I'm in Japan - halfway through a two-week stay here, filled with performances, teaching, and (remarkably) one free day spent in Hiroshima last week visiting my old friend, pianist Elena Kuschnerova, who is a guest professor at Elizabeth University in Hiroshima for this month. Yesterday was typical of my usual routines here: running in Hiroshima in the morning (beautiful along the river; sobering to think of a city risen from ashes so quickly--there was nothing left after the bombing in 1945); traveling to Osaka by shinkansen, teaching for four hours, and then performing a short program at the end of a joint concert by young Japanese musicians. Today I'm in Kobe - ran uphill and ended up in the park on Mt. Rokko and stumbled upon a series of gorgeous waterfalls (nunobikinotaki) - inspiration for my day: a recital at 2:00, a lesson after, and then another performance in the evening at the end of another joint concert.
Wonderful people: in Hiroshima, in addition to hanging out with Elena and being sad after visiting the amazing museum of the A-bomb, I had the pleasure of staying at the apartment of a wonderful family and being treated to good company and delicious food and practicing my stumbling insufficient Japanese. So many wonderful people I get to meet - probably don't appreciate this enough, being a narcissistic piano player (is there another kind out there?).
And last night, met new colleagues: recent DMA graduates from Eastman, Sang-Woo Kang and Toko Suzuki, both pianists, for a most enjoyable dinner...many friends and colleagues in common - great serendipitous meeting!
Onward and upward - must go practice in the hall for today's concert in a few minutes.

I'm just back from playing Rachmaninoff Paganini Rhapsody with the Cheyenne (WY) Symphony Orchestra, with my friend Stephen Alltop conducting (his last concert with that orchestra as music director). Cheyenne Civic Center is an excellent hall; and the symphony has a devoted, large, and enthusiastic audience (this in a city of only 55,000, according to the sign at the edge of town). To see that kind of support for good music in a small city without a major university is refreshing! And the orchestra is really good (of course, it includes a good dose of recent grads from the University of Colorado, as well as lots of good players from all over the Front Range). A wonderful experience...

An interesting moment: during the pre-concert talk, Stephen asked me a bit about Kazakhstan - I think he was a bit taken aback (and the audience appropriately amused?) when I pointed out how similar the Siberian weather of Astana was to the Siberian weather of Cheyenne. And, of course, both places have cultures that are centered around the horse (hippocentricity, to coin a word). I didn't mention that the Kazakhstanis also _eat_ theirs.

Of course, this isn't quite fair: now we're having beautiful spring weather out here on the Rocky Mountain Front (although it did snow on May 1); flowers coming along, the wild plums in bloom (and smelling lovely), grass a-greening, etc. Driving out of Cheyenne this morning, the air was clear enough for good views of Longs Peak and the still very snowy Mummy Range.

I went to Evergreen, CO, today to hear my high-school student Torin Francis play the first incarnation of his senior recital. Marvelous to see the enthusiasm and support he gets in his home town - and he plays well and deserves the attention. This is a group that probably includes relatively few people who would otherwise be going to hear classical music - such an important thing to have a talented performer (great Haydn Sonata 52!) play there and be embraced by the community. (And it's gratifying for a teacher to hear his student play well, needless to say!)

You see, there's hope (I didn't even mention how many young people were at the Cheyenne concert - wonderful to see!).

After the recital I wrote about in my last post, the rest of my time in Dushanbe included a lecture-recital at the National Conservatory (where they had a recently donated Yamaha in good playing condition - yay!), a talk and play session at the Tajik Composers' Union (mostly for students from a music school), master classes at the Children's Art School and the Shakhidi Music School, a visit to the soon-to-be-completed Cyber Cafe being built through the Boulder-Dushanbe Sister Cities group, and the weekly ex-pat hike.

I was particularly impressed with the children at the Children's Art School and the Shakhidi Music School, who clearly loved what the are doing. The teachers are obviously dedicated and excellent. I have promised to send them some sheet music - the Shakhidi Music School (a good college-preparatory program) needs good modern Urtext editions of standard works, since they're using copies of copies of mid-20th-century editions of often questionable provenance (the best they have for Bach seems to be the Busoni/Mughellini/Petri edition - hardly ideal for teaching in my humble opinion, notwithstanding the fact that Petri was two of my teachers' teacher); the other schools are interested in American pedagogical material. A hidden treasure was the older Bluthner concert grand hidden away in the office/studio of Olga, the director of the Children's Art School and a fine teacher. Maybe the best piano I saw in the city...

