So where was everybody?

People (including me) often remark on how much less crowded
BEMF is these days than it used to be. There are several
conventional explanations:

  • There’s more to do, so each event is less
    well-attended.
  • There was a heyday of early music in the 80’s (which I missed) and early
    90’s and the people who were attracted to early music then are
    aging and traveling less and staying out less, and early music
    hasn’t recruited younger people to replace them.
  • The lousy economy is cutting into everyone’s discretionary income.

I’m sure all of these explanations are valid, but I ran into
another one last night. A friend came over with his two dogs to
console me for losing Sunny, and I told him I was surprised at not
having seen him at BEMF this year. He turned out to have been
busy. One of his groups is doing a recording, but the good story
is that he’s now playing shawm in a rock band.

It reminded me of Michel
Godard, one of the best serpent players in the world. He
plays lots of kinds of music, from Medieval to jazz and the
digeridoo repertoire. He
attended the Historic Brass Society conference in 1995, and said
that it was the first time he’d been asked to play somewhere because of the
instrument he plays, rather than because people liked his music.

So if there are lots of players of early instruments who aren’t
going to BEMF because they’ve found places to play that aren’t
specifically early music-related, that would be a more cheerful
result than everybody getting old and losing their money.

Sad news

He wakes up a littleSunny on his last morningAftermath

Sunny’s last morning, a set on Flickr.

Sunny was uncomfortable enough to be saying “do something” yesterday morning, so I made him an appointment at the vet. It turned out that his constipation was caused by a massive tumor in his colon, and we decided to put him down.

These are pictures from after I made the appointment. I don’t have one from his last decision about where to lie down in the examining room at the vets — he was famous for figuring out how to be as in the way as possible, and this talent didn’t desert him at the end. He had a whole room to pick from, including a comfortable blanket in the middle of the room, and he lay down in front of the door to make it hard for the vet to get in and out of the room.

I told him how much everybody was going to miss him, and he ate lots of treats and barked at the vet when she took his paw to put in the solution. And then it was over.

News of the week of July 28, 2011

Meeting report

We played:

Schedule

We’ll be having dropin meetings as usual on Tuesdays at 7:45 PM
at my place.

Other events

Our playing at the Boston Wort
Processors Pignic was well-received. Ishmael, Jan, and I
played Susato, country dances, Ortiz and van Eyck.

The Wakefield Summer Band, with Laura Conrad on tuba, will be
playing its first concert this Friday, July 1, at 7 PM at the
bandstand on the Wakefield Common, as the sun sets over Lake
Quannapowitt. Come kick off the Fourth of July weekend with
marches, polkas, and concert staples. Other concerts this season
are scheduled for July 22, August 12, and August 26.