composer's notebook

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.