Cody Russell

Homepage update..

I decided to update my little homepage on grue to be XHTML 1.0 compliant today. It is now.

Spanish Royal Family

Last night my quartet performed for the king and queen of Spain. I’ll write more about this in a couple days maybe. Right now I feel like hacking or something.

The week isn’t over

Today I got a speeding ticket.

The worst week ever

I’m having the worst week ever. Really. Everything sucks, and every day I get some bad news.

• First I found out my teacher’s mom has cancer again, and that is very disappointing. I like her mom a lot. When our group went to play in Amarillo I stayed at her mom’s house. My teacher has been emailing me with updates about how things are going.
• Then my teacher emailed me and told me she found out it’s likely I won’t be admitted to Peabody Conservatory because of my GPA. Everyone has been telling me for years that GPA is pretty much irrelevant to conservatories, and that I should just be practicing. And since I pretty much hate all the classes I take anyway, I have no particular desire to go to them and get higher grades than I need to merely pass. Someone told me he thought I was just looking for an excuse to underachieve, but that’s not the case at all. I slack off in bullshit classes like History, P.E. (yes, we have to take P.E. classes at my school!), Physics lab. They’re meaningless to me, and I appeared to have no need of them at all since conservatories don’t care about GPA! I’ve been practicing, playing with Fort Worth Symphony, and playing with my quartet. These are all things that will actually benefit me in the future, and help me get a job. My bowling or walking classes will not do that. I do other stuff besides music, too: I happen to be pretty interested in math these days, and I’ve learned linear algebra and (simple) calculus, as well as a lot of programming stuff, which might actually get me a job someday if I wanted. I read history books that are interesting to me. It’s not like I go out and party instead of learn.
• Then I found out my friend Chris has a brain tumor. See my last diary entry.
• Today I received more bad news. It appears now that our concert on Sunday will be the last thing our quartet does. Lauren said today after rehearsal that she just doesn’t have time for it anymore, because she’s really loaded down with a lot of other stuff. She’s in another trio that is demanding a lot of her time, and she’s getting to the point to where music is just not fun because she’s so overwhelmed by it. The rest of us understood, but nobody said anything else. We all just left rehearsal silently. I understand how things are for Lauren, but it just makes me really, really sad. I loved this quartet more than anything else, and now it is almost finished. This quartet is the thing that made this year worth living to me. It was tons of work, all the time, but we sound really, really good right now. I drove out to SMU in Dallas almost every other day because this group really mattered to me, more than anything. Ending this group just makes me so miserable. It’s worse than breaking up with a girlfriend, for sure. I feel absolutely crushed.

  This just sort of shows that you shouldn’t get too attached to anything. At any moment, the worst possible thing could happen to you and you’re totally fucked for that time.

Maybe the worst thing is how I’ve reacted to everything that’s happened. Each time something bad happened recently, I’ve felt worse and worse. But even after hearing about Chris’s tumor, I didn’t cry. I felt really sad, and I’ve felt sad about it ever since he told me. But now I feel really bad, because when I got to my car after quartet rehearsal I just sat there crying. I cried almost the whole way home. Not just a couple tears, but really crying like I haven’t cried in a long time. I guess what I’m unsure of is whether the quartet meant that much to me, or if it was just all this shit piling up on me for the past few days. I’d like to think it’s just the shit piling up. I would feel less bad if that were the case. I think crying more for the quartet than for my future at Peabody or for my teacher’s mom or my dear friend and his tumor.. I think that just sounds really wrong.

What does tomorrow hold in store for me? A “no” from USC? Likely that’ll come soon. A “no” from Cleveland Institute? CIM is sort of my only hope for a school for next year, and having hope for CIM is like having hope that the sun will supernova before anything worse happens. It’s just too tough of a school to get into, and my audition wasn’t that great. I am so fucked. Maybe I’ll get hit by a truck tomorrow afternoon, and this can all be over. But that can’t happen, because it would be good, and good stuff doesn’t happen to me.

My friend..

One of my friends has been having strange experiences recently. He has random dizzy spells, and occasionally smells things that are not there. So, he found out yesterday that he has a brain tumor and he had an appointment this morning with a neurologist. I’m not sure what more he found out from there.

This makes me very sad.

Fugato

My friend Amirosh is interested in possibly working with me on my ideas for Fugato. He has experience in writing parsers and stuff, which is something I don’t have. I think it would be really cool to try to work on this project. It’s too much for me to try to attempt on my own, especially with so little experience.

April recital

I still have not talked to my teacher about canceling my solo recital, because she has been gone for awhile, but the more I think about it the more I think I really want to cancel it and play a quartet recital. I think chamber music is really what I’m most interested in than anything else. I far prefer to listen to quartets than to solo violin or viola music, and I usually prefer to play it I think. I don’t think doing both recitals is an option, because the performance hall at our school is pretty much full until school is finished.

