Kiersten’s Blog

A couple of weeks ago, Taylor and I made a trip to Claremont.  He had to take his written qualifying exam.  We spent the night in Hemet the night before and left London there to play with Granny and Papa.  I spent the day shopping and hanging out with old friends, while Taylor spent the day taking a test.  I had a nice day.  I don’t think his was quite as fun.  That evening we went to a concert at the Claremont Colleges.  I was glad to be able to go, especially after the disappointment of not being able to see Itzhak Perlman the week before because London and I were too sick.  Anyway, the concert this particular day included a performance of a Philip Glass piece.  One of the performers was Philip Glass himself!  Philip Glass is one of the most important modern composers.  You will definitely find him in textbooks.  To non-musicians, he would be considered a “classical” composer.  To musicians, his music would fall into the category of minimalism.  It’s not often that a person gets to hear a composer perform his own music so this was a treat.

Taylor knows more about this stuff than me and he already blogged about it, so this is what he has to say,  “Mr. Glass et al performed a new piece called Book of Longing.  Book of Longing is a new work completed last year; basically it is a song cycle.  The songs’ texts come from Leonard Cohen’s recently-published book of poems by the same title.  Leonard Cohen is also one of those towering figures.  Cohen is perhaps one of the most important poets in the last 40 years; he is certainly one of the most popular.  Cohen is a songwriter himself, though most folks haven’t heard much of his music.  That song “Hallelujah” that was in Shrek, and that has been remade by everyone from Jeff Buckley to k. d. lang is probably Leonard Cohen’s most famous song.”

I enjoyed the concert.  It was definitely different from a traditional classical music concert but it was very good.  We had second row seats.  I felt kind of bad because, although I was enjoying myself, I had a really hard time staying awake.  I hope Phil didn’t notice me nodding off!  Part of the problem is, it was 100 minutes of nonstop music with no intermission.  Try that on for size when you’re 8 months pregnant.  I started to feel like I couldn’t move, and of course I had to go to the bathroom.  All in all, it was a great concert and a fabulous date with my husband.

Now for the rest of the story.  We just found out on Friday that Taylor did, in fact, pass the written portion of his qualifying exams that he took that day!  I’m so excited and proud of him.  Now he has to go back in a couple of weeks to take the oral portion.  After he passes that, he has to finish up the German class he’s taking and write his dissertation.  He’s getting so close!  It’s so exciting!  I’ll let you know when you can start calling him Dr. Smith.