composer's notebook

Comics and Copyright

2010-03-12T10:57:00.000-05:00

My guest blogger post is up at The Comics Journal group blog, The Hooded Utilitarian. The entry is part of a roundtable discussion on issues surrounding copyright and free culture. The centerpiece of the week was an interview with animator, filmmaker, and free culture activist Nina Paley.

I refer to Paley's work and the interview in my post, so for context, you might need to check out the full week's postings. Start with this recent one by Caro on Paley's film Sita Sings the Blues. Right before the Paley interview, Noah posted an essay on copyright, and a review of Paley's film. And yesterday, Pallas posted a brief and snarky history of copyright.

My thanks to my friend Noah Berlatsky (who I've known since we were 2 or 3) for inviting me -- it was terrific for me to pull my head up from the desk and read and think about something interesting all week. I had a great time!

Steal this notebook

2010-03-08T16:18:00.000-05:00

This week I'll be a guest blogger on The Hooded Utilitarian, a blog on The Comics Journal written by old family friend and comics/culture critic Noah Berlatsky. The topic this week is free-culture, and even though Noah is calling this a "roundtable", I'm seeing the table as virtually square, with me set up to sit on the "pro-intellectual-property-rights" side. My entry will run Thursday.

I look forward to my arguments getting verbally eviscerated by super-clever wordsmiths who do this for a living.

Pride

2010-02-22T14:58:00.000-05:00

Better Half just designed a set of operas up at Bard College. Two of them are new pieces, by David Little and Missy Mazzoli respectively ... both of whom are incredibly nice people and total superstars right now. It goes up at Bard's spectacular new Gehry-designed hall -- a breathtaker that, what with the idyllic setting, seems like it jumped directly out of Sleeper.

The production is this weekend. Go upstate to see that beautiful sketch made manifest.

DRAM

2010-02-16T14:43:00.000-05:00

If you're at a college or university right now (and I suspect most of you are), check out this list and see if your institution is on it. If it is, it looks like you have access to DRAM, a "not-for-profit resource" offering "on-demand streaming access to CD-quality audio" of all kinds of contemporary and 20th Century music. Labels like CRI, Albany, innova, or BMOP/sound - all the places that stuff is (or used to be) found. Wonky, wonky stuff to be sure, but all incredibly difficult to find, and/or simply out-of-print. Even though I don't have access myself, the light browsing I've done quickened my heart rate, as the otherwise unavailable Michael Colgrass or Marjorie Merryman & Marilyn Shrude recordings scrolled before my eyes. It looks like they've even put together some interesting playlists, like "A Survey of 20th Century American Orchestral Works", or "A Too Brief Introduction to the New York School". There's even a "Random" link at the top, which yields both familiar and fascinating fruit.

If you find you have access to this, please let me know how it flies. I'd be very curious. And jealous.

LGA-ORD-SAT

2010-02-10T10:59:00.001-05:00

Tomorrow I travel to the 2010 Texas Music Educators Association Convention in San Antonio. If The Snowpocalypse allows me leave at all, that is.

It's been a few years since I've been to TMEA; in 2007 I went to simply see for myself what I'd been only hearing about: The massive attendance. The gloriously huge ensembles. The endless exhibition floor. It was all as promised, and then some. At the mercy of my Native Companions, who sherpa'd me through the TMEA traditions and snaking queues for All-State concerts, I couldn't even manage to convincingly pretend I belonged there.

This year I'll enjoy the rehearsals and performance of As the scent of spring rain... with Steven Davis and the 5A All-State Concert Band -- the first performance of my music at TMEA. The pretense of my being in any way relevant to the State of Texas is still shaky, but this time at least I'll be able to point to a concert program and mumble something about bi-tonal harmonic language and crystal glasses. I trust my translators will make me sound like I know what I'm talking about.

Two for two

2010-02-07T00:44:00.000-05:00

If you're like me (Lordy I hope not) you turn through the Sunday Arts & Leisure section with a pace that slows significantly as you move toward classical (reading a physical paper, you'll find it after theater, film, television, and sometimes dance--but always before architecture). The dread has a lot of sources, but mostly it's just because I expect to see either a fawning publicist-written puff piece about an upcoming event that rates as cool/interesting (but not too cool/interesting--just cool/interesting enough to keep everyone comfortable), or a profile on someone I vaguely know. The latter usually sending me into a career-questioning emotional tailspin.

