Rants By Topic

You’ll Never See The Like Of Me Again – Snippet The Boats

09.28.2017

Another snippet from the new opera, The Boats: You’ll Never See The Like Of Me Again. Hurricanes and waterfront property. Recitatives vs. Arias. Genesis. It. Wagner. Choosing the proper length of time for an performance is half the battle.

Roger CortonA new snippet!

You’ll Never See The Like Of Me Again (Snippet)

JCHForget that. Inquiring minds wanna know: how’d the hurricanes treat ya?

RCWhere we live it was OK. But I went with a group to help out south of here. And it was unbelievable. Whole towns will have to be rebuilt for hundreds of miles.

JCHSo much for (ahem) ‘the myth of global warming’.

RCWell regardless of politics and beliefs I’m sure people are thinking differently about building near the shore.

JCHMaybe. We have this Irish expression which I will translate freely, “The Good Lord provides sweet forgetfulness after childbirth. Otherwise, we’d never have more than one […]

Guitar Tips

09.13.2017

Teaching

Well, Rog is off for a while so I decided to take some initiative and actually write something myself–something I haven’t done in years. Mr. Corton is selflessly helping people in his part of Georgia trying to cope with Irma (Note to the people in charge: You should definitely pick more epic names for super-storms. I mean, c’mon. ‘Irma’?) Anyhoo, whatever he’s doing it’s definitely more important than helping me do (cough) ‘social media’.

But fortunately, we do have a ton of material stuck in ‘the vault’. OK, it’s not really in a vault. What it is, is that when Rog and I do these Skype chats, he chops them down to 1,000 words and then sticks the rest of the blather in a virtual trash bin that never seems to get emptied. So at times like this, all I have to do is write a witty introduction like this. And then? Et Viola! Instant Rant. Like this.

The following is actually from a chat we had four or five years ago. […]

You Can Dream With Me – Snippet The Boats

09.5.2017

Opera, Songs, The Boats

Another snippet from the new opera, The Boats, the big finale: You Can Dream With Me. Escaped salmon. Career opportunities. Crisis and Chinese expressions. Playable mockups. Creative at the wrong time. Performance therapy. Woody Allen.

Roger CortonA new snippet!

You Can Dream With Me (Snippet)

JCHSnippet my arse.

RCI misspoke. It’s a substantial piece of music. What gives?

JCHI dunno. I guess my thinking is that the opera stuff is such a stretch for regular listeners that there’s no need to be ‘stingy’. It’s not like I’m gonna sell racks of these things.

RCSo what you’re saying is that because it’s less of what people want, you’re making up for it with larger portions?

JCHI never thought about it like that. We lose money on every sale, but boy do we make it up in VOLUME! (laughs).

RCVolume–that’s good. OK, so what’s it all about?

JCHWell, it’s the finale. And […]