Nervous Breakdowns and Missteps

Hi All--my busy-meter has been pegged for the past two weeks, and logistics have finally started breaking down. If I can somehow get things done this month and not lose my mind. I'll not go into details, as they would only depress me. Sorry Kristen!!!!

In more pleasant news, I got a parcel from Bulgaria today--I'd reviewed a performance of Emil Tabakov's concertos, which have just been released by Naxos records. I wrote a review of it for Musicweb which the editor sent to the composer himself in Sofia. Tabakov emailed me asking if I'd be interested in more of his recordings and I was quite happy to say yes. Inside the parcel, which Tabakov hand addressed, I have eight CDs, five of which he burned for me himself. On top of all was a very pleasant brief note. It's stuff like this that I really enjoy about reviewing recordings. Tabakov has number of recordings to his credit, almost exclusively with the Sofia Philharmonic under his baton; he was conductor for the Sofia Philharmonic from 1988 until 2000. More recently, he is the conductor of the Ankara-based Bilkent Symphony Orchestra, which is the orchestra for the burned CDs I got. His work is much along the lines of Shostakovich, Schnittke, and Shchedrin, which means I really rather like it. He's rather obsessive with his thematic material, which adds to the tenacity of the pieces of his that I've heard so far.

The above photo was taken at my last poetry workshop, which involved making unusual taxonomies and sorting objects in new and different ways and seeing how that can be applied to poetry. There were quite a few objects to sort through. I started taking pictures of what I came up with, as well as what others did, which you'll likely see throughout posts for April.

For example, there were quite a few postcards. I started taking pictures of them as seen through various pieces of equipment found in the room, including the overhead projector, which is how I got this second image. All in all, quite fun.

Ok, I've got to get back to work. Much to catch up on.