Up at 8. Tom Shad got in touch about having me play keyboards at a Tom Petty tribute for the closing week of Hi-Fi. Some back and forth about that later in the day, but I think I’m doing it. Left around 10. Breakfast, coffee, started McClary, Feminine Endings on the train, at LC library by noon. “Worked” til 7, though I feel like I only got going around 2. Added 1000 words, but a lot after the first graf either has to go or move. Got bogged down in “Tutti Frutti.” Left to hear the JACK Quartet at Columbia. A selection of 20th/21st string quartets (one of two nights, but I can’t go to hear the program w/ Ruth Crawford Seeger on Sat.)

Erin Gee Mouthpiece XXII (the singers also vocalize; nice but comparatively slight)

Mark Applebaum, Darmstadt Kindergarten (same music five times w/ one player each time getting up to make movements corresponding to their part; hence, last repeat is silent; effective)

Elliott Carter, #2 (I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to follow this music)

Anthony Braxton, Composition 173 (reworking of a 1976 piece for a larger ensemble – I may have the LP; it’s in his abstract music drama mode; “Here’s a sound for you, Mr. Experiencer.”)

Morton Feldman, Structures for String Quartet (early, short, repetitive, subdued; he’s so great)

Cenk Ergun, Sonare (loud-quiet-loud; the grunge hit of the piece; looked taxing to play, not sure if the off-sync sound of some rhythms were an ensemble problem or an epiphenomenon)

Good overall, except for jerks in the audience. Kept on w/ McClary on the way home, daybook poem. Home at 11, read a few poems in George Starbuck, Bone Thoughts. Yale Younger Poets 1960, a few years after Ashbery. It hasn’t dated as well as Some Trees. But what has? Lights out midnight. Feel like I have a heavy couple of weeks coming.

[The Anonymous Que Pasa, “Addy” to Young Tiger, “African Dream”]