But this week I found two pieces which not only did I read all the way through without stomach pain, but really quite dug: Allan Kozinn's excellent essay on performer interpretation vs. composer intent in contemporary music, and Matthew Gurewitsch's piece on the following page on (interesting!) opera productions made for Swiss television.

Enjoy with coffee (no spit-takes necessary).

Best ... album notes?

2010-02-01T11:48:00.005-05:00

So very many categories. It takes me something like 5 complete minutes to scroll down the list of winners ("Best Zydeco Album"? Really?) to see if LA-ex-pat Aussie and big band rock star Tim Davies won for his track Counting to Infinity off his recent Dialmentia album.

Nope. Not surprised. Way too interesting. But the loss is no excuse -- go pick up the record and enjoy the fabulous crazy. His band is hot, and the tunes are creative, completely nuts, and brilliantly arranged.

For extra fun, click his "Scores" tab and check out Tim's score videos. An ingenious idea I will one day steal without remorse.

Loose Symphony

2010-01-29T11:24:00.004-05:00

Next week I return to Tempe, where two years ago the brilliant Gary Hill hosted me in a residency featuring the amazing Liz Buck playing my Concertino with the Arizona State University Chamber Players and Gary conducting Avenue X with the ASU Wind Symphony. This time I work with my friend, the brilliant Stuart Sims, as he conducts Symphony No. 1, My Hands Are a City. This in itself would be terrific, as Stuart's interpretive skills are unparalleled, but the coolest part is that he performs the work as his doctoral lecture recital. Titled "The 21st Century Symphony". That's definitely a first for me. I saw a friend perform a Berio Sequenza as her lecture recital once, but he was already dead and couldn't attend. So there, Luciano.

Stu is one of those guys who make you feel lazy and dull. No one thinks more about, well, everything, than this guy. When he was conducting at CSU Stanislaus, he organized a Chunk performance where he provided not only the most extensive program notes ever to be written about a wind ensemble concert based on rock/funk music, but also rented an authentic Hammond B3 organ for the concert. Then he cajoled Maestro Reynolds to shake his money-maker in a Chunk performance at USC. I'm not exactly sure how Stuart managed that, but the result was hot. And unsurprisingly fun to watch.

The weblog/podcasts he does with Dustin Sosieth on The Loose Filter Project are consistently spot-on, and as a Loose Filter fan I'm psyched that we'll be preparing something for the site while I'm there. I'll take some supplements before we start taping so I can keep up.

While at ASU I'll meet with Gary's conducting students, and it looks like I'll also be guest lecturer for the ASU Honors College. I'll also see the composition students of my amazing longtime friend Roshanne Etezady (we were Tanglewood classmates 20 years ago). It's worked out to be an added bonus that I get to catch up with Roshanne, who, besides being a beautiful composer, is famous for simply being awesome.

Stuart performs the work with the ASU Wind Symphony twice on 2/4, so log on to your Facebook account and check out the official event invite.

iPod Thursday

2010-01-28T11:54:00.001-05:00

If next week this happens again, we'll call it a weekly feature. Otherwise, it's just a random day in which I'll mention the podcast that is so flipping cool I've been listening to it at any conceivable moment I can stick earbuds in my head: A History of the World in 100 Objects. BBC Radio 4's brilliant series is mesmerizing; each 15-minute episode discusses a single object from the British Museum, selected by the Museum's director Neil MacGregor, and how it relates (chronologically) to the history of humanity. The result is kind of a miniaturized and compacted Guns, Germs, and Steel, or at least I'm hearing them develop basically the same thesis from Jared Diamond's book. But the angle of the single objects picked from the museum is a killer one. The website has detailed photos and videos of the pieces, and links to listen online. Subscribe to the iTunes podcast feed here.

I would warn you to stick it out through the first episode on the Mummy of Hornedjitef, which is fairly dull. It gets quite a lot better as it goes along, and certainly more meaningful as each 'object' takes you further along humanity's development.

Frank v. Met

2010-01-27T15:10:00.002-05:00

A close friend (who I know reads this notebook) recently suggested that I might perhaps consider updating these pages a bit more than I do. That maybe, just maybe, I'm thinking a little bit too much about this, and that current, if not perfect, content trumps extended essays. And that perhaps everyone might find the whole exercise more enjoyable if I clicked "Submit" with a bit more alacrity. Shocking, I know.

