I don’t often have much luck with the weather, but this time the rain went away and Sasha and I went riding out to Inspiration Point and up South Park Drive. Amazing how much easier a climb is when you’ve got good company. I wish I could just keep pedaling and pedaling, until I became some kind of cycling angel and my wings lifted me up to that campground in Fiddler’s Green.

I played Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite with the University Orchestra on Friday and Saturday. I love that piece: it’s a tiny gem, perfect in all of its aspects. It’s also the first piece I ever had a real solo in, back in high school when I played in the Portland Youth Philharmonic. At the end of the evil king Kashchei’s infernal dance, the Firebird appears and sings a berceuse to lull the king and his minions to sleep. That lullaby features the bassoon, all by its lonesome. I was as nervous as anyone can be without busting an aorta back when I played the solo for the first time; I remember standing outside the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall (in the rain, of course) before the concert wondering if the Foreign Legion had any recruiting offices in Portland.

Ten years makes a difference. I’m certainly a lot less nervous, although I’ve never been sure if it’s because I’ve gotten better, or if it’s because I don’t care so much about “getting it right” as I do about being a part of the music: which of course still requires accuracy, but also understanding. At times that understanding comes intuitively, in the same way that a sailor understands the wind on his sails, or a skier understands the face of a mountain. Sometimes it comes through careful study of formalisms like chords and thematic progression: though this knowledge ceases, in time, to be a collection of formulae and becomes part of the apparatus of perception. There is nothing more wonderful in my life as a musician than the moments when all the work of practice and listening moves, so to speak, from in front of my eyes to the back of them, to my breath and the tips of my fingers.

(cdm | Lullaby)