The private social club where I work has a monthly concert. They always bring in amazingly talented performers, but the works that are programmed on the recitals aren't always particularly exciting.

I was looking forward to tonight's concert. I had heard nothing but great things about the pianist who was performing. My mood changed when I saw what he had programmed: four fantasies/fantasias by Mendelssohn, Schumann, Mozart, and Beethoven. The Beethoven was - you guessed it - "Moonlight Sonata." I can't remember exactly what the other three were, because every time I try to remember I fall asleep.

Ok, that was a little harsh. I'm sure all four are great pieces, and they're definitely four of the powerhouse composers in piano literature. But couldn't one of them have been something a little more exciting? Perform three of those four - any three - and something else. (Well, maybe not any three. I'll take Schumann or Beethoven over Mendelssohn or Mozart any day, but that's just my taste. And do we really need to hear Moonlight Sonata again? The piece that anybody who plays piano at least decently well has learned at some point or other? But I digress...)

I know the pianist was programming for the audience. The average age of members of the club is 71.5. We can probably safely assume that the average age of these concertgoers was pretty close to 71.5. These people are looking for things that they're familiar with. I'm not asking for Ligeti to be programmed- that probably wouldn't go over very well with this crowd. At least pick something that they might not all have heard before: Something by a more obscure composer whose work is similar to the others you're playing. Something from a composer with a slightly broader tonal vocabulary. Go ahead and keep it tonal, just be a little more adventurous. Make those 71.5 year olds think a little bit. Make them talk about the music. Sure, they might not love it, but they'll probably be more likely to remember that piece compared to the others.

Everyone complains that nobody will go see performances of newer music. That's why we have to be ninjas and trick them into hearing newer music by surrounding the newer pieces with the safety-blanket pieces that they'll hear on the radio on the way home and in their homes when they pop in their CDs. Maybe one of these newer pieces will catch their interest. Then they'll be more likely to listen to things more like that, and things that are another step out of their comfort zone.

I know this rant has been made many times - most more artfully than this one. I'm just particularly disappointed about the concert tonight. Such talent, and he didn't do a thing to further an
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Yay! It's done! I'm sure I'll tweak it for a while, but it's done and performable! The entire thing ended up being about 40 minutes long. It's late, but I was excited and needed to post this.

Now I can devote more attention to my orchestra piece (which might be named The Necromancer... is that hokey?), the libretto to the Lilith opera, the song recital (which looks like it actually is happening), and now a potential opera performance that some friends and I are discussing.

More on the song recital: What I think will happen is the singers will each sing something of mine and something by another composer. I might even sing myself!

More on the opera performance? Well, I don't want to give away anything yet. This is full of a lot of maybes, and I don't want to jinx it. It quite possibly will include a staged performance of The Name on the Door, though, and that's exciting.
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I just made some huge changes to the website: Everything in the Experience and The Music tabs now is broken into different pages by content. Now, if you want to see one piece of information, you don't have to wade through a bunch of other information to get it! Check it out!
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Just yesterday (coughcoughwhileIwasboredatworkcoughcough) I started working on the libretto for the first of the operas that's meant to be a companion piece to The Name on the Door. This one deals with Adam, Eve, and Lilith... probably set in 1967. It may or may not involve brownies.

Anyway, at this point I'm just to a confrontation between Lilith and Eve. Once I get finished with this libretto (which is very, very rough at this stage) I'd love it if I had a few people take a look at it. I might need extra help trying to keep it in 1967
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The past few days have actually been somewhat good for me, creatively.

I have a start on "The Good Night," the last song I have yet to write for Love is Not the Last Room. Well, it's my third or fourth start, but I don't think I'm scrapping this one. Thanks, Prokofiev, for the ideas. You'll probably hear the more obvious idea if you listen to it, but that led to a less obvious idea #2, which probably only in my head. Oh, idea #2 owes a little bit to Shakespeare, too. (Cryptic much?)

The real progress was made in the orchestral piece. I spent the last week or so listening to some of the great orchestrators (or, at least the greats that I have full scores for.) Listening to Stravinsky's Firebird gave me some great ideas for colors in the piece, and I'm able to reference those colors for recurring musical ideas throughout the piece. In just two days of orchestrating, I'm 2/3 of the way through the piece! It's moving by much more quickly than the past couple times I've tried to orchestrate this. So, thanks, Stravinsky, for letting me borrow some of the crayons from your box.

Oh, and the piece doesn't actually sound like Stravinsky. It sounds like another piece of mine, Cogito ergo sum, which I've been told sounds like Bartok. Well, Cogito ergo sum kind of feels like a practice piece for this new piece. Much more involved. 

So yes, thank you Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Bartok, and, in a roundabout way, Shakespeare.

