May 4th has become known (among the geeky of us) as Star Wars Day, and you will see many May the Fourth be With You greetings out there. It was also a night out for us, and an appropriate one for the day.
Last night, we went to the final Binghamton Philharmonic concert for this season. They did a concert called Other Worlds: Superheroes, Fantasy, and Scifi. It was fun. The program was:
Superheroes:
Superman Theme John Williams
Music from Wonder Woman Rupert Gregson-Williams
Black Panther Ludwig Goransson
Fantasy:
Game of Thrones Suite Ramin Djawadi
Theme from Lord of the Rings Howard Shore
Avatar Suite James Horner
Intermission
Scifi:
2001: A Space Odyssey Richard Strauss
Apollo 13 (Yes, not fiction but cool music) James Horner
Theme from ST:TMP Jerry Goldsmith
Close Encounters of the Third Kind John Williams
Theme from ET John Williams
Theme from Star Wars John Williams
A cool thing last night was that before the concert, they had a little talk and demo of the new ErgoSonic bass drum that was built for the Philharmonic. It was designed by a local percussionist/music teacher and used parts made for the design by companies in NH and VT. The president of ErgoSonic, Ken Turner, talked about his inspiration for the design and the process of getting it built. He wanted to design a bass drum that would be more ergonomic for the orchestral percussionist to play than the traditional design. Then the principal percussionist of the Philharmonic, Sam Lazzara, did a demo of the drum. The Binghamton Philharmonic is currently the only orchestra to have one of these new design drums.
It was a good evening.
That’s Ken Turner speaking in the picture, and Sam Lazzara’s head peeking over the drum.
My latest book is a collection of very short stories, half science fiction and half fantasy, called “Crossed Wires and Other Very Short Stories”. I have also written a few other short pieces, another collection, two novels, and an urban fantasy series. You can find most of them at Smashwords, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, and wherever e-books are sold. A few are also available from Amazon in paperback. My novel, “Circle Unbroken” is also on Kindle Unlimited, if that’s your reading preference. You can find out about all of them here.
There are also some stories you can read here on my site, mostly the yearly Halloween short I write, but there are a few others. You can read them from here
And So On... 