After sending Vivid Geography out the door to the Japanese commissioners and the University of Houston (who will perform the U.S. Premiere this Fall) a couple of weeks ago, I restarted the task of piecing together all that had fallen to the floor in the three months I had my Finishing the Hat blinders on. Correspondence, phone calls, rentals, etc… as I’ve mentioned before, I can apparently do only two things at the same time, and at all times one of them has to be “Be With Family”. So “Writing” was quickly replaced with “Business”, and we’re off to the races again, with notebook entries and return phone calls.

And travel. Tomorrow I leave for Seattle for the CBDNA National Conference, where Rod Schueller‘s Texas State Wind Ensemble will play the bejeezus out of Symphony No. 1, My Hands Are a City, and where I can also enjoy many new pieces by colleagues and close friends. The Texas State ensemble burned the place down when they played the first movement at TMEA last month, so needless to say, I am looking forward to this. In anticipation, I sent out a nifty new issue of Ye Ol’ Newsletter.

There was a time not long ago when I thought I would be flying directly from Seattle to Tokyo, for the premiere of Vivid Geography at the 2011 Japan Wind Ensemble Conductors Conference in Kawasaki City. Even before the terrible earthquake these plans fell through due to scheduling, but unsurprisingly, the entire festival was recently canceled. I have a special place in my heart for Japan, having traveled there to be the composer-in-residence at the 2008 Conference in Kurashiki, and having spent many fun times with the wonderful musicians and characters from Tokyo Kosei, so the news from that country these past couple of weeks has simply made me feel ill with helplessness and worry. Those fantastic people though, they do soldier on…the e-mails that have been coming in have contained lots of business-as-usual, and the next commissioner to tackle this huge new piece, the Nagoya Academic Winds, will go on as scheduled next month.

And the piece is huge. Weighing in at 15′, a full twice as much as originally planned, the thing morphed very quickly into a major, massive project. I learned long ago that a piece turns out waaay better if you simply let it “go” where it “wants” to go (whatever that means, but I suspect you understand), and not force the work into the box you had hoped it would initially fit. And so it’s now a major big piece, for 20 players and SSA chorus, incorporating an eclectic ensemble of instruments designed as a kind of cross between a sinfonietta, a new music group, and a wind ensemble; including woodwinds, saxophones, brass, mallets, and strings. I’m pleased to think that it achieves the specific sound I was after: a sort of Downtown Romanticism.

I suspect I’ll be pocketing the above Ism for future use. I should grab the URL while I can.

Scale Shift by Marcella Durand, on its way to becoming Travel (or possibly Spectrum, or perhaps Vivid Geography) for SSA chorus and chamber orchestra. Japanese Premiere March 29 in Kawasaki City at the 2011 Japan Wind Ensemble Conductors Conference, and the American Premiere Fall 2011 in Texas, by the U.S. commissioner University of Houston, with the chorus and instrumentalists of the Moores School of Music, conducted by David Bertman.

Dear Directors and Conductors,

Tokyo Kosei Wind Orchestra and the 2011 Japan Wind Ensemble Conductors Conference is looking for a U.S. commissioning partner, for a piece for women’s chorus and chamber orchestra, premiering in Kawasaki City Japan on March 27, 2011. The work will set the text of contemporary New York City poet Marcella Durand.

I’m thinking eight or nine minutes, and the planned instrumentation is:

flute, clarinet, bass clarinet, bassoon
soprano sax, alto sax, tenor sax, baritone sax
horn, trumpet, trombone, tuba
vibraphone, marimba, percussion
SSA chorus
violin, viola, cello, bass

One on a part, so, 19 players, plus the SSA chorus. I love this instrumentation. Looks like spicy chocolate to me.

If you’ve got a wind ensemble with a regular contrabass player (and a collaborating-relationship with a chorus), this means you’d only have to arrange for 3 extra string parts.

If you’ve got a chorus, this is an ensemble of 19 players, which could come from an orchestra or wind program. I will also be making a version with piano, both for rehearsal and performance.

If you’ve got a sinfonietta or new music ensemble-type thing, I’d think the challenge would be the chorus and the saxophones, but if you can get a Torke Four Proverbs performance together, you’ll probably also be able swing this.

I don’t have a title yet, mostly because I’m leaning heavily toward one particular Durand poem, but very well might change my mind at the last minute and choose another. The language and rhythm in all her stuff consistently resonates with me, so it’s quite difficult to choose the exact right one for this project. I actually met Marcella in our neighborhood, through our kids, who are playground friends. After seeing her only in the rather blindingly distracting & unconducive-to adult-conversation context of toddler birthday parties and play-dates, I stumbled upon one of her poems in The Nation. a few months ago. When I started thinking about this piece, I made an enjoyable project of looking at more of her work, which is chunky with poetics and evocatively fractured in a style that seems to suit exactly the harmonic and rhythmic language I’ll be going for with the piece.

Contact me if you’re interested in partnering with JWECC, and sharing worldwide premieres with Tokyo Kosei. The U.S. Premiere could be scheduled for anytime this Spring, or into Fall 2011.

