A Finer Things Break

The piano studio is about to begin its Christmas break, and I'm excited because this will be a working vacation for me.

I've defined the two week break as my "Finer Things Break," which is an idea steal from The Office's Finer Things Club, a club instituted for a select few individuals that still had souls in the corporate environment.

However, instead of using my break to discuss art like the picture above reveals, I plan to use my time to finally notate my Aeneas compositions into a computer program.

You may ask, what in the world is an Aeneas composition, and this is where I have to decide whether or not to share the short or long version of this story, as I am afraid you may find me really, truly, very nerdy.

Let's keep this short. :)

In college, I double-majored in piano performance and Latin. To combine both of my majors for a final project, I took 3 separate texts from Vergil's "Aeneid," translated said sections, and put the words to music from the original Latin. I ended up performing a song cycle using Dido's 3 major monologues with my dear friend Hannah as Dido. From there, we were forever known in college as the "Dido Divas."

Fast forward to today, I am now completing the song cycle by adding Aeneas' most famous words. His monologues will turn into 4 individual works, and they will frame Dido's 3 songs perfectly.

The goal is to finish the notation over the break and send it to a tenor for review. The overall plan for 2019 is to perform the entire song cycle in March for a special gathering at St. Olaf College. There is still a lot of logistics to prepare and discuss, but that is the lofty goal!

So as I will be dreaming about sugar plums and candy canes over the holidays, I'm confident I will also be dreaming of the song cycle and things I should tweak on it.

As always, Ben, Blair, and I are sending everyone Happy Christmas greetings over this blessed holiday!