There, just waiting for me, were friends, family members, high school acquaintances, and lots more.  Both my *parents* were already there, which is a scary realization for a technophile like myself.  And there were many more Lovriens there than I’ve ever had access to.  So I started a new genealogy page there to link to my current Lovrien Genealogy site (http://www.lovrien.com).

This is going to be awesome.  If you’re on Facebook too, look me up!

The piece I wrote last year for the Dallas Wind Symphony’s Christmas concert is selling like hotcakes for the upcoming holiday season. It is easily the #1 best-seller from the Lovebird Music catalog this year. I was informed this morning that the United States Navy Band will be performing it on Dec. 5th. Have you heard it yet? If not, have a listen.

The idea started with an arrangement of “Pat-a-pan” that I did in 2006 as a demo of the capabilities of the Garritan Personal Orchestra sample library. Pat-a-pan is such a cool minor-key tune, almost Slavic sounding, and I wanted to slip some other Christmas-themed material into it, so I decided to transpose “Up On The Housetop” to minor. It worked out great and the arrangement was completed…

Several months later, as the DWS Christmas concert approached I came back to the same idea and started to expand on it. Grace and I were driving to my daughter’s orchestra concert when idea started coming quickly and I started giggling. She wanted to know what it was all about and I hummed some “warped” variations to her. She loved the idea. The layers and the “jokes within jokes” came together very quickly; taking tunes like “Here Comes Santa Claus” and transposing them to minor… oh wait, Danny Elfman did it just like that in “Nightmare Before Christmas,” didn’t he? OK, I’ll have to do better. Let’s make it a waltz… yes, that works. In fact it sounds a little like… ooh! Let’s use the accompaniment pattern from Shostakovich’s Waltz No. 2! Gosh, do you think people will get that? Hmm, better drop a couple bars of the melody on the end to make sure…

Then I had to assemble them all into a form. How about arranging them in tempo order from slow to fast, like a Jewish Hora? That way it builds energy from start to finish. Drop the waltz variations in the middle and it works great. It seems to hit the right balance between “sounds nothing like the original” and “oh, I know what tune that was.” And it’s a nice change of pace for Christmas concerts where things can get sickeningly sweet, like too much candy on Christmas morning.

Sunday morning we attended my cousin’s church, Church in the City, in Milwaukee.  A beautiful building and an excellent service.  Had a wonderful lunch afterwards with cousins and family before heading up to Manitowoc to visit the other side of the family.  Ended a leisurely Monday with a refreshing walk through the farm and woods.

Update (09/02/08): Well, the guys in the DWS office loved the video much to my surprise, so I reshot the video and it is posted on the DWS main page now.

We flew into Omaha and rented a nice Honda Odyssey van, picked up Dad & June and headed north; first to Sioux Falls and then straight west across the state to Deadwood.  Dad popped in a Roger Miller CD along the way and we enjoyed the music, especially his goofy-yet-philosophical “You Can’t Roller Skate in a Buffalo Herd“.  Little did we know that not only would we hear the tune again playing in the streets of Deadwood, but that we’d actually be *in* a buffalo herd less than 24 hours later!

The next morning we started off early to do the 3 “must-dos” in the Black Hills: Mount Rushmore, Crazy Horse and Custer State Park.  The carved mountains were every bit as impressive as we expected, but the real fun was the drive through Custer State Park.  Well, the first 80% of it was pretty boring actually - nice scenery but no wildlife whatsoever.   We saw a few donkeys and antelope but no prairie dogs, and we really were hoping for buffalo.  We were getting a little disillusioned when Dad said he could see some buffalo on a hill a long ways off.  But we couldn’t find a way to get closer and we were nearing the end of the wildlife loop through the park.  Finally, finally we found them.  Hundreds of them, on both sides of the road, many of them coming right up to the cars!  We could hear them grunting at each other, and even got video of a nursing calf head-butting his mother’s underside to get at the action.  

Leaving the park, the drive back towards Rushmore on 16-A was a real bonus - do not miss this when you visit!  Known as the Iron Mountain Road, the highway winds up a mountain with crazy hairpins and one-lane tunnels in the mountain rock.  The tunnels are strategically positioned to perfectly frame the Rushmore faces in the distance as you pass through.  At the top of the mountain is a beautiful scenic view of Rushmore (from above!) and the surrounding hills.

The next day we headed up to a nice lodge mountaintop lodge my Uncle Fred and Aunt Sharon rented to celebrate their 40th anniversary.  Lots of family turned up and we had a nice time.  Visited downtown Deadwood and saw a reenactment of the shooting of Wild Bill Hickok.

On the way back (diagonally across Nebraska) we stopped at Smith Falls State Park, home of the largest waterfall in Nebraska.  We expected something about 8 feet high… it is plains, after all.  But the falls are actually very impressive, nearly 70 feet high.  And if you ever find yourself lost in “the middle of nowhere,” look up and see if you might be in Ainsworth, Nebraska, which officially bills itself that way.  If you are, stop by the Ainsworth Golden Steer for an excellent steak dinner.  We did; food and service were awesome.  Could have done without the “free steak dinner” insurance sales presentation on the other side of the dining room, but somehow it seemed like the perfect ambience given the circumstances.

Then back to Omaha, where I had to have my requisite Runza as I do every visit to Nebraska.  Mmmm!