While playing at the Pitt Union piano, a dude just randomly came over and started improvising against what I was playing which is exactly what pianos in public places are good for. It was great, since the dude was apparently doing a masters in piano performance or something and was really freakin' good. He got some crazy off-scale moving octave shit going on in "take five".
Watched part of the recital version of "Anyone Can Whistle" and I feel like a terrible person for having left partway through, since my opinion of the skill of everyone singing, pianoing, acting, and narrating in it was quite high, but I have to amend my personal
List of Composers Whose Melodic Phrasing Makes Me So Damned Antsy and Uncomfortable That After About an Hour of It In a Hot Crowded Theater I Just Cannot Remain in my Seat
to be
- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
- Stephen Sondheim
Mozart's thing is that he keeps setting me up for expecting some resolution then whoosh he is off to something else over and over again. Sondheim: not sure. Maybe it's just the way broadway musicals generally expect to get away with intense repetition of little dissonant phrases because you're supposed to be paying attention to the words or something? And then in the middle of nowhere have a song that is so unbelievably sticky-sweet that it is like someone smooshing cake frosting directly in your ears? Anyway I begin to really start to see why "Waiting for Guffman" is more deeply funny than I realized.