To that end, I'll attempt to catch up with the Robert Frank exhibit at The Metropolitan. The subject is far less than timely, as the exhibition ended on January 3, but Better Half and I did manage to catch it before it left town, and it was flipping terrific. Basically it was everything from The Americans (seminal work of photographic brilliance, and less interestingly, the meat of the 2nd movement of Symphony No. 1) in gorgeously giant prints, laid out in order with comments about the images from Frank and the curators. But the gems of the exhibit weren't the photos from the book, which I can basically see on the inside of my eyeballs at this point ... it was the rows and rows of Frank's negatives and proofs -- evidence of what didn't make it into the book, and completely thrilling insight into his process of choosing exactly which photo of the series of almost identical shots was the one he wanted.

My take-home favorite part of the exhibit was actually non-photographic: there were some letters and correspondence in a case (Frank apparently kept an epistolary relationship with Walker Evans), where the curators had laid out Kerouac's typewritten draft of his foreword for the book. Like the On the Road scrolls, it looked drugged and feverish, like it was banged out in a sweaty fit of overnight inspiration. And yet, the pencil corrections and insertions were detailed and exacting. I love this. Evidence that an artist we collectively like to believe feels rather than thinks, is actually...thinking. Really, really hard.

Experiment

2009-12-10T14:06:00.005-05:00

When I was in Austin a few weeks ago for a short residency at Southwestern University, I perused the office shelves of my my host and old school chum, composer Jason Hoogerhyde. Upon finding the beautifully bound vocal score to his new opera The Color of Dissonance, I gasped at the lovely paper, color cover, and professional book-binding. So then Jason showed me his other scores -- all gorgeously printed and professionally bound like, y'know, actual books. Like real scores you'd buy at Patelson's (oh, wait, I can't buy anything at Patelson's anymore -- it CLOSED G-d save us all.) I want I want I want, I said. So he told me about Lulu, the print-on-demand service where he got them done. Upload a pdf and cover images at the size you'd like, and for some pretty fair prices, they will print lovely copies, even selling them for you from their site.

As an experiment in self-publishing-fetishim, I chose a score to throw at them. So now you can officially purchase a study score (sized the European A4--slightly skinnier and slightly longer than American 8.5x11) of Symphony No. 1, My Hands Are a City.

Since the 114-page conductors score is a monster--expensive to print and to purchase--and not so convenient, practical, or cost-efficient to hand to interested conductors, we'll try this out as another option. My hope is that my own small order of them will arrive in time for my short junket at this year's Midwest Clinic in Chicago, but it probably won't. So demand-print your own copy and give the gift of Beat to the-one-you-love-who-loves-to-squint-at-study-scores.

Which describes me well, at least. 'Tis the season. By the way, there's a small hole on my shelf where the Dutilleux Cello Concerto should be...

What you do

2009-12-03T23:25:00.003-05:00

In the in-between space between finishing a piece and the premiere, you write a program note. And then you take a deep breath while hoping that it's even remotely close to fitting the piece. Because you actually haven't heard it yet.

Swami Faxon

2009-12-02T10:53:00.002-05:00

The Economist recently interviewed Roger Faxon, head of EMI Music Publishing, for their audio podcast (sure, I subscribe, what of it?); while listening I found myself bobbing my ear-budded head up and down in vigorous agreement on the subway, causing my personal space in the train car to generously expand.

Except for a brief but embarrassing editing goof around 3/4 of the way through, the interview is fascinating, and I 'Amen Brother'd with almost every word Faxon says. He seems completely brilliant, and totally gets it. I want the guy to be my guru. His perception of how the value of recorded music is switching from object fetishism to links of organization without any loss of love or desire, is spot on.

But enough about me

2009-12-01T13:13:00.005-05:00

...let's talk about my Online Presence.

If my name is the commodity I'm promoting (which it kind of is), then I have placed that name on a baffling array of shelving around the internets:

* My website
* This notebook
* BCM International website
* BCM Forum
* Facebook
* Twitter
* Classical Lounge
* The AMC Online Library (formerly NewMusicJukebox)
* Wind Repertory Project*

And that's off the top of my head, and doesn't include sites where I've absent-mindedly let my membership lapse, like the American Composers Forum, or am simply listed and linked to as a "composer", like Meet The Composer.