Poetically yours,
JN

Time-management here is fixed. There are exactly three things I can be doing in any given period:

1) Compose
2) Maintain my publishing/composer “business”
3) Be with my family

#1 is a bit more than just the actual time it takes to write; it’s inclusive of the months of research and Thinking About a Piece that happens before any actual notes are written. And when it gets into full swing, the mono-tasking is so severe, I can barely be coherent on the phone. So I usually don’t answer it.

#2 has the snarky quotes because, well, it is just me here–it’s not like I’ve got an administrative staff, or a bank account or anything (I use a shoebox). But the modern composer (and probably less-modern one, for that matter) must book gigs rehearsing the music and teaching, and the self-publisher must run his/her own rental library and/or storefront (fulfilling rental orders, shipping scores, sending invoices, filling out W9s till the cows come home), as well as a maintain a promotion department (sending mailings, writing newsletters, printing perusal scores, and saliently, updating these notebook pages).

#3 is a catch-all for the juggling act that is the Modern Marriage slash Parenting of a Three-point-five-year-old. It’s made up of preschool pickups, soccer practices, chicken finger suppers, and the precious solo time with Better Half that comes sometime in between bath/bedtime and the moment we collapse from exhaustion.

The thing is, I am only able to accomplish two out any of these three things in any given time period. And since #3 is, of course, non-negotiable, that means that #s 1 and 2 simply can’t happen at the same time. Like a physical law preventing two objects from occupying the same space at the same time, if I’m writing this week, I simply cannot fulfill a rental order. Or return an e-mail. Or send a score to someone who is considering performing a piece. Because the brainspace that is left over after #1 takes its rightful share goes directly to #3. And thanks to the algebraic Property of Equality the reverse is true; if I’m frantically filling the (now overdue) rental orders and returning weeks-old phone calls, there’s no way any writing is getting done. Because Team Newman is going to The Dinosaur Museum together (see #3), and there’s No Freaking Way I’m missing that.

With that in mind, the OK Feel Good Music Promo Department has been non-functional this Fall, and a quick-and-dirty roundup is in order. Since the last notebook posting the following excitements (in the first and second categories) have happened: IU-Purdue’s Chad Nicholson interviewed me for his fun “Wind Bands of Every Flavor” podcast, I finished a new work which premiered with hooplah last week at the Percussive Arts Society International Conference, and I traveled to residencies at Texas State University (Rod Schueller, Symphony No. 1, My Hands Are a City), University of Oklahoma (Bill Wakefield, Across the groaning continent), and Florida State University (Richard Clary, De Profundis). Tree was performed in Chicago, The Rivers of Bowery in Boston, and Sowing Useful Truths in Miami. I’ve also started work on a piece for women’s chorus and chamber orchestra, for a premiere in late March in Kawasaki City, Japan.

With respect to Category The Third, we are now marginally closer to deciding in what order to rank elementary school choices for the Board of Ed’s District 1 Lottery (alternately titled “Shoot me now”). Also, I discovered my Inner Soccer Dad.

I can also now highly recommend the new David Mitchell and Jonathan Franzen novels. I’m thinking those significantly ate into #1.

No one particularly cares about how I manage my time, as long as whatever is needed from me gets to whoever needs it, before they get in trouble for not having it. But knowledge is power, and Knowing My Limits is the new Getting Things Done.

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.

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.

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.

In 2008 I went to Japan for the Japan Wind Ensemble Conductors Conference‘s premiere of Climbing Parnassus. When I returned to the U.S., I found an e-mail waiting for me from Jim Ripley, a conductor in Kenosha, WI. Jim introduced himself as not only the Director of Instrumental Activities at Carthage College there, but also the principal guest conductor of the Kurashiki Sakuyo University Wind Philharmony, the ensemble at Kurashiki University, where the JWECC conference had just been held and where I had just spent a week. He saw on the internets where I just was, and (ingeniously) knew we had to get to know each other. Since then, I’ve not only been up to Kenosha to guest conduct the Carthage College Wind Orchestra and Honor Band, but Kurashiki University became co-commissioners of the the Symphony, performing their premieres on their Japan Tour last year.

I was thrilled to get a recording of Jim’s performances a few months ago, and even though it’s taken me quite a while to get to it, I’m excited to share them. So here they are: the first two movements (Across the groaning continent, and The Americans), with the Kurashiki Sakuro University Wind Philharmony; James Ripley, conductor, in their final live premiere of Symphony No. 1, My Hands Are a City, at Civic Music Hall, Shiga City, Japan, on November 23, 2009. (It’s a large download)

The third movement (My Hands Are a City) from that performance is terrific, but it seems that the final chord was accidentally cut off in that recording. Kind of kills some of the effect of the big ending. I’m sure that can be fixed, but I’ll have to get into that at a later date. So here is Kurashiki Sakuyo’s third movement performance from their concert at Toka Gakudo (Music Hall) – Kurashiki Sakuyo University, Kurashiki, Japan

The point is the same: these are amazing musicians, doing what they do in Japan (which from what I can tell, is simply be awesome, all the time). Happily, I can actually hear how much Jim enjoys the piece in these performances.  It’s hard to articulate how rewarding that is.