I also had the opportunity (thanks to Maya's always wonderful work) to visit the sleeping Buddha in the Historical Museum - this is awe-inspiring, and a must-see for anyone who's out that way (tourism in Tajikistan is not easy...) in spite of the Soviet-era archaeologists' somewhat cavalier method of removal and transport. The Museum also has plenty of archaeological material from a wide variety of sights throughout the country from bronze- and iron-age remains forward. It does begin to give a sense of what a crossroads this area has been.

And the hike on Sunday (my only free day) was a great way to finish a musically-rewarding trip: a day of walking in the foothills among flowering trees, waterfalls, spectacular scenery, and a view of dinosaur tracks preserved on a formerly horizontal cliff surface. (There are a number of pictures in my Central Asia Album attached to this page.) And, wonderful company from all over the world - good conversations, fun people.

On my first morning in Dushanbe, I was picked up early by Maya - the marvelous person who knows everyone - to go to a music school in Tursonzade, about an hour's drive from the capital. This is a city near the Uzbek border that exists primarily to house the workers at the giant aluminum smelter (there's a picture in my Central Asia photo album). The most amazing thing was being greeted by a group of women doing native dances to the music of folk instruments and then dancing with them (I don't dance, for those who might be wondering). And, there was bread to be broken and dipped in honey, tea and sweets to be shared, and then...I listened to the very young students, who didn't seem all that thrilled to be there. I was (and this doesn't happen too often) nonplussed - I tried to work with the students a bit at an appropriate level, but it wasn't easy (partly because the interpreter didn't know the appropriate musical words, partly because the students were so nervous that they had a hard time responding). I also played a bit, and was given a book (in Persian script) as a keepsake. Everyone was lovely to me, treated me like a very distinguished visitor. But, I hoped that the next master class would be different!

My other experience in the "countryside" was at a town called Vahdat, where they seemed to have a somewhat better idea of what to expect, but it was also challenging - here the piano was in a small room, and a large very young audience had gathered outside the room, where they couldn't really see or hear what was going on inside. What impressed me most was seeing the drawings and paintings that students at the school had done - marvelous work. I was to see a similar excellence in visual arts at the Children's Art School in Dushanbe, and, at a higher level, at the Academy of Fine Arts. Here I was presented with a Tajik hat and warm winter robe; I posed for photos dressed (a la Barack Obama in Kenya?) in best local fashion.

The next day was the day of my recital. I presented a master class in the morning at the Academy of Fine Arts, where the rector presented me with his book on Shashmaqaam, a type of Tajik folk music. One student and two faculty played for me - the rapport was good, and I knew what I was supposed to do (this kind of teaching I'm used to!).

I'd been warned not to expect too much of the pianos in Tajikistan. It turned out that not only were there almost no instruments that postdated the end of the Soviet Union; there also were no piano technicians left in the country. The tuner whose work I saw everywhere seemed to have trouble with the basics - one piano that I practiced on was almost a half-step low through it's entire range (not to say that it was in tune with itself), none of the pianos were really in playable condition.

The piano at the giant concert hall (with a carpeted stage - suitable for overly-amplified pop spectaculars and firing bureaucrats) Kokhi Vakhdat was a Bluthner (no, not pre WW2, but Soviet-era East German Bluthner) concert grand - all nine feet of it gaily filled with confetti and glitter from the recent celebrations for Navruz. There were only 2 connecting rods for three pedals, and the one for the una corda was installed (weirdly!) in the one for the non-functioning middle pedal (I crawled under the piano and did some quick fix-it-up on this). There were several bass notes missing strings (fortunately there was at least one string for every pitch!). Several of the keys were somewhat sticky; they were all at different heights; "regulation" and "voicing" were foreign concepts. Best of all, a flock of birds had taken up residence in the ample flyspace (thus the name?) behind the stage. My concert began at dusk, and they were very enthusiastic throughout the first half of the program.

The audience was large - filling the theatre nicely. They all wanted to hear a concert, and I was determined to give them one in spite of the quality of the instrument and the resident wildlife. It was liberating: no reason to be nervous, because just getting through my program would be a miracle.

