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Two blog posts in one day! (Did you read the other one, about my visit to Yale? You should. Click here.)

AEJ and I like to make pizza. Fellow composers David Rakowski and Beth Wiemann (bound in matrimony) also like to make pizza. Since we live near each other and are friends, we should all make pizza together! Hooray!

Step one, as it always is with pizza prep: a cocktail. I made what AEJ calls “The Koi Pond” – Grey Goose Citron, Trader Joe’s Limeade, and pickled ginger.

It’s always good form to bring a gift to somebody’s house, and since we were hosting, we received glow-in-the-dark silly putty. I’m afraid it was too light to see it glow. (Next time.) AEJ made a kitty.

AEJ and I usually just buy pre-mixed dough for the crust. D-Rak makes his dough from scratch, complete with that yeasty stuff called “yeast.” (You can view the full pizza recipe — including his sauce — on Rakowski’s blog.)

It didn’t initially look like much.

But after some rolling…

… crust!

I was excited, but Glowing Silly Putty Cat was becoming less and less impressed.

Our main contribution to the pizza was our homemade sauce. Well, mostly homemade. 1 8-oz can of organic tomato sauce, 3 Tbs. of organic tomato paste, 1 tsp. oregano, 1 Tbs. of sugar, and 2 Tbs. of fresh basil.

One ingredient we normally don’t include, but will henceforth: fresh tomato.

After pre-baking the crust, D-Rak applies extra virgin (that’s what they all say) olive oil.

The application of the green pepper.

Other toppings for this first pizza included black olive, Spanish onion, pepperoni (on some of the pizza), banana peppers, mozzarella, and cheddar cheese. The second pizza would be a little different.

Baked! (Dude.)

Pizza number two added mushrooms, marinated artichoke, and a lot more cheese (including fresh-grated parmesan). I liked this one even more. (Observe the Vegetarian Strip.)

Eating time! I’m pretty sure the picture that D-Rak is taking would soon be on Facebook. (Um, why am I the only one with a mixed drink?)

Dessert, because we didn’t plan well, was mango and strawberry mochi from Trader Joe’s. Very tasty, but messy (you end up with flour everywhere).

I thought the evening was fun and the pizza delicious. Silly Putty Cat was completely unimpressed.

On Friday, I had the opportunity to visit Yale University for a performance of my trombone concerto, “Harvest.”

I’d never been on the campus before – it’s not as if I could ever have gained admission to the school – and I was excited to visit the school that educated 5 US Presidents, 49 Nobel Laureates, Cole Porter, and AEJ’s dad.

Upon my arrival, Thomas Duffy, Yale’s Director of Bands, gave me a tour. One building we didn’t enter: the Scroll and Key tomb, home of one of Yale’s secret societies.

Little known fact: Scroll and Key membership consists entirely of cats. Siamese cats.

Spring has come to Yale!

This stunning building, designed by Gordon Bunshaft, is the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. The “windows” are translucent marble, designed to protect the books from direct sunlight.

A shot of the interior.

A fancy case…

… containing one of 48 surviving copies of the Gutenberg Bible, the first major book produced on a printing press in the 13th century.

Continuing the walking tour… This is where they house the visiting scholars from Dartmouth.

(I’m slowly learning the fun of disparaging “other” Ivy League institutions.  I say “other,” as if I’m a member of any.  But still, it’s fun, and I recommend it.  You could say things like Seth Myers’s recent joke from SNL about the student who falsified his transcripts to Harvard.  “He’s been sentenced to four years at Cornell.”  You need to tell that joke in a cartoonishly haughty voice.)

The Yale Library no longer uses card catalogs, of course, but the drawers are still there – empty.

Some things that Yale-folk read. Forbes, and…

The Yale School of Music.

A poster for the concert!

The concert was in Woolsey Hall – a beautiful structure that holds a massive pipe organ.  Organ music would sound spectacular in there with the 15-second reverb and heavy low frequency response, but fast wind ensemble music? I guess we’d see!

The Yale Concert Band is not part of the (graduate) School of Music. It’s a volunteer (non-credit earning) ensemble, consisting primarily of Yale University undergrad students who major in things other than music. So basically this is a group of super-smart students who will eventually Rule the World, but they like playing in band (i.e., they’re My Favorite People™), so they do this as an extra-curricular activity. The contrabassoonist is normally a sax player. The timpanist? Also normally a sax player. So how’d the concert go?

It was great. The soloist, Yale School of Music trombone lecturer, Scott Hartman, is an awesome player. (I later learned that he was the trombone soloist in the Brass Band of Battle Creek’s performance of “Asphalt Cocktail” in 2010.) Scott is very theatrical in his performance, at times firing these blasts of power left-to-right across the audience, following with a glissando aimed straight ahead but up towards the balcony. I loved it.  The second movement was beautiful, and the last movement was light and fun.  And that first movement: badassery.

And the band? They nailed it. This was the first non-music-major ensemble I’ve heard play the piece, and I had no idea what to expect, but as I told them all after the concert, they played the sh*t out of the piece. (Sax-turned-contrabassoon-player: You should play more contra. Sax-turned-timpani player: play more percussion. Your time is better than some percussionists I’ve heard…) I really hope I get an opportunity to return sometime soon to work with Tom Duffy and his ensemble again. Next time, I hope to somehow get into the School of Music’s building, where I can contribute to the corruption of the minds of Yale’s composers-in-training.

It might sound goofy, to be able to say “I spent the day working at Yale” makes me feel proud and humbled. I’m just relieved they didn’t ask to see my SAT scores.