I think we are going to begin working on a new quartet after 1st April, and Fumika will play first violin. She seemed to be interested in Beethoven Op.59/3, mostly because she has already played it. Her solo recital is the day before this quartet recital would be, and she doesn’t want even more music to have to learn. Op.59/3 is really, really cool. The last movement starts out with this canon that begins with big viola solo.

Weird, stupid ways of (not) thinking..

There’s this girl at school who has freaked me out several times before with the weird non-functionings of her brain and the things she has said as a result, but now I think she’s outdone herself again.

She was sitting around telling me about how she doesn’t like chamber music. Not string quartets. Not brass quintets. Not piano quartets, or flute or clarinet quintets or anything. She just doesn’t like chamber music.

So, I started playing some CDs for her. I played parts of this Mozart Adagio and Fugue in c minor, part of a Schubert G major quartet, and then parts of Beethoven Op. 59/2, Op. 74, and Op. 95. She claimed that they were all terrible pieces. That’s right, now she began claiming it was not the ensemble for which the piece was written, it was the music itself. And, coincidentally I suppose, she thinks that all chamber music is simply Bad Music.

I asked her to explain why she thought these Beethoven quartets were not good, and she claimed that there is no point to them. They were written “just for the sake of being written” she said. There was just no music merit to them.

Quartet

Things are turning out well for our quartet, with respect to the concert with Ron Houston. It appears that we would no longer have to learn the Mozart quintet. We’ll perform the entire Schubert quartet, and accompany Ron as he performs the Telemann viola concerto. Ron is a really good violist, and I think it will be a lot of fun. We have not yet checked with our cellist to see if she can do it though.

Etc..:

I was excited that I got some email from my dear friend Rebeca. She’s very happy, and is involved in a lot of musical activity at her school.

I started learning how to program Ximian’s ETable widget today. It’s quite a cool thing, I think, and I’ll probably get a lot of use out of it.

All week I’ve been listening to Beethoven quartets. Today I listened to Schubert quartet No. 15 (G major), and I really like it. There are so many quartets I want to play. I want to play Beethoven Op. 59/2, Op. 59/3, Op. 74, and Op. 95. I want to play some Schnittke, Mozart, Brahms, and Bartok. More than anything, though, I still want to play every Beethoven quartet!

I’m sort of tempted to cancel my solo recital in April and use that day for just a chamber music recital. I think that might be a lot more fun. I’m much more interested in chamber music than I am in solo music.

Quartet

Our quartet had a coaching with Barbara Hustis, assistant principle violist of Dallas Symphony, the other day. I thought it went really well, and I really liked Ms. Hustis a lot. We worked through the third and fourth movements of Schubert’s Death and the Maiden quartet. Ms. Hustis wants us to play again for her on Sunday, so I’m really excited.

Ron Houston asked us to play a Mozart viola quintet with him on a recital at the Dallas public library a week from Sunday. I’m not sure if we will or not, but it was quite cool to get the invitation.

Summer:

I think I want to ask Ms. Hustis to teach me during the summer when my normal teacher is gone to Maryland. I’ve never studied with Ms. Hustis before, but I think she must be a great teacher.

I think I’m going to stay here and take summer school, play quartets, hack on software, and practice.

It looks like Gabriel and Fumika may go to Germany this summer after all, but I have some other people who would like to read quartets this summer. I might play violin and see if Cameron would play viola or something. We’ll see.

Musicianship

Once again, the old subject of emulating vocalists has risen from the ashes on the viola mailing list. And, as has always been before, it is starting out to be Cameron vs. Nardo. History repeats itself, and so it will likely turn out to be Cameron vs. Almost Everyone. I really hate the viola list these days, and so I almost never post anything there. I actually did post something this time, and I’m sure that it wasn’t worth my time, as it is never worth my time.

The basic argument follows as such:

Nardo says violists aspire to emulate good vocalists.

Cameron says musicians aspire to emulate good musicians.

It always seems to me that they both think the same thing, but don’t understand the other’s words. Cameron likely understands Nardo’s, but wants Nardo to say them in a more precise way, which he never does. Hence the fact that this topic comes up so often.

I still really like Rolando Beauvoir’s analogy.