I had learned a work by Tajik composer Tolib Shakhidi called Sufi and Buddha for the occasion, and opened the program with it. I'd had an opportunity the day before to play it for him, and to meet him and gather up his other piano music - a marvelous and high-quality body of music that I hope to have the opportunity to play. The audience (and Tolib) were enthusiastic. I continued then with my planned American program with works by myself, Carter Pann, and Lowell Liebermann. The second half was the op. 25 Chopin Etudes - a challenge under the best of circumstances!

As it turned out, I don't think I've ever had such a liberating concert experience: with an impossible instrument, a huge hall, and a large enthusiastic audience, I went for broke and managed to make things work (although I'd be terrified if there was a recording of this out there somewhere - I can only imagine what it must have sounded like). This was a memorable concert, memorable for me as a performer, enthusiastically received, and a joy to play: some small return on the amazing generosity of the teachers, students, and others that I had met.

I've been meaning to get this posted for a while - it's already almost a month since I got back from Central Asia, and I've only managed to get the first week of my trip (Astana and Almaty) posted! So, before I forget, i thought I'd include some snippets of my time in Tajikistan.

Before I left Almaty on March 25, Dina and I visited the Folk Instrument Museum, and heard a demonstration of several Kazakh instruments (bowed and plucked strings) and of the singing style. I was impressed not only by the music, but by the love of this music that has kept it alive in our modern age. One of the Soviet system's pluses was a cultivation of national arts (as a way, perhaps, to suppress nationalism itself - ironically, this might have been a counterproductive policy!) and an attempt at writing down much of the orally/aurally-transmitted music of various national cultures. The Kazakh style of singing points up the connection of this culture to the Mongol culture - Genghis Khan had a lasting and important impact here.

I flew Tajik Air from Almaty to Dushanbe - a spectacular flight over high, high mountain ranges (the northern outriders of the Himalaya, these ranges are young, high, ice- and cliff-covered, with beautiful glaciers, high peaks, deep deep valleys, and few signs of human occupation). The flight points up one of Tajikistan's problems: because of the way the borders were drawn in Soviet times, Tajikistan is essentially non-contiguous, with its northern and southern habitable areas divided by impassable mountains. Overland communication has to go through Uzbekistan, and the Tajiks and Uzbeks, culturally different (speaking a Persian and Turkic language respectively) and territorially competitive (two of Tajikistan's historical cultural centers, Samarkand and Bukhara, are located in modern Uzbekistan), don't get along well as far as I could see.

Dushanbe, the capital, is in the southwestern part of the country, located in a fertile, low-lying valley with views of snowcapped mountains over low, golden foothills. I arrived in early springtime, with the fruit and almond trees beginning to flower, the leaves of the trees setting, the birds singing. The infrastructure has not been maintained since the fall of the Soviet Union, due to a civil war and other issues (Tajikistan is largely dependent on outside aid for survival at the moment; it is also a French staging area for the NATO force in Afghanistan, which has been something of a help economically). The land is fertile, although food crops tend not to be the top priority (the country is famous for its fine cotton, which tends to be relatively hard on the land, as well as for silk - mulberry trees are everywhere in the countryside). A major source of hard currency is an enormous aluminum smelter in Tursonzade, spewing greenish smoke, and using the bulk of the country's hydropower, at the expense of providing power for the citizens. Although Tajikistan doesn't have bauxite, it does have hydropower, but not always enough to power both the smelter and the rest of the country. The smelter takes priority.

My first experience of the country was a bit scary: I arrived at the airport an hour earlier than I'd been expected, so no one was there to meet me. After I got past the the border guard who attempted to extract a gift from me (by standing too close and whispering "money" several times), I was mobbed (as the only westerner coming off that flight) by uncountable hungry drivers, all offering to take me to my hotel in sign languages. The airport has no place to change money (and the local currencies are all non-convertible), and no public phones. I finally persuaded a driver (by using my terrible German) to let me use his phone, and arranged for a pickup. An interesting experience, as I speak neither Russian nor Tajik.

Once I arrived at my hotel, all was wonderful. The Hotel Mercury is in the middle of a residential area, not far from the center of the city. It is a new building built in Russo-Mediterranean style (to coin a descriptor) with fountains, a private courtyard, high ceilings, and a pervasive smell of swamp gas (common all over the city).

