Packing for Amherst

I’m going this year. I’m looking forward to the cornetto class
with Nathaniel Cox, and as usual, to playing the serpent with lots
of good singers in the “Mass”.

Of course I won’t know until I get there what I’ll be doing in
the afternoon, but I’ve signed up to do German Imports and Exports
with Grant Herried, whom I like but haven’t ever had as a coach,
and the Copenhagen Part books with Wouter Verschuren, who’s the
big name dulcian player that people seem to like a lot.

For second and third choices I put Tenorlieder with Nathaniel
and Innsbruck and the Regensburg Part books with Catherine Motuz,
the sackbut faculty member whom I’ve never met.

Packing

I’m in the state of reise-fever where everytime I touch
something, I think about whether I want to take it, and if so,
what else I’d need to take with it. I’ll have the car, so I can
take more than any reasonable person would, but maybe I’ll
restrain myself.

Packing serpents

The exciting part of packing this year is that I have my new
serpent case from Emily O’Brien of Dill Pickle Gear. It
weighs less with all three serpents in it than the old D serpent
case did empty. I’ve been fiddling with putting backpack straps
on the D rings, but it’s light enough it really might not be
necessary.

I think I’ll wait to have an assistant before posting more
pictures — the closed picture is easy enough, but you can’t
really appreciate the three layers with bright yellow and red
linings unless someone holds them open and you see what can go in
them.

Anyway, that takes care of most of the instruments, since the
third layer will probably take the renaissance recorders as well
as the tenor serpent and the cornetto.

Computers

I’ll have the laptop computer, which I tested that it would
transcribe music (using the 2-octave MIDI keyboard) when I spent a Tuesday morning in Fall River. I
used it to post to the blog from Amherst
2014, so it will still work as long as I make sure to have the
modifications I need for the wordpress.com version of the
site.

I’ll have my phone and laptop and watch as normal, so that
means I need the chargers. I’ll also bring the foot pedal that
turns pages, in case I end up playing with anyone.

Other things

I’ve been packing clothes and other necessities of daily life
for long enough that I can do that pretty automatically. Of
course, as I get older, there are more pills that count as
necessary, but not yet so many they need their own suitcase.

So you’ll be hearing from me

I still get mad about 2010
sometimes when I’m practicing, but I really believe we may have
some of those problems licked. So I’ll let you know how it goes,
but I expect to be mostly having fun instead of posting
about the terrible things that are happening to me.