I never made a MySpace page (because the site made me yack) but there is an extant BCM MySpace page that's pretty much frozen in 2006...which I sort of refuse to link to.

In addition to this nonsense I'm considering starting an e-mail blast list. BCM used to do these back before they were cool (read glitzy HTML), but since we've basically stopped doing that, it might be time to venture out on my own into the world of annoying people in yet another medium. Because I smell a tipping point, and despite the fact that personal e-mail marketing generally makes my teeth itch, I really don't want to be the only schlub without a stylized mailing list shouting out my latest and greatest.

But a mailing list would require, y'know, actually mailing out regular releases. And the website itself already has a "news" page (technically a Blogger page itself) which requires constant updating. This page requires updating, certainly more than what I do. And the whole idea of Twitter is constant updates. And when these things go by the wayside (as they tend to with me because occasionally I like to write music), the concept of an "online presence" does as well. Because you stop reading if it's not new. Which means that the "commodity" of my name has incrementally lowered in value.

I'm looking for a balance. The question is, how much of each of the above toe-holds into online networking does one do? How much information is mirrored from one place to another? How frequently does one or the other update? It used to be that my website was the one-stop-shopping source, but no longer. Now, people actually write me with legitimate "business" (residency or commission inquiries) on Facebook, of all places. Pretty much the most impractical place to do that kind of thing. In that kind of world, where does one rank the importance of staying current with, say, the "Juilliard Alumni Online Community"?

As far as how others seem to handle it, SB has done something intriguing where he aggregates almost his entire online presence on his front page, which is pretty nifty. Those kinds of links are there on my site, but one needs to dig a little.

The king of this balancing act is my friend EW, who parlays his catalog of music and conducting work into active Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace accounts, as well as all his named websites and weblog. His particular online genius shows in his lassoing all of these disparate sources to create something brilliant like his Virtual Choir project.

I do keep a Google Reader account, filled to the brim with my friend's blogs and rss feeds, ideally to keep track of their online doings ... but frankly I never have the daily time to read them, and find myself catching up on something like a monthly basis, power-reading through scores of entries. It's exhausting, and defeats the whole purpose of the daily blog. If I have trouble making it through everyone's feeds, status updates, tweets, and e-mail blasts, why should I expect you to deal with mine?

How do you manage your name online? Where exactly is the Nirvanna of internet promotional balance? Comment. Or re-tweet this post. Or message me on Facebook. Or e-mail me. Or IM. Or txt.

Or better yet, pick up the phone and give me a call. I remember phone calls. Phone calls were nice.

*12/1/09 edit: I forgot about my page on Nikk Pilato's excellent wiki.

Chant THIS

2009-11-17T23:01:00.006-05:00

As I pull myself up from my collapse in the corner after finishing The New Piece, it occurs to me it might be a smart move to let others know that the thing actually exists. With that in mind, this is De Profundis, for massed winds. The "for" is unabashedly stolen from the great Henry Brant Angels And Devils masterwork, but the title itself is from the Latin Requiem, and is one of many many of the same. So I feel less guilty about that, at least.

I believe I used the de profundis plainchant incipit (which sounds like this) in clear and obvious ways, but I wouldn't be surprised if others disagree. I actually think the piece is hot, but barring that, it will at least be occasionally very, very loud. The 6 drummers (2 bass drums, 2 sets of detuned timpani, 4 tom-toms, and 3 roto-toms) will see to that.

There exists a MIDI mockup, but the internets will never get it's grubby little mitts on it. Audio will have to wait for a couple of months. Commissioned by the Central Oklahoma Directors Association, De Profundis will premiere with the CODA Symphonic Band (an ensemble of some 110 souls) in early January.

Status update (expanded edition)

2009-10-27T11:04:00.004-04:00

As others have noted: the rise of The Facebook and The Twitter has made notebook-ing significantly more difficult. Because let's face it, if one has something interesting to say, you can probably say it in one or two sentences. And, even more likely, in 140 characters. But since one of my current projects is shaping up into something intriguing enough that describing it won't actually fit into the "What are you doing now?" box, my in-progress report lands here.

