My goal: open with a pulsing, harmonically spare section containing periodic dissonances that break the monotony. Twittering chaos in the winds interrupt and finally take over. Close with a celestial echo.
The pulsing section was the initial germ and what I started with, yet I struggled figuring it out and didn’t get it right until the other two were almost fully developed. It was more frustrating than expected and a very dispiriting start. The three voices in the wind section are inspired by some of Elliott Carter’s pieces where each voice is a separate monologue, almost without awareness of the others. In my head I had initially heard music with a complete lack of regular beat but ultimately was not able to realize that texture. The idea for the celestial section came as I was finishing the winds. I heard the initial motif and the cascade texture followed naturally. The overlapping transitions were developed after each section was nearly complete.
The pulsing section is maybe a little too repetitive; the twittering has voice crossing that may-or-may-not work; the celestial echo gets too dense and I could have maybe used fewer voices.
Need to work more on combining instruments and notating dynamics.
A year or so ago I decided to start studying orchestration in order to continue composing, even if no longer able to perform on piano. I had acquired a used copy of Walter Piston’s Orchestration book somewhere. It’s bound with an imprint of Allerton High School–England–on the cover. A note pasted on the first page: Frank Snape Music Prize, Marilyn Smith,1960-16, J. J. Morton (?) Head Mistress.
Anyway, cut to a month ago when one of the classical stations I listen to on the way to work was playing a Haydn symphony. Thinking of the 100-plus that he had written, I decided to try to write a piece for orchestra every month this year. Learn by doing, etc. Although I will commit the offense of not fully allowing the pieces to develop their themes and structures, I will benefit from frequent fresh starts, and will be able to grow out of the previous works’ mistakes. I had this idea on January 15th so I’m on target for 30-day composing sessions, but behind for the year. It’s a soft target.
I started unsure what my orchestral style would be. Rock musicians turned orchestral generally produce tonal works similar to their songs but without any of the edge that electric guitar, studio processing, etc. adds to the music. I didn’t want to fall into that. Inspirations are the Russians: Shostakovich and Prokofiev, the sonorists: Schnittke and Penderecki (5th Symphony), and works like Sibelius’s 5th Symphony (for its discursive fluidity) or Shostakovich’s 10th Symphony.
In this first study, I started with the general intent of opening with a section of chattery, fluid strings, then leading to a more homophonic section dominated by brass, and developing off of those. The result is 5 sections and a coda, generally:
Polyphonic theme A for string
Homophonic hymn-like theme B for brass
Theme C derived from the texture of theme A, progressing with more dissonant brass
Theme B in the string section while the brass references theme C
Theme A and C interwoven, closing with coda referencing the simplified texture of theme B for brass and strings
At 3:12, it does feel a bit rushed as if it’s 30 minutes in a 3 minute span, but I feel like it did achieve what I set out to express. (Musescore used for scoring and PDF/MP3 output.)
I like to write notes here, for my own reminiscence, about interesting concerts I have been to. However comma some concerts pre-date this web site and I think of them often and so want to let them be counted. Most of the dates I list are from memory and what I can find on the web, so some may be a different venue, and a different year, and wildly inaccurate, but still my experience of the concert is there. Their documentation is only as poor as my memory. [ed. I made a partial reference to some of these in 2009 and 2016].
Elvis Costello at the Fox Theater in Atlanta in 1989. This was his King of America tour and the first concert I ever went to. I know. KoA was mostly country–his foray into the Nashville song-writing scene–and not my favorite, but a great opportunity to go with my brother and his then-girlfriend who was, unfortunately all I remember, a very likeable goofy blond pot smoker. We were in the upper balcony?
21 Aug 2009 – Elvis Costello to Release Live Shows on CD (Steve Hoffman Music Forums) – The chat board post references a show in 1989 that they went to, probably the one I went to also.
Some punk bands at 688 Club. It closed in 1986, so it must have been my first or second year in college. I remember being freaked out having never been to any place like that. Things have changed. That locale recurs as concert-related because it’s an urgent care location and I had to go for a freaky looking spider bite I got at one of the Piedmont Park Music Midtown festivals.
GWAR at Masquerade in Atlanta. First mosh pit and hanging out with metal heads from college and some weird drugs and yeah. GWAR spit “blood” and threw “maggots” (dye and rice) on the crowd so clothes were trashed by the end of the concert. And the pope raping scene was… something else. This is where I fell in love with the group dynamics and camaraderie of the mosh pit. I miss that and know I cannot again be a part of it at concerts as an older (?) person. Recommended, though.
Music Midtown several years when it started in 1996. It was at where the Federal Reserve building is now (just up the street from where we live now), then where the Georgia Aquarium is now, then off Piedmont and Pine (near Central Park where Shaky Knees is now).
