Every year, music theory and musicology geeks from all over the nation get together at conferences, partially to share our knowledge with one another, partially to validate our existence, and mostly to keep in touch and schmooze with the big wigs. This year, the American Musicological Society and the Society for Music Theory held a joint conference in Seattle, as they do every other year. Many of my friends and I from UCSB flew up to Seattle for the event. Best Conference EVER.

It started with an early but nice flight from SBA to SFO and then from SFO to SEA-TAC. It was raining in San Francisco so I thought I'd get a second shot in what is turning out to be a series of "scenes of stuff behind a window on which rain is falling." I'm soooo artistic (that was the first shot up there by the way). On the way to Seattle, there were some gorgeous clouds (as there always are) and some nifty scenery. Mt. St. Helens, the recently erupted, was in plain sight out the right side of the plane. As I was sitting in a window seat, I had to get a shot. Not wonderful out a plane window without a polarizer but it was the best I could do.

The pilot also made an approach to SEA-TAC from the North, turning right above Seattle. This afforded almost everyone in the plane a great view of the city from above. I've got a shot or two of the Space Needle too but here's one of downtown. It's a beautiful city, although not terribly large. Once I got in, I went straight to some of the sessions/presentations before dragging my things over to the hostel at night. Dinner was at a place called Turf, an inner city like diner with ultra-greasy foods and cheap prices. Friends and I loved the place. Crashed fairly early because I had gotten very little sleep the night before.

Academics and festivities continued the next day (Friday). Our very own prof. vdT took some of us out to lunch on Friday, followed up by some parties Friday night. Many schools hold their own conference parties and many graduate students are not averse to crashing said parties. Decent wine flowing freely is a huge incentive. Also lots of exhibitors and vendors set up at the hotel, selling discounted books and scores. Mmm...Henle Verlag Urtext Editions... The shot above is a place we went to for lunch on Saturday, called "Uli's Famous Sausages." A, T, and I weren't overwhelmed but they were nice and fresh sausages, something not easily obtianable here in SB.

MUCHO partying on Saturday night with many more parties, and even a UCSB dinner. Open bars are a wonderful but dangerous thing. I continued the schmooze fest, saying hi to Drs Burnham, Tymoczko, Morris, Peck, Straus, Carr, Fink, Hyde, Cuciurean, and many more. Not schmoozing for schmoozing sake, of course, since they all do very interesting work I've read about, but one can only establish (for the most part) a rather basic relationship at a conference. Frightening to have so many academics stars in one place.

Got up Sunday morning and ransacked the Norton booth. Norton is a big publisher and they were pretty much giving away their paperback books on display at their booth at the end of the conference. Mmmm, free tangible knowledge. After hovering there for far too long, we all adjourned for lunch. On the way back, I decided to upgrade my Seattle-LA segment to first class. Corrected some student papers on a wonderful seat with a glass of wine, a good dinner, and a double shot glass of baileys and then another of amaretto. Hooray for complimentary 500 mile upgrade e-certificates.

So the loot for this conference:

• Henle Urtext scores of the second volume of the Beethoven Piano Sonatas, Bach Well-Tempered Clavier Book I, and the Liszt Sonata in B Minor (all came out to less than $90. Big discount over normal prices).
• Schirmer (ick, I know, but they're study versions) editions of the Rachmaninoff Second and Third Piano Concerti
• Seeing, meeting, praising, kissing the boots of, etc., lots of academic big shots and attempting to absorb their wisdom, knowledge, and methodology. Great papers on Ligeti!
• Ordered "Musical Invectives" from Norton, by Nicolas Slonimsky. Music nerd humor. Love it.
• The Classical Style and various other books from the Norton ransacking (for free!)
• Some tote bags (one AMS/SMT 2004 and one from Norton).
• A free iPod mini.

The iPod mini deserves a small story: Norton was raffling off 2 iPod minis, provided that you registered and attended their e-media library workshop/tutorial/thing. Since we teach with Norton materials, I thought why not. Saturday afternoon, they finally got around to raffling off the things. First one comes up an A (musicology friend at UCSB, lives diagonally across the hall from me) gets it. Go UCSB! Then they bring out another iPod mini. I get the second one! What are the chances?! Two iPods go to one theorist and one musicologist, both at UCSB, living in the same apartment complex. That pretty much paid for half the trip. I wasn't going to buy one, but hey, I'll take it.

Music conferences rule (no wise cracks from the peanut gallery about the cooler things they probably give away at the tech or science conferences. I'm happy with my books and iPod mini thank you very much. Ignorance is bliss.)