composer's notebook

Just browsing

2008-06-25T23:08:00.005-04:00

It hadn't occurred to me until this morning but there are two (at least) approaches to writing music. You can sit down and write something specific -- perhaps a commissioned work, where you know the forces (ie. piccolo, tuba, and basset horn!), timing, and premiere date ("Hmm, I really need to write this because the first rehearsal is Tuesday") -- or maybe, like I did this morning, you simply sit down, write, and wonder what it is that you've just done.

You see, despite economic evidence to the contrary, these are luxurious times. Because right now business and writing have combined in a perfect storm of relaxed productivity. For one, the work of attempting to put a bullet in the 2007-8 season (requesting missing programs, listing performances for ASCAP, sending out CDs and scores of the new works, shelving returned rental sets....) moves along at an acceptable and non-time-framed (and therefore non-stressful) pace. Combine that with the fact that the upcoming writing schedule is amorphous and unconfirmed (at best), and the result is that when I sit down to write, instead of scratching away at fulfilling a specific piece, I find myself simply writing something, and then musing about whether any of it might want to be one of my varied personal projects.

Huh. This is kind of a good progression. What is this? Is this the Act I soprano aria from the opera? Maybe it's the slow movement to the multi-mvt work I've been pitching. Whatever--it all goes into the moleskin, and it's all surrounded by lovely question-marks.

This is quite liberating. I find myself being surprised by my decisions of what might fit where--often giddy with the idea that I've made the most un-obvious choice. Seems like this goes in a choral piece, right? Hah! Like fun. What if it was actually a percussion ensemble? Well, this amuses me, at least.

This sort of thing happens while writing a specific piece, all the time, of course. You go along for weeks, writing what you think is your string quartet, eventually coming to the horrible realization that it's actually for guitar and flute (or whatever). That's no fun at ALL.

Obviously, if I was teaching a student who was playing around with this particular exercise, I would advise to proceed with caution. The craft of writing idiomatically for specific instruments/forces is an essential tool, and I'd be the first one to point out that, at least I've found, music tends to come out best when you're thinking about the specific ensemble you're writing for. You should probably be writing different notes, different voicings, different registers, even different rhythms for (say) orchestra than you would for (say) wind ensemble. (Thaaaaat's right, I said it. Not everything works in transcription, people. Sometimes the giraffe doesn't fit in that doggie bed. Or whatever.) That's not to say you can't do it, and there's certainly a long and glorious tradition of re-appropriating music written for one kind of ensemble into some completely different Other (I'm lookin' at you, Mr. Stravinsky) - a tradition to which I have proudly contributed.

What I'm talking about is slightly different, though. I'm not using my bag of crafty tricks in order to Make It Work. It's more like ... dreaming. This is making something musical, and then conjuring up its realization. It's not going to work forever, but for right now it's awfully fun.

Refresh

2008-06-07T14:33:00.005-04:00

Not that you were curious, but the evidence of my latest Fun Spare-time Project might be staring you in the face (if you happened to be in the right place, that is). A new & improved site design is live and online, and I must say, and despite the volumes of bugs I'm sure are about to be reported, it's a major improvement.

Sure the colors are different and the boxes are a little bigger (we have bigger monitors now), but the real Big Deal is the migration of all content into a MYSQL database, all driven by my amateur (and ugly) PHP scripting. Oh, it's slick ... if you're geeky enough.

Do I want to upload a new work? I just input the new piece in the database, and POP, it simply shows up, everywhere it needs to be. Or how about that New Works page? It's a no-toucher now ... it just puts up the most recent 3 works written. Clicking on a genre? It'll take you to the latest piece in that category. Need to sort the works catalog by any criteria you can think of? Want to see what pieces are on a certain CD, and what CDs a certain piece is on? POP. All done with PHP magic. I can go on. I'll spare you.

Sure, all those old links to the individual piece pages are broken. Sure there are a few crazy Safari javascript bugs I have no idea what to do about. TOTALLY worth it. If my garage-puttering hobby-happiness can be bought with some inscrutable IF/ELSE coding, then I make no apologies. Enjoy looking around.

And e-mail me with your bug reports.

I heart Japan

2008-05-02T15:24:00.004-04:00

I adore my friends in Tokyo--they are so bloody on top of things. Within a week or so after the Tokyo Kosei premiere of Climbing Parnassus, I received a CD in the mail. And Holy Honshu, Batman, what a performance. Here is the streaming audio to prove it:

Climbing Parnassus: Tokyo Kosei Wind Orchestra, conducted by Kazufumi YAMASHITA

In 2 bullet points, here's what I love about this performance...

• The fact that it is so relaxed in tempo, it runs almost about a minute or two longer than any previous duration. Which I read as a sort of reveling in the sound of the thing and not wanting it to end. Yes, I'm allowed to think that.