Philip Glass solo piano at Emory’s Schwartz Center for Performing Arts in 2000. This was when I worked at a company in the king (or queen?) building and we went with another couple from work. They sat in the front row of a very intimate setting and left in the middle of the performance. I hate that that’s my prominent memory.
Robert McDuffie performing Philip Glass’s 2nd Violin Concerto at Spivey Hall at Clayton State in Morrow, GA. This I can’t find anything about but I know I was there. Reduction for violin and piano. The joy of the composition was matched by his enthusiasm and passion for the work.
McCoy Tyner at the Variety Playhouse in 2010. I remember his performance being a mix of blocky, forceful and dissonant jazz with the multi-voiced, polyrhythmic complexity of Prokofiev. It was eye-opening.
Terry Riley improvising on the Tennessee Theater’s Wurlitzer organ at the second year of the Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, 2010. His performance was hypnotic. Solo on a theater organ performing phased, minimalist feats of brilliance. One of a kind. Lisa’s mom, Mickey, owned that city’s events and so got us free tickets to everything. I was the only one that could go. I missed the first year, with Michael Gira and Philip Glass. It was/is(?) an amazing rock/experimental festival, more so being in Knoxville. Weird, huh?
So in college I met some great guys (where?) that were in a band called Afterlife. I wasn’t a real performer but would have liked to have played with them, and so I eventually hung with a different group of friends and more loosely disciplined musicians and they fit my casual undiscipline and let’s face it skillessness at the time. Still…
(The bassist from Afterlife, Jonathan, and I hung as pals and got into girlfriend shenanigans and partied and watched our first John Waters film together, perplexed and laughing, and generally slacked, and dated roommates to greater and lesser results but had an experience all the same. Some good times; some weird.)
Afterlife has been releasing in the last five years or so new albums. Again: discipline pays off. Full discography is:
THE FROZEN SUN (1988)
THE AWAKENING (1990)
CURTAIN CALL (1991)
COMPASS ROSE (2013
BRAVE NEW WORLD (2016)
In our era of purging, I found two cassettes of their first two releases. “The Frozen Sun” and “The Awakening”. I don’t remember purchasing them, but I think the sticker for “The Awakening” says $5.00!
Do not be alarmed by the rectangular shape, these are cassettes!
Afterlife album reviews of their first four albums (search includes one non-Afterlife album) via Nostalgia Is Evil – Music Reviews The Official Blog of Patrick Aei, some guy whose mother went to West Georgia with the rest of us (who?)
I need to decide what to do with those classic, self-produced cassettes.
(Odd note: back in 2004 I had posted a random reference to one of the members. Completely unrelated subject though.)
Lisa called me at work while I was in a meeting, three days before Thanksgiving.
I’ve never heard her like this. Well, I had heard her like this once before and it was at a moment previously and nearly exactly 10 years ago, 10 years minus one week, with the passing of her father. Jack, and now Mickey. With Mr. Foley it had happened in a gross one-month-or-so sequence with my dad then hers then my sister-in-law’s. I hesitate to write this previous co-incidence because of the stupid stupid terror of what I am thinking now but that cannot just cannot happen. Hearing her on the phone–no–just seeing the call from her was crushing. Phone calls do not happen between us.
Can she drive? She’s at work. She can, so we meet at home and pack more clothes than needed, planning for everything that might happen this week. Overpacking in the way you do. There’s every uncertainty of when you might start crying, being silently grateful that you’re silently not thinking about it and not crying, and then feeling guilty that you’re not. I cannot speak to what she went through.
July 2006
In Knoxville, her and her brother and I are given free executive suite rooms by the owner of a very nice downtown hotel because of his appreciation of Mickey. She had helped him or he her or some sort of collegial reciprocation had happened over the years, and we will realize and benefit from the fact that that had happened with many other individuals in Knoxville. So many. The arts community, government agencies, the mayor-now-governor, every large and small department had some cherished interaction with her. This over a period of twenty years or so I’m not sure. I’m half bragging because it’s impressive and so sweet and so impressive. Throughout the half week [this is Wednesday now] there were so many. The offered help is helpful yet also a burden of pride that makes it hard to accept offers that are humbly expansive. I speak for myself, of course, of my impressions and I guess even the most sincere acts in a time of anguish will be difficult at that time until there is some distance. “I’ll do anything.” “How can I possibly ask anything of you?”
