composer's notebook
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Wednesday, March 21, 2007
La Chunk
This morning I leave for a junket in L.A., to attend rehearsals at USC's Thornton School of Music for H. Robert Reynolds's Chunk performance, the concept of which I would suggest Tears the Roof Off the Sucker in just about every way you can think. It's sure to be a fantastic week, where I get to hear Chunk played by one of the country's best ensembles under a Legend of a baton, as well as chill out with EW and JM (fresh back from Japan) ... and wrap up mvt 3, all while enjoying the 72 degrees and sunny. Since I just got around to shoveling out my car from last week's snowstorm, that sounds pretty great right about now.
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Bleep Bloop Radio
A shameless plug for my friends at the American Music Center, who have launched their own streaming internet radio station, called Counterstream Radio. I am digging it, myself. This morning alone I've listened to some Zhou Long, David Lang, and Morton Feldman - all composers I like very much and seek out performances to get to - and there they were, conveniently pushed right at me. Excellent pieces, too. I even heard a Whitacre choral broadcast the other day. It's good, eclectic stuff, with an impressively workable interface. One can play the stream via iTunes as well, but you unfortunately don't get the text data streamed that way, and that's the whole fun, of course. (Wait, who is this now? Oh, Jacob Druckman, sure!) It's also got little "Buy" buttons in case you want to purchase. Which after I heard the Lang movement, I did.
"Sucker" doesn't even come close.
Monday, March 19, 2007
Break the slump
Since I've been banging my head against the 3rd movement of the Concertino for quite some time now (Blocks are not fun, people. Not. Fun.) I've been getting a lot of advice on how to proceed. One of the better ones was to relax, step back from the stress of the long-gone deadline, and write something else. Something small, something with a double-bar in a manner of days. Just to get writing again. It was an excellent suggestion, and nothing else was working, so a couple of weeks ago I wrote this.
And it worked. It's cute, it's short, and I like it quite a bit. And forcing me to think about some other music for a change seems to have done the trick, as the 3rd movement is chugging along now, and is shaping up well. The title you see, Dohyci, is a bit of a puzzle I know (as is the piece itself, which strikes me as a musical koan of sorts), but I'll be sure to make that clear not long from now, when/if a premiere is in the cards.
And yes, if you squint, you will find that time signature is indeed 11/8 + 3/4. Well how else is one supposed to do 3+3+3+2 / 2+2+2? And no, it can't be 3+3+3 / 2+2+2+2. That's very different.
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
Me composer, write good
There's a new Composer Blog on the NYTimes site, called The Score. Fascinating. It's a little too autobiographical at this point for my taste, but one hopes it will gear up into some interesting postings. It's part of their Times Select online subscription thing (like their editorials and much of their multimedia content), which means that one has to pay, I believe. But if you get the newspaper delivered it's free, you just have to sign up.
It's a group blog thing where they apparently take turns ... there are postings from Michael Gordon, Alvin Curran, and soon by Glenn Branca, but the best one so far is unsurprisingly by Annie Gosfield (well, best music, too). I met her at a concert last season once, introducing myself awkwardly, like a blushing teen asking for an autograph or something. I think I might have blurted something like "I'm a big fan! I'm a composer too!", whereby she looked at me kindly and nodded uncomfortably, no doubt wishing that the big freak leave her alone. Sigh. Her posting from last week, albeit quite "bio", rings the most honest and open for me, so maybe there will be some engaging reading there in the near future. I'm curious how this interesting side project by a news organization not exactly known for it's composer-coddling will ultimately pan out. Considering the bulk of excellent New Music-related reading out there (from NewMusicBox to JasonRobertBrown.com), it might just add white noise to a crowded field. So to speak.
See? This composer-related reading gives you ridiculous mixed metaphors. Can you get that from the NYTimes? I think not.
Monday, March 05, 2007
Gliss me
This weekend's American Modern Ensemble program "Musical Mavericks" was a festival of composer-performers ... featuring an impressive roster of Downtown Usual Suspects, like Todd Reynolds, Robert Dick, Pamela Z, and Micro-tonal Master John Eaton. It is awfully fun to see these guys do Their Thing in person, but my personal takeaways for the evening were:
1) Michael Lowenstern is one fantastic bass clarinet and a really fun composer to boot. I'll be buying his 1985 on CD, and picking up whatever else I can from the iTunes Store.
2) Rob Paterson (now sporting a spiffy new website) continues to write winning music, as well as consistently put together impressive programming for his ensemble. This is both happy and depressing for me. Rob played his 5-octave marimba piece, Komodo on the program, brilliantly showing off his head-scratching six-mallet technique.
3) Composer/Bassist Sean McClowry writes great stuff. He played his April '94, winner of the AME's 2nd Annual Composition Competition, and it's a stunner. Definite highlight of the program.
But the burning question on my mind after last night really is: Why doesn't every flute come equipped with Robert Dick's glissando headjoint? That little number is pure genius, and a bargain at $2k a pop. Can I start a petition to get these suckers installed on everyone's flutes by the time my next wind piece is due...?