Ron Blessinger

Violin

At this very moment …

Ron is stressing about having to write program notes for upcoming Third Angle concerts, since the group’s budget doesn’t quite cover hiring a professional annotator. Soon he must leave to rehearse with violist Charles Noble for a performance they will give at the Vancouver school where Ron’s wife teaches music.

On the CD player …

Ron generally uses his listening time keeping track of other new music ensembles, including Bang on a Can, a new music consortium in New York. “I don’t have time to really listen to non-classical music, although I do flip through the pop music stations to keep abreast of what’s current, because I have two kids and I don’t want to seem too out of touch.”

In the kitchen …

“My cooking is where food goes to die.” Ron’s wife Ann generally takes care of the cooking in the Blessinger house. “What I have is a really excellent book called ‘Look and Cook’ that has really clear pictures of the utensils and ingredients and assumes the reader has no aptitude, which is definitely true in my case.”

On the music stand …

are all the works for the next Third Angle concert, which features amplified works, including a piece by Steve Mackey called “Feels so Baad,” a parody of the Chuck Mangione song “Feels so Good.” “This piece is supposed to make you feel the way you would after hearing the Mangione piece a hundred times on the radio.” There’s also a piece called “Sing Sing J. Edgar Hoover” by Michael Daugherty, “a work I wanted to do in the era of John Ashcroft which features taped snippets of J. Edgar Hoover’s speeches accompanied by amplified string quartet.”

And on the nightstand …

A biography of Lyndon Johnson by Doris Kearns Goodwin and Huckleberry Finn. “Huckleberry Finn connects me to my populist philosophy of music which is that all art shouldn’t leave its audiences behind. It delivers on a variety of levels, which is what good music does too.”

Before you left …

Ron would bend your ear some more about Third Angle and show off his 1918 house, which he and Ann renovated. “I’d also show you pictures of my kids, Daniel and Erinn, known around our house as ‘Loud’ and ‘Louder.’”