Choral Set (1981)
 |
| Your blogger in 1981, drinking ire |
At the University I was occasionally pulled into other ensembles. I sang in a chamber chorus for a graduate student's choral music recital (fun!), pounded piano for a singer who was learning a fellow composition student's single-character opera (The Tell Tale Heart), and played piano in various UW Contemporary Group concerts. I tried unsuccessfully to learn Bizet's two-piano "Jeux d'enfant" with Christopher Mehrens for a class with Neal O'Doan, and finally signed up for the University Singers, as an easy ensemble credit. This led to my career on the opera stage, as illustrious as it was lengthy. The University was staging Dvořák's "Rusalka" and I was tagged for the chorus. I fit the bill perfectly: sack of meat, sang tenor (more or less). I was then bumped up to the "next level" chorus, where I remember singing in the first-tenor section in performances of Berlioz's "Requiem", Haydn's "Lord Nelson Mass", Beethoven's underrated "Mass in C Major", Walton's "Belshazzar's Feast" and Orff's "Carmina Burana". I even tried my hand at writing music for choir and organ. "Choral Set" (1981) consists of an Introit, an Anthem, a Prayer Response and an Extroit, none of them successful.
 |
| Aaron Keyt in the early 80s |
I would also, when asked, play fellow students' piano compositions. We may have already become acquainted and started hanging out together by then, but it is in this context, in 1980, that I first worked with Aaron Keyt, who had started in the program a few years after me. I played his composition "Seven Piece Match Set" for the weekly seminar and for the Young Composers' Concert that November. We have been collaborating steadily ever since. Much more later.
 |
| Neal Meyer, with hair grown back |
In my last quarter, Spring of 1981, I took part in the UW Contemporary Group Improvisation Ensemble under the guidance of Stuart Dempster. I was excited to join this group after hearing them perform the Spring before and realizing, much to my surprise, that I could follow what they were doing. It wasn't that hard. I could do that! It was in this group that I first worked with Neal Meyer (now Neal Kosály-Meyer). Of course I had seen him around the music building - he was hard to miss, a bearded young man with a shaved head (not a common look back then) lugging a synthesizer around in a big blue case. I would have been dumbfounded had you told me that in a few years I would marry his sister. Again, much more later.
