Thoughts from the practice room or from behind a camera.
(I contain multitudes of ways to communicate non-verbally.)
How is Fremont Island like a vampire?
This image was taken March 9, 2025 at the Great Salt Lake, from the causeway to Antelope Island looking northwest-ish towards Fremont Island and Promontory Point. It’s a familiar scene, but on this evening, migration hadn't started and there weren’t a lot of birds around, so the water was dead calm. The reflection was like polished glass, a mirror, doubling the island and sky.
Minimal, serene, simple, pastel, calm.
I walked into a wind storm at Great Salt Lake so you don’t have to
On May 12, 2025, northern Utah was under a wind advisory. Communities and neighborhoods lost power from the wind. From above the valley, one could look to the west and see the dust blowing in plumes and devils across Great Salt Lake. I grabbed my camera and went to the south shore to see what was happening.
It was windy in town, no doubt about it. But the further west I drove, it became clear that Salt Lake City was not experiencing the same wind and dust that was happening out of town. The dust was blowing off the slag heap across the freeway, blowing in from the west desert, blowing across the playa of Great Salt Lake.
An evening on the Notom Road
“So what are you going to do on your week off?”
My head spun around, “WE HAVE A WEEK OFF???”
I guess I ought to look at the calendar instead of making assumptions more often. It turned out that the string players who were not part of the Utah Opera performance of Ruggero Leoncavallo’s “Pagliacci,” of which I was one, did NOT actually have a full week off. But when I realized that I had THREE WHOLE DAYS unexpectedly free, I asked Scot if I could take the car and go someplace for photography. Woo-hoo!
American Tune
A couple weeks ago I drove out to Antelope Island for a quick couple hours. It was overcast and I didn’t really expect to see anything amazing for photographs.
On the drive out, feeling overcast and grey myself, my local radio station (KRCL, iykyk…) was playing a cover of Paul Simon’s American Tune.
The voice in your head
Recently I was in a rehearsal for a faculty concert at the University of Utah. We were rehearsing the Menuetto-Trio I-Trio II of the Mozart Clarinet Quintet and having a conversation about the tempo. One colleague said that she wanted it to be faster, but kept hearing her teacher’s voice in her head saying, “Not too fast!.” We all laughed because we all understand that feeling. Another colleague reminded her that she doesn’t have to listen to that voice anymore. Of course we don’t, we are full grown adults with professional lives of our own, but we all understood and recognized it, because we all hear that voice in our own heads.
Why not both?
I created this website specifically to be a home to my eBook Vigil: Winter Visions of Great Salt Lake. On my old photography website, I couldn’t sell digital downloads so I went looking for a new solution. I thought about trying to create a place for this eBook on my old viola website, but since I created that website, things have changed and it was no longer as easy for a layperson to use. So I had two websites that I couldn’t figure out how to integrate well.
A (2015) Conversation with Atar Arad Every day is a new day to discover more music
Bob Dylan, Nicolo Amati violas, Cuckoo’s Nest. These are just some of the topics that I covered when I caught up with Atar Arad, this year’s Primrose Memorial Concert guest at BYU. After my 5 years studying with Atar, I was pleasantly surprised to discover some things I’d never known about him.
If you love music the rest will follow: Reflections on studying with Atar Arad (originally from 2015)
If you love music, the rest will follow: Reflections on studying with Atar Arad