All-Star Lineup

HI all-stars,

I mentioned writing a line-up last week. At first this may seem like a large group, but considering the level of people's other commitments, you know, life stuff, we hope to build in a degree of "fault tolerance", so that if some members are unable to rehearse in person consistently, we can still make it work. As of today, here is a list of our conspirators, and what instruments they generally play. I have not quizzed all of you, so please correct my guesses and lies. Motley crew indeed. If you are not listed here, please contact me. A couple of people have not checked in yet, so they may not be on the list.

Name Instruments/Roles

Bruce Stevens guitar

Clare Strayhorn violin, vocals

David Oskardmay director, guitar, vocals, mridung, Ableton, bass

Henry Lowman (VA) guitar, lute(?)

Jeff Lindsey drums (kit, djembe)

Lisa Oskardmay violin, vocals, guitar

Marvin Levi drums (kit)

Neil Englert bass

Patrick Grant (NY) advisor

Steve Burnett tenor sax, bassoon, surbahar, waterphone, theremin, effects

Tom Ed White viola

That is what we look like sorted by first name. More organizationally, we have:

Strings: Tom Ed, Lisa, Clare

Guitars (yes, I know they also have strings): Bruce, David, Henry, Lisa, Patrick

Bass: Neil, with help from Steve and David

Percussion: Jeff, Marvin

Vocals: David, Lisa, Clare

Other: Steve, who plays a lot of weird things

One interesting feature is that many of us are multi-instrumentalists, so we may have our default configuration and the alt-instruments change-up configuration. Interesting.

I have also invited the neighbors, and none have yet jumped on board. Hopefully they won't mind when we take over the neighborhood. In other news, I realized that I have woefully neglected the capabilities I have with Ableton Live, a decent composition tool and live accompaniment environment. Who needs humans anyway? It does open another dimension.

I will be ordering a MIDI keyboard and some kind of foot trigger thingy. I have lately been composing directly in MuseScore, but there are many ways of working, so we also have our electronic-based configuration, playing within a programmed set. In this way, we span the musical space from an organic mostly acoustic orchestra to an electronic dance band.

That's the news for this week. We will have our first meeting in October. Watch this space!