• The 15 seconds of silence after the piece is over (!) before anyone applauds. The audience was either stunned into silence, or incredibly respectful, and I choose to believe it's a little bit of both.

The musicality of Tokyo Kosei is so remarkable that I'm basically humbled into having nothing to add about this. So now I am left with the question of which recording best represents the work...the one above, or the premiere by the JWECC Festival Ensemble from the Conference in Kurashiki (and I'm soliciting comments to that end).

It's not really a choice. They're both too good.

Procrastinate in Layers

2008-04-15T12:30:00.002-04:00

While following a "Came From" link in my webstats, I found that my friends at the Japan Wind Ensemble Conductors Conference have put up an awesome link to information on the commission, on a page that is clearly supposed to be in Japanese. I don't know what's going on there with the html, but I get the gist, certainly, and it's worth the click for the graphic they made out of the first page of the score. That's an uncorrected score there, with a mistake on the commissioner line (there's a fourth commissioner not listed, the Kawasaki University of Medical Welfare "Heartful Winds"). Still, I love the Greek imagery inserted in there--sweet! Unfortunately, in comparison, Konagaya-san's manuscript looks way cooler than my Sibelius-printout. Perhaps that's why someone thought it might need some spicing up with a few dancing Muses.

I'm thinking of doing a Call for Artsy Visual Responses (CAVR?) to any piece of mine. Now that the gauntlet has been thrown down, I can hear Photoshop booting up around the land...

Trifecta

2008-04-10T21:29:00.010-04:00

I've been mentioning, hinting, and talking around 3 new (or new-ish) pieces of late, without giving much detail. Since the travels have ended, and I've finally culled all available audio for these suckers, I hope to flesh these out a little more. (I can't imagine anyone would want to listen to all of these in a row, so, y'know, take it slow.)

1) My Hands Are a City. For months I've been typing this title, and having nothing to link to. Now that we've got a few performances under the belt, there's a page online, with the score and a live perusal recording, courtesy of the (really terrific) Texas A&M-Commerce Wind Ensemble conducted by lead commissioner Jeff Gershman. This fall sees the World Premiere Recording by John Lynch's University of Georgia Wind Ensemble, on the Naxos label (the sessions sounded great). The program note gives many of the details on the piece, so the only thing I would add is that there's not a note in the work that doesn't somehow come from either The Rivers of Bowery (it is meant as a drastic expansion of that shorter piece) or from mid-century beebop/jazz source tunes. Also, the plan as it stands now is that this is but one movement of what will eventually be a 3-mvt piece. Probably this is the third. The idea would be that one can program The Rivers of Bowery in addition to the full 3-mvt MHAaC work (Symphony No. 1? Really? Thinking about it) and have a complete Beat-themed Newman concert half. Well I like it.

2) Climbing Parnassus. After a spectacular performance of As the scent of spring rain... by The Florida State Wind Symphony at the 2007 CBDNA National Conference (thanks, Rick!), I was approached by the awesome foursome from Tokyo Kosei to write a piece for their Japan Wind Ensemble Conductors Conference the following year. They were arranging a Festival ensemble comprised of members of the 4 commissioners: Kawasaki University of Medical Welfare "Heartful Winds" (medical students, mostly), the Nagoya Wind Symphony (an area youth wind ensemble), Tokyo Kosei Wind Orchestra (the professional ensemble in Tokyo), and Wind Ensemble KANADE (a simply amazing pro group). I knew that JM (slick new site design, John!) had just returned from the 2007 JWECC gig, and couldn't conceive of not doing it, so after asking if we could do 2009 (No, 2009 was already booked for SB) I said Yes and we were a Go and my 2007-8 writing schedule was officially out of control. I was late with the piece, of course, but surprisingly, it turned out really well. Since I was just coming off MHAaC, and was faced with another wind ensemble piece, I was intent on making something altogether different from what I had just completed. And so where MHAaC is huge, sprawling, rhythmic, and note-y, Climbing Parnassus is intimate, relaxed, and sound-y. I was terrified they wouldn't like it, but after hearing that Nakata-san was pleased, I was one happy camper. The program note explains the title a bit, so the only thing I would add about this one is on the ensemble setup. After trying and then discarding several other arrangements, I settled on a simple (turns out in practice it's probably less-than-simple, as people were frantically running around on stage to make it happen) stereo setup for most of the pairs of instruments and choirs ... clarinets on one side, clarinets on the other ... trumpet 1 on one side, trumpet 2 on the other ... bowed marimba on one side, bowed vibraphone on the other...etc. Nothing new under the sun, certainly, but effective. The recording of this fantastic performance does not exactly show this off, so you'll have to use your imagination a little. Trust me, live in performance, the stereo/panning stuff sounds AWESOME. But I'm kind of pleased that it's the kind of piece that needs to happen live to give the full effect (what piece isn't, I guess). That makes me happy in a wonky kind of way.

