Program #84, December 20 2001: Unthemed.

This was the first From Cats To Dogs program I'd done for a while -- my "unthemed" programs seem to have been becoming increasingly less unthemed for some time now, so it was good to do an old-fashioned continuous-segue program for a change. This evening's segue began with a voice-centered loose end from last week's Steve Reich program, then made its way around to Joan La Barbara's brilliant 73 Poems, with major emphasis on flute, clarinet, and electronics/computer music in the meantime.

Perhaps more importantly, I experimented with something new this week: shutting up! For better or for worse, I usually tend to chatter on somewhat during the show, giving a lot of background on pieces, talking about their mutual contexts, relating them to the human condition (or at least my own) in some way, and so forth. This week I decided to try not to connect the dots so much through words, and just focus on making the segues work out on a musical level. I don't see myself doing it this way every time, or even most times -- so many of the shows I do have enough thematic focus to induce me to keep chatting away. But perhaps I will try to be more economical with my speech in the future, as this time it was certainly pleasant just to sit and listen.