Also, while I was listening to the great orchestrators, I rediscovered this amazing piece. Strauss didn't normally write with his heart on his sleeve, but he totally did here. This isn't the direction I wanted to go with my new piece, but I had to listen to this... several times. Give it a good listen yourself (along with the other two youtube videos that make up the full performance). Trust me. You'll love it.
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I've been working a lot. Not just on music: My job's been hectic, my chorus rehearsal schedule is sometimes a bit much (concert this weekend), doctoral applications (long done, but they took a lot of the time toward the end of 2010), and just general business from life.

I have been writing, though:

As of last night, Love is Not the Last Room is 17/18 done! Only one song left! It's a tough one, though- the last soprano solo. I've been wrestling with it for a while. Hopefully a good idea will come to me soon!

The 365 Project is coming along well. I finished Autumn back in December, and I'm really happy with it. I think it's one of the prettiest things I've ever written. I have mixed feelings about Winter so far, but the last few days have produced some music I like for that.

The Inspiration Ring has kind of taken a back burner for all of us, but it should get started up again soon.

As soon as LINTLR is completely finished, I need to dive headfirst into my orchestral piece that I've been talking about writing for such a long time. This really needs to be finished and in my portfolio!

Also, I have a new collaboration starting up soon: My friend Ashley Alden wants to create a staged song cycle, based on the life of Cleopatra, with me. She's writing the words and will sing it, and I just have to write the music! I'm looking forward to the project, though- I think it could be really interesting. More details to come on that project later.

Some other things I want to do soon:
-Review the CD of string quartets I recently got
-Blog about composing and songwriting with words first, or adding words to existing music
-Organize a recital - Yes, I know, ANOTHER one. I've been itching to get work performed again for a while!

So, this post's title: "Lots of progress, not much progress"
That's what I feel like lately. I'm getting a lot of work accomplished, but nothing's finished. I feel like I have nothing to show for all my work, but soon that will change.
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 Busy day! Aside from the normal humdrum weekend stuff (laundry, dishes, etc), I got a lot of composing done today:

First, I have a draft of my round 2 of the Inspiration Ring ready to send to Heather- a few more tweaks when I look at it again with fresh eyes and ears, and then I'll send it.

Then, I cleaned up the 365: Summer movement. I actually like it more as a whole than I did toward the beginning of the project. Since it's Autumn now, I've also started the first few measures of the Autumn movement. I changed my mind about keeping each movement in 4/4, quarter=80. Autumn is 3/4, quarter=70. It seems more autumnal to me. I really like where this is going so far.

After that, I tackled Love is Not the Last Room some more. I now have another mezzo song done. That means I have 6 out of the 18 songs done. To be fair, this one went really quickly. I sort of recycled some old material from a piece for a class. The original piece had lyrics that were under copyright, so I could only use it one time for educational purposes. Since I liked it and it could never be heard again, why not recycle the music? It fits the new piece perfectly.

Of the remaining 12 songs in LiNtLR, 5 are interludes/the introduction, so they should all go pretty quickly. So really, only 7 full songs left to write: I'm just about halfway done!
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So, I had another idea for a new project, which is hopefully going to happen:

A photographer, a writer, a poet, another composer and I are all sending short pieces to each other which will then serve as the inspiration for a new short piece. This new piece will be sent out again, and... you see the ring happening here.

Writer sends to composer sends to photographer sends to poet sends to composer, lather, rinse, repeat.

Once we get these first five rounds done, I'll share what we created!

Other than that, the 365 project is still chuggin' along. Love is Not the Last Room has slowed down a bit, but I think once I have a little more time this will charge ahead again.
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I've re-thought what I'm doing with the song cycle. It's going to be slightly more Rorem-esque in scope than I had originally planned, but I think it'll still go fairly quickly.


The song cycle is now called "Love is Not the Last Room," a line from the last poem of the set. It will be for soprano, mezzo-soprano, tenor, and baritone soloists, with a piano accompaniment. Each singer will have 3 solos. There is also a finale quartet, and there will be an intro and a few transitions with various groupings of the singers based on material from the quartet. All in all there will be 18 movements, but many are around a minute long.


I have three pieces done so far- "Oh, Every Day that Dawns" (soprano... previously written, but recycled for this), "A Cry" (soprano), "Singers" (tenor). I'm also pretty much done with the vocal line for the final quartet- it just needs some tweaking and for the piano part to be fleshed out. Several other songs are sketched out a bit, too.


More details once I have them!
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Hey everybody. I made a couple tiny edits to my page today (on Other Experience and Contact/Links).

I started working on my 365 Project last Monday. So far, I'm unsure about whether this will be a good, performable, presentable piece of music... but the strict nature of the writing is forcing my creative juices to flow. If nothing else, this time next year I'll be able to pull out some interesting material to use again in another project.

I've also been compiling and organizing public domain poetry for a song cycle. I actually have poetry picked out for two separate song cycles: one on Loss, and one on Love. The Loss cycle will be for soprano and either tenor or baritone. The Love cycle will be for either tenor or baritone (likely whatever voice I don't use for the first cycle.)

I'm excited to get to writing!
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