Caution:Wedding Cake

PoChun, Brubeck and I are in Toronto. Our final destination is my parent's house in St. Louis, but neither of us had been to Toronto, so we decided to give it a go. The highlight of today was a visit to Toronto Island with the bikes. We spent most of the day there; Brubeck ran all over the place, and we rode across the island twice over.

Later, Brubeck settled in for a nap, and PoChun and I hit the town. We hit the St. Lawrence Market, but after that we had no luck finding any attractions that were still open. It seems that most places [that interest us] in Toronto shut down around 6. Another snag we ran into was that most of the areas we walked through were devoid of restaurants we were interested in. It was really frustrating; we were hungry and all we could find were Tim Hortons and sports bars. Finally, after we had decided to head back to the hotel we found a suitable place.

Ok, so we got to the hotel, and although excited to see us, Brubeck was still worn out from earlier in the day. We called it an evening and decided to just chill out. I checked my email, and noticed a message Berklee's development office.

Off on a bit of a tangent now, David Harrington asked me to seek out funding for me to write a new piece for the Kronos Quartet. I've been looking, but not a lot of opportunities popped up all at once. There was a fellowship available at Berklee in January, but I would have had to finish my piece by the end of April . That would have been way too fast.

A similar fellowship deadline hit in May, and this one gives me a year, so I applied. This email staring me in the face was clearly the results of my application.

So, back to Toronto. There it was, really great news. I received my funding and can now officially start my piece for Kronos. PoChun told me we needed to celebrate, and the combination of Toronto's strict liquor laws and our fatigue prompted me to do something rather drastic. I grabbed a beer from the hotel's mini bar. It was $12 after taxes for a sub-par brew, but it was fantastic.

The title of my new piece will be Caution: Wedding Cake, and it will be my third food-related work. Part of my fellowship is to provide an insight into my working progress. That's where this journal comes into play. I will be updating this site regularly with information about composition, sound design, and my interaction with Kronos, as they pertain to this new piece.