Food intermission: Buceo 95

I am finally, finally almost done with mastering my new solo CD coming out from Mutable Music Label. It has been going on for a few years, on and off, and I had to go away from thinking about it and now I can listen to the pieces again. I spent the past few weeks working really hard; when I work on mastering my CD I spend a lot of time listening to it, almost feel like performing over and over again while doing so. I'm exhausted. So, I had a rare dinner out 'sans' kids with violist friend Liuh-Wen Ting and her husband Marshall at Buceo 95 Spanish Tapas. Great calamari, pulpo, but the best was pork belly. And the very interesting Spanish Rosé called Tondonia, which was VERY much approved by my French husband :) Liuh-Wen is the person who introduced me to him; he is also a [very good!] amateur viola player. Tomorrow, I'll go back to reading, guess what, Moskowski duo (!) which I'm playing with Muneko Otani, the 1st violinist of the Cassatt Quartet next Sunday at our kids' piano recital!

End of Season: Lotteries, the Earth, and...something new

So here we are after yet another long hiatus, back to blogging again. Now at the end of the academic year, a lot has happened in the past 6 months! Good news: I won two 'lotteries', a 2010 Composer in Residency in musical research at IRCAM in Paris, and 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship in music composition. Bad news: I got 3 herniated discs in my neck and took 6 long months of physical therapy and traction to put it back together. The picture above is my co-fellow this year, composer/Korean Komungo virtuoso Jin Hi Kim at the Guggenheim Foundation reception this week.

At the Guggenheim reception, I got to speak with many interesting people from many different disciplines which was very inspiring. Many guests were this year's Fellows, but there were some old-timers. One person I had an interesting conversation with, was a person named Dennis Hayes, Prof. Emeritus at Columbia Univ. in the Dept. of Earth and Environmental Science. He is now at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and observing the earthquakes, volcano etc around the world. Prof. Hayes was very interested in my subharmonics, string frictions and torsion of the string etc. and wanted to learn more. He asked me to send him some stuff. I have been thinking the earth seems to be twisting lately. Anything that my little violin would help the earth research...

We are leaving NYC in early June until early September, putting my two kids into French public schools thanks to their hosts, my parents-in-law. This is the sink-or-swim, learning French summer for the kids. I'm very anxious how they would do but it's for their own good! Or so I hope... I will be working with the Realtime Musical Interaction Team at IRCAM, finally getting to sit next to those very bright people and try to get the bowing tracking issues advanced. I will post my progress periodically, I promise myself!

A last note: there is something I think I can 'announce' pretty soon :) or so I hope. I think I'm achieving a new Subharmonic interval. I have been working on it intensively for the past few days and it seems to be coming fast. Still unstable and not presentable... That means my poor husband has been putting up with my annoying practicing day in and day out. I'm sure it is not pleasant to listen to!

New: adding to the last note, after the Guggenheim reception, Jin Hi Kim invited me to join her for clothes shopping, to the designer she is wearing in this photo, Nadya, since I thought it was very beautiful. Nadya was showing in a hotel room at Beacon Hotel so we came back to the Upper Westside and both allowed ourselves to buy our celebratory items, for PERFORMANCE use! (deductible!! :) Then Jin Hi came over to my home nearby for a take-out Indian food. A very nice time spent together on our special day.