Peter's photos

Tish here - We're all back home in California now. Very early flight this morning (6:20 from Des Moines, going through Denver). All went well, and the instruments arrived in San Francisco safely, as did the players. Our only bad food experience occurred last night. We arrived at our Des Moines airport motel around 9 and decided to try take-out from a Chinese restaurant on the motel's list of nearby places. China One - don't go there! Very baad. But the people were very nice. Watched a little bit of Spinal Tap to relax, then got about 3 hours of sleep. We loved working with Peter in St. Bridget's. Thank you Peter for a great session!! Annette and I think Iowa would be a fun place to live. Frances thinks it's a great place for a little second home in the spring. My mother's father, who I never knew, was from Mount Pleasant, about an hour away from Iowa City. Next time I'll make time to visit the town.
Now we have to do the paper edits and send them to Peter for the final editing.

We've just been packing up recorders at our motel in preparation to drive to the church for our last day of recording. Because the church is very cold at night we bring our wet recorders back to the motel each evening, knock out the blocks and let them thoroughly dry. The drive to the church, about 15 minutes, takes us through beautiful rolling hills, fields edged by woods, a tiny village, past a strange tall tower (now used for cell phones and radio waves...), down a gravel road to a quiet and peaceful spot. We are so lucky to have the opportunity to make music together in such a lovely location. Peter, our recording engineer, is a joy to work with - he is never mean, he makes very good suggestions, both musical and technical, and he is lots of fun to hang around with in the breaks. I (Frances) have been enjoying very much playing with the three other Farallonians. It is wonderful to get to play these pieces over and over with such good musicians. You might think the over-and-over part, trying to be perfect in every way, might be tedious, but it is not at all. It is completely absorbing.

Tuesday recording session

Another good recording day. Got lots done. Beautiful weather here in Iowa - apparently we're here at the best time for weather. One more day to go!
We've been trying out Iowa City restaurants. Tonight we ate at the Bluebird Diner. I had red beans and rice, and a small order of ribs, with a Fat Tire. Everything was good except the dessert. We shared an amaretto cheese cake but I stopped after one bite - it was too dense. We have shopped at the Pioneer Food Coop every night. It's a great little grocery store with lots of good bread, cheeses, produce, and everything else you'd expect.

Frances here again - we've had a very productive day! Here on our second day we managed to finish recording 13 pieces - among them Petrone, a couple of Lupo fantasias and a handful of medieval pieces. Also a Byrd Pavan and Galliard using our "Bigs" - contrabass, great bass, bass and tenor. Lots of fun. And for even more fun, we went out for a dinner of Indian food.

Tish here - can't really take any videos of playing since we're all playing! But check tomorrow for some other videos. Time to say good night!

treees in front of church

Peter setting up mikes

Tish, Louise, Annette

Peter Nothnagle

St. Brigid's

Lunch on the front steps

Back in the motel after our first day of recording and a good Thai dinner in Iowa City. We had a good day. No videos yet - I'll try to get one tomorrow. Peter's great to work with and the church is fun to play in. We only had to stop twice for plane noise. The old rectory is rented out to a family with a 4 year old boy. We met him and the father during a break - had fun playing with the little boy. Peter told us that snakes might show up in the church, but they are harmless corn snakes.

Happy Farallon with its contrabass.

Iowa countryside on highway 80

watching our contrabass get loaded on the plane to Des Moines

Louise in Denver airport

We're finally ready to get to sleep after a long day of flying and driving. Good pizza restaurant next to the motel with a wonderful waitress who told us where to find the local food co-op. Went shopping and got lots of good food for breakfasts and lunches.
Ready to record starting tomorrow morning!

Frances here. We're in the airport at Denver and I can't wait to get to Iowa and begin recording. We get to play music for hours and hours every day for the next four days! We have too much music for the CD and will have to pare down - but it's nearly impossible because every piece is so beautiful, exciting, moving etc.

Frances and I were picked up by an airport van at 4 am this morning. We arrived at SFO at 5 with our large case which had the contrabass, hair dryer, heating pad, and my running shoes. And of course, even though I'd been told on the phone we could gate check the case, we couldn't. However, a really nice United employee helped us with getting it through security while we observed it, then seeing it locked for the rest of the trip. It was actually a relief to not have to get it through carry-on security. Annette and Louise arrived about 6 and we made our way to our gate. The first flight was good - just a little bumpy as we started the descent into Denver but not much. Now that I think of the bumpy rides as though I were on a bike on a dirt path, I don't get anxious like I used to. Of course I'm not wearing a helmet on the plane but I guess that wouldn't really help.

Dear blog followers
I decided to try the AdSense which puts ads on our blog. Google says that we'll make money if anyone clicks on the ads, but if it becomes too annoying I'll change the setting.

I tried shipping our biggest recorders using the Door-to-Door service advertised on the United site, but the site wouldn't let me complete the order. So we're going with gate-checking. Wish us luck!

getting ready to go to Iowa to record

We're off to Iowa City! Solon, that is, where Peter Nothnagle lives. We'll be recording our English repertoire starting Sunday April 18th. Yesterday we played most of our repertoire for some of the Friends of Farallon. Thanks to them, we are much closer to our goal of paying for this recording! Today Frances and I started cleaning and oiling recorders in preparation for the recording.