3) Concertino for flute solo, chamber winds, and piano. Finished a year ago, we now have a full recording, and it's smokin'. Robert Ambrose's premiere with flutist Sarah Kruser Ambrose (for whom the piece was written) as soloist in February was so terrific - but I there were weird recording problems. It's always something. These tracks (there are two, click the top "listen" button for mvt 1, and the second "listen" button for movements 2-3) feature Gary Hill conducting Elizabeth Buck and the Arizona State University Chamber Players. Believe it or not, there are early plans for recording this one for an upcoming Naxos CD as well. I'm trying not to think about that too much, in case it doesn't happen. There's a brilliant program note for this one too, of course, which gives the idea on the whole French (or French-isch) Chamber Music stylization. But let's be honest. The first movement is Newman does Poulenc. The second is Newman does Takemitsu. The third is Newman does Martinů. Hey, just calling the spade what it is, that's all.

Nippon Newman

2008-03-30T13:57:00.006-04:00

It's probably not surprising to hear that I had a terrific time in Japan (Japan = Awesome. I took some 400 photos to prove it), and that everyone involved with the 2008 Japan Wind Ensemble Conductor's Conference in Kurashiki are terrific people with scary talent. NAKATA-san (tenor saxophonist with the Tokyo Kosei Wind Orchestra) is a monster at every single thing he does (perform, arrange, conduct, organize), and I am eager to once again thank him and all the super pros at Tokyo Kosei, his ensemble the Nagoya Wind Symphony, IWATA-san and "The Heartful Winds", and YO-san and his stunningly amazing chamber group Wind Ensemble KANADE for making our commission project happen. I do not overstate when I say the whole thing was a huge success. I'm really really pleased with the piece, as it came off quite well, and the JWECC Festival Wind Ensemble's playing made me look very good indeed. I'll be posting the audio and info for their commissioned work, Climbing Parnassus, in short order. Mostly because you kind of have to hear it to believe it.

While I was gone, in the venerable Town Hall, the NY Premiere of my Concertino happened, with the Boston University Chamber Orchestra, conducted by (beloved former composition professor) Richard Cornell, with flutist Elsbieta Brandys, as part of my alma mater's InCite Festival. My family attended in my absence. They said it was great. I believe them. Still. Not being there suuuuuuucked.

Upon return I immediately turned around to get back down to Texas, for a residency at Texas State University-San Marcos. There I ate Whataburger, drank Shiner Bock, taught some lessons, worked with the terrific ensembles, and enjoyed performances of my stuff, including Avenue X (led by Caroline Beatty), Moon by Night, and a premiere performance of My Hands Are a City conducted by co-commissioner Rod Schueller. My sincere thanks to TSU for their tireless work and a great time!

And then we come to The End. The End meaning unemployed, with nothing to do but enjoy doing nothing. This week. This is it. The last gig. Basta. No more. And so this evening I leave for a residency at Arizona State University, where Gary Hill conducts his ensembles in performances of As the scent of spring rain..., Avenue X, and the Concertino, featuring soloist Elizabeth Buck. GH sent me a rehearsal recording of the Concertino this weekend. I teared up a little while listening to the third movement. Seriously. And the pianist wasn't even at that rehearsal. O this is gonna be good...

direct flight

2008-03-11T09:15:00.002-04:00

I leave for Japan today - and begin the journey that culminates in the world premiere (actually means world this time) of Climbing Parnassus, at the 2008 Japan Wind Ensemble Conductor's Conference in Kurashiki, as a guest of my friends from the "Heartful Winds", Nagoya Wind Symphony, Tokyo Kosei Orchestra, and Wind Ensemble KANADE. Upon return late next week, I suspect I'll be once again breaking my notebook-no-pictures rule...

GA-TX redux

2008-02-27T15:42:00.004-05:00

My head is still buzzing from last week's whirlwind tour of Georgia and East Texas. In Atlanta, it was the premiere of the Concertino, with the Georgia State Chamber Winds, Robert Ambrose conducting, and the fabulous Sarah Kruser Ambrose as the flute soloist. I was a wreck in the first rehearsals - but eventually settled down to realize that despite the severe difficulty of the ensemble parts, the piece works like a sonofagun, Sarah sounds like an angel, and Heck, the piece sounded like real music or something. Y'know, like something you'd sit down and listen to. Weird.

The Recording Gods weren't on our side though. Something about the mics being set wrong. And so it was just one of those things that is there, and then is lost into the ether. So now plans will be put into motion to get Robert and Sarah into a studio and record the sucker for real.

