Minutes for January 29th, Chinese New Year

Attendees: Victor, David, Martin, Glenn, and MB
We arrived in good time. David and Victor were having a lesson. We settled in and began with three octaves in C major. We tackled this task three times. The first time—to get it ascending and descending—took a while. As usual, its an exercise in addressing self-placed stress and deflecting frustration. The second time took about two rounds. The third time was completed on the first attempt – assisted by a pre-time of concentrated joke telling. Victor suggested an attempt at four octaves, but MB didn't know how to do that.
After C major part 1, we worked on EofN. Multiple plays and work on getting the down beat of the rhythm in the right place. Burbles get off track easily. Then, some Askesis and Third Relation. Askesis sounds not half bad but maybe “a third” bad.
We spent time discussing upcoming events…
We will have to wait to plan to play at the Montesorri school; we will play on May 7th at OCBC; we need some more info to apply for the improv performance at Third Life studio – with that info, we will apply to play on May 5th. Dev will be in town during May hence the May dates. We talked about Mary Beth’s art project. She gave a brief overview. Looks like the second or third week in Nov will be the performance date. As Victor pointed out, there is a lot to think of to get it all organized. Then, we worked on the Bach piece which is harder than first thought especially for certain parts. We made it through the first page and then two bars. Martin was a prone, mid-circle audient.

sun jan 8th, 2006

at the dojo. martin, david, mb, glenn, victor. we began with a 5 part improvisation in 5/8 which lead into a circulation. then victor called for a choose a note piece in the c symmetrical scale, with notes to be played using the principles we study in the circle. we worked on eye of the needle and after a brief bathroom break by victor where glenn declined to tell an amusing anecdote we worked on doing a light march while we played eye of the needle, and then more specifically the f# section of eye of the needle and then the whole of eye of the needle again. we played askesis, and we surprised at how well this sounded given the state of eye of the needle, and then after joking about eye of the kesis and ass needle we played askesis again. glenn recalled that in atlanta they worked on third relation for 15 minutes straight for two days and that helped his hands give up working too hard. we ran the Ab and Db sections of askesis for 10 minutes straight. we played eye of the needle again, but still it was a struggle. we worked for over a half hour to be able to play slowly the first page of bach's invention #1 as a 4 seat circulation. we played a 5 part improvisation in 3/4. and then at glenn's request played third relation to stay in touch with it.

Meeting at VMcS's Jan 1st 2006

Attendees: Victor, Glenn, David, MB and Martin

We began with a five part inprov in C (or there abouts). We then played and worked on EotN, repeating and clarifying the ending and looping the first 4 chords. Then we moved onto Askesis playing through the piece and then looping the C# through the descending cords before the tricky section repeating the last 2 measures of the tricky section. Following a Glen question on the release of the right hand, we did a release exercise.
We then took a break for a lovely apple crubble pie courtesy of MB and tea courtesy of JM.
Many things were discussed related to schedules, upcoming gig possibilities, group focus and needs. Victor made some points as to the groups functioning and how he has a sense that our work is very important as it relates to the bigger picture and a major turning point in the world.
Victor spoke of Tony Blake the enneagram guy and the Bennetts.
We finished with G,D,MB and V running the first few measures of Invention #1 and then
Askesis, Third Relation and a final Circulation.