Re: GG: calling all boffins

[Pooya Woodcock <pooya@MATH.UMD.EDU>]

> I guess that makes me a...what?  I had an undergraduate major in
> mathematics, and for most of my career (and currently) I'm employed as a
> software developer.  Intricate logic and problem-solving are my daily
> bread: building (or untangling!) deeply nested structures of shape and
> detail, data relationships and meaning.
> BUT...I have a doctorate in harpsichord performance with some sub-degrees
> in music history and the other "early" keyboard instruments.  I was a
> pianist until the first year of college, then switched to all the others
> (harpsichord, fortepiano, organ, clavichord) and went on with them.  As
> much as I enjoy mathematical structures (and earning good money in them),
> music is my passion.  And it's really very similar: deeply nested
> structures of shape and detail, data relationships (notes/phrases) and
> meaning.

Amazing. This is EXACTLY what I seem to be doing. I am inches away from my
math/cs degrees, I expect to do some (and am currently doing some) software
development, and I WILL go to Grad School in piano performance.
I have had quite a bit of education in piano by way of studying at the
Peabody Conservatory (Balt,MD) and performing in competitions at the
Kennedy Center in D.C. ... but never super *seriously*.   And so,
although the sciences,logic, and number theory are embedded in my daily
life, like Bradley, I consider music to be my ultimate passion.

It was my very first piano teacher, Glenn Taylor, who introduced me
to Glenn Gould. He was a jazz pianist- at least for the time I studied
with him- and I thought it was pretty neat for a jazz pianist to embrace
Gould's style. I wonder what he's doing now.. it's time for me to look
up his phone # and give him a call. Perhaps I could ask him where he
first heard of Gould.

> Music is indivisible. The dualism of feeling and thinking must be resolved
> to a state of unity which one thinks with the heart and feels with the
> brain.
>
> Music is a means of giving form to our inner feelings without attaching
> them to events or objects in the world.

word.

> Time is to the musician what space is to the painter.

word.

I am pleased to see someone so similar to myself on this list,

Pooya