I'm going to talk about music this time.  My main interest is jazz, but lately I've been listening to a lot of New Orleans music (of course most of it is rooted in jazz, but some has other roots as well).  My secondary interest is in classical music.  As I said in my initial post, I like a wide variety of classical music.  I find baroque music to be good for writing and composers like Bach to be great for reading.  I have a special fondness for Arvo Part and John Adams, both 20th c. composers, one Estonian (Part) and one American (Adams).  Adams was the subject of a recent profile in the New Yorker that talked about his early influences and life in the bay area.  Part, I don't know much about, but I just got a copy of Tabula Rasa and am still exploring it, though my initial impressions are favorable.

All of this is leading to talking about our recent experience at an eighth blackbird concert here in Fort Collins.  I was quite excited to go given all the good press I had read about the group.  They are known for energetic performances of modern music and have even won a Grammy award.  But I have to admit to being sort of disappointed.  (My caveat - we left at the intermission and I heard it got better in the second half.)  The performers were technically proficient, but I got the impression of music as intellectual exercise and my preference is for more lyricism and melody.  One piece started with one note, then two notes, then three notes, etc. until they got to all 64 notes, then it went backwards to the original note.  Interesting as an exercise, but it didn't grab me as a piece I enjoyed for its emotion.  Maybe I just don't have the right mind set for that kind of thing.  But I'm glad we got out to see what it was about.  This was the second concert in the five-pack that we bought in the Lincoln Center series.  The first was a combined performance of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band and the Blind Boys of Alabama, a concert that I enjoyed a lot.  We'll have to see how the third performance grabs us.