I mentioned last night that AEJ and I went to a party at Griffith Park last week. What I didn’t mention was that the party was a birthday party — for a one year old. To get in the proper mindset, AEJ and I stopped by the old Griffith Park merry-go-round. As you can see, it was terrifying. (Okay, it wasn’t. I was a lot of fun, but I did get a little dizzy. I’m such a loser.)

And look! They were selling pinwheels! Fun fun!

It was a few minutes after the merry-go-round ride that we saw Mr. Squirrel, whom I mentioned last night. Here he is from another angle. I’m right there with you, Mr. Squirrel; I love corn, too. I just prefer mine cream-style.

There was plenty of tasty food at the party — like this pasta salad.

There were toys for all of the other “children.” We, sadly, didn’t get a present. This was pretty smart, though. Courtney, the mother of the birthday girl, had prepared all of these little gifts — and the gifts were little stuffed purple dudes, soap, and shampoo — so the kids could get clean after a day at a birthday party in the park. It was a great idea — so I stole one of the bags. (I’m kidding.)

Look at the little ships made of orange peel with Jello inside! Courtney is awfully good at this whole kid party thing. (She should be; she owns a face painting company here in LA — face-painter for the [children of] stars.)

The children — babies, really — had been well-behaved… until the open bar.

The milk, I totally get — although it was my first party with milk. The Mountain Dew, though, maybe not the best idea.

Seriously, kid. Chill with the Dewsky.

Thing started to get out of hand when, as far as I can tell from this baby’s nose, somebody busted out the coke. I know it’s LA and all, but these kids roll hardcore.

One of the parents at the party was a professional balloon artist. How friggin’ cute is the balloon penguin?!

No, no, don’t give it to that kid! That kid just drank like three cans of Mountain Dew, and is experiencing serious munchies! She’s going to bite the…

Oh, great. Now it’s a friggin’ mutant cyclops penguin.

AEJ got a balloon treat of her own — a balloon mermaid!

Check out the detail in this thing. It even has a tiny little pink bow in its hair!

AEJ refrained from biting it. Loki, though, won’t stop gnawing at its hair. So far, it’s still in one non-popped piece. For now.
This is Ruby, the birthday girl. She’s pretty cute. After lunch, she decided to wash her hands. In the dog bowl.

Here are all of the babies at the party. I swear to god, I’ve never been to a party with so many babies. Well, at least not since Juilliard. Oboists are so immature. Zing!

Ruby wasn’t content to hang with the non-birthday babies, so she ran up to me for her literal close-up. Hey, it’s Hollywood, babe. You show ’em.

We left before things got totally out of hand. Those babies can party.

And for the record, I’m perfectly happy being uncle John. That’s already more than enough responsibility.

Where have I been? Right here, at my computer — listening to dozens upon dozens of recordings of bands. I’m one of the judges of this year’s National WindBand Honors competition. In this first round of listening, I had more than 40 bands to listen to, each of which sent two pieces along with scores. The competition is open to both high schools and middle schools of any size.

What have I learned?

First, that listening to 40 bands in three days, and providing both written and tape-recorded comments is, to put it lightly, draining. I don’t know how people judge things like the ASCAP Young Composer competition, where they receive 400 entries.

Second, I learned that there are some truly exceptional bands out there — particularly, believe it or not, at the middle school level. I heard two middle school bands that sounded like decent college bands. It was insane. These were actually middle school bands that I would listen to by choice. Who knew?

AEJ and I went to a birthday party at Griffith Park a few days ago. While we were driving around looking for the party, we saw a coyote, or as AEJ called it, “a puppy.”

AEJ got its attention.

Later, we saw a squirrel up in the tree, eating a corn cob.

Isn’t it a shame that I couldn’t zoom anymore than that? Why yes, it’s terrible.

So I bought a new zoom lens. It’ll be here Tuesday.

I swear. I’m done buying lenses now. I swear. Besides, I’m broke. (Please contact me if you’d like to license any music for marching / commercial / ring-tone / elevator use.)

I finished another movement of the Sax Concerto this afternoon. It’s the slow movement, and I tend to have a very hard time with slow music, so it was a tough slog. I don’t know that it’s as good as I’d like it to be, but it’s as good as I know how to make it right now, so it’s time to move on to another movement. Three movements are done (in short score) now:
2. Felt
3. Metal
4. Wood

These three movements run about 15 minutes. Movements 1 and 5 will be very short, and will be halves of the same idea, bookending the entire concerto. Whereas the above three movements will be limited in their instrumentation (as I wrote about here), the outer two movements will be tutti. (I did end up cheating a little on “Metal,” which includes 1 clarinet, bass clarinet, contrabass clarinet, and contrabassoon. Still, it’s definitely metal-focussed.) I’m trying to decide if all of the musical material for those outer movements comes from these three middle movements. The challenge would be in not letting those outer movements become medleys. It would give the whole piece some rock-solid structure, though.

You can see a few pages of “Metal” on this PDF. Tempo is around quarter=90, but you’ll see lots of little “q=84,” “q=74,” etc., indications, which were my attempts to get Finale to play with a little rubato.  You’ll also see several things that aren’t possible — like lightning-fast 4-mallet glockenspiel, 5 trombone parts, and three bass clarinet parts, but this is all short score stuff.  The trick, as always, will be in the real orchestration.  That happens in August.

Go see Ratatouille, the new Pixar movie. I loved it — and not just because it was about food (with Thomas Keller serving as a consultant!), but the food didn’t hurt. I even got a little misty a few times, not because it was sad, but because the whole film was so brilliantly done. (You ever get that? The “I am not worthy” tears?) Oh, and Michael Giacchino’s score is perfect.