Schicksalslied and Nanie: the big night is almost here!!

The post of September 9, 2005 below discusses that PJr, CPG and I have joined the Choral Union at Arizona State University. After weeks of diligently practicing, our first big performance is scheduled for 7:30p on Friday, October 21.

There are two pieces that involve the chorus; each was composed by Johannes Brahms, and each is accompanied by a full orchestra. Schicksalslied (the Song of Fate) lasts about 17 minutes. You can (and I think you will) enjoy the entire song by clicking here: http://www.classiccat.net/brahms_j/54.htm. (Instruction: when this page loads, click the Uni Witten-Herdecke chor link; that will lead to a page of free music links; scroll down the page to Sommerkonzert 2001; click on Schicksalslied and wait for the file to load, it doesn't take long. The beginning of the song is quite quiet so make sure you have enough volume on your speakers.) Notwithstanding my ethnic heritage, learning the German pronunciations did not come easily. The song extols the beautiful, points out everybody eventually dies, and laments that nobody mourns the un-beautiful. Cheery 19-century German stuff. But very nice music.

As far as Nanie, the text is by Friedrich Schiller (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schiller). This fella also wrote the “Ode to Joy” that was so famously set to music by Beethoven. Schiller is all about aesthetics, meaning I don’t really know what Schiller is all about. Nanie includes a bunch of classical and mythological references. Again: 19th-century German stuff, but very nice music.

You can read about Brahms at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahms.

Anyway, I've never been in a performance with this kind of music. It's a great experience.

Time for a change . . .

I graduated from ND law school in 1982 and have worked in large law firms ever since (except for about four years working for corporations in-house). So it’s been all large organizations, all the time. 23+ years. Which starts to sound like a long time.

On Friday, September 30, 2005, I cleaned out my desk and left Squire, Sanders & Dempsey, where I’ve been a partner for the last 5+ years. SSD has been a good place to work; a large international law firm with 800 attorneys and offices around the world (www.ssd.com); about 75 attorneys in the Phoenix office.

My new firm has about 792 attorneys less than SSD. I’ll be the eighth partner at a small firm in northeast Scottsdale (Feldman, Brown, Wall, Hall & Agena PLC, www.phoenixlawgroup.com). My bio is at http://www.phoenixlawgroup.com/pgales.htm (but no photo until I get a chance to get together with the photographer this week).

My practice areas won’t change, though I will be able to focus more effectively on smaller companies (which is the right market to target in Phoenix). But work life will be quite different with far greater flexibility and far fewer resources. I’m looking forward to it.

It happens that we had a bottle of 1993 Dom Perignon sitting around the house that was a closing gift from a client on a $200 million refinancing transaction from 2002. When I got home from cleaning up the office, Patricia and the kids had the idea to break out the bubbly and toast my last day. Nicole and Patrick were visiting here in Phoenix along with the usual suspects, and Mary Beth Stern also showed up. So that was a nice idea and I appreciated it.

Then we watched a home movie from 1995-96; we probably haven’t watched this one since it was recorded. The scene of Kelly chasing racecars around a slot car track is quite hilarious. PJr also had some trouble finishing street hockey breakaway chances. Among other good scenes. I need to get back on my project of converting tape to DVDs.

The only down moment was realizing that Nicole forgot to bring a coupon for Kelly's ProPlan food with her from Chicago (see posts of September 23 and September 21, below). Uh oh.