[powerpress]<\/p>\n
A recording made live at Mira’s house the day we met in person for the first time. This is a “live take” release reminiscent of the track Dylan released where the whole band fell apart laughing. <\/p>\n
Mira had some questions about the physicality of playing horn, so I suggested that she try something my horn teacher once had me do: sit behind me, rest her chin on my skull, and rest her hands on my rib cage. The chin-to-skull contact would allow her to hear not just through her ears the usual way but also through bone conduction to her inner ear. The hand-to-rib contact would allow her to feel the effort that goes into breathing and blowing. <\/p>\n
First, as I was starting to play, Mira’s long-haired German shepherd, Roshi, started licking my face. I persevered for another measure or two until Roshi’s enthusiasm knocked the mouthpiece off my embouchure, producing a bizarre sound and causing both Mira and me to crack up completely. <\/p>\n
I started over again from the beginning. This time, when I got to the stopped horn passage, aka “that THING,” I forgot that I was playing my deskant horn and didn’t have the stopping crook in. My deskant horn is a B-flat\/high F double horn by Lawson that has an optional low F extension that can be replaced with an A crook or a stopping crook. At the time, I had the low F extension in, so the only way I’d be able to play the stopped passage properly would have been by substituting a lot of funky fingerings and doing some careful tuning with the position of my right hand in the bell. <\/p>\n
I didn’t do any of that. I just tried to play the passage as if I were using my regular horn. <\/p>\n
The result was a series of increasing out-of-tune notes, until finally I realized what the problem was, stopped playing, swore, told Mira about the problem, and again cracked up. <\/p>\n
I resume from that passage, playing it open, and finally finished the piece. <\/p>\n
This was the first time Mira and I had shared the daily kaddish live, in person. At the end, I set my horn in my lap, Mira wrapped her arms around my shoulders, and we sat together like that in silence for a long, long time\u2014two full minutes\u2014before one of us spoke. I preserved that two minutes of silence together in the recording, because I don’t think I’ve ever sat inside a pregnant pause as long as that one before, and I don’t know if I ever will again. <\/p>\n
A powerful experience. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[powerpress] A recording made live at Mira’s house the day we met in person for the first time. This is a “live take” release reminiscent of the track Dylan released where the whole band fell apart laughing. Mira had some questions about the physicality of playing horn, so I suggested that she try something my…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[253],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-podcasts"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1842"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1842\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2158,"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1842\/revisions\/2158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}