It's been a few months! In case you're wondering, here's a rundown of what I've been up to

House Remodel: my dad's house is getting a major remodel, and I will be moving back in soon, but in the meantime he and I have been shuffled about. I call it the Brandon Diaspora. Luckily house sitting has exploded for me, thanks to the vaccinated desperately wanting to escape their homes. I'm hoping to move into my new home by October 1. I've been painting, dusting, packing, and organizing things endlessly for the past several months.

Weill Project: Joe Mabel and I have been rehearsing twice a week since May with lots of other work going into recording videos, doing research, writing blog posts, and creating placards. You can follow us via our website, and read the blog series I've been writing about the life of Lotte Lenya - Installment One and Installment Two

New ZERO Album: In the spring I recorded a couple of tracks for Zappa Early Renaissance Orchestra's fifth studio release, Make an Arf Noise Here, due to come out very soon on Cordelia Records. One of the tracks was also turned into a video by Kevin Crosby for inclusion in this year's virtual Zappanale, and the other is included on Would You Like a Snack, a compilation album of choice cuts from 200 Motels.

Minstrel from the Island of the Moon: I illustrated a 1920s epic poem by Ottys Sanders using pen and ink. This book will be designed and hand crafted by Peter Nelson-King and available for purchase in a limited run in November.

Dabbling with botanical illustration: going through Wendy Hollender's instructional books to learn new techniques. I'm quite excited about where this could lead!

​Coping as best I can: Like most of us, the pandemic, climate change, late stage capitalism, and changes in my career and family dynamic have all added up to be a lot to deal with just by themselves. As is my wont, I've been reading a lot of self-help books, mainly on creating routines and confidence for creatives. Some of this is actually in preparation for my own book series. More about this below. 

Maybe you would like to play along. I would love to see what you see when you close your eyes too. Lots of people have a light show or a movie playing in their head throughout the day that they are barely aware of, even when they close their eyes. This is also why I meditate, to watch these images expand and listen to them divulge their meaning. ​

For the past thirty years I have pulled out my hair. It started when I had chicken pox back when I was ten, and pulling my hair out was the only way to scratch the chicken pock on the top of my head. Trichotillomania has been a defining feature of my life as the bald spot on my head grew from being the size of a quarter to taking up most of my head now. Back in 1999 I was still able to cover it with my own hair worn in a bun. My mother, being a devotee of all things mystical, said that she thought it was a physical manifestation of overactivity in my crown chakra. I hadn’t yet dived into learning about the chakra system yet when I learned of the ushnisha, but I was fascinated that there was iconography for what I perceived on a personal level as the buzzing and itching I feel on the top of my head.

Story number 2​

I went to the Monet exhibit in Portland, OR around the same time. This exhibit was extra special because it included some of Monet’s biggest canvases, very rarely seen in the United States.

Story number 3​

This only happened a couple of years ago. I had been on a huge Schubert kick, and still am, taking the time to listen to all of his songs and organize them into playlists by subject. It’s odd, but sometimes one will just hit me out of nowhere with an emotional intensity that’s hard to bear, even if I had listened to it many times before with no emotional response at all. I had heard Nacht und Träume (that’s Night and Dreams in English) many times over the years, but my mind just seemed to not register it. I made a playlist on my Ipod of all of Schubert’s songs about the night – or the moon, stars, and constellations, so of course this song was included. Then one day I stood in the rain listening to this playlist for about the tenth time as I waited for the bus in downtown Seattle.

Looks like Kurt Weill and my dad share a birthday (along with Jon Bon Jovi and Elmer Fudd). I consider this to be an auspicious sign as I am in the beginning stages of joining my friend, Joe Mabel, in an extended Kurt Weill project. Joe Mabel is well known around Seattle as being a local historian, photographer, and software developer, but you may not know that he is also a kick ass guitar player! Heck, I didn't know either until he asked me to be a part of this project. ​

We got a chance to rehearse Youkali Tango together and it sounds really great on guitar, so I'm excited to hear how the rest of our set list sounds as well. It turns out that Kurt Weill's music is rarely played on guitar, at least in the classical sense. There are certainly plenty of bands that play his music, but in the classical world it is all performed on piano or with orchestra.