The piece (after several discarded options) will be titled De Profundis, the Latin incipit from the first line of Psalm 130, "Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord..." This is probably the 487th piece of music to carry that title (Mr. Mozart wrote a pretty good one) -- just one of several good reasons why others were floated -- but ultimately I decided that going with anything else was doing the thing a disservice. The work actually uses the de profundis plainchant. (Due to thorough indoctrination in the "plainchant" terminology in college musicology classes, even now I suppress a gag reflex when "Gregorian chant" is used instead.)

The work was commissioned by the Central Oklahoma Band Director's Association for their honor band festival this January. You might notice, their front page there has a helpful countdown clock to the Clinic, thus providing me with a clear, pressure-less visual to assist my completing the work in a timely manner. Thanks, guys.

The student ensemble premiering the work (under the guest direction of my friend Jeff Gershman) will be enormous. A sea of flutes. An (ocean?) of clarinets. A (hmm, prairie?) of saxophones...you get the idea. And so my initial idea for the piece was to use the large-ness for maximum bang, and write only stuff that works best with a crowded stage. This is not a new idea by any means, but it's quite effective. Especially with lots of aleatory, big crunchy chords, and an evocative image like "Out of the depths I cry to you". The end result seems to be turning into a Henryk-Górecki-meets-Warren-Benson-while-John-Corigliano-drives-by-waving-frantically kind of thing.

So to speak.

Here's a page of the short score.

See, up there, at the top? That's the Górecki. And down there at the bottom--there's the Corigliano. The Benson comes later.

You are what you eat, people. Choose with care.

Gesamtkunstwerk (with ghouls)

2009-10-07T13:27:00.004-04:00

I mentioned this Spring about working on an opera during my residency at the MacDowell Colony; today I officially posted the score and information for our completed excerpts. These represent the first three scenes—more or less the first 25 minutes of the piece—sans a brief orchestral prologue which still sits on my desk in sketch-form.

A couple of years ago when we were initially looking for material, my collaborator—playwright, cult movie aficionado, and now librettist Gary Winter—presented me with a list of half a dozen films to look over. Films like Cat People. And the unsurprisingly less good The Curse of the Cat People. When I sat down to watch Carnival of Souls, a particular string went zing in my heart, and I knew without a doubt that this was our opera.

You can watch Herk Harvey's brilliant film on a two-disc Criterion DVD with tons of really terrific bonus material; Netflix not only has that in stock, but also available for instant streaming viewing. More dubiously, you can view the film on Hulu, as well as on some completely shady site called the "Internet Archive", where the film is listed as public domain. Which it isn't. (Our sincere thanks to copyright owners Peter Soby, Jr. and Matthew Irvine for the license to make the opera.)

One of the things I love about the film is how in spite of the obvious camp, it's actually a very beautiful movie--the photography is simply gorgeous. I actually took a lot from this, and tried very hard to mirror that sensibility in the music. In these three scenes, inside the shell of humor and dippiness in the horror-movie characters, I attempted to carry through a core of beauty and real feeling.

There's a famous still of the actress Candace Hilligoss as "Mary Henry" emerging from the river after the accident. That's where our opera begins, and Gary wrote a beautiful aria where Mary sings about the drag race and tragic accident of which she is the only survivor. This is where I began work (I had to choose somewhere), and about a year, maybe a year and half later, we have a complete libretto, and the first three scenes composed in piano/vocal score—the first scene of which is fully orchestrated. Along with the understanding and (really, quite crazy) support of Better Half, this was all accomplished by stealing time between other (paying) projects. Which was quite difficult, because most of the time I'm physically awake, I would actually like to be working on this piece.

There does exist a not-safe-for-internet MIDI-mockup of the excerpts, but until actual singers workshop/record some of it, we'll all have to make do with the score. But if you're near a piano with me, maybe I'll sing some of it for you. I do an excellent ghoul.

WASBE has a blog

2009-07-09T20:50:00.004-04:00

Doesn't really sound like English, does it? Yet as I write, the 2009 World Association of Symphonic Bands and Ensembles Conference at CCM in Cincinnati continues. Follow along with their (impressively current) blog. If you're into that kind of thing. International conventions of wind ensembles, that is. Pictures of my few days there earlier this week were up, I suspect within moments of my having completed them myself:

A morning talk with composer Johan De Meij and myself: blog photo

An afternoon talk with composer Martin Ellerby (left), Johan, and composer Yo Goto (sort of pictured on the right): blog photo

My sincere and public thanks to Ramiro Barrera and the amazing James Logan Wind Symphony for giving me a reason to be there with their terrific performance of the Symphony on the opening concert.