In Athens, at the University of Georgia, I immediately switched gears into HUGE PIECE mode. Maestro Lynch rehearsed his ensemble on My Hands Are a City for my benefit, and we fixed plenty of errors and awkward scoring while I generally swooned at how awesome it sounded.

Then before you know it you're on a plane to Dallas, and over East Texas-way, for the residency at Texas A&M-Commerce. Jeff Gershman, who shepharded the MHAaC consortium despite, y'know, having many other better things to do, rehearsed and premiered the piece with his ensemble, and it was spectacular. So. Very. Loud. I teared up a little at one rehearsal when it all just came together and what I was hearing not only matched the performance in my head, but exceeded every expectation. Pile that up with BBQ and a stomach-overfilling fried catfish buffet, and you've got one great composer residency. My thanks to ALL at TAMU-Commerce for your generosity and hard work!

Now it's off to Kansas City, to the CBDNA Regional hosted by UMKC. I meet up with the TAMU-Commerce gang there, where they play the piece for the CBDNA folks. There are also 2 other performances there - including Texas State's Moon by Night, and Oklahoma University's As the scent of spring rain.... The other day I received from Maestro Wakefield a recording of a previous OU performance of the piece, and it is stunning. After I picked my jaw up from the floor, I got really excited about hearing them playing it live. In KC I also get to hear a new Mackey, and Jeff Gershman's Zappa arrangement again, which clearly just takes us all to school.

LGA-ATL-DFW-MCI

2008-02-18T23:33:00.004-05:00

The next two weeks are huge. Tomorrow I go to Atlanta to rehearse and then premiere the Concertino, with the Ambroses (Robert and Sarah) at the SCI conference GSU is hosting, and while I'm down there I'll pop over to Athens to rehearse My Hands Are a City (the new big piece) with co-commissioner University of Georgia, under the direction of the awesome John Lynch. Then I immediately go to Commerce TX for a residency chock-full of rehearsing and premiering MHAaC with lead commissioner Jeff Gershman and the Texas A&M-Commerce Wind Ensemble. A few days after that, even though there a couple performances happening simultaneously at another conference several states away, I go to Kansas City for the CBDNA Southwestern Regional Conference hosted by UMKC, for 3 (THREE) performances of Newman: As the scent of spring rain... with the Univ. of Oklahoma Wind Symphony conducted by William Wakefield, MHAaC with Commerce and Gershman, and Moon by Night with the Texas State University Wind Ensemble conducted by Rodney Schueller. I'm convinced that everyone will leave Kansas City thoroughly sick of Newman, as well as (because they will be so easy to compare sitting next to each other like that) wondering why he writes the same stuff in every piece. After the Newman (I mean CBDNA) Conference I head back to Atlanta, because Maestro Lynch and the UGA ensemble is recording MHAaC for their new Naxos release (!) and I have finagled myself into their sessions. Then, and only then, do I go home. At least until I leave for Boston, Japan, Texas again, and Arizona. But that's more about the other new piece. As we've discussed, I can only deal with one at a time.

Blurb

2008-02-15T15:15:00.003-05:00

In anticipation for his World Premiere performance next Sunday of My Hands Are a City, Dr. Jeff Gershman of Texas A&M-Commerce asked all the composers on his program for an answer to the following question:

Has the vernacular music of the United States had any influence on your works or development as a composer?

Here's what I sent him:

American vernacular music has not only overtly influenced my music but also has become a frequent and major source of that music's material. For me that means letting go of any remaining (and counter-productive) "classical" prejudices and embracing my love of American popular music in its countless flavors--proudly borrowing and stealing what might be otherwise completely unassociated popular material in order to form the backbone of any piece. Sometimes that's choosing to concentrate on a certain vernacular style that fascinates me as a compositional starting point, or maybe it's playing with specific-pop-style forms within more traditional classical models. It's all on the compositional palette now, and I can see this path serving as a never-ending fount of inspiration and development for myself for a long time.

My blurb will share his program book with answers by Donald Grantham, Christopher Rouse, and Frank Ticheli. Theirs will no doubt be less wordy and convoluted.

Newman? Newman?

2008-02-11T22:45:00.000-05:00

Been waking up each morning, anxiously checking your blogs, only to find the same stale dated entries staring at you each morning from your favorite for almost two months? Thought as much. Funny story. Turns out, I can't actually multi-task. Better Half has been pointing this out for years, but let me explain so that we can all get informed.

So, let's say, that you're reading here in the notebook that I'm working on such and such a piece, or that I'm busy doing what-all. In fact, I lie. I may in fact be taking a few hours a day to actually do what I write that I'm doing, but here's the twisted logic: IF you are reading about it -- I'm NOT spending an inordinate amount of time accomplishing it. Because you're reading about it. Which means that I feel comfortable enough with say, a deadline, or the fulfillment of rental or sales orders or what have you, that sure, why not write a notebook entry, it's been a few days, etc. And when I write about something, I'm probably going to give the impression that I'm burning candlesticks at various ends / midnight oil / what have you, while doing it.