Enemy at the Gates:

Gerry is just finishing his spring break from UT, and so

he’s in town today. We went to go see Enemy at the Gates, and I thought it was very, very cool. Not often do you see a movie in this country where the Russians are the good guys. =)

Being secure in life:

After seeing Gerry and talking to him, it really got me thinking about stuff in the future. I feel very insecure, especially after seeing him again. He’s going to do really well. He’s in law school at UT now, and is kicking ass. It’s pretty much a certainty that he’ll graduate from there and get a really good job, then within a few years he’ll be making triple digits. He’s got a really nice girlfriend, and I think he’ll get married and stuff. I’m still not finished with college, and when I am it won’t matter because I’m getting a fucking music performance degree, which is absolutely worthless. I really hate my school, and I dislike many of the teachers there. They make me sad that I’m graduating from this school. So, I finish college and I have a piece of paper that might get me so far as being a manager of a Burger King. A degree in music won’t get you a job as a musician. It won’t get you shit. Getting a job in an orchestra is what I’ve wanted for so long, and now I’m thinking: What if I’m not good enough to get a job in a good orchestra? I don’t think I could settle for playing shitty gigs in shitty local orchestras like Irving Symphony, and playing little quartet gigs with university students and people who failed to make a career as musicians. I think I’d rather be the Burger King store manager. And, what if I am good enough to get a job with a good orchestra? I’m beginning to notice how orchestral musicians all hate their jobs. I used to think, “What the fuck is wrong with you, man? You have the greatest fucking job on the planet, and all you do is bitch about it!” Now, I’m not so sure. I think the fault is partly that of the schools, of the teachers. Partly it’s the fault of the symphonies. Musicians are trained to be very, very good. They’re trained to have very great technique, and they’re trained to feel the music and express that feeling. They’re trained to be individuals and think for themselves, express the music in a way nobody else does. When you’re giving a solo recital, you’re in command. You’re the king of the hall. Then, you get an orchestra job and suddenly you have no say in the music. You do what you’re told, and you are forbidden to be an individual at all. You’re just a gear in the machine. What happened to being an individual? So, now I see why orchestra musicians all hate their job. Can you blame them now?

So what does this mean? I have no idea. I’m just really confused now. Also, I’m sort of pissed off because I feel like I’m way behind a lot of people my age, like Gerry. I don’t feel very confident that I’ll get a good job, and at the same time I’m sort of afraid that if I do I won’t like it. What the fuck would you think if you worked your ass off for years for one singular goal, and once you achieve it you find that you hate it? That would be one big fucking slap in the face, wouldn’t it? I’m angry right now just thinking about it. More than anything, though, I’m just really confused.

Ximian Internship:

I talked to campd last night about working at Ximian this summer as an intern. I’m not sure. He’s really got me thinking about this.

There are advantages and disadvantages to it.

Advantages:

• Boston would be an interesting place to live for a summer. It would be fun.
• I could study viola with someone from Boston Symphony maybe. James Dunham said he can hook me up with a really good teacher, and I trust that he would. He’s so cool!
• I’d actually make some money for a change.

Disadvantages:

• I must finish school this summer. You have no idea how much weight this item alone carries to me right now.
• I have a kickass string quartet at SMU that I could be playing with this summer. I love my quartet.
• Organizing this would take a lot of work. Finding an apartment, etc, etc. I’m already the laziest person in the world when it comes to mundane things such as these, and on top of that I’m working pretty hard right now to catch up in all my classes. I’m way behind now because of my school auditions. This takes us back to item #1 of the Disadvantages list.

GNOME 1.4 comes out soon:

Yeah, that’s right. Personally, I don’t give a damn about GNOME 1.4 in itself. The major new feature is Nautilus, which replaces gmc, which is an application I never used. Thus, I seriously doubt I’ll ever use Nautilus. As a result, I’m not much better off with GNOME 1.4 than I was with 1.2, and even then I wasn’t that much better off than I was with 1.0.

GNOME tries to maintain pretty strict binary compatibility with all 1.x versions, which is why I feel like it’s been in such a rut for so long. The problem now is that the hackers have been replacing old libraries with newer and better ones, but for reasons of binary compatibility the old libraries couldn’t go away. So when OAF came along, GOAD still existed. When gdk-pixbuf came along and fixed all the stupid shit in Imlib, there was still no way to get rid of Imlib.

All that changes now. GNOME 1.4 is nearly out the door, and development for GNOME 2.0 begins. GNOME will ditch all attempts at binary compatibility at this point. It will switch from GTK 1.2 to GTK 2.0 and totally dump GOAD and Imlib. Once that happens everyone will realize, “Hmm.. OAF sucks, Bonobo sucks, gnome-vfs sucks, and gdk-pixbuf sucks. But I guess we’ll stick with them until GNOME 3.0 comes out in three years.” =)

Too bad EsounD won’t be dumped too. Man, that sound server sucks ass!

Pictures from Heifetz Institute!

Finally, I have posted some pictures from Heifetz Institute! They’re not all up yet, and they have not been scaled or color corrected yet. But they’re there. You can see Marc and Olivia, Daniel Heifetz, Short Megan, Yoshiko, and me. I’ll scale them to something smaller and color correct them when I get more time.

(editing later).. I forgot to mention that the pictures are on my webpage at my computer. Hit the homepage link at the top of this page to get to my homepage. You’ll find the pictures there pretty easily, because there’s almost nothing else there.