composer's notebook

Terrific recording of the Sowing Useful Truths premiere at Seiji Ozawa Hall with H. Robert Reynolds and the Boston University Tanglewood Institute Young Artists Wind Ensemble now online.

IU-Purdue’s Chad Nicholson interviews me for his fun “Wind Bands of Every Flavor” podcast.

You’re following my ridiculous Twitter project, right?

Read along with me! And while Bill Schuman spins dramatically in his grave, at least we’ll be having a good time.

I’ve been tardy with posts, so if you didn’t already receive one (and let’s face it, you, and 1100 of your closest friends, probably did), you can read through the latest Newman Newsletter to get the gist of what’s been going on.

If you’d like to join the mailing list, there’s a handy link in the neighboring box (or here, if you’re reading this somewhere besides the notebook site). One of these suckers will go out every 3-6 months. I came up with those numbers because I meant it to be every three months when I sent the first one, but then the second one didn’t happen until six months later. I’m amazing at math.

Since that mailing went out, Sowing Useful Truths premiered, and the event was as terrific as I had hoped. Maestro Reynolds made it gritty and groovy, and the ensemble burned the house down. The evening was made even better due to JM & AEJ joining Better Half and I for the weekend, and transitioned smoothly to Thoroughly Mind-Blowing by getting to sit with the great David Amram, whose unsurprisingly-terrific & freaky piece preceded mine on the program.

I do admit that being back at Tanglewood and BUTI all last week was great fun, but more than a little surreal. What with Martin Amlin’s composition class in the Groton library, the brass quintets playing outside in those shed thingies — it was kind of like the last 20 years never happened…

A recording of the Wind Ensemble’s world premiere of Sowing Useful Truths at Seiji Ozawa Hall is coming soon. Not soon enough, but I’m working hard on making a nuisance of myself in order to get my hands on it.

Sowing Useful Truths premieres next week at Tanglewood. I’ll be there working with the BUTI composition students, and rehearsing with conductor H. Robert Reynolds and the BUTI Wind Ensemble all week in preparation for the July 30 concert.

Leavin’ on a jet plane, for the Hochzeit in the Alps, starring Steve Bryant and the Divine Dr. Verena Mosenbichler. (My fancy Google phone won’t let me do umlauts, sorry Frau Doktor.) I’ve brought along all my manuscripts for Sowing Useful Truths and plan on continuing work in the infrequent breaks between parties. Nothing new under the sun. I hear there’s some precedent for composing in Austria.

On the arts think tank website The Loose Filter Project, carve out some minutes and dive headlong into The 21st Century Symphony, or, “Why Stuart Sims is Awesome.”

I recommend first watching the video of Stuart’s brilliant lecture on my piece, including live examples with the ensemble. (I learned a lot myself.) It was one of those planets-align / mind-blowing days, as his entire doctoral lecture-recital centered on Symphony No. 1, My Hands Are a City, and the resultant Bernstein-like show-and-tell is a joy to watch. Plus, you get to watch Stu recite Ginsberg and Corso. Worth the whole 20 minutes right there.

Then listen (or watch the videos) of his complete performance with the Arizona State University Wind Symphony. As a capper, there’s also video of the run-out concert at the RV retirement community (you heard me) near Tempe. You’d think that as an idea that would fly about as well as a cement block, but it was actually completely fantastic … an example of how all it takes to engage an audience (any audience) is to avoid insulting their intelligence. Mostly though, the video shows how I answer audience questions, and then Stuart answers them better.

Enjoy a first mix of Stuart Sims’s fabulous recording of Symphony No. 1, My Hands Are a City (click the listen graphic) with the Arizona State University Wind Symphony, from their February session produced by the great Sam Pilafian.

Every year around now I submit my “ASCAP+” application, which is, for all intents and purposes, a simple listing of any performance, any recording released, any award, and any piece you’ve written during the past concert season. I’ve written about this before, but the issues this particular activity drudges up will never be resolved. One tries and tries to builds a catalog that has a performance life to it, and at ASCAP+ time, one is forced to take an exacting stock of that life and its particular ebbs and flows. On its face it’s a good thing, of course–an opportunity to compare accomplishments with goals–but for someone like me (I’m not sure what that means, either) it’s not exactly easy to stomach. The results are usually terrific (they award some $), but let’s just say I’m glad I have to deal with this only once a year.

This year I did a little tally. I spent much of the year writing the first three scenes of the opera, so other than that I wrote only two works: De Profundis (a wind ensemble piece), and Milori Blue (not a wind ensemble piece). Both of those had premieres (Milori Blue premiered yesterday, in fact), but the complete listing of performances was intriguing…

Including arrangements, there were 68 performances. That’s a tally of every time something was played, so if one ensemble played a piece three times on tour, I counted that as three performances. I make up the rules here, people – no raised eyebrows, please. Now, that’s a terrific number, I remember (not so long ago) when in a season I would average three performances. Or two. Or none. Even so, two years ago, the number was more like 90. Like I said, ebbs and flows.

There were:
11 As the scent of spring rain… performances
6 of Chunk
7 of Avenue X
3 of The Vinyl Six
3 of the new piece De Profundis
and 1 of The Rivers of Bowery

Most interestingly, there were 14 Symphony plays this past season, all from commissioners. I was stunned by that number, and even more stunned that it turned out that this was the winner in the hypothetical “most performed” category. I guess having 30 co-commissioners helps the 30′ piece along…

Now to the oddballs. Climbing Parnassus enjoyed its second U.S. performance … but by one of the Japanese commissioners. Still only one U.S. ensemble has attempted it (I feel a little like Mr. Babbitt on this one). There was no Concertino performance, but a Japanese recording of it was released. There was a single chamber group version of OK Feel Good (in Portugal), but none of the wind ensemble version. Intriguingly, by my records, there hasn’t been a performance of the wind ensemble version since 2007.

There was also no Uncle Sid performance this season, but I did receive a fun recording of one from last season (I love recordings of that piece, they are like an audio snapshot of kids goofing off), and I just received a hire inquiry for a Sid performance this Fall in Perth, Australia. So Sid’s still kicking, God bless ‘im.

In the arrangements category, Alarm Will Sound played Fingerbib again, which was giddy fun at (Le) Poisson Rouge, and the glorious Hila Plitmann just sang her composition chaos (twice, so that counts as two performances) last weekend, which I arranged for string quartet, bass clarinet, and piano, for her Airhead show.

Much like the traditionally-published Moon by Night (12 known performances this season), it’s difficult to tell when 1861 gets done. It’s sold through a distributor, so I don’t really know who buys it. And for obvious reasons it’s difficult to search for performances of a piece with that title … I keep coming up with death dates and geneology sites. The last record I have of a performance is from over a year ago, although it’s very possible that one or two or thirty have happened and they never got into the performance database.

Like I said, it’s a simultaneously encouraging and disconcerting exercise. So, thanks, ASCAP. You keep the existential angst flowing. I’m (annually) grateful.

This afternoon at the International Tuba-Euphonium Association Conference in  Tucson, Pat Stuckemeyer premieres Milori Blue. Titled after a lush and misty pigment, Milori Blue is a 3-movement sonata for solo euphonium and piano.