Your faithful blogger (well, not so faithful recently, I know these entries have been few and far between) received news of a wonderful honor last week...I've been awarded the Artist Fellowship in Music Performance by the South Carolina Arts Commission for 2008-2009. It always feels good to get a kind of confirmation in the work one is doing, and I'm very grateful and appreciative of this special recognition. I'm also particularly proud to receive it from the Arts Commission of my recently adopted (as of 2004) home state, a state my wife and I love dearly.

An extra bit of happy news accompanied this event: my friend John Fitz Rogers received the Arts Commission's Fellowship for Music Composition. His CD is coming out soon, I've been working on the liner notes, immersing myself in his music for a few weeks, and the impact of his work just keeps growing on you the more times you listen to any particular work of his. What higher praise can you give a composer?

Spencer is one year old today! Happy Birthday to You!


This is actually from last January when he was about 7 months old, but gives you a pretty good idea how much big Spence is enjoying this "life" thing. Lynn and I have no more idea what we're doing than we did a year ago at this time, but we muddle through and make sure that no matter what, Spencer knows how much he is loved. Being a parent really teaches you that no parent ever really knows what they're doing, including your own, and that's an important psychological step for any child to take, at any age, in reconciling themselves to the stormier aspects of the relationship they may have had with one or both parents.

Spencer is a miracle; we learn from him every day. Physically demanding for a (now) 47-year-old first-time father, but getting to play with blocks again makes it all worth it. Your mommy and daddy love you with all their heart, Spencer. It has been an incredible year. Let's kick this second year off in style, buddy.

You have the whole rest of the week to get to events of the Southeastern Piano Festival, which takes place at the USC School of Music and is under the artistic direction of Marina Lomazov...recitals, master classes, a competition on Friday (for which I'll be one of the jurors), Olga Kern playing Rach 2 with orchestra...it's got the works.

Ms. Kern really got the Festival going last night with her recital in the School of Music's recital hall. Here's just one unusual aspect of this festival: rarely would you be able to hear Ms. Kern in a hall of such intimacy, as I'm sure that economics generally dictate that she usually plays big halls, even for solo recitals. All the better, then, to hear what a stupendously huge sound she wrings from the instrument, and an appealing, orchestrally big sound, really never going over the edge into harshness. I hope the students watching learned from that experience. Ms. Kern gave a powerful rendition of Chopin B minor Sonata and Rachmaninoff 2nd Sonata. She never seems to hurry or rush unduly, preferring to let herself enjoy the byways, the nooks and crannies, within every movement. For me that sometimes made the Chopin fail to take off, or to lack direction at times. But in the Rachmaninoff I thought it worked spectacularly. Never did Rachmaninoff sound as modern or as original to my ears.

The Festival has been going for several years now and is firmly established as a cultural jewel in the Midlands firmament. For a more detailed look at a past Festival, go to this older blog entry on the 2006 edition, written when I had more time to devote to lengthy posts, pre-fatherhood.

We're not going to make it down to Spoleto this year. Partly that's because there weren't many events that really piqued our interest, but mostly of course it's a logistical question, what with looking after Spencer (or lil' Bush for the fans of that show among you) and the cost of gas and staying down in Charleston and just general busy-ness here at home practicing an Allen Shawn solo piece and Steven Mackey's Indigenous Instruments for Present Music next week, and preparations for the Bennington Chamber Music Conference later this summer...

Of course there is the wonderful chamber music series and a number of friends and colleagues are playing there and I would have loved to catch a concert or two. Dock Street Theatre is under renovation so they are temporarily taking place at Memminger Auditorium. As with the chamber series at the Columbia Museum of Art, Charles Wadsworth appears to be taking first steps towards handing off the reins of the Spoleto chamber series somewhat, as Geoff Nuttall of the St. Lawrence Quartet is serving as an assistant "curator" of the series.

But if I could go to only one event at Spoleto during the run, it would be the four-hour work by Morton Feldman for flute, percussion, and piano, "For Philip Guston." This takes place next Wednesday June 3 on the Music in Time series, brilliantly curated lo these many years by John Kennedy and located in the Recital Hall on the gorgeous College of Charleston campus. The chance to detach oneself from the normal perceptions of the passage of time (sans hallucinogens, or heck, avec if you prefer) made possible by hearing this work of Feldman's live rarely presents itself, especially in this part of the world. Just make sure you pee right before. And don't drink a lot right beforehand either, nor eat anything terribly, um, controversial. In other words, you don't want anything to disrupt your ability to listen for four hours. But, since the show starts at 5 PM, think of the incredible dinner that can be your reward afterwards in this very special city, with its many enticing and creative restaurants.

For preparatory reading on Morton Feldman, I highly recommend this New Yorker piece from a couple years ago by Alex Ross, who writes eloquently about both Feldman the memorable character and Feldman the creator of "vast, quiet, agonizingly beautiful worlds of sound." Other Spoleto-related reading worth checking out: Jeffrey Day's piece in the State last Friday on Columbia's resident bassoon whiz, Peter Kolkay, who'll be playing on some of the chamber concerts; and the New York Times is running a Spoleto blog of its own.

Occasionally I come across a quote, a picture, odds and ends that I save in a folder on my laptop for potential use in the blog. Here's something I've been saving for awhile, from the memoir "Things I Didn't Know" by the Australian art critic Robert Hughes. With all the recent dustup over one of the presidential candidates' alleged "elitism," I thought this might be a nice time to throw Hughes' comments into the mix: