M-Ongst Ourselves |
("Contact Susie with a Glance at yourself at SKilgard@aol.com or 954-0326!")
March is the Month for Musical Mensans! By sheer coincidence, all the Glances this month share a love for ... what else? Music. And a one, and a two, and a...
Ever wished that Hawaiian vacation would go on forever? You might think twice if Patricia Hayes Alberti told you that living on the island paradise is great for a while, but can definitely become too much of a good thing. She and her husband lived on Kauai for 15 years, and just moved to the Valley about a year and a half ago. While in Hawaii she started managing musicians and other performers, and she has been able to continue that business back here on the mainland. She manages a wide range of performers who come from all over the world--classical and jazz musicians, mimes, even a puppeteer. Her experience with music began long before her business, however. She has degrees in education and music education, and taught music in Detroit, her hometown. Aside from her work in that field, she also works for ASU Public Events--that’s the department that brings in the professional events for Gammage, the Sundome, and Kerr Cultural Center. She loves her work there, which consists of working in the marketing department with the corporate sponsors for events. Her favorite shows at ASU so far? Chicago, she said immediately, as well as Miss Saigon and Showboat. The department is already busy preparing for next season’s shows; what they will end up scheduling depends largely on which shows already have scheduled tour stops in places like Los Angeles, San Diego, or Texas, so that the cost of moving all those sets and performers to Tempe is a little less extraordinary.
Speaking of extraordinary, have you ever seen the scenes around Sedona? Lowell-James Hicks has the good fortune to live in the area--Jerome, specifically, population about 450--and works as a jazz musician part time in those towns as well as in Prescott and Cottonwood. Jerome, he says, is situated at 5,000 feet and is a great starting point to bike either downhill to Cottonwood or uphill to the top of Mingus Mountain. He also lives on the Big Island of Hawaii (could this be another March theme?!?) where he has served as Executive Director of the Hawaii Animal Welfare Lobby. More recently, Lowell-James has just completed several hundred hours of prior art research on a new technique for a particle collider--"simply an intellectual exercise," he adds, "since the prototype is a few trillion dollars beyond my reach." He studies Jungian psychology, bioethics, and ASL, and is a vegan -- no animal products in his diet, apparel, or tools or the trade. What happened to the music theme? Never fear--here’s the oh-so-smooth Glance-to-Glance transition in the guise of Lowell-James’s patents: one in progress on a piece of medical apparatus, and the other (for sale on the web) for a musical instrument.
And, how alphabetically convenient to be speaking of instruments when Ellen Long recently has built a dulcimer--an hourglass-shaped, four-stringed instrument. This instrument was developed in the Appalachian Mountains, where people say that if you can count to nine, you can play the dulcimer. (Ellen herself is not so sure it will be that easy.) The dulcimer is a fairly peculiar instrument in that three of its strings are tuned to D, with the bass string tuned to G. You only can change the pitch on one or two strings, since the others don’t change pitch. This means that the dulcimer is almost the only instrument from which you can hear a melody as well as the sound of a constant background droning tone. Only one other instrument can do this--any guesses? (Answer’s at the end of the column.) If making your own instruments appeals to you, you might enjoy visiting the web site of the company that sells the kits Ellen uses: www.musikit.com. Ellen also has built a mandolin and a harp, and she says that, if you are interested in music, building your own instrument is a special experience. Why not try the dulcimer yourself? It’s portable, not too complicated to build, and to play it you only have to know the treble clef--like playing the piano with only your right hand! That other instrument, by the way...is the bagpipe.
Many merry melodies to you this March!