Nope, not so. Because the above is exactly what I have been doing for the last two months and it didn't even occur to me to sit down and write something for this page. Can't. Multi-task. See?

So instead of writing about what I was doing, here's what I was doing: writing. Music. Two new large ensemble pieces, basically simultaneously. I knew the composing schedule was going to be tight this year, but it all caved in on me in a giant/ugly way, and snowballed into having two pieces basically due at the same time. The problem started when the first piece took about 6 months to write (let alone orchestrate, copy, etc.), instead of the 4 I had budgeted. You could see where that would maybe cause a problem. I don't recommend doing it like this. It was not fun. One piece may be going well, but then there's the other... it just means that you're basically always miserable about something.

But Oh! They are complete. It's now February (I think), and it's over. About 2 months later than everyone (everyone!) wanted. One is already in rehearsal (reports are good), and the other is mid-parts-extraction (which, if you've been paying attention, I did not actually accomplish today, because why? Because you're reading this, exactly). And now that that I can do more than one thing (with the only one thing I can clearly do), I'll write the next couple entries on the details on these two new works.

And so, I dare to lift my head up and look around. I hear there's an election?

Tis the season...

2007-12-06T13:39:00.000-05:00

...of frantic work. While everyone else seems to be blissfully sauntering around Union Square browsing for gifts, I hole up in the studio 7 floors above, putting in countless hours on My Hands Are a City. Having the piece finished as soon as possible is necessary ... having it finished in time for the Midwest Clinic in Chicago (where I'll have the opportunity to see most of the commissioners and show them the work personally) is ideal. I seem to recall the exact same situation happening last year at this time with the Concertino ... hurried and stressful last-minute work up until it was time to pack for Chicago. In the case of the Concertino, I was only able to complete 2 out of the 3 movements (the 3rd I completed in March after a nasty bout of writer's block). If this trend continues, I'll be forced to think this is less of a worldwide conspiracy against me, and more of a personal pattern of behavior.

This situation I hope will turn out better, but it's still a mountain to climb. I've been thinking about, sketching, writing, and editing this piece for about 8 months non-stop, and though my time working on it every day is productive (indeed, "flow" is often experienced), the piece is a monster, and sometimes 9 hours of uninterrupted work will go by, at the end of which I'll feel like I've just chipped away a handful of stone from a 2-ton block of marble.

Block that metaphor, and while you are at it, add in a few more weeks to December, please. Because I have another piece due in January.

Noisy Book

2007-11-11T23:01:00.000-05:00

Like everyone else in this town who is even remotely-connected to concert music, I've been reading Alex Ross's new book. I had it pre-ordered a while ago, as there has been much pre-game hooplah about the publication (his bio-blurb in The New Yorker has been chanting "Alex Ross is working on a book about 20th Century Music" for, like, ever). I acquired it right away because I wanted to read it right away - not necessarily because I wanted to read it right away, but mostly because I knew everyone else would be reading it right away. And I didn't feel like I'd have the energy to fake it at cocktail parties. I rarely have the energy to fake it at cocktail parties anymore.

I'm not surprised that I'm enjoying it, considering how much I like to check out his entertaining, thoughtful, and generally fair criticism, as well as his fun weblog. What does surprise me is how much I'm enjoying it. Weirdly, I can barely put the thing down. I mean, weighty historical compendiums of esoteric slices of Western Musical History don't generally make for sizzling reads, but Who Knew? Ross's talent, which transfers brilliantly from the 2-page review in a weekly periodical into a 640-page book, is to somehow take information we already thought we knew, and shine bright lights into fascinating little corners. This is an extraordinary and enviable skill, and I'm sure it makes for engaging reading for a layperson, but for someone like me - someone who, honestly (and somewhat embarrassingly) already knows quite a bit about, say, Modernist composers in Paris in the 1920's, it's quite a discovery to find a guy who can get me to gobble up even more and feel like I never really saw the whole picture before. I find myself reading (again) about any number of well-taught masterpiece - Pierrot Lunaire for instance - and catch myself thinking, Huh, I never really thought about it like that before...

Again, I read this as a fairly informed party, so I do wonder how it flies for the interested normal person. I would guess just fine, but it's hard for me to tell, since I and many like me can instantly conjure up the sound of, say, Carl Ruggles when he is mentioned, but I'm guessing not everyone can. One of Ross's annoyingly-excellent talents is to be able to describe these things (accurately) without sounding precious - as well as make that particular Ruggles paragraph readable for someone who has heard The Sun-treader two or three times. To that end Ross provides not only online audio samples, but an iTunes Playlist for good measure. Excellent for those who might not already have the Storm Interlude from Peter Grimes memorized.