East River vs. Thames

2009-06-30T13:48:00.003-04:00

Now that it's almost July, UGA's new CD including the world premiere recording of My Hands Are a City (also the third movement of Symphony No. 1) is finally available.

Naxos does an enjoyable podcast about their new releases which I listen to whenever I can; their latest is an interview with conductor John Lynch about the album. John says such lovely things about us. I had to go and listen again.

I'm quite familiar with everything on the record (I was at some of the sessions) but I when I received the CD last week I listened to the whole thing all the way through and was completely floored. It not only sounds amazing (engineered by the great Bruce Leek, pictured so eloquently in the above JM link), but the disc also tells an engaging story about ecstatic celebration, with my piece, Kristy's gorgeous piece, and Hammersmith as the big "descriptive" works, basically serving as pillars.

JM's Kingfisher's Catch Fire is a rocket ship in the middle of the record. It's both a spectacularly crystal-clear recording, where I hear all kinds of things I never heard live (that contrabassoon! Who knew the chimes came in there?) and, for the bombastic nature of the 2nd movement, an amazingly subtle performance.

The CD is up on Amazon now, but you can also download it, which, let's be honest, is what you'll do. My track is "Album Only" on both the iTunes Store and the Amazon MP3 Download store. Probably because it's kind of long. Sorry 'bout that.

Your recompense will be that while on iTunes, you can pick up the University of New Mexico's new As the scent of spring rain... recording on Summit Records for $0.99. That's like $.03 for every bi-tonal cluster! Act now.

March me

2009-06-24T20:35:00.002-04:00

Yesterday I signed a marching band arrangement license. This wouldn't be a big deal, except that it's my very first one. Ever. Until now, no one has yet asked if any of my 13 (depending on how you count it) wind ensemble pieces (the most common fodder for such things as I understand it) could be arranged for another ensemble.

I actually find this fact totally fascinating. I mean, I'm lucky enough that people who are looking for music to arrange are likely aware of my stuff - yet there must be something inherently weird about the music which makes it unsuitable for arrangements...or at the very least, make it easy to pass over as a more difficult choice. I have some ideas of what that might be, but it's still an interesting question. Makes one (well, me) think about qualities in my music in ways I never thought before. Which has been a curious experience. There were even certain works I was convinced I'd be getting calls about, but never did. That kind of thing is probably more about me not knowing what I'm talking about, though.

Even so, this particular milestone is sort of a full circle thing for me, because (and this isn't something I usually admit in public without significant prodding) I used to be one of those kids marching around on a football field. In fact, back in the day, I was proud "squad leader" of the trombone section of the Wyoming Valley West Marching Spartans. O! We had a blast. Probably because we had no idea how stinking-bad we were.

My career as a marching trombonist peaked when I played the featured solo in our show's (no doubt stellar) arrangement of Maestro Ritchie's Say You, Say Me, atop an aluminum ladder. It's a cautionary tale, really.

So now I leave the marching, and the arranging, to the experts. Who are now obligated to send me a video of the final product, of course.

Carnegie Grind

2009-06-01T14:45:00.002-04:00

Last night's MAYWE concert at Carnegie was a super fun ride, and my sincere thanks to Robert Ambrose and Laura Moates Stanley and the whole ensemble, who shouted Avenue X to the heavens at the Isaac Stern Auditorium. Maestro Ambrose also programmed the gorgeous Dusk, which made the evening into a rare opportunity to hang with SB.

My Day with Bryant began earlier when we popped in on on the Bang on a Can Marathon down at the World Financial Center yesterday afternoon. It was the usual schmooze-o-thon, only this year with the unusual addition of an audience full of of babies. Apparently infants and toddlers really dig Ethyl. This is a hypothesis easily tested at home, and I'll get right on it. In any case it seems clear that we're all getting older, and those who go to these things are now procreating in order to make more little Cantaloupe CD-purchasers.

Getting stuck behind the President's motorcade on West St. combined with a last-minute re-shuffling of program order meant we actually missed the two pieces we were most interested in hearing in our allotted time slot: the new Bill Frisell, in which our old friend Carrie Stinson was playing, and a new piece by Ted Hearn of whom I became a fan after enjoying scenes from his opera at this year's City Opera Vox readings. Oh well. I heard they sounded great.