The main drag in Dushanbe, Rudaki (named for a famous poet), is tree-lined, gracious, much calmer than anything I saw in Kazakhstan. On my runs, I discovered that when one leaves the main drag, the conditions deteriorate rapidly, with garbage dumped willy-nilly in the neighborhoods, large numbers of feral (hopefully not rabid...) dogs, rutted dirt roads, and houses that could be generously described as shacks. Nonetheless, people are able to go about their lives and the city seems to be working after a fashion.

My first evening included dinner at the home of the US Embassy's Cultural Affairs Office, Anne Benjaminson, and her husband Greg Naarden. In a wonderful, small-world moment, I discovered that Greg used to study violin with my long-time colleague (and current collaborator in the Clavier Trio) Arkady Fomin. And I had to go all the way to Dushanbe to meet him.

Next posting, I'll start writing about the music schools, "master classes" (whose definition turned out to be more fluid than I'd expected), and my concert at the Soviet-Era cavern, Kokhi Vahdat.

I've just posted a few pictures from Kazakhstan on my myspace page to go with my blog posts of April 10.

On March 23, I flew from Astana to Almaty - from the new capital being built by President Nazurbayev on the South Siberian Steppe to the old capital, a gracious old city at the edge of the mountains in the southeast corner of the country (too close to China, too prone to earthquakes, other excuses for moving?). After the cold glitz of Astana, Almaty was warm and welcoming, if somewhat worn from the Soviet and post-Soviet experience. The views of the mountains rising abruptly to the south are amazing - when not blocked by haze (a human artifact, I fear). The city is named for its apples, which apparently are in the process of being destroyed by development (I saw a remnant of an apple orchard being encroached upon from both sides while out running). This could be one of the most beautiful cities in the world...

After spending a few days in wintry Astana, it was also wonderful to feel the beginnings of spring, to hear the sounds of birdsong, to get a glimpse of nature, to hear running water, to admire all of the mature trees in Almaty.

Shortly after checking into the hotel, Dina and I went to the Kazakhstan National Conservatory where I gave a master class to some marvelous students, met wonderful professors and the rector of the Conservatory, the pianist Jania Aubakirova, and rehearsed in the small hall where I would be giving my recital the next evening. Everyone was marvelously warm and welcoming, and the students were attentive and responsive to the teaching (and all came to my concert the next evening as well).

On March 24, I began my day by running up a river (or flood control ditch) with a new park for the first mile or so, then into the countryside (marred by the occasional random garbage pile), by the above-mentioned apple orchard. The next day I ran farther uphill to a ridgeline above a former skijump on the southern edge of the city - amazing views of the mountains, new housing development (giant homes), and of the city spread out in the growing haze below.

My recital was quite successful - they ran out of seats, and were requisitioning chairs from the greenroom to put into the hall. There were enthusiastic audience members standing in the doorways... I spoke briefly about the pieces on the program this time, with the help of my interpreter for the occasion, Karly Makatova. The small hall is housed in a renovated building that used to be used by the postal service. It is located upstairs, in a room that was evidently designed as a hall of some sort in the first place, with high ceilings, plaster walls, wooden floors - a beautiful sounding room. The piano was a Grotrian Steinweg, concert sized, rather bright, but with an action well suited to playing Chopin Etudes. Liebermann 3rd Sonata and Chopin Etudes went especially well. Afterward there were two interviews with members of the press - the embassy people (with the help of Dina and Leila [the goto person for the US Embassy in Almaty) did a fabulous job, and generated lots of interest and great audiences for the concerts.

A real highlight of this trip has been all of the wonderful conversations, over dinners, with a mix of Russians, Kazakhstanis, and Americans - wide-ranging topics (history, language, religion, politics, even music from time to time!), always lively.

Continuing my journal - more on March 20, 2008

Rehearsal in the Presidential Cultural Center (with great and sometimes chatty attention from cleaning crews who decided to enjoy some piano music on their breaks), interviews with TV Astana (wonderful interviewer - intelligent and interesting questions) and TV Kazakhstan, lunch with Dina and Marianna (Public Affairs Assistant from the embassy - bright, funny, wicked sense of humor, and virtuoso interpreter for my TV interviews).