Ross's premise for the book is quite simple - he takes a small step back from each individual ism, looking at the whole mess of decades as a piece - subsequently creating these fascinating little links from what are normally taught as disparate movements and styles...so that Schoenberg and Gershwin seem to metaphorically lock arms in a veritable Hands-Across-The-Century. It seems crazy that I can't think of anyone else who has bothered to approach the gobbletygook of 20th-Century Music like this.

And I haven't even finished it yet. I'd better hurry. I don't want to bump into someone on the street and not have my cocktail chatter ready to go.

Buckeye Nation

2007-10-30T18:43:00.000-04:00

Last week's visit to The Ohio State University was chock-full of reasons to be pleased... terrific performance, great people, fun seminars with the students... But giving the Wind Symphony's absolutely beautiful and sensitively-performed performance of my piece a run for it's money was Maestro Mikkelson's personal tour of the OSU stadium and state-of-the-art marching band facility. For this city boy, a 230-piece brass band (with matching silver instruments, of course) rehearsing in a cavernous room complete with double-gun video projectors, flat-screen displays for game-tape viewing, and John Madden-style telestrator for complete ease of marching analysis - well, it's not something one gets to see every day. And I'm not sure we should - my brain got full just watching these guys warm up. I'm guessing the marvelous excess is exactly what's needed to engage the 105,000 souls in the stadium, but I prefer to think of it as one more of those exotic Musics Of The World I wish I understood - a glorious noise requiring a lifetime of study, like African drumming or Indian ragas.

My thanks to the OSU Symphonic Band, Wind Symphony, Erika, Rich, Mark, Rick, and Russ for making mine a blowout residency! And next time I'll be drugging the lead sousaphone before pre-game and dottin' that 'I' myself.

Huge.

2007-10-21T12:44:00.000-04:00

Today I fly to Columbus and Ohio State University, for a short residency, working with Russ Mikkelson and Rick Blatty's ensembles on As the scent of spring rain... and Avenue X. The rehearsals and seminars and such culminate in a Wind Symphony performance Tuesday evening, where my piece is nicely sandwiched between Mackey & Bryant.

I've been trying to think, and I'm pretty sure that OSU is the largest university where I've had the honor of a composer residency. I expect crowds in the 10's of thousands, just like at the Buckeye games. Stadiums full of people. For wind ensemble concert music. Chanting "Go Newman Go!" while waving giant foam fingers. Yes. This is what I expect.

14th St.

2007-10-17T15:29:00.000-04:00

The cross-street as living/breathing NYC arts scene... in the form of a couple of blurry cellphone snapshots, so nifty I thought they warranted another exception to the no-photo rule:

Last month, 14th St. played host to a bite out of a Richard Serra Torqued Ellipse as it was being transported home after this summer's MoMA exhibition.

And a craftsman plies his trade -- Will Write Art (for monetary contributions, of course). In a stroke of genius, he is set up outside Trader Joe's, which I thought was an inspired choice for one's personal card-table/typewriter artist colony.

Addendum

2007-10-12T14:17:00.000-04:00

The breathing jazz-encyclopedia that is Jim Kull, of St. Charles, Illinois almost immediately weighed in on the Lush Life essay, pointing out:

1) That Strayhorn was 17 or something like that when he wrote it. I think I ignored that fact for obvious depression-inducing reasons.

2) That solo Strayhorn performance where he talk-sings like a cuddly Rex Harrison is not a "bootleg" at all - it's from Ellington's 1964 show at Basin Street East.

3) There's another Coltane recording (the one I was referring to was the title track on his 1957 Prestige release) - it's from 1963 with Johnny Hartman, and it's simply tear-your-heart-out beautiful. I bought it myself right away. Long live the iTunes Music Store!

4) That I omitted (not on purpose - I just dumbly forgot) the famous fact that Sinatra never recorded the tune, because he couldn't sing it. It was too difficult. There's a neat recording out there of the Capitol Records session in 1958 where he tries to sing it, and finally gives up, mumbling something about wanting to "put it aside for about a year". I've heard it on the radio a few times - it's a kick ... see for yourself. You can hear Sinatra slamming the door when he storms out.

I have my own addition, and that is we may have missed out on Nelson Riddle's arrangement (supposedly terrific...so what else is new) from that fated 1958 Capitol session, but we eventually got one he did for Rondstadt in 1984. She's OK, I guess. It's worth it for the spectacular Riddle work.