Our first official show isn't scheduled until February 19, 2022 (at The Chapel in Wallingford, Seattle) due to the pandemic, which we are hopeful will be much mitigated by then, but then we will be ready to invade your house party with Weill music. We have hopes for recording an album as well, and perhaps touring widely if all goes well.

I happen to be the art director for this project as well, and am deep in the process of designing a logo. We will be presenting each song with a large placard on the stage, in Epic Theater fashion, but there are far too many songs for me to design all of these - and my style doesn't exactly lend itself well to the angry tones of many of these songs. Joe is also a very talented visual artist who will be helping with this, but we also enlisted internationally known artist Yvette Endrijautzki to design several of these placards. She is perhaps best known for her Farrago Spiritum tarot card deck which she designed with Raven Zingaro, but also owns Nautilus Studio and gallery in Wuppertal, Germany.

Joe is already writing up articles on the link between John Cale and Kurt Weill, and I will likely have more to add as well. There will be a big academic side to our project, but on the whole Kurt Weill's music is pretty new to me. Mack the Knife was the official Ballard High School literary club anthem back when I and my friend, Sara Girganoff, founded it, though the anthem was her idea and I never even learned all the words. Weill is an artist whose music exists in a liminal space - not quite classical and not quite pop. This makes him the go to composer for opera singers who want to sing something poppy, and for bands who want to do something classical.

For the record, one of my biggest pet peeves is when opera singers try to sing pop. It almost always sounds stilted and laughably pretentious. I say this as an operatic pop singer myself (see me singing 99 Luftballoons with Operadisiac above), but my approach is very different. I take on pop music and exaggerate its operatic possibilities for comedic effect. I know I'll be laughed at for singing pop music anyway, so why not own that and play it up? This is making the Weill Project challenging for me since I need to find a way to sing some of his poppier stuff in a way that still sounds authentic when a comedic take is not desirable. Does that mean leaving out the vibrato? Using more chest voice? More swing? Something else? I don't think I'll be able to figure out a formula for it, because if I did I would be just as bad as all those other stilted popera singers.

At the same time, I am finding the classical, romantic even, sensibility in Weill really beautiful and moving. There is a lot there reminiscent of classical German art song and operetta, sweet dashes of Schubert and Lehár. 

​I'll have a lot more to say about Weill's music in the future, but for now join me in wishing him a happy 121st birthday!

In preparation for their tour of Prague, Salzburg, and Vienna the choir’s director, Dr. Greg Vancil, had made a very special request of Julia. He had a friend near Salzburg and wanted the choir to visit, but there wasn’t enough room in his summer house for the whole choir to sing in any organized way. Greg suggested that Julia sing a solo instead, but not just any solo, a Schubert song. This friend of Dr. Vancil’s was none other than the descendant of Schubert’s best friend, Joseph Spaun. The current day Spauns continue to take their legacy of support for young musicians quite seriously. It was in this capacity that Dr. Vancil had met them, so he wanted to give back in some way, even if only musically. He handed Julia several songs to choose from, some deceptively simple, some well known, some obscure. One in particular stood out to her. It was a mock serious aria summarized by the idea “Why don’t you ever write to me anymore?” which Schubert had composed and sent to his friend in a fit of exuberant melancholy. The music was some of the most vocally complex Schubert ever wrote, serious music with a silly theme. As a soprano with her own operatic burlesque troupe this piece made perfect sense to Julia and she vowed to learn it, with hopes to strip to it on stage at some point in the future.

 “My friend has done so well for himself!”​

The words stood out in her mind with a feeling of joy that brought a lump to her throat and filled her eyes with tears. Running with the only idea that made sense to her, she silently asked the voice, “Schubert, is that you?”

“Nevermind…” the voice seemed to reply shyly, popping out of her head as quickly as it had appeared. Julia’s nerves were back, and she quickly forgot that strange little interchange.

How does one feel feelings that aren’t their own? I really wish I could describe it. Maybe it will never really make sense. Believe me, I struggle with putting this out there. I know it makes me sound crazy, or at least a bit dissociated from my own brain, but it is my truth, and I can’t deny it because “talking with Franz” has improved my life in countless ways.

