Real Irish people!

Pretty busy days. I was supposed to wake up this morning but I just curled up and slept through the meeting with the music 3rd and 4rd years. No problem, though; everyone here is in such chaos that they don't notice. I am taking:

Modernism
Shakespeare
Free composition forum with Donnacha Dennehy
Post-tonal advanced music analysis with Michael Taylor
Ethics: Philosophical and Theological
and Approaches to Theological Ethics with M. Junker-Kenny
Post War/Post Nation: British and Irish Poets since 1945 with Gerald Dawe

I almost took an "Exile in two languages" course covering Beckett and Nabokov, but then at the last minute the English dept. lady said that if I was really going to do poetry I should take Gerald Dawe's course. Apparently he is a real live Irish poet and knew/knows pretty much all the poets on the course list. Sounds awesome.

Donnacha Dennehy is a real live Irish composer, with commissions for the National Symphony, WNYC radio, and some other stuff. Into acoustic/electric things. Sounds really wild.

In other news, I have some digits in my phone now. Like, 5-6 acquaintances, one of who plays the sax. Might play some jazz some time.

I went to the RTE (like BBC for Ireland) National Symphony Orchestra tonight. The program was Tchaikovsky (Capriccio Italien, op. 45), Volans (Trio Concerto, Irish composer, came up for the curtain call), and Prokofiev (Suites No. 1 and No. 2 from Romeo and Juliet, Op. 64). The curtain call for Prokofiev was around 10 minutes long, with a short encore of one movement. Tickets were 5 euros for students. I think I'll go every week. Next week it's Sibelius, Rachmaninov, and Nielsen. Pretty wild.

I'll leave you with a link to Donnacha Dennehy's WNYC broadcast from Merkin Concert Hall. This is a lot like what the concert in that strange room behind the locked door was like. Except better.

Donnacha Dennehy, WNYC: http://www.wnyc.org/shows/newsounds/episodes/2007/04/11