Jazz and cocktails

2007-10-11T16:54:00.000-04:00

A short essay on the Billy Strayhorn standard, Lush Life, with as many audio links as I could gather.

jiyonasan niyuman

2007-10-02T15:29:00.001-04:00

In March of 2008, I will travel to Japan for the Japan Wind Ensemble Conductor's Conference, for the premiere of a new work they've commissioned. The announcement of my residency is up on the JWECC website, and a little poking around with the help of the internet translation engine makes for some giddy reading. Someday there will be an online Japanese/English translation matrix that works. For now, we enjoy light, Eastern-flavored poetry.

Photos of last year's conference are up there as well, where you can enjoy a pic of last year's resident composer John Mackey applaud with gusto at the premiere of his piece, kinguhuitsushiyazukiyatsuchihuaiya, which (you can probably tell from that title) is a barn-burner, with a killer hook.

I'm excited about how amazing the student ensemble is sure to be, but it's definitely going to be tight, writing this piece on time. Although at this point I'm fairly confident that the timing will work out without too many issues. In any case, the piece I have in mind is going to present an interesting (compositional) challenge. If I can pull it off, it's going to be quite something.

Up-dates

2007-10-01T17:28:00.001-04:00

Happy Birthday wishes today to composer John Mackey! Time marches on. I remember when...

And because they are great kids and great players, I'll come through on a plug for the sax quartet who most recently kicked-b*tt on the Lullaby ... Ready to play your gig in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area, out of Stephenville TX, meet Saxerkameradenschaft-pfiefer.

If Hemingway jumped off a bridge...

2007-09-18T17:41:00.001-04:00

We live in an era where I (and one or two others) mourn the loss of the great Aztec Publishing on W.52nd Street, purveyors of the Best Manuscript Paper Ever (O you green 16-stave 17x11! I should have stocked up!), so if you are wonky like me you now have to order your manuscript paper from Los Angeles. But if you are anybody else (read, sane) you simply make your own paper (that is, if you even still use manuscript paper), custom to whatever your needs are, with a printer and any half-decent copying software. Although, I maintain it is not the same thing. Nope.

But if you do enjoy the Old School of pre-staved heavy-weighted manuscript-paper luvin', you'll dig my new crush, the Moleskin Pocket Music Notebook. This little beaut is compact, organized, and sexy. I've been putting my sketches in it since they arrived, and I love this thing. I bought two. For someone who is constantly riffling through countless loose pages of manuscript paper looking for that one snippet I thought I got down -- I know it's here somewhere -- is it on this page? The back of this one? ... this sucker is awesome. Now I just flip through the little book.

Plus, with the Moleskin label, I can pretend I'm artsy and wear a beret without irony.

Long Title, Long Tail

2007-09-17T12:50:00.000-04:00

If you take a gander at the upcoming performance calendar, you'll see that one particular piece is the unqualified star this year. That would be the one with the long title, and there's no use pretending that its spike in performance life is due to anything other than Maestro Clary's gorgeous (and high-profile) performance with The Florida State University's extraordinary Wind Orchestra at the CBDNA Conference in Ann Arbor last Spring. I could count the scheduled performances for you (several planned-but-not-yet-confirmed performances are not in the online calendar yet) but I think it's more fun to let you peruse yourself. Let's just say it's more performances in one season of any single piece I've ever had, ever. In fact, several are on the same day, creating stereo As the scent spring rain...'s across the land, more than once. That's a lot of bi-tonality...

I thought it might be interesting to give a bit of composer-insight into how the piece came about - stuff you wouldn't necessarily find in the program notes. It started life as a simple song, for voice and piano, written for the incomparable Hila Plitmann, for a recital at Juilliard. Hila had given me the Hebrew text (a language I can read, but don't understand ... don't ask, it has to do with modern American Reform Judaism education) along with a transliteration, and her own poetic translation. I set it as best I could, and we were all (thankfully) pleased with how it turned out. The performance of the song itself was perfect and absolutely lovely of course, and Hila even performed it a few more times over the years, and that was that.

But I kept thinking of the little piece on and off--something about it bothered me. I suppose I thought it wanted to be something larger. Either a song-cycle with many more songs, or something else. And then, one summer while visiting my wife for a week in Cooperstown NY while she was working at Glimmerglass, I pulled the song out of my portfolio while sitting outside in the glorious Cooperstown surroundings, and thought now was as good a time as any to do something with the piece. While the birds tweeted and the picturesque Lake Otsego burbled, I sat at a picnic table and started re-working the piece, sans commission or any idea of when it might be premiered or performed, into its current form. It was, if I remember correctly, quick work, moving along at what is for me a furious pace. I'm almost positive I had the bulk of the thing finished before we headed back downstate.