So in fact it turned out that the most intriguing piece for me that hour was a little ditty by Jeppe Just Christensen for five amplified coffee grinders. You'd think that would be easy fodder for The Snarky, and of course I was quite ready to, but instead I found myself totally enjoying it. Different amounts of beans made for different pitches, and the hocket-y (caffeinated!) rhythms were fun and unpredictable. And as the beans ground down the tones of the machines eased down, creating a natural denouement. It was actually sort of brilliant.

You can probably hear many of the Marathon pieces if you check out their summer season at MassMoCA up in North Adams, not far from The Newman Compound™. If you go, give a call and we'll meet at the BrewHaha.

And while you're surfing around all those amplified Downtown websites, open a new tab onto the aesthetic opposite that is johncorigliano.com. It's live and online, and full of nifty pictures of JC's African Art collection.

Search me

2009-05-26T20:20:00.002-04:00

Since the slowing down in notebook entry frequency has become more the rule than exception, one of the more interesting results is that some of you are simply giving up on reading anything new, and instead attempting to mine older postings for Newman Goodness. This is ultimately a good thing, I think, but I haven't exactly made it easy for you. There are a good five years of archives, listed only by date. This turns out to be less than useful, which some of you pointed out (nicely). After receiving some e-mails in quick succession, all asking where in the world one can find the entry on this or on that, today I added search function, courtesy of Mr. Google, who as long as he's taking over everything that actually matters, might as well take over jonathannewman.com, too.

It's not ideally placed in the layout, but it'll do in a pinch. The whole notebook is by now, years after creation, a little outmoded and probably in need of a refresh. Blogger ca. 2004 was not the highest-end of techy advancement, and now the whole thing could use a makeover, both in engine and working parts, and in (now that there are functions like search and drop-down menus and such which weren't in the original layout plan) design.

But the search field should work, which is the important part. Try it out with your favorite keywords, like "cheeky" or "Star Trek" or "Mackey" or something like that. Maybe I've written something brilliant about it.

If you enjoyed

2009-05-18T23:51:00.004-04:00

I've been happily receiving very complimentary and ego-soothing feedback on the live Symphony No. 1 performance recording from Indiana University. Surprisingly, I've actually listened to it myself a few times. Usually I wouldn't put myself through that, but in this case, the voice in my head (you know, the one that screams "This is awful. What were you thinking?", etc.) never fully drowns out the music itself, and for much of the piece I can vaguely enjoy listening.

In addition to satisfying myself that the Symphony actually exists, I've been catching up on what my colleagues have been up to this year. (Because apparently, it wasn't all about me. Who knew?) I missed hearing most of these pieces live because I was squirreled away in New Hampshire during the National CBDNA Conference in Austin, so the performance recordings had to do, and I pass them on here. When you take in the following links (listed in no particular order) make sure you listen some time well after my stuff, because they are all way too good, and any direct comparison doesn't favor me at all.

--SB's Ecstatic Waters is beautiful, glorious, spellbinding, and every other adjective like those. Anyone who's heard it, live or otherwise, will no doubt confirm the above, but I am probably the least surprised out of anyone. When Steve sent me a copy of the MIDI realization last year I flipping teared up while listening. The skill and imagination involved in this work is staggering, and when this becomes one of those pieces we talk about, remember I knew him when.

--JP's written a ton lately, including a euphonium chamber work I haven't listened to yet because I am overdue on writing one myself, and I know if I listen to Joel's I won't be able to remove my sobbing self from the corner of the room to actually do it. But I have listened to his exciting and brilliant new violin concertino. And a new live performance recording of It Perched from Vespers Nine confirms for me how gorgeous that work is, and how much I wish I had written it.

--I also happily received a recording of JB's Diabolus Ex Machina, which stuns the listener by slapping him upside the head with a completely original sound world. If I had heard it without knowing the source, I would have guessed this sucker to be Frank Zappa's lost masterwork, and I'm hoping that this posting will kick Jim into updating his website and posting the live premiere recording so that more than five people can hear it.

--And no one needs me to point them toward JM's Asphalt Cocktail, of course, because downloads of the live performance John put on his website reportedly nearly brought down the server. Still, I've been listening to it repeatedly with a smile on my face, in part because it's got my name on the top of the score, but mostly because the insane ear-splitting roar that is that piece is a marvel of craft and creativity.

