December 2025

Continued scoring "Attributes" for MELISANDE Act II. (This is the big Act II ensemble number [with a diegetic dance break] and the sequence is about eight minutes long.)

Taught four piano students and five voice students.

Continued serving as organist for the Quincy Unitarian Church, including a "Carols & Cocoa" service on Christmas Eve.

Continued preparing OVER THE PIANO AND OTHER SONGS OF LOVE, a candlelight dinner and cabaret to be held at the Unitarian Church in January.

Performed multiple holiday concerts with the Eventide Singers.

Continued Andrew Byrne's "Singing Athlete" method.

Got back into classical chess study and classical piano study. Am using Bruce Pandolfini's "Solitaire Chess" for the former and the two Brahms Rhapsodies for the latter (obviously only the second rhapsody at the moment, since that's the one I know, but soon soon soon I'll start learning the first one).

Finished reading the Federalist Papers. Read Dorothy Canfield Fisher's The Brimming Cup and then read it again so I could take notes. It's the best book I've read this year, and I did keep track of all of the books I read this year, because it's such a remarkable distillation of a necessary and fundamental philosophy.

Then I read Sinclair Lewis's Main Street because The Brimming Cup was the second-best-selling book of 1921 and Main Street was the best-selling, and it's actually worth reading them both back-to-back because one is literally about truth and the other literally about falsehood, but The Brimming Cup is the one you'll remember.

Current quote on our blackboard: "If your standards are consistent, there must needs be more you can learn," which is something I said (and, more specifically, realized) when we were talking with friends a few weeks ago.