I had a beer with a guy who was hit on by Aaron Copland

For real.

After amazingly full days of learning and concerts on both Thursday and Friday, we got a day of rest on Saturday. Though I was originally hoping to go somewhere outside of Pavia, we got back to our dorm at 4AM on Friday, so I decided to sleep in.

I wish I could say that I was out until four having fun with my friends, but in fact we started our trek back to dorm at the reasonable hour of two. There's a long story in this one, but to sum up: when there are no busses and you can't find a taxi, you walk, even if you don't know where you live. Eventually, you find it... eventually.

At 2PM my roommate Jason and I woke up and headed into town. We got some lunch, did a little bit of shopping, and then sat down at a cafe and talked with Dr. Hulse and our visiting composition lecturer, Karl Korte, for a few hours. Professor Korte is about eighty years old and was there at many pivotal moments in music history. He was present (I think) at the first performance of Cage's 4'33", he was friends with Bernstein and Copland, and he was a pioneer in the field of synthetic and electronic music. Definitely a very interesting man.

This festival so far has fired me up about different ways to look at and write music. Many people think of contemporary composers as being eccentrics and arrogant academics locked up in some ivory tower. What I've actually found, though, is that every single person in this program is probably more culturally aware and appreciative than the average person. The killer soprano loves country music, the composition teacher quotes South Park and Borat, and the moment you start to sing or hum any given pop song, half of the participants join in instantly.

My favorite part of the program is still working with Giovanni. We have very similar feelings about what makes a good piece of music. I'll see if he has a website, because I think that you all might be surprised by how accessible his music is, even though it is still very contemporary.