Michael James Oberhauser

First and foremost: The composition recital that Kyle, Roc, and I have been working toward is in less than a week! It's tentatively named "Perspectives," (that hasn't been ok'd by everybody else yet). The program is below:

Perspectives
A Recital of the music of Kyle Gullings, Roc Lee, and Michael Oberhauser
The Artist's Inn Residence
1824 R St. NW
Washington, DC
June 4, 2010
8:00pm

String Quartet No. 1: At Best It Sometimes Rhymes (2009)                                     Kyle Gullings
II. Two Music Boxes
III. Emanations
I. There Is a Child
                                                         *Destiny Hoyle, violin
                                                          Kate Northfield, violin
                                                       *Elizabeth O'Hara, viola
                                                           *Diana Curtis, cello
*member of Altra String Quartet

Four Poems (2010)                                                                                     Michael Oberhauser
III. Haiku
IV. Free Verse
                                                       Cristina Verderese, flute
                                                          Henry Valoris, viola
                                                              Roc Lee, piano

Three arias from the chamber opera Oblivion (2010)                                                Kyle Gullings
The Plumtree
Night in Kalapa
Sorrow Is My Own Yard
                                                      Rachel Barham, soprano
                                                      James Rogers, baritone
                                                      Cristina Verderese, flute
                                                         Kyle Gullings, piano

Piano Suite (2005)                                                                                                       Roc Lee
tristesse oblige
sepia
                                                         Hilary Henry, piano

in memoriam Hibakusha (rev. 2009)                                                                       Kyle Gullings
                                                       Kyle Gullings, baritone
                                                        Hilary Henry, piano
                                                                 narrator

The Name on the Door (2010)                                                                      Michael Oberhauser
                                                    Sarah Philippa, soprano
                                                  Katherine Sanford, soprano
                                                    Joshua Brown, baritone
                                                     Elena Forbes, clarinet
                                                       Henry Valoris, viola
                                                     Elizabeth O'Hara, viola
                                                       Yufen Chou, piano



Next part of this post: Encounters.
Working here at the Cosmos Club, I saw that there was a recital by the Vocal Arts Society scheduled one of the days I was working. I had no more work to do, so I could have gone home, but I popped upstairs to see if they needed anything. Turns out the recital was made up of all Lori Laitman's music. There were two singers there... and the composer herself on piano. I mentioned to the woman sponsoring the recital that I was a composer, and she invited me to listen to the recital and meet Lori afterwards. I did both! What a wonderful concert (everyone, look up her "Pentecost." It's incredible.), and what a sweet, friendly person! She and I are actually friends on Facebook now! :)

Part three: Raise
I mean, there's not much to say about this, except that I got a raise at work... and I'm taking on a lot more hours: Instead of working weekends, I'm now working Monday through Friday 9-5. The worst part about this is I had to give up my dogwalking job. I'll miss the mutts, but the extra money will definitely be nice!

Just a quick update on the work I've been doing lately:

- I finished my first draft of The Name on the Door, my new opera. I'm gonna let it sit and stew for a while, come back and do some edits, then get to orchestrating! It looks like it'll be about 15 minutes long.

- I made a version of Haiku for flute, piano, and viola. (Vibraphones can be tough to come by.) A friend suggested I do this so it could be performed at a recital some time soon. I actually really like the way it turned out - it sometimes adds to the meditative, mystical quality, and it helps make the big sections bigger and "wetter," if that makes any sense. I'm considering doing a flute/piano/viola version of the other three pieces in Four Poems.

- Kyle, Roc, and I are slowly making progress toward putting on a little concert. (I say little, when really it might be up to 90 minutes long.) We're still looking for a venue, but we have rough dates nailed down: we're looking at early June.

Finally, in honor of Porgy and Bess being performed at the Kennedy Center, here's a YouTube video of Audra McDonald singing "My man's gone now."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HT6LDh7cO1g&feature=related

It's amazing how, even after being pretty much stuck in my house for a week, I didn't get any work done... then as soon as I was busy with other things, I get a lot of composition work done.

-I finished my first full draft of Four Poems. It needs a little editing, but I need to spend some time away from it to be able to look at it with a more critical eye. I'm really excited about it!

-I've started, and am about a third of the way through, my new opera about Jezebel. I think I'm going to name it The Name on the Door, but I haven't for sure decided on that yet.

-I made a concert ending to John's aria from Magnum Opus, "I'm just worried about you, Claire." It's actually almost a minute longer with this ending.

I'm also working on putting together a recital for Spring with my friends Roc and Kyle. Hopefully all or part of Four Poems and The Name on the Door will be on the program. I just need to find a good, free venue... any ideas?

I tried to post last night, but Weebly was having some troubles and my post didn't save. No worries: I'm redoing it now. Plus, I added more to other parts of the website (a new Compositions Performed page, and a restructuring of the pages of the website)

The first order of business is that the children's musical is finally finished! I finished it last Friday, enjoyed a 3-day weekend of no composing, and was itching to get into some new work this week.
I started with some revisions of Haiku. I've always liked the general sound world of that piece, but there was something about that piece that just wasn't interesting enough. I think I've fixed that now, though.

I've also started work on another piece to go with Haiku: Limerick. It still needs some work, but I think I like where it's going. To come in this set: Free Verse, Sonnet, and possibly something else. For some reason I think 5 pieces is good for this set.

Something exciting for the near future: a City Choir performance. On Sunday, October 25 at 5:00pm we will be performing Mozart's Requiem and Tavener's Little Requiem for Father Malachy Lynch. It's at the National Presbyterian Church in Washington, DC. If you'd like tickets, click here.

The next exciting thing coming up: fall travels! Here's the itinerary:
November 4 - Toledo, OH to visit family and friends
               5 - Ann Arbor, MI to check out the University of Michigan
               6 - another day in Toledo
               7-8 - the greater Chicago area to check out Northwestern University, see friends, and see a performance of my children's musical.

Whew... I think that's enough. I'll leave you with a recording of something I've been listening to lately: Prokofiev's Alexander Nevsky. I went to a recital at the Kennedy Center a few weeks ago of Olga Borodina, Ildar Abdrazakov, and the Washington National Opera Orchestra. One of my favorite pieces was Field of the Dead from Alexander Nevsky, which Olga sang. It was incredible. Here's the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vC_qyMIqb-s . The piece is sung from the point of view of a girl at a battlefield after the battle. She pays her respects to the fallen soldiers, and promises to marry a surviving soldier. Incredibly heavy, incredibly moving stuff.