i got a phone call from ezra today. he was wasting time before his performance this evening, and working on a 4½’ square portrait using sticker scraps from his bald man project. he is going to europe in a couple weeks, so i probably won’t get to see him before next year. next year, he’s going to new york to perform something or another, and he has been awarded the merce cunningham scholarship at cornish, so his plan is to meet merce cunnningham while he’s there, which makes me very proud and very jealous at the same time. i want to go to new york to perform – okay, so i’ve already performed at the kennedy center, and i’ve met my share of famous people, but he’s getting to meet one of the preeminent choreographers of the 20th-21st century. it doesn’t matter that that puts one degree of separation between me and merce cunningham, and even less of a degree of separation when you realise that i’m his father. it would be very much like me meeting buckminster fuller or john cage, except that they’re both dead and merce cunningham isn’t.

anyway, we don’t have a snow white performance today, which (i think) is a good thing, since there is also a rehearsal for the “Nelson Sings Nilsson” cd release tonight, which i would probably have to miss if there were. i don’t know whether i’ve written about this before (i have, sort of), but i’m doing it again anyway. harry nilsson is the guy who wrote the incredibly popular songs that were performed by other people such as “One (Is The Loneliest Number)”, “Cuddly Toy” and “Me And My Arrow”, but he also wrote a bunch of other, less well known, but equally awesome songs. sean nelson, the singer for Harvey Danger, decided that he’s releasing a CD of these not-so-well-known songs which is recorded by The Really Big Production Company, which is my friend mark nichols. this involves a 4 piece rock band, a 9 piece big band (for which i am playing tuba), a 24-piece orchestra, backup singers and a childrens’ chorus. we’re performing the entire CD – 14 individual songs, and a medley of 15 other songs – live at Town Hall (scroll down to 8 december, or see sean’s blog), on 8 december – which is quite a feat, considering that i had never met most of these people before a few weeks ago. the actual recording took place in a studio and i recorded the tuba parts listening to a recording over headphones.

i suppose this is what i do instead of going to europe and new york, and meeting merce cunningham…