Monday is check in, then to the house to meet Vicky, Narda, and Michelle. Narda and Michelle had entered the house on Monday and found Mickey in an unfortunate way. According to what I know medical examiner, police, and cleanup were called. We went to the house with the peppermint oil smell and the friends manning the phone bank for explanations. Red the beloved dog was there for however many days before discovery and now at the animal boarding place. All aspects are sad. (There are other aspects that I want to document here for my own flawed memory but that are too personal so won’t.)
We stay as others are informed, calls are made, and everything that can be done that night is done. L&M&I go to the hotel restaurant late and they are open and we order food and we eat and we reminisce and we enumerate what needs to be done the next day that is Tuesday. Already calendar clarity starts slipping. Is there something about the moment of finality that make time non-specific for those survivors?
Lisa and Mickey, Christmas 2008
Tuesday was busy.
We started at the house looking through all of Mickey’s paperwork. Folders that are well organized are still a volume of personal filing quirks that outsiders coming in just cannot immediately puzzle out. Which documents are valuable? The transitory–car oil change receipts, notes on a catering job, old credit card bills–are many and may contain buried within them a page or two of value. All but will and life insurance are found.
Documents are pulled aside and the bio cleaning owner arrives to assess the job. This is a delicate thing that you don’t think about but know has to happen. He’s incredibly cautious and caring and I weirdly can’t imagine being upset with his presence because of how he handles even the potentially awkward questions. Homeowners insurance should pay for everything minus deductible. Much like the funeral home (as I remember) he manages as much as possible without our involvement. He’ll contact insurance and knows all secondary sources to test (flies? dog urine?) for cleanliness.
We leave for Berry Funeral Home to prepare the cremation and next Monday’s service. Non-invasive autopsy has been managed by Mason after dealing with the police and medical personnel from the initial discovery. The funeral home will manage cremation, urn (no), obituary, service, and list of mourners.
The rest of the day and evening was mostly low-impact restaurant hopping. Late lunch at Stock And Barrel then return to the house for a follow up exam from the bio-cleaning guys (black light). Drinks at the Old City Wine Bar. Snacks at Kefe, a Greek place that Mickey would have loved (maybe she’d been there?). Hotel and beers.
Service is Monday. I don’t have many pictures of her.
“Former City of Knoxville event planner remembered for making the holidays bright”, video remembrance from WBIR TV:
Obituary copied here because I see the obituary link for my dad got 404ed:
Mickey Patricia Mallonee, 76, passed away unexpectedly in her home on November 19th, 2018 in Knoxville.
Mickey Patricia Mallonee was born and raised in Knoxville and graduated from South High School. She briefly attended the University of Tennessee, where she began dating Jack Otis Foley, also of Knoxville. Upon Jack’s graduation the two married and shortly thereafter moved to Moody Air Force Base where Jack completed his pilot training. Their Air Force career took the family to South Carolina, Alaska, Washington D.C., Nebraska, Alabama, Louisiana (where Mickey served as President of the Officers’ Wives Club), North Carolina (where she also served as president of the Officers’ Wives Club), Greece and England, to name a few. Col. Foley retired to Atlanta, GA, where their two children established themselves and continue to live today. Mickey eventually made her way back to Knoxville and soon began her trajectory into the arts and civic communities, becoming director of the Arts Council of Greater Knoxville. Soon after, she began her stint with the City of Knoxville as the Special Events Director for Mayors Ashe and Haslam, during which she had a hand in coordinating 700+ events a year, and became an alumnae of Leadership Knoxville. After “retiring”, she continued her contributions via participation on several boards including Knox Heritage, McClung Museum and Mabry-Hazen House. She loved the city of Knoxville, almost as much as she loved her children, and tirelessly worked to better the city and the community she adored. Her children will miss her immeasurably.
Mickey is survived by her daughter, Lisa Marie Foley and son-in-law, Scott D. Strader; son, Mason Wade Foley and daughter-in-law, Danice Johnson Foley; nieces, Vicky Llewllyn, Karen Williams, Pam Hays, Paige Mallonee Brooke; nephew, Mike Robinson… and her dog, Red.
She was preceded in death by parents, Michael and Adeline Mallonee; sister, Barbara Ann Robinson and brother-in-law, Eugene Robinson; brother, Bobbie “Buddy” Mallonee and sister-in-law, Cynthia Joan Mallonee, and ex-husband, Col. Jack Otis Foley, USAF, Ret., all of Knoxville, Tennessee
Service to be held at Berry Funeral Home, 3704 Chapman Highway on Monday, November 26, 2018 at 2:00 pm. Reception to follow from 4:00 – 8:00 PM at Historic Westwood, 3425 Kingston Pike. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made in her name to either Knox Heritage and/or McClung Museum at the University of Tennessee.Condolences may be offered at www.berryfuneralhome.com.