Done Done Done

2009-05-11T14:03:00.002-04:00

Sort of. There are some parts-issues I've yet to deal with: cleanup and re-pagination etc. But basically the big first Symphony is complete. After something like 4 years since I started making noise about it. That's done as in first performance (the astounding Indiana University) in the can, first round of corrections made to the score and parts, and audio/perusal materials uploaded to new piece pages on the website, done.

The official title is now sans quotes, and reads: Symphony No. 1, My Hands Are a City. No more quotes around the Corso line. There was some back and forth on that. It's a fittingly wordy title; this is a complicated sucker. Three separately-performable movements, four website pages, instrumentation wrenches like electric guitar and celesta, a middle movement with a third of the players tacet, and a 2-consortium listing so complex it resembles a government tax form.

To put the bow on my (personal) festivities, next month, Naxos releases the University of Georgia Wind Ensemble's recording of My Hands Are a City. At the time of the sessions in Athens, this was the only movement, and the complete work was a pipe dream. Now that fourteen-minute beast starts on page 59.

Newmanpaloozas

2009-04-23T09:31:00.006-04:00

After a short residency in my home state of Pennyslvania at Millersville University, where I conducted the terrific Millersville ensembles in four Newman pieces, I find myself in beautiful Bloomington, IN, where I'm giddily composer-in-residence this week. So in honor of tonight's World Premiere of Symphony No. 1, "My Hands Are a City" at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, here is the hot-off-the-press program note:

In 2005 I wrote The Rivers of Bowery, a short work celebrating a verse from Allen Ginsberg's Howl. I soon discovered that both the musical and extra-musical themes were much larger than the length allowed, and so I designed this Symphony as a complete expansion, both in thematic scope, and in musical material.

In my neighborhood on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, the musicians and poets and characters of our mid-Century "Beats" are still very active ghosts. I walk past the tenement where Allen Ginsberg wrote Howl, stroll across "Charlie Parker Place", and over the city streets rapturously described in prose and verse, and captured in era photos and film. Surrounded by these spirits, I structured the work in three movements, each taking on a different aspect of the sensory experiences I collected from my months of immersion in the novels, poetry, and photographs of these artists.

Titled after a line from Jack Kerouac's On the Road, the first movement opens the Symphony with the restlessness and constant drifting of a young generation terrified of stagnation. As a short burst of agitated motion, this moto perpetuo reflects Kerouac and his characters "performing our one and noble function of the time, move. And we moved!"

The second movement takes its title from Beat photographer Robert Frank's powerful collection, The Americans. In 1955, Frank traveled the country taking extraordinary photos of a nation that is actually many nations. This movement does not "describe" any of the individual photos, but rather is an attempt at an overall musical picture of the paradoxical America Frank saw: diverse, yet uniform; determined, yet lost; sated, yet unsatisfied.

The final movement, My Hands Are a City, titled after a 1955 Gregory Corso poem, overflows with mid-Century American vernacular. Altered progressions from bebop tunes, and stretched out, frozen, and suspended solos from Lester Young and Charlie Parker recordings all fill out the work. In its larger scope and breadth, the movement is a summing up of the symphony's themes,
both poetic and musical.

In all of it, taking material from The Rivers of Bowery happened quite naturally. The process was much like approaching my finished piece as if it was my sketchbook, and using that once-final material as the cells and harmonies to then spin out. But where in the overture I concentrated on capturing Ginsberg's singing of the lost and outcast mobs of his counter-culture, in the expanded work I was intrigued with the ever-present cloud of sadness hanging over much of the work of The Beats. It's a quiet sadness I hear even in the frantic bebop of Bird and Miles, and in my re-reading of the classic literature of the period—perhaps adding a tinge of darkness to the colors of this Symphony.

This new work (a monster, clocking in at about 30 minutes) is dedicated to my friend Jeffrey Gershman, who will lead the amazing IU Symphonic Band in tonight's premiere. The Newmanpalooza that is the Indiana "Spring Festival of Winds Brass and Percussion" also features Paul Popiel conducting Avenue X with the IU Concert Band, and Stephen W. Pratt leading his Wind Ensemble in the North American Premiere of Climbing Parnassus.