more excitement in one week

My friends back home made the comment, "You have more adventures in a week than I could handle in two or three months," and I can say that the same is practically true for me.  One long day of classes and traveling past Zürich for work and I am loathe to leave the house the next day.  Even for things I love to do.
I did, anyway, make my way to the farmer's market, and I got there just in time.  I managed to get some good bread (finally!), and really at the last minute; I was saying hello to the nice lady who sells hand made mustard and she asked if I wanted to buy some bread.  Yes, why not!  Anyhow.  On the way home I passed by a parked taxi with a copy of Gilgamesh in the front window.  What a literate working population.

Not much else happened this weekend.  I made a squash curry with coconut milk (Thai-style, yum!), played the smallest amount of bass possible to still call it practicing, and then brought some curry over to my friends' house.

Classes seem to be fine.  Baroque and Classical Theory, Notation, German for foreigners (Auslanders).  My Notation class is interesting.  The idea is to place the piece in a time and location, based on the physical clues you can look at.  Like Art History for musicians.  This includes looking at things like instrumentation, why and when different markings were used, how you can tell which country the music was written in and where it was printed, and, consequently, what technique was used to do the printing.  !!  The teacher is great, she's smart and funny and very enthusiastic about her subject.  She also wears a little watch on a chain around her neck so she can end the class on time (charming).  She explained a little in class about different printing techniques, but the students seemed generally confused about the concepts.  After class I asked her if she might be interested in having the class come over to Druckwerk so I can show them what copper plate etching, lithography, and letterpress printing actually are, and how they work, and she liked the idea.  So, we're setting something up for the end of the month!  How exciting.
Every student also has to do a presentation about one subject at the end of the year, topic of our choice, and she has approved further research on my part into how and where music was printed.  I plan to do a few physical experiments, too, of course.

I have homework for other classes, too.  Come up with 6 - 8 variations on La Follia.  Write a 4-bar minuet using a specific chord progression.  Look at this, I'm back in school.  Weird.  Well, in typical form (as far as I can remember) I am putting of my homework.  Hopefully not until the last minute.  That would be depressing.  I'm 30, after all.  One would hope I've learned not to procrastinate so much.  Ha.

little web of roots I found while cleaning up the balcony today



Meanwhile, fall is starting.  Pictures to follow. 

this, and that

Not much going on here at the moment.  I have very little playing to do; my teacher is out of the country, teaching at Tafelmusik (where I met him), and I don't have any work, though I do have one concert this month, the Master's recital of one Marie Schneider, blockflote player of Alsace (France).  

I can't print, at the moment, because the building has been taken over by the giant art fair; yesterday I went to the opening of the show (and skipped the entry fee by sneaking in the back way, ha) and saw a couple decent things, along with a lot of really uninteresting paintings.  There were two publishing collectives from Germany, one from Berlin called AKV, and one from Leipzig, called Spector Books; I ended up talking for a while to the Spector guy, and in the end traded one of my we are eating breakfasts for a book set of theirs called Liner Notes.  The "set" includes the English translation of the text, and is pretty interesting: it's a record of four days of conversations about books, making books, organizing books, designing books.  One of the Spector people I talked to even suggested I come up to Leipzig and do some printing, or perhaps teach a workshop, as they're pretty interested in letterpress up there (as much as they can be; no one is as enthusiastic about the old technologies here as they are in the States).

So.  This makes it sounds like I've been doing things.  Maybe, although I also am getting into the habit of sleeping late, then taking a nap during the day, then... looking at the internet... and... uh...

Well.  In other news, alas:

I'll have to buy a new bass wheel when I go home this summer.  I can't complain too much, I did buy this when I was at USC (1998).  I've definitely gotten my money's worth.

And, I did have the chance to print one thing before Art Basel started:

new book project!

Finished.

Printed onto antique topographical maps of Switzerland.  Wood type on front, handset lead on reverse.  Edition of 12.  More info, I guess, on Etsy.

Also, for your enjoyment, two crappy pictures of a hilarious window display in Groß Basel (across the river from me, in Kleinbasel, or as I've started calling it, "Meinbasel" - my Basel), a picture of these little things printed with the symbol of Basel embedded in the sidewalk all over town, and a photo I took of this bow I'm playing on, while describing it via Skype to my dad.

Thursday is my official audition for the Schola, wish me luck!

printers are famous here

My flat is located on Efringerstrasse, between Markgräflerstrasse and Amerbachstrasse.  Two days ago I learned that Amerbach was the name of a printer who worked here, and just yesterday I was looking at some of the images I shot of the books at Stanford.  Below, the first book I ever photographed:

You'll notice his name about halfway down the text, Amerpachio.  How about that.  I should mention that Amerbach probably didn't live in my neighborhood, back in the 16th century; this was probably a field, or a forest.  Maybe there were some deer.

Below, some images taken yesterday while helping Florian finish his project.  He had a lot of text for us to set and print.  

ZwiebelFisch

Well, how about this: I got a key to the Druckwerk studio today. Druck = print. Letterpress printing is known as Buchdruck (buch = book) and, in exchange for volunteer hours (1:1) that's exactly what I'll be doing. Some Things I Learned At The Print Shop Today:

1. If a letter in your case of type is in the wrong spot, it's called a fish (Fisch). If it belongs in another case entirely, it's called an Onion Fish (ZwiebelFisch).
2. Everyone knows about points from their word processing program. Turns out, points in America are slightly smaller than points in Europe. What?! I wrote more about this on flickr.
3. Spending 3 hours thoroughly vacuuming and sweeping up a print shop can make you sore in the haunches but is still worth it for the earned trust and brownie-points.
I'm going back tomorrow to do some more organizing, and start setting type for a business card. Check out the shop's website, if you feel like parsing through some German.

More pictures, of course.

Spring is warming things up around here, and I had lunch today by the Rhein (about a 2 minute walk from the studio) in the sun. I possibly even got a tiny bit sunburnt. And, I stood (briefly, briefly) in the river, which is full of snowmelt at the moment. Marcel, one of the printers, told me that during the summer he often walks from the studio down to the river for a quick swim. What a perfect way to take a break.