Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

Lawyer: "Silly me, I was always under the ridiculous illusion that a trial was a search for the truth."
Judge: "Oh please, counselor, a trial is a search for admissible evidence."

From the television show Law And Order: Trial By Jury, in the episode, "The Abominable Showman"

Here's something I really meant to post several days ago, but there's still time to get word out: this Saturday, 21 May, is the Maryland Faerie Festival at the Patuxent 4H Center (18405 Queen Anne Road Upper Marlboro, MD 20774). This should be a lot of fun and very colourful, so come on out and indulge your sense of whimsy, your sense of mystery, or both. Or just enjoy the Spring weather, the various entertainers, and peoplewatching (the similar event in Pennsylvania is a delight for the eyes, with entertaining garb and faerie wings galore; I expect that this Saturday will be as well).

I'll be performing with Thrir Venstri Foetr / Three Left Feet on the main stage at 3:00 PM. If your friends list overlaps mine, you might appreciate a heads-up that gorgeousgary and maugorn have solo sets at 10:30 AM and 4:00 PM respectively, in addition to performing with Thrir Venstri Foetr at 3:00. And if you don't already know them, here's a chance to find out why you should. And I know a bunch of people reading my journal are familiar with Clam Chowder, who will be on the main stage at 12:30 PM, and storyteller Bill Mayhew, who will be in the Storytellers' Pavillion at 4:00 PM. A complete entertainment schedule has been posted at the festival's web site.

The festival runs from 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM. Admission is $7 for ... well, as the web site puts it, "kids age 12 to 99", $3 for kids age 3 to 11, and free for folks under three or over 99. I don't know how much they're charging for adults of any age, so it's probably safest to plan on arriving as your child-self (though I don't think they'll be testing for grown-up-ness at the door...) Take a dollar off for coming in costume, and if you find one of these faerie creatures before the festival, escorting it back to the land of faerie (that is, bringing it to the festival) will be rewarded at the gate.

Okay, so I was in the shower and some Star Wars music crawled into my head, which got me thinking how much I'd love to have a copy of the orchestral score for A New Hope, which got me thinking about orchestral music in general, which made me think of tympani, which reminded me how [expletive]ing fun tympani are to play, which got me humming tunes that would be cool to play/hear on tympani ...

And all of a sudden I want to play "Rince Briotanach"[*] on tympani. Or, since you almost never see eight kettledrums in one place, play the bottom four notes on tympani and give the rest to shawms or bombards or maybe even brass. (There's a pretty obvious call-and-response bult into the melody; I'd like to throw in a less obvious treatment on one of the repetitions as well.)

But man, it'd be so cool to have two tympanists, each with four drums, on opposite ends of a stage, with the whole melody covered with BoomBoomBoomBoomBoBoBoooms, and just let other instruments decorate the middle. Maybe the tympani, two fiddles, a cello, and a xylophone.

I dare anyone to try not to dance to that!

(Uh ... any of y'all got an orchestra with that many tympani that you can convince to perform this for me? 'Cause those things are bloody expensive and my Roto-Toms are just not going to get it done.)

[*] By Clannad, if I'm not mistaken.