I just posted the “final” recording of FSU and Richard Clary performing “Redline Tango” on November 18. The live performance was nearly flawless, but I pulled a few bars from the dress rehearsal recording. It took longer than I expected, because I had to use Digital Performer, and I’m used to ProTools. (Alas, my old ProTools audio card doesn’t fit in my new G5 tower.)

The recording is awesome. Check it out.

Now I need to burn a whole bunch of CDs of the piece so I can hand them out at the Midwest clinic next week in Chicago.

Tomorrow, I’m back at the “day job” for a few hours. Not sure why they asked me to come in. Hopefully it’s so they can fire me, and I can go on unemployment! But, probably not…

I figured that since I did take a lot of photos while I was in Tempe, I may as well share them. What’s a blog without silly photos? You may want a high-speed connection for all of this bandwidth…

What was my first stop in Tempe? Well, Fatburger, of course!

Next, it was over to campus for the first time. That crazy building is a Frank Lloyd Wright design. He originally designed it to put in Baghdad, believe it or not, but it ended up in the Arizona desert instead.

The next day started with lunch, of course. Mmm — chimichanga!

(It’s the biggest chimichanga I’ve ever seen. That’s my hand, for scale.)

Rehearsal! I wish there were audio on the blog, so you could hear how great this band is.

Later that evening, Gary Hill and I headed to dinner. Where? Why, IHOP, of course! Man, I love the country griddle cakes…

Gary went with something a little healthier. I never would have thought of getting a salad at IHOP, but this looks pretty good. I don’t know that it’s particularly low calorie (check out that piece of garlic bread), but I’m sure it was tasty.

There was a great chamber winds concert that night. After it was over, we headed to Gordon Biersch for some beer…

… and carrot cake!

The most important meal of the trip, though, was the trip to…

Even the ketchup looked good!

Just to prove that I wasn’t eating alone, here is Serena — my guide in Tempe — and her boyfriend, Darren.

Mmm… How I miss the In-N-Out burger. I had mine “animal style.” (That means “with grilled onions and mustard” — not something risque.)

And before I knew it, I was stuffed.

(The “after” picture isn’t quite as appealing.)

The next day, I attended a rehearsal of Kendra D’s piece at ASU. Following the rehearsal, we went to lunch at a local pizza place. (The pizza, believe it or not, is not pictured.)

This is a local park called “Hole In The Rock,” I think. It is, in fact, a hole. In a rock. It’s beautiful. You can take stairs up there (it’s pretty high) and see the whole city. Here’s the hole…

This is me, heading up the stairs…

… and here’s the view from the top. AEJ likes this picture, with the mountains mirroring the skyline.

It turns out that Tempe has water, too!

After sightseeing, I headed to the hall. You can’t tell from this picture, but it’s huge (there’s a second balcony, not pictured), seating 3500. Hopefully it would be more full for the concert…

Here’s the band again, just about to start the final dress rehearsal.

And finally, here’s one last shot of the music building at ASU. See ya, Tempe!

I guess I should get some “work” done now. I have some fun ideas for the Arabic wind piece. Now to see if they pan out… While I work, I’ll also be awaiting UPS, who is bring my new toy! Thanks to Karl S. at ASU for getting me an Apple Store hookup!

I’m safe and sound, back in NY. Well, safe — barely. Seems that somebody in air traffic control at LaGuardia was trying to kill me. Okay, maybe an exaggeration, but I had a bit of a scare coming home.

Several minutes into our descent, the pilot said we’d be on the ground in about 10 minutes. Due to high winds at LaGuardia earlier on Friday, they were down to a single runway for a while, but both runways were again operational, so he didn’t expect any further delays. As we were making our final approach, he suddenly turned the plane left, and told us that there was an “issue” with one of the runways, and they needed to clear it before we could land, so we needed to circle for 5 or 10 minutes.

More than 30 minutes passed with us circling at fairly low altitude — which kind of freaks me out, as, in case you couldn’t tell, I don’t like flying anyway, and the air is choppier at that altitude — and we finally started (again) our “final” approach.

The landing gear came down, and we descended over the water, as you typically do at LaGuardia. Landing there is always a little freaky, because it looks like you’re going to land in the water, and then suddenly, ground appears right before you touch down.

This time, it was the same as usual, but just before the ground (and runway) appeared, the plane suddenly pulled up and we were all pulled back in our seats as the pilot put the plane back in full throttle and quickly ascended, just before we landed. I’d never experienced that before, so, needless to say, I wished I’d taken the emergency Xanax I had in my pocket. We quickly climbed, then banked hard left, and the pilot came on the PA to tell us that another plane was “in our path” on the runway. So, some air traffic controller screwed up and cleared us for landing, but there was another plane on our runway.

We finally landed safely, of course, but I wondered how close we came to making the evening news.

I’m hard at work on this new wind commission. First I wanted to write a cowboy polka, then I thought maybe that was silly and instead thought that a Middle Eastern-themed piece would be more fun to write (think Turkish). Then I thought that maybe “The Market” wouldn’t want a Middle Eastern piece at this time in history, and I’ve gone back to reconsidering the cowboy polka.

What should I do?! I need to commit to something ASAP. The material I’ve written for the cowboy thing is fun and irritatingly catchy, but I don’t know that it’s “music.” The Turkish stuff is a lot more intricate, and it’s loud, but will people want to play a brash, American-sounding bastardization of Turkish music?

Should I worry about that?

What should I do??? HELP!