(Excerpted in part from past Yuletides)
Thank you for writing something for me. With the exception of the do-not-like stuff, please take any and all of this as optional suggestions only, and do what works for you. Not all of the stuff I like, for instance, may be applicable to all the fandoms I've requested; choose what makes sense to you.

Do not ( Read more... )

I don't know why so many people are anti-Schumann--the symphonies, that is, most people seem to approve of the piano music. As an instrumentalist, okay, I can kind of see it--the man was a pianist, and he doesn't seem to have taken much in the way of advice about writing for other people's instruments. (Is there historical background for this? Must ( Read more... )

Amended from last year’s letter:
Thank you for writing something for me. With the exception of the do-not-like stuff, please take any and all of this as optional suggestions only, and do what works for you. Not all of the stuff I like, for instance, may be applicable to all the fandoms I've requested; choose what makes sense to you.

( Specifics )

Been listening to our last orchestra concert and the one before that (inadvertent 2-CD set, long story). I think honestly we're pretty good, for an amateur group with three hours' rehearsal time a week. There are occasional slips in the winds, but when they're good they're good, and the strings have it better with several of us on each part, and ( Read more... )

I have two young dead men in my head. For various reasons both of them have been on my mind for a while now, making me cry when I think too hard about them-which isn’t a bad thing, because they were worth it. I didn’t meet either of them. One I might have done; I was ten years old when he died, and he was a friend of my father’s for a while, but we ( Read more... )

In the second category: やっぱりoh, Taka. Lately when M does his thing at rehearsal of noodling madly away to himself during breaks, fancy double stops and bits of concerti and A's father's Hungarian stuff and God knows what, it makes me want to cry, because Taka should be in Tokyo somewhere (or in Ithaca, or anywhere on this side of the void) doing ( Read more... )

Okay, it's about time. Where I am now:
Too much damn time at work, but otherwise it could be (knock wood) much worse.
Listening to Taka Ohira's violin, some of it recorded before I was born and some as late as 1987, the year he died. All I can manage is oh, Taka. How do you tell that story so it makes sense ( Read more... )

Thank you for writing something for me. I'm sorry this is so late. With the exception of the do-not-like stuff, please take any and all of this as optional suggestions only, and do what works for you. Not all of the stuff I like, for instance, may be applicable to all the fandoms I've requested; choose what makes sense to you ( Read more... )

The thing is, this is why (one of the reasons) I like my job. On my own time, I would never, ever seek out information about autophagy, or chemicals management regulations, or the fifty-year history of an industry fair. (I might about Josiah Conder, but that was an exception.) If I'm translating or editing lengthy reports on these subjects, though ( Read more... )

I want to write a little about Ookiku Furikabutte, a Japanese manga (also made into an anime series) by Asa Higuchi. In short, it’s about high school baseball, it’s nineteen volumes long so far and not even close to finished (I hope; also, this is by no means an uncommon length for a manga series), the art is somewhat on the crude side, but ( Read more... )