Riding on a Frisbee

This week, as I mentioned in the earlier entry, my children are in the camp in Nantes and I am completely free to work on my own. They do call me almost every day and there is a daily update on the activities on the website of their camp. My parents-in-law are in Brittany where it is closer to Nantes just in case. Everything is set up to maximize my work here at IRCAM until the end of July.

I feel like our work together is now at the middle of the Mount Everest. I'm working very closely with my main collaborator for the past few years, Frédéric Bevilacqua.　Just yesterday I felt that Frédéric touched the subject I have long LONG thought about. It is quite difficult to describe in words---people have used different expressions in the past: one composer said the music is a kind of "spiral", another said it is the way we walk, and someone else said it is like we are riding on a frisbee. It is a very difficult subject I feel, but the essence and the core of violin playing in a way. I learned to climb staircases without losing my breath, climbing on rocks without STOPPING my motions. It is the same "rolling" principle.

I hope that I don't sound like speaking some secret language or something, but I really don't know how else to describe it. But finally I have the opportunity to actually see this in data, not just in imagination.

As I am alone in Paris now, I take every advantage of visitors coming my way :) Here is a wonderful Soupe de Fraise (Strawberry Soup) I had with my (now former) student and saxophonist Jeremy Viner from Juilliard who came to visit.