I can’t say enough about my last 2 weeks at the Ostrava Days festival in the Czech Republic. But here it is: I played 10 Premieres, including Christian Wolff’s new Small Orchestra Piece where I played bass clarinet, another giant performance of Terry Riley’s In C, the premiere of Jeewon Kim’s gorgeous “Who Am I” which had a monster clarinet part with Studio Dan from Vienna, premiering Edgars Rubenis quiet microtonal beauty, several performances with Ostravska Banda, a site-specific work by Theo Finkel to end the 18 hour all night marathon, improv workshops with Thomas Buckner, hearing Alvin Curran and Frederic Rzewski play, so much great beer, super reunions with musicians Juho Laitinen, Jen Baker, Will Lang, James Ilgenfritz, Lucie Vitkova, JPA Falzone, Zach Layton, Conrad Harris, Chris Nappi, Liisa Hirsch, who else!! so many, hearing Devin Maxwell’s beautiful Cloudseeding 10 (the last in the series) for string quartet have it’s Czech premiere, a Feldman OPERA!, so many new friends and their new, awesome music, too many to list (Kimberley Farris-Manning, Bruno Ferrandis, Amin Sharifi, Judith Berkson, my rad clarinet colleagues that gifted me special Czech liquor), feeling the real strength of community and giving experimental music it’s weight in the world. (oh and having a nap on a boat in Prague under the Charles Bridge)
fromkp 