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septembre 17e, 2008
03:24 pm - It's actually over....
I can't believe the concerts are over. I've spent six months working up to these... well, longer, actually. Ever since we announced that Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg was going to be our new music director in January, I've been working my butt off to make sure we could sell these concerts to huge, full houses. I did my job - normally we have around 900 people come out for these. This weekend we had around 1,700, nearly double!!!
We also got fantastic reviews. Here are some excerpts:
"The quality of performance is so high, the audience so engaged, the program so engaging within its class, and the charisma so omnipresent that now the only remaining barriers to national celebrity lie in the marketing arena." - San Francisco Classical Voice
http://www.sfcv.org/2008/09/09/new-star-on-the-horizon/
"This fine string orchestra continues to play with a degree of zest and unanimity that most ensembles can only envy." - San Francisco Chronicle
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/09/12/DDOK12SVUR.DTL
"The orchestra was being drawn, visibly, into Salerno-Sonnenberg's special world of performance, which matches hot-bloodedness with machine-shop precision." - San Jose Mercury News
http://www.mercurynews.com/music/ci_10447518
Whew. And now, back to the rest of my life...
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mars 5e, 2008
02:41 am - Random Cat in Laundry Room
This is a copy of the letter I wrote to my building mates two nights ago:
"Hi everyone,
Mike and I were woken up at 3am today by what looks like a main coon cat pawing at our door and trying to get in our apartment to play with our cat. The two were yowling at each other.
When we managed to get into the hallway without the cat coming into the apartment, we walked up and down the hallway to see if anyone was awake or had left their door open. The end results: WE woke a few people in a failed attempt to return this poor cat to its home and it ended up pooping in front of #xx's door. We picked up the poop right away and tied it up in a bag in the laundry room which we'll take out to the trash in the morning.
It's now 4am and we need to sleep or something, so we lured this cat into the laundry room and set it up with a makeshift litter, a little water and food. It looks a little confused and annoyed, but basically OK.
We tried calling animal control, but they don't pick up before 9am and had no good advice to give us.
Is this your cat? If so, please go rescue it from the laundry room! If not, we're going to take it to the SPCA in the morning to get it checked out. If no one claims it within a week, we may adopt it ourselves.
This cat is quite friendly (rubbed against our legs constantly) and looks too healthy and well cared for to be a stray. If he or she is yours, and you end up picking him or her up, please let us all know!
Your tired neighbors,
Rachel and Mike"
We didn't actually get to go to sleep until around 6am. Eric was still yowling for his new friend. We were going to name the new cat Elijah. It turned out to belong to one of our neighbors, though.
Funny thing is, she didn't even realize the cat had gotten out. It escaped when one of her roommates left the apartment that night and it was let back in by one of them before she woke up.
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octobre 9e, 2007
04:55 pm - it begins with a P and ends with an S
( My big purchase! )
I've never written a check for that much money before. o:
Humeur actuelle:  excited
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août 22e, 2007
03:37 pm - dream
I had a weird dream this morning about Rush Limbaugh. He was a homeless guy in a wheelchair and he was at an intersection that I was walking past. He was talking very loudly as if he was on the radio (his radio show is what's on my alarm clock in the morning) and he was describing some new metal contraption that made it more comfortable for disabled homeless people to sleep in deserted alleyways and behind restaurant kitchens.
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juin 30e, 2007
05:05 am - lots of music this week...
I already wrote about the Grande Old Opry and Bernadette Peters with the Nashville Chamber Orchestra... I think. Well, if I didn't, they were awesome.
Sunday night I flew home, ate dinner, and promptly went to my first TA event in SF - Gabriel and Dresden spinning a free set at a club called Slide, right next to Ruby Skye. Ohhh what a wonderful night it was! I got there just in time for their set, and it was like no other set I'd heard them spin before. The first hour of it they did a lot of playing with the beat and had this very techno sound... 2nd hour they incorporated some house anthems, I believe... i didn't actually know any of the tracks. I'm so out of the loop. Oof.
Then tonight was the Human Rights Campaign / Cyndi Lauper True Colors tour at the Greek Theatre in Berkeley. Thanks to Mike, I was able to go backstage (I missed talking with Cyndi Lauper though because I had to stay at work a little late!!!), and I even managed to validate my presence by videotaping an interview with Erasure's keyboard player. It was a great concert... I'd never seen the Dresden Dolls live, and I was REALLY impressed. It was also amazing to see some of my favorite songs from when I was a little kid performed live... those were always radio and VH1 / MTV tunes... I never expected to get to see them live!!! AND THEN I MET ROSIE O'DONNELL BACKSTAGE. I was TOTAL fan girl, but she was really nice and took a picture with us (to be posted after Mike uploads it from his camera). I TOUCHED Rosie O'Donnell!!! Eeeeee!!!!