The recital this evening was very successful. I spaced out a bit in the Liebermann 3rd Sonata - couldn't find my brain, and successfully recomposed some things (don't try this at home). The audience was attentive, aside from a rash of cellphone rings and conversations in the first half (a habit I was to observe while attending a concert at the National Academy a few days later). I probably should have spoken about the American works (Griffes, Korevaar, Pann, Liebermann) on the first half - lesson learned for the next show in Almaty!

Dinner afterward with new friends from the US Embassy (all Russian speakers for good reason) in a fake Medieval Castle with an impressive list of Belgian beers.

March 21. Practice, rest, and then - went to a gala concert for the 10th anniversary of the National Academy of Music held at the Pyramid - a Norman Foster creation intended to show the unity of religions. The concert hall is a cavernous and acoustically unfriendly space under the pyramid (made me think of the brief vogue for pyramid power in the US back in the 1980s - we were all receiving positive energy while listening to amplified classical music, I guess). The gala was oddly familiar: like one of the ones that my colleague Arkady Fomin puts on with his string orchestra in Durango every summer: emphasis on string ensembles and multiple violins. President Nazurbayev attended, and was applauded and looked benevolently upon the audience. He has done amazing things for the National Academy of Music, giving his strong support to music education in the new capital.

March 22. Visited a yurt set up for Nauriz, the Zoroastrian New Year (Vernal Equinox). This is a holiday celebrated throughout Central Asia; a holiday that has new life in the post-Soviet world as an important cultural touchstone for the re-found nations of that part of the world. I celebrated in the yurt with Dina and Daniel Sher, Dean of the University of Colorado College of Music (my boss), who was visiting as part of the National Academy of Music's anniversary celebrations. We had the opportunity to hear up close the playing of the dombra, a two-stringed guitar-like instrument, with the two strings tuned a fourth apart, and to hear traditional Kazakh singing. We also were treated to traditional Kazakh foods, including horsemeat in various forms, fermented horse milk (Kumis), and the special drink made for Nauriz. The inside of the yurt was decorated with marvelous Kazakh-style fabric art - patchwork, embroidery, and other techniques, a wonderful riot of color to combat the bleakness of the long winters.

The day finished with a gala concert at the National Academy, where I joined a number of other performers in a rather long evening. I was happy to be able to perform Carter Pann's William Albright: A Concert Rag for a large and distinguished audience. Other performers included Marcello Abbado (who played his own works), Ranko Markovic, Artistic Director of the Vienna Conservatory, who gave a sensitive and beautifully nuanced performance of Schoenberg's op. 19, and a number of wonderful string players.

March 20, 2008 - morning
The weather has warmed up enough for the snow and ice to become water, slush and ice. Astana, a brand new city, is being built on swampy ground along a river, and very little provision appears to have been made for drainage. The signs of spring thaw include roads with more than a foot of water, parkland submerged (tree bottoms soaking), and lots of slush and mud.

Today is my third day, and I finally made it out for my first run of the trip. the time zone is set late here, with sunrise around 7:30 am (at equinox time!), and long evenings. I went out this morning in cloudy, damp, dawn light. My hotel is in the middle of the newest part of the new city, surrounded by construction sites. Incongruities: a development of lookalike American-style tract homes (big!) arranged squarely on square lots, mostly empty from the looks of it, just outside my window. And, a Stalin-Gothic pile (enormous - like the Moscow University building) of apartments oddly called "Triumph" - this in an area where Stalin exiled the families of purged government officials. The highlight of my run was the opportunity to run across the frozen (soon to thaw) river and to stand in the middle and admire the skyline of the attractive new buildings on the bank.

The symbol of Astana, the Beitarek, is visible from my window. It is a giant tower representing the egg of a legendary bird perched on top of a tree (Quetzalcoatl, perhaps?). (I have been told that some here call it the lollipop.)

I gave a master class at the National Academy of Music yesterday. The students played well and learned well; the auditors were attentive and interested. The studio where I gave the class had two New York Steinway Ds - unusual to find American pianos anywhere in Eurasia; I'm curious how they got here. My gracious and wonderful host for the class was Professor Ismailov, the head of the piano department. There is a great deal of interest here in the American University system - what we require of various degrees, teaching philosophy, the emphasis (at least at my school) on pianists learning collaborative techniques and playing duos and other chamber repertoire, etc.