When I had it copied, I wasn't sure what I had, or how well it would go over. The language of it makes it a tricky piece, with many exposed, close & crunchy harmonies, and intonation problems waiting to happen. It's also kind of a delicate, intimate piece - two adjectives I would hesitate to put alongside "band". But I made some calls, I sent some e-mails, and I sent the score to a few conductors -- at this point, all friends of friends in the Wind Ensemble World...no one I really knew. Eventually the intrepid Scott Stewart at Emory University was intrigued enough by the score to give the official premiere, and we were off. It was slow at first, and the ensembles who took it on generally didn't like it. For a few years, I believed I had a Clunker, and seriously considered just putting it in a drawer. But after a short-list of performances, I came to the realization that it was actually my most difficult piece, requiring a subtlety of musicality to which no other work of mine comes close. But as more ensembles played it, I feel like we all kind of slowly figured out how to perform the work, and the performances got better, and more informed. Yet I remained hesitant to promote the piece too much because I still didn't quite know what it was. Every once in a while, though, an ensemble would perform it, and I would be pleased, but always a little surprised that they wanted to take it on.

But it was never anything like this. This is an explosion. And all of these programmed performances are by ensembles and conductors that we can safely call the Best of the Best--they are sure to all be fantastic. I can't wait to hear every single one of these (and several of them I'll be there to hear in person).

Oh yeah, you know I'll be buying Maestro Clary's martinis the next time I see him.

Home Sweet Beat

2007-09-14T15:37:00.000-04:00

A good piece in today's paper (I'm pretty sure it does not require the TimesSelect subscription) about the glory days and subsequent gentrification of my East Village neighborhood, brings up everything I've been thinking about and working on for the last few months. The multimedia attached to the article includes a fascinating mp3 walking tour with amazing facts I never knew about points of interest I walk past every day, as well as a wonderful 10 minute video tour, which pretty much crystallizes why I wanted to write this piece I've been working on.

Walking around the tattered remnants of Beat Culture every day in the 'hood, I think of these guys and their art and poetry and music constantly. A piece had to come at some point. And fortunately it's a big one. 16 ensembles, in a consortium organized and cajoled by Jeff Gershman at Texas A&M-Commerce have commissioned a large movement I'm tentatively calling My Hands Are A City, titled after a Gregory Corso poem. This will eventually be a separately-performable movement in a large-scale work, probably 3 movements - all of it an expansion on the themes (both poetic and musical) I touch on in the overture The Rivers of Bowery.

In addition to the daily reminders of the now-gone-forever culture you can see in the above NYTimes video, I've been inundating myself with fun primary source research as I write the piece, which of course has been a genuine pleasure. So far I've read John Clellon Holmes's seminal Beat novel Go, Holmes's 1950's essays and newspaper articles about his friends, a pile of Corso and Ginsberg and Kerouac poetry, a very fun biographical overview of the time by Leslie MacAdams called The Birth of The Cool, as well as re-reading the glorious On the Road. I've inundated my ears with hours of Charlie Parker (his apartment was 4 blocks away from mine) and Miles Davis and Lester Young, as well as studied transcriptions of their solos. I unearthed the fabulous Beat-filled and Amram-scored short by Robert Frank, Pull My Daisy, and stared for hours at the glorious photos in Frank's 1958 book The Americans.

I really can't get enough, and so whenever I sit down to compose, I wonder how this stuff actually translates into the notes I'm writing. I honestly have no idea. I'm pretty sure none of it will come out specifically in the music, but it all swims in my brain nonetheless as I write. And yet I'm still clueless as to what the aural effect of this barrage of sensory information will actually be. I am not Charlie Parker (that is both very sad, and a good thing), so the piece ultimately wants to sound like Newman -- and those two things are so dissimilar it's been very interesting to reconcile them. Still, if enough bee-bop genius soaks in my head, maybe something half-decent will come out the other side.

In the can

2007-09-12T17:14:00.000-04:00

Some fun but blurry pics of yesterday's The Vinyl Six recording session are online. I like the piece very much, and we got a bunch of really terrific takes. It's pretty thrilling to hear the fantastic chamber players of Avian Music play the piece as if they've been living with and performing it for years (they premiered the work a year and a half ago). It's a nice contrast to the frantic and just-learned-this performances composers usually enjoy. Avian director Peter Flint plans a CD of rock-inspired chamber works, for release probably in 2008. I voted for the title "RockBird".

not writing, riding

2007-09-08T22:22:00.001-04:00

Tomorrow I'll be twittering from 6am-5pm from the NYC Century Bike Tour, where I'll be huffing and puffing my way around the entire city for the 2nd consecutive year, on my sturdy, hip, yet quite pokey Jack. Sure all the other riders will be blowing past me on their $2000 composite road bikes, but at least I won't be changing my tubes every time I hit one of those famous (and inevitable) NYC potholes.

Biking is my meditation. I actually get a lot of composing done while riding. Considering I'll be doing 100 miles of it tomorrow, while I'm at it I might as well finish up that one-act opera I never got around to completing in 1993...