, more I always thrive best under stress.)

7+ months later, I was going to have this recorded.

I'm grateful we had the rehearsal day at UCLA because everyone there saw me play this pretty competently. (I had been practicing this like an obsessive compulsive nutball.)

There was a plan on recording day that the Rhapsody would go up right after the main break, so that would give me time to warm up.

The dumb part about producing the session and having a piece on it is was that one of the instrumentalists didn't read my email that explained the pay structure and was demanding a doubling fee, which was already incorporated into the pay structure. Because of this my, break was taken up by salary discussions, and I did not have time to warm up. Critical because one of the heart drugs I'm on makes your fingers cold and feel as if you have neuropathy.

When we aimed to record piano with orchestra, my fingers weren't moving. Gayle Levant was in the producer's chair, and she told me to just sit out, and we'd record my part later. I had promised Ashley she could leave promptly at 1:00, and of course we were going over time.

So I get into the studio to record my part. The way the studio is set up, I could see directly into the control room right in line with Lucas, the engineer; Austin, who was filling in for me; and Gayle. You couldn't hear what they were saying unless they pressed the talk back button. Largely, in silence, you would see Gayle say something while shaking her head, and then Austin nodding in agreement. And then Gayle would come on to the headphones.

Here are a couple of her memorable quotes:

"That sounded really good. I don't know if it was together, but it sounded great."

"Do you want to make the 16th note section triplets to make it easier?"

"Somebody practiced!"

At the end of the day, I was produced by Gayle Levant and engineered by Lucas Fehring who makes miracles happen after recording. They whirled u some magic and made me sound good.

I had written one segment I really wanted to perform with Maksim. That didn't happen because he recorded first. And MB Gordy had to pick up one important line of Ashley's on Glockenspiel, because she had to leave promptly on time.

The recording was a success. If you're interested in hearing any of the music discussed, please contact me, and we will send you the link.