Two broken bones in six months (unbelievable!) slowed the Alexandra Eddy Project down a bit—but just a bit. Breaking my knee in a freak fall late last summer was one thing, but then a few weeks ago ice hidden under a lot of snow took out my right wrist! There will be no violin playing now for quite some time to come.
However, adversity can sometimes lead to creativity! In the fall I wrote a brief piano piece, The Fashionable Gimpette, as a tongue-in-cheek musical comment on gimping around with a cane, and then made piano arrangements of some other pieces I had composed in the past. I am happy to say that the scores are available online, at https://www.sheetmusicplus.com/search?Ntt=Alexandra+Eddy. (Mp3 files are provided with each piece so that you can hear as well as see the music.)
And now that for the moment I can’t even pick up my bow, I have been exploring the surprisingly rich world of playing keyboard with one hand (though not the Ravel Concerto!). It is fascinating to arrange piano accompaniments for left hand, and I have already given one performance in this way. The next Project concert with my excellent violin student Jim was to have been violin duos by Leclair, Milhaud, and others. Though we can’t do exactly that right now, I am arranging and playing my parts on my exciting new instrument, a Johannus One keyboard-organ. The Johannus company is internationally respected for its fine electronic church organs, and the One is the company’s least expensive product, intended to be portable and for studio use. It has no pedals, so is not strictly a complete organ, but the sampled sounds—taken from famous American, English, French, and German instruments—are wide-ranging and glorious. They also include very fine harpsichord and piano sounds, so in effect I have four organs and two additional keyboard instruments available to me. All of them make wonderful partners for the violin. I can’t wait for our next series of performances, for which I will use many of them!
Photo by Alexandra Eddy: the Johannus One and some of Alexandra’s music