Columbus Day is a lame holiday because there’s no mail delivery on Columbus Day.  I love it when the mail comes.  I love it so much that for Christmas last year, AEJ got me a toy mail truck.

I also like it when mail is taken away. I spent most of yesterday afternoon preparing invoices and packing orders, having forgotten that today was a holiday, and the mail wouldn’t go out until Tuesday. I could have spent the afternoon doing nothing, but instead was unnecessarily productive.

I wanted to share what I think is the best marching band show I’ve ever seen. If you like video games, or marching band, you’ll love this. When I posted a link to this video on Facebook yesterday, it only had about 3000 views. Since then, it’s gone viral, as they say (that’ll happen when everybody from Wil Wheaton to Huffington Post link to it), and the views have crossed 1.2 million. In other words, if this sort of thing appeals to you, you’ve probably seen it already. It’s pretty incredible. (You won’t believe the part with the horse.)  This is the Ohio State University Marching Band, in their show from Saturday night.  Also: Go Bucks!

The Columbus Symphony Youth Orchestra, under the direction of Peter Stafford Wilson, performed “Redline Tango” (the original orchestral version) yesterday afternoon. Last weekend, the Annapolis Symphony, under the direction of José-Luis Novo, performed the piece twice during their season opening weekend. (Novo also conducted the piece at the Eastern Music Festival in July.) I think the orchestra version of the piece has now received 20 performances. For a not-yet-dead composer, that seems like a huge number. (The band version: 10 times as many performances, but we’ve discussed the band-vs-orchestra differences before.) The recent string of performances — plus the amazing time I had a The Cabrillo Festival in August — does kind of make me wish I had another orchestra piece, I have to say. Anybody want to pay for that? Anyone?

Anyone?

In closing, here’s a picture of Loki, because the Internets are for cats.  (I’m peeking into the 8mm frame.)

I went for a very nice 22 mile bike ride today on the Minuteman Bike Path. It being October 5, that was probably the last ride of the year.

I had my iPhone 5 with me, and I took a few pictures with the new panorama mode.

One observation about the iPhone’s panorama mode: if you don’t hold your hand steady as you pan from left-to-right, you end up with jagged black holes in the picture edges. This isn’t some appearance of the Smoke Monster from Lost (minus 10 points for a badly dated reference); I apparently just can’t pan smoothly.  Oops.

Another observation: if you squish the panoramic image to a more standard 4×6 ratio, it’s not quite as impressive.

Aren’t you glad I’m updating my blog more regularly?

And again, it’s a blog post where I start with “wow, it’s been a long time since I updated the blog. I’ll try to do better.” It’s the internet equivalent of “I hit you ’cause I love you, and it hurts me more than it hurts you,” or some such BS.

Friend-of-the-blog-and-Facebook-friend-and-even-real-life-friend David Rakowski has a brilliant blog – I think the best composer blog on the Internets – and I’ve mentioned it many times in the past. He then started a separate blog where he could post videos of people performing his music. But then Davy decided that he wanted to post shorter, more random things — things that didn’t fit into the large essay structure of his primary blog, nor the video blog — so he started a third blog, with posts that tend to be short, photo-heavy, and on some occasions, Google Map videos of his bike rides. (Here’s Rakowski wearing my new sunglasses. He needs these to go with his “I’m Not Steve Reich” baseball cap.)

I tend to use Facebook for those latter purposes — videos of concerts, like this video of the Australian premiere of the orchestra version of Redline Tango :

… and pictures of random things, like Loki and his round belly.

When I have even less to share, I turn to my Twitter account.

I generally feel that I need substantial content to generate a full blog post, but maybe Rakowski’s latest blog should be an example. I’m going to try to update more often, even if the posts are short. We’ll see how that goes.

First, though, here, in brief, is what’s been happening here over the past several months.

I finished a new piece, “The Frozen Cathedral.” It was commissioned by UNCG, and they’ll give the official premiere at the CBDNA national convention in March. It’s a big ol’ piece with antiphonal percussionists, loud trombones marked “bright, epic, bell up,” and a plagal (“Amen”) cadence at the end. The MIDI is online right now, but I’ll be taking it down soon so that people get it out of their heads in advance of hearing the “real” version in a few months.

We made pizza. A bunch of times.

I updated the Performance Database. There’s still a lot missing — this really only shows the rental performances, not performances of pieces like “Sheltering Sky” or “Foundry” (which, at the moment, are likely my most-performed pieces), but you’ll get an idea of what’s coming up – like some exciting performances at this year’s Midwest Clinic.

We spent a few days visiting the Rakowski/Wiemann summer house in Vermont.

Oh right — I got a new ultra-wide-angle lens : the Canon EF 8-15mm f/4 L Fisheye. And did I mention that we made pizzas?

I took the new lens out on a walk in my neighborhood.

The leaves on our street started turning. I love fall.

Loki got a new toy.  It’s watching you.

I went to several farmers’ markets, like this one at Harvard Square.

They had heirloom tomatoes. I love heirloom tomatoes.

They had hot peppers.

And green, er, red, er… gred peppers.

I bought some green onions.

I decided to make gazpacho. (Gazpacho with fresh local heirloom tomatoes and local gred – g’red? – peppers: good stuff.)

We went to brunch. There was an orchid in the restaurant lobby.

Oh, and we visited NYC. It rained.

Okay, I think we’re caught up.  See?  You really didn’t miss that much.