You have 57 Notes — Play Them Wisely!

Here at McVirgo Manor, Saturday afternoon often means Saturday Afternoon at the Opera on CBC Radio 2. It’s one of the benefits of living so close to our neighbors to the north (or in our case, south!)
This past weekend, the featured opera was Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande, which is not the best-known opera — nor [...]

Pirate Music!

Do you know what day it is?
That’s right, me hearties, it’s International Talk Like a Pirate Day!

The holiday was invented by two guys from Oregon back in 1995, but really, do you need a historically valid reason to great everyone with “Arrrr, matey!” for one day out of the year?
McDoc is a TLAPD enthusiast, so [...]

Breakin’ the Law… or Not!

Wherein Miss Music Nerd gets a small slice of legal education!
First, the background: A couple of people have asked me if I have any plans to cover the songs played at the Republican National Convention, like I did for the Democratic one.
I was pretty clear toward the end of the DNC’s week that I wasn’t [...]

McDoc’s Awesome Birthday Score!

McDoc did good. This morning he presented me with this book, which I hadn’t heard of, but which was actually written, it appears, especially for me.

I mean, it’s a nerdy book about Elvis Costello. Cha-ching!
The smart money says that I’ll be post more about this as I read it!

Miss Birthday Nerd!

21 at last!

Oh, and look who decided to show up to the party!

I share my birthday with two other famous composers: Peter Maxwell Davies and Antonín Dvořák. The Davies coincidence is cool, because he wrote one of my very favorite pieces, Eight Songs for a Mad King. The sad thing is, [...]