Dining with musician friends at Bacheesos in Berkeley, CA

This was a happy reunion after many long months. The last I caught up with Friedrich Edelmann and Rebecca Rust they were returning from one of their European tours only to land one in Japan, playing for the Emperor and Empress. The happily married bassoon and cello duo, who sometimes add a pianist to the…

Practicing J.S. Bach’s Gigue from French Suite No. 5 in G, BWV 816

My "block-headed" journeys continue. They take me through landscapes of chordal outlines solidifying my learning. In J.S. Bach's A minor Invention 13 I'd recently absorbed organized clusters of notes in my palms as they moved in harmonic rhythm, while featherweight thumbs became little rulers, measuring and spacing out distances between inverted chords. Once unraveled, these…