And the Weekend kept on going and going

This past weekend turned out to be so busy that not only did it start on Thursday, it continued into Monday. But in a good way.
On Saturday I went to sen_no_ongaku's birthday party, which lasted 11 hours, all of them fabulous. There was an endless parade of scrumptious food, fun games, and cool people. And my world shrank some more. Not only have sen_no_ongaku and sigerson recntly met digitalemur, but they and several of their friends apparently know fajitas's wife. I guess that explains why I like them all so much.
On Sunday, pantsie and I got together for some music making. It went really well - I think we're starting to hit our stride and be really comfortable together, musically speaking. And there was some devious plotting regarding the songs I will be writing for her, and a recital we plan to do together later in the year.
Yesterday after work I had dinner at Betty's with my sister and some of her friends, then we went to the Charlemagne Palestine performance at NEC. The concert opened with Stephen Drury playing Morton Feldman's last piano piece, "Palais de Mari". I often like Feldman's music, and Drury is a good pianist. However, I think that Feldman is, oddly enough, not well-suited for the concert hall. His music is very quiet and extremely minimal - soft sounds hanging in the air. I much prefer it heard in a quiet room with very few other people, or, even better, through headphones. In a concert hall situation, I usually find myself getting distracted by the noises of the audience shifting in their seats. Feldman's music requires repose and concentration.
Charlemagne Palestine is an avant-gardde composer and performer who has been doing his thing since the late 1960s. I'd never heard of him before this performance, but since he rarely plays in Boston, I figured what the heck. It was certainly an experience, but in a good way. Palestine is a very eccentric man. Before playing, he set up a bunch of stuffed aninals and scarves around the bases of the two pianos he was going to perform on, which were set up with the keyboards facing each other. Then, he set up a little table between and in front of the pianos, with a bottle of cognac, and bottle of perrier and a glass for each of them.
His performance of his piece, "The Golden Mean", also had several theatrical aspects. Before beginning to play, he told a few amusing anecdotes about himself and his career. Then he drank some cognac - well, quite a lot of cognac actually (we were sitting only three rows back in a small concert hall, and we could smell the stuff, too). During the performance, he would occasionally pause to drink more cognac while the sounds from the pianos rang out. He also incorporated some Hebrew singing and some chanting about sound into the piece. It was pretty odd, even bizarre at times, but the purely musical aspects were really wonderful.
What Palestine's music is about is the timbres that can be produced by hammering away at single notes and/or tone clusters on the piano, or, in this case, two pianos. He played them both by sitting on a bench between, using one hand on each. What is produced is really quite amazing - beautiful tones that seem to coalesce in the very air, often sounding like bells or even almost like large choirs. The shifting among notes and tone clusters gives the piece form and even, at times, melody. It's very beautiful and unique. I confess that I was quite inspired by the sounds and music Palestine was creating. It's not for everyone, but once you get past the eccentricity of his performance style, it's really worth hearing.