I know I promised to be better about blogging regularly, so here's the quick catch-up on the last two weeks...After a somewhat anti-climactic fourth of July (unless you consider watching both Terminator movies a typical fashion in which to celebrate freedom) I give you Jack the toothless wonder!! My little baby lost his first tooth yesterday - and the tooth fairly gave him $5!! I only got quarters when I was a kid!!
Okay, so what's been going on in the world of Melly. First and foremost!! Matt's post-Christian nihilist pop-opera, The Little Death has been given the official greenlight for release from New Amsterdam Records! I am officially a co-hort and New Amsterdam Recording Artist. So psyched for Matt. This project has been his baby almost as long as I have been his baby, and it's been fascinating watching his manic tinkerings mature into what has become a truly unique compositional voice. (Psst - and if you're in the city on the 8th, check out Matt's WNYC commissioned remix of Rhapsody in Blue..)Fresh from a three day trip to Seattle to listen to a new premiere of his for Seattle new music Series TownMusic, Matt helped me load all of my earthly possessions into a U-Haul, and move into his place temporarily as the search for a bigger and better apartment continues....So, yeah, I've moved and am covered with the obligatory mysterious cuts and bruises... am currently shuffling through old boxes of papers and photographs and enjoying the memories that come with it... am also re-arranging cabinets and hanging shelves!! Wielding my hammer and fierce set of IKEA allen wrenches, intent on maximizing space efficiency and organization for three people in a small, synth and gear crowded apartment, like creating a database of all of the VHS and DVD's in the apartment and sort by format, genre, director, length, etc, dorky right?
On Friday I found myself at NPR doing an interview about my involvement with Jacob Cooper's TimberBrit. It was really exciting sitting in that booth by my lonesome, with nothing but a microphone to keep me company. I feel like I expressed myself fairly well considering my interviewee didn't really ask deep probing questions. We'll see what they actually take from what I said (it wasn't a live broadcast).. and the radio engineer and I had a very interesting conversation about experimental music ending with her asking me, "Do you ever ask yourself, 'what would Lucy Shelton do?'" she was kind of awesome..sigh...
I also found out that a proposal I had submitted for an evening of "Dark Cover Songs" entitled the Mafoo and Melly Variety Hour was accepted for the Gershwin Hotel in August, so I really need to get cracking on that set list now! I've always wanted to do an I Enjoy Being a Girl/I Feel Pretty/Somewhere that's Green/Part of Your World Death-Metal Medley..what do you think, does that work?
But in the meantime, I have two new arias to learn for the American Opera Project/Opera on Tap's on-going project An Opera Grows in Brooklyn. On Friday July 17th @ Galapagos, I'll wail through three of David Little's arias one from his most recent Carnegie Premiere Dog Days, and one from Soldier Songs, and finally, a Newspeak staple Sweet, Light, Crude. My co-horts on stage with me are performing regulars at La Scala and New York City Opera, so I kind of need to get cracking, like right now...