Happy Mozart Week, everyone! I like to celebrate composer birthdays, and my two favorites happened to be born in the same week: Mozart on January 27 and Schubert on January 31. My half birthday falls right in between on the 29th, so this gives me many reasons to celebrate. Not to mention the week is kicked off with Burns Night on the 25th, which for me just means an excuse to drink scotch and try to read Robert Burns until I get a bit of a brogue on while still having no idea what any of the words actually mean.

This year Mozart will turn 265, and a long lost piece of his, never before heard in public, will be performed in Salzburg. Luckily it’s a solo piano piece, so social distancing shouldn’t be too big an issue. You can listen to it here at 9 AM PST on January 27, but it will be available to watch until January 29.

​I could try to tell you why Mozart is my favorite composer, but it wouldn’t make sense. Sometimes it’s hard to put your taste into words. Let’s just say that for me a marvelous obsession with this music was kicked off with a vision followed by a dream the day after my 14th birthday. I don’t yet have the courage to talk about it in public, though it may become a scene in a future novel. Let’s just say I was in love with him. Weird? Yes, but it saved me from the horrible world of teen dating. Don’t worry, I eventually recovered and had some normal romantic relationships. Honestly, I probably should have stayed in love with Mozart.

​I think everyone should have a marvelous obsession. Obsessions come easily to me because I have obsessive compulsive disorder. OCD is often ridiculed as being about obsessive cleanliness and order, but really one of the main ways it is experienced is as “bad thoughts,” often of a religious, moral, or blasphemous nature, which is why it is sometimes called "scrupulosity." You can read more about the history of that here. I bring this up because, not only was that my main form of OCD, but OCD can also be harnessed in good ways. I suffered from it mainly during my childhood, but around the time I became obsessed with Mozart the symptoms mostly disappeared.

 While I taught myself to sing via Phantom of the Opera, like most young aspiring sopranos in the 1990s, it was this introduction to Mozart that really helped my voice grow. I could only barely read music at the time, so I learned all of Mozart’s soprano arias by ear with the help of a libretto from the library. Of course this meant I couldn’t tell the difference between what was written and what might be ornamentation or one singer’s unique interpretation, but I managed to learn them all (aside from La Clemenza di Tito) by age 17. The first aria I crammed into my brain and voice was Vedrai Carino from Don Giovanni. I didn’t have a high F yet for Queen of the Night, but I still learned her arias just in case I grew one. Eventually I did, and lost it after a few years, but I had fun with it while I could.

That said, I recorded myself singing several Mozart arias on cassette tape which I entitled “A Noble Attempt for a Seventeen Year Old,” and it’s really not great listening. I next attempted a similar feat in my 20s, which was much better, but there have only been random videos of me singing Mozart since then. Here is a video of me singing an aria from his one act opera "The Impresario," which I translated and staged with Operadisiac back in 2011. I think I’ll record an all Mozart concert for you guys soon with electronic backing tracks, and with a focus on his early works. Maybe three concerts of early, middle, and late Mozart! You see, the guy still gets my brain turning.

When I want to strengthen my voice in a hurry, especially if my high notes are feeling more difficult than they used to, I turn back to Mozart. When I want to focus on the technique of elegant line and expressive coloratura, I turn to Mozart. It is my hope that I will feature some of my more in depth Mozart stories and insights via this blog. For now I will leave you with just a few things.

Ten years ago I wrote this article about Catarina Cavalieri, one of the more famous sopranos in Mozart’s circle, also rumored to be Salieri’s mistress. I was attempting to write a historical fiction novel about her, but I think only certain scenes ended up being interesting, and I can just put those up on this blog.

Here you can watch the shadow puppet production I created for Mozart’s opera “The Goose of Cairo,” posted in six parts. I sing in it too:
Goose Part One
Goose Part Two
Goose Part Three
Goose Part Four
Goose Part Five
Goose Part Six

I could never overestimate the influence Mozart had on my emerging artistic interests and talents, an influence unmatched until Schubert showed up, and he literally showed up. More on that in a few days. Until then, celebrate Wolfgang’s natal date with some of his favorite foods: liver dumplings and flat English beer...though cake and champagne sounds better to me.