I have a bunch of earnings reports to read and as I work from home, I can’t get Scarlatti’s Sonata in D minor, K.64 / L. 58 / P. 33 out of my head. He wrote it sometime around the year 1740 and it was printed in Volume II of a book of keyboard sonatas he published in 1742. Harpsichord, clavichord, piano, guitar … it just sounds so catchy no matter the instrument on which it is performed.
I could hardly sleep Friday night because of excitement. It felt like Christmas as a kid, when all that joy, happiness, and anticipation are bundled together. Only much, much greater. Imagine you had been waiting on Christmas to arrive for more than thirty years.
Many of you watched me put off this purchase for decades as I prioritized investing over consumption, but it is now here: Aaron and I finally settled on our “forever” piano. We purchased a Bösendorfer 230VC model with the Enspire Disklavier Pro add-on and a custom-inlaid Macassar ebony wood around the soundboard. It is being manufactured near Vienna, Austria for us and should arrive in the next year.
We recently discovered that in 2017, the SpaceLab9 booth at New York Comic Con sold an extremely limited edition Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Ultimate Vinyl collection etched to look like the famous sweet rolls from the game. The collection, which was limited to only 95 copies, contains the full 52-tracks found in the game. The moment we learned it existed, we knew we had to have it. After some searching, in June 2020 we were able to track down one of those boxed sets. We immediately bought it for our music collection.
Over the past year, one of my favorite tracks to listen to while I work is an instrumental piece by Iranian-born composer, producer, instrumentalist, and performer Sami Yusuf. In referring to his genre of music, Yusuf calls it “Spiritique”, which blends Eastern and Western sounds into something new and different.
Several incredibly talented people collaborated on a disco-style track called “Kill the Lights” that Aaron and I have been listening to on endless repeat. The build-up to the chorus and explosion of happiness is great, especially when the volume is turned up, the sun is shining, and you’re getting stuff done. You can’t help but dance. It’s probably going to be the song we remember most from Spring 2020 (even thought it was released several years ago and just flew below our radar). There is just so much joy in it.
One of the benefits of our relocation to the West Coast was going through boxes and containers dating back to early childhood, discovering things that we didn’t realize we had; toys from our nursery, birthday cards from elementary school, choral music from high school and college. This included migrating old computer archives before destroying the physical drives, resulting in large amounts of data we now need to organize and catalog over the coming years as a part-time personal project
I am a huge fan of the work of biographer Ron Chernow (many of you know him for writing Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr., which is the best biography on the oil giant that has ever been published). Back in 2004, he wrote a biography of Alexander Hamilton. If you don’t have a copy, you should buy one and read it. My edition is marked-up, highlighted, cross-referenced, and scribbled upon. Through 800 or so pages, he lays out the story of one of America’s founding fathers.
As I’ve grown older, I find myself fascinated by the power of social capital; specifically, how it encircles the person who possesses it with a halo that sets them apart from society even when they are far from the only snowflake. People often mistake fame with competency or ability. This tendency is part of human nature so it…
La Marche des Scythes I’m working from my home study trying to get a bunch of stuff knocked off my agenda now that we are starting the 3rd quarter of the year but I have a certain passage from La Marche des Scythes in my head. I’ve been playing it on repeat at full blast…
After writing about the mathematics of Borda count voting systems as applied to the Eurovision contest, I realized I never posted the Russian performance, presented by the virginal 17-year old Tolmachevy Sisters. Bask in the symbolism of both the staging and the orchestration choices. Those of you with a history or music background will spot it…