And now we're home... and there's more music, but it's not so welcomed. Our neighbors across the hall at Hat Factory are having a noisy party with tons of people... which is fine for a Friday night, except that Mike and I are really tired from working all week AND we have to work all weekend (dammit). Anyway, there are all these obnoxiously drunk people making all sorts of noise in the hallway and right outside the door (which is right next to our apt) and the music is more than just a thump thump thump, AND (this is the part that I find the most annoying) the RESIDENTS of the Hat Factory are nowhere to be found. Well, actually, two of them are out of town, which means that the one who is left, Eddie, is the only one hosting the party, and he is MIA. So we have a bunch of drunk people wandering our halls, going in and out of their apartment, and smoking right outside our door, and there is no one available to maintain control. I'm all for a good party, but the damn host SHOULD BE AVAILABLE so that when disgruntled neighbors who have had a long week want to politely ask that the music gets turned down just a little and that people are encouraged to not scream in the hallway, we have someone to talk to!!! Grrrr.
Mike mentioned that these poor partying drunk folks are an easy target for our wrath because we're both cranky from our long weeks. Yes, I agree. I am tempted to just head over there and shut the party down myself.
I AM going to formally complain to the residents of Hat Factory next time I see them, though. I think it's really irresponsible to host a party and then go missing. As for the rest of my grumbling, well, I am kind of cranky tonight (despite the great concert), so I am going to just try to ignore it and have that be that. Or if they get really obnoxious I'll go yell at them. Heh.
Poor Eric... he is mostly fine, but every noise makes him go wide-eyed. This is nowhere near as bad as he was during Decompression, tho!! (:
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juin 28e, 2007
03:06 pm - crappy mood
First - www.savenetradio.org <--- please click this link and contact your Senators and Representatives to ask them to vote for the Radio Equality Act, which will establish the same rates for internet radio stations that satellite radio currently pays. This legislation is important to negate the new outrageously high royalty rates that will go into effect on July 15th and that will only serve to put most independent internet radio stations out of business.
More info:
http://www.di.fm/blog/read/2007/06/day-of-silence-on-june-26th.html
San Francisco Chronicle Article
I am particularly upset about this because internet radio has been one of my outlets for spreading my own music (I was a Radio Crystal Blue Gem of the Week in 2005) AND for exposing me to all sorts of new music. Internet radio is what exposed me to eurodance and trance ten years ago, and to many of the DJs and artists that I'm now a fan of.
I've been in an icky mood all day today. my productivity level at work has gone downhill as the day progresses and I've been doing the thing where I mentally curse people out as I walk down the street (which is normally something that happens during early morning commutes when I'm sleepy and cranky). It doesn't help that the last two nights of sleep have been heavy but angsty. Night before last I dreamed about the new NCCO website design. It was an odd dream, in which I was basically just staring at the design page, and over time it shifted to a simpler design. Around 2:30am, I woke up from this scared out of my mind, jumped out of bed to use the bathroom, had all these paranoid fears so I turned on the big light in the bathroom, then when I was done I basically ran back into the bedroom and hopped onto the bed, scaring Mike awake. I don't know WHAT was so scary, but I was half asleep and scared out of my mind...
Then last night I had all these dreams about staying in a hotel and changing gates for a new flight and not having any cash with which to buy myself the delicious food that was being served at the posh restaurant downstairs and then going through a gate in the middle of New Orleans with someone who was a combination of Dee Dee and someone else and shutting it before two older bums could follow us through, who then got angry with me for shutting the gate in their faces even though it was some sort of dorm we were entering and they had no real business being there. Apparently letting these dudes through was some sort of accepted thing and I was the weirdo for not feeling safe letting them. OH, and between the hotel bit and the gate bit, I was rescuing my sister from some sort of Acropolis in the middle of the night, which is when the bums started following, and now you know the rest.
UM, yeah. To top it off, when I woke up this morning, the cat curled up with me, then bit me hard enough to break the skin (no blood though). Then he bit me again and I shook the can at him. He ran away and meouled/wailed a bit before jumping back on the bed and curling up with me again. Mike suggested that maybe he's actually skitzo. I suggested that maybe I took too many flash photographs of him last night.
Humeur actuelle:  cranky
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juin 26e, 2007
01:52 pm - picture of Eric Clapton
It's been a while since i posted any pictures up here. This is an old one, but a favorite:
I love my kitty!!!!
OK time to get some lunch. Mmmm.
Humeur actuelle:  busy
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juin 5e, 2007
10:46 pm
I'm trying really hard not to do any work right now. I need a night off.
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mai 24e, 2007
10:22 am
Bob Dylan is a 24 also! Today is his birthday. (:
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mai 11e, 2007
02:19 am - REMINDER: Show tonight, 9pm at Mo Pitkin's!
Just in case you forgot:
Friday, May 11, 2007 at 9pm
ALL AGES
Mo Pitkin's House of Satisfaction
34 Avenue A (btw E. 2nd and E. 3rd St)
New York, NY
$5 in advance on ticketweb.com
$7 at the door
Mo Pitkin's serves dinner.
Order your tickets in advance to get the very first tix with our names printed together!
Show listing on upcoming.org with bios
www.rachelrossos.com
www.michaelgallant.net
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