Jlunch profile picture

Jlunch

At Least Make a Musical Sound, Please!!

About Me

This is my flickr! homepage. It's got my pics.

I'm a professional musician and amatuer photographer living in Spain. I was raised in the States and have lived a fairly adventurous life that has included much travelling and living away from the nest so to speak. I was raised near Seattle and left there to pursue my education as a professional violist. I spent one year in Northfield, MN studying at St. Olaf College. (Um Ya Ya) I then travelled to Boston to study with Walter Trampler for three years. when my time finished there, I moved to San Francisco where I lived for 7 years. I spent my time playing chamber music and filling in as needed with the local orchestras and spent a time playing with the Opera.

My obsession with the String Quartet repetoire prevented me from ever embracing the idea of playing in a Symphony Orchestra. Too many compromises. Too many lame musicians who don't give a damn about anything that has anything to do with playing beautifully or making choices inspired by actual musical reasons. I instead played with the Conservatory Quartet, the Rilke Quartet, The Klee Quartet, The Schostakovich Ensemble, The Pound Ensemble and the Sausalito Quartet. I have taught violin and viola for years. I moved to Midland, TX for a work residency with the Sausalito Quartet. I left there as soon as I could when we finished our contract. I chose Chicago as my next destination where I spent a very meaningful year and a half in the comfortable proximity of my brother and sister-in-law. It was the repose I had needed before embarking again on the big adventure which was to just leave the country all together.

I have been living in La Coruña, Spain since 1999 working as a professor in viola, violin, and chamber music. I also ironically have a full-time Symphony job with the best Orchestra in Spain, La Orquesta Sinfonica de Galicia. My photography is now the project that calls me the most artistically. I am also exploring the possibility of starting a business here in the city. Let's see what transpires.


My Interests

Music, Photography. (Art in general) I love travelling, dining well, reading something interesting, arming myself with truths about nefarious governments and scandalous policies that oppress people, throwing the frisbee, learning new languages, communicating with people with absolutely no common language (always fun and good for some mutual laughter), trying almost anything to eat, etc. etc. etc. There are many more things here and I really wouldn't know when to stop. I have very few obligations except to live a quality life and really enjoy the experiences there are to be had with living each day.

I'd like to meet:

Petter Hegre, a few of his "talents", my Norwegian ancestors (in Norway of course), somebody willing to heavily invest in me.

Music:

I´m a complete music freak, or "friki" as they say. If it´s good, I can love it but if it´s bad, forget it. I'm not going to sit here and type 734,793,589,142 band and composer names because that's just pointless. I'll give a small sampling of latest current listenings. Tool, Clutch, Bartók quartets, Frank Black, Tenacious D, Arcade Fire, Placebo, Wire, The Damned, Loop!Station and Deadweight. Next week, it could all change. you know how it is.

Movies:

I love movies. There are a great many films that could all go here. It would be easier to fit here the type of films I don't really dig. I'm not a big Blockbuster fan. I love a great story, well told and beautifully filmed. I want to think, not just be entertained. I like to feel like I'm participating in something. I'll think a bit on this and put some names of films I love.

Television:

It´s constantly on the 24/7 FIFA channel. I have lately enjoyed Lost, Prison Break, CSI, Alias (R.I.P.), always been a bit of a Trekkie, Sopranos, Six Feet Under.

Books:

Again, what do I write here? I could write something really pretentious and say Ezra Pound's "Cantos", or "Anything by James Joyce." That would be totally ridiculous and not true as I have hardly expedited the neccessary dicipline to work throught these works. I've labored with great difficulty through some parts of these works. I did however go through a mad Nietzche phase but as of late, I've been reading all the same stuff everybody else reads. Harry Potter, Ken Follett, Dan Brown, yadda yadda yadda.

Heroes:

I love Beethoven, c'mon, the guy was deaf and reinvented music. That's like not only being the greatest painter ever, but being blind. I'm pretty inspired by Ronaldinho, Zidane, and anybody who truly shows great individual brilliance in any field. Cool he may not be, but Stephen Hawking is a total genius. (apparently fallable just like the rest of us) The concept of heroism is not really my cup of tea so to speak but I can see heroism in a few different ways. Heroism could be the pursuit of individual excellence or the complete opposite of that. Doing something so selfless for the benefit of others. A Firefighter for example. There are many noble pursuits and many roads to get there.

My Blog

The Background Photo

Hey everybody, I now have a dynamic looking page thanks to some basic HTML tips. The photo is one I took about a year ago in my lightplay series. The photo is completely unedited and not sharperned or...
Posted by Jlunch on Tue, 22 Nov 2005 05:25:00 PST

Some people play video games, we play music.

I had a cool gig last night. I was scheduled to play with the Pound Ensemble (my trio) which consists of 1 viola, 1 violin, and percussion. My friend Gabor (the violinist) got the flu so we cancelled ...
Posted by Jlunch on Thu, 20 Oct 2005 02:32:00 PST

Rock Song 101

Rock Song 101 Me Paisanos, the idiosyncratic, obese and patriotic, cerebral for the Ivy League yet ignorant to the plague that is the excess "in moderation" the limitations of our creativity...
Posted by Jlunch on Tue, 18 Oct 2005 03:32:00 PST

Who knew My Space was this cool?

I just got an e-mail from my friend today who mentioned he had a blog on his Sheryl Crow Tour. What the hell is a blog I asked? Anyway, things got carried away and here I am over here writing and he´...
Posted by Jlunch on Tue, 18 Oct 2005 07:52:00 PST