Yesterday ended with a reception at the home of the Embassy's Cultural Affairs Officer, Victoria Sloan. Her flat is beautifully decorated with objects collected over her career in the Foreign Service, and generously populated with cats that she has acquired in various postings. The invited guests included music students and musicians, embassy staff, and the US Ambassador to Kazakhstan, John Ordway. I was glad of the opportunity to talk with local musicians (warm, wonderful group) as well as to admire the dedication and cultural intelligence of the Americans in the Foreign Service - the best and brightest; these are people who do a wonderful job of representing the best of the United States to the world.

Tonight I give a recital at the Presidential Cultural Center. The instrument is a bright Hamburg Steinway Model C that will work well in the hall. Off to practice!

I’ve been traveling in Central Asia for almost two weeks now. I’ll be home again by Tuesday, April 1, airlines willing. Over the next few weeks, I hope to create a kind of journal of my trip, with highlights and fun details, and, eventually, photos. For today, I thought I’d at least attempt an introduction.

Dina Bodaubay, who received her DMA in piano from the University of Colorado partially under my supervision, has been working for the US Embassy in Astana, the brand-new capital of Kazakhstan. She put together a grant for me to come and perform and teach in Kazakhstan and Tajikistan over a two-week period. Since I’m almost at the end of my trip, I can say that it has been enjoyable, artistically exciting, eye-opening, fascinating, at times challenging, and especially wonderful in the opportunity to meet so many wonderful colleagues and students in a part of the world to which I could have only imagined going before. In addition, I have to say how impressed I have been with the US Embassy people, both Americans and natives of the countries concerned. These people are dedicated, smart, creative, and work incredibly hard. As an American, I am proud of the efforts and impact that the Cultural Programs have.

I arrived in Astana - a new city being built on the southern Siberian steppe (in the northern part of Kazakhstan) - in the last gasps of a cold, cold winter. My first day, we failed to make it to the city of Karaganda by car because of a Wyoming-style ground blizzard: zero visibility due to high winds and snow. As an alternative, we made it to my master class at a music school in Karaganda on a Soviet-era Russian train - 4 hours each way (instead of a 2 and a half hour drive) in truly proletarian comfort! I had the opportunity to sample the fare in the onboard buffet, which was no worse and not much better than what we get on Amtrak (anyone remember "ham and egg aboard an English muffin"?). Russian-style soups, some attempt at salad, etc.

The master class in Karaganda had me trying to teach 6 students with big repertoire (pieces like Beethoven 32 Variations, Ravel Ondine, Schumann 2nd Sonata, etc.) in 2 hours, even more cramped by the necessity for pre-class tea and a television interview. The pianos (Estonia) were not good enough for the students or the repertoire, which posed a big challenge: how do you try to talk about tone production and beauty of sound when the piano is incapable of producing a beautiful sound? Nonetheless, I was impressed by the dedication and talent of the students, and hope that I left them with some good technical ideas (keep those elbows down and relaxed, use good hand position, learn how to rotate your hand properly with a lateral motion of the wrist, proper five-finger positions and alignment of the fingers, etc.) and some new musical ideas (hypermeter, for example, in talking about Chopin’s 3rd Scherzo). We caught our train back to Astana, and I watched the flat, snow-covered steppe go by - occasional trees (not happy looking), lots of crows, a post-industrial wasteland of abandoned factories and associated housing, slag heaps from the coal mining, until we arrived, late at night, back at Astana’s almost-modern train station (where the escalator was still out of order and taken apart).

Watch this space for more!

In two weeks, I'm supposed to leave for Kazakhstan and Tajikistan as an Artistic Ambassador. I'll be playing recitals and giving classes in a number of cities in both countries. Half my program is American music - works by Charles Tomlinson Griffes (something old); myself (something borrowed...); Carter Pann (a rag - something blue?); and Lowell Liebermann (something new). The other half is Chopin Etudes - keeping those fingers limber. If I were sensible (given that I do have a full time teaching position at the University of Colorado) I would just be doing this - but I've got a piano quartet program this weekend in Fort Collins (d'Indy and Fauré Quartets), and tons to do when I get back (chamber music, two concertos at the beginning of May, then a trip to Japan...). Interesting trying to figure out what to practice - a song cycle by Colorado composer Richard Toensing? - a trio by Dvorak? - a Mozart Concerto? - Martinu Quartet? - you get into a place where there are so many things you're supposed to be doing that you can't do anything but write about it on myspace. The things we do for love...