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The Symphony: Influences (1)

Saturday, September 13th, 2025

This post is one of a series explaining and exploring the process and documenting the premiere of my Symphony in G, “Doxology.” My influences have been many and wide-ranging, so there will be two posts about them.

No creative work springs ex nihilo from a human mind, and for thirty-odd years, since my days exploring classical music four CDs at a time from the public library, I have been thinking about the genre of the symphony, listening to its most famous examples (and some less-famous), talking about it with people interested and not, and pondering what my contribution to the genre might be.

To say that I, like Newton, have stood on the shoulders of giants is an understatement, and while this new work is in many ways the finest I have been able to make in the times and circumstances I have lived, there are also many works that it fails to compare to. I don’t know that I can say that this is a work, or that I am a composer, that pushes the art form forward: it pushes my art forward in important ways, but I don’t expect to be included in future music appreciation courses.

Nonetheless, the symphonist must decide just what a symphony is, and what it means to write one. My solution is certainly not the only answer, or necessarily a correct answer in everyone’s eyes. It is, of course, shaped by my decades of listening, analysis, and conducting, and often by the music that I considered during the six years my symphony was a work-in-progress.

What follows, then, is a shortlist of symphonies–and symphonists–that were in my mind before and during those years. The creative DNA of my symphony can be found in these works.

Brahms

The four symphonies of Johannes Brahms loom large over any latter-day symphonist, or should. In the early days of this blog, I spent eighteen months working through Mahler’s nine numbered symphonies, and while I learned a great deal from the experience, Brahms’ works have been and remain more foundational. As sprawling and wonderful as Mahler’s works are, they aren’t on this list of significant influences, and I will have to think more about why that is: I suspect it is because of their deeply personal language that demands public expression of what for me is a more private experience.

Brahms’ First Symphony was one of the first symphonies that I played, with Peter Wilson and the Columbus Symphony Youth Orchestra. The trombone part is crucial, but limited to the final movement, but even so, I relished exploring this work–when we began it, I hadn’t even realized that Brahms wrote symphonies, only that he was The Lullaby Guy. I’ve always felt a kinship with Brahms’ process of this piece, which gestated over a long time–decades–as the composer worried about how he would stack up to what came before.

In preparation for that youth orchestra audition, I purchased a CD reissue of George Szell’s 1966 recording of Brahms’ First with the Cleveland Orchestra. I first heard it live in 1993 in Youth Orchestra rehearsal and the same year as an audience member at a concert of the Columbus Symphony Orchestra: I remember Alessandro Sicilliani’s shockingly fast opening tempo in the first movement, which was unconventional, but I rather liked it.

Later, Brahms’ Second Symphony was the audition repertoire for my first year of college, and I discovered its finale, one of my favorite symphonic movements. The Third and Fourth are just as wonderful in their own ways, as well. I often tell my music appreciation students to take a rainy afternoon and listen to all four Brahms symphonies and know that they will have spent their time wisely.

Beethoven

Like Brahms, I too have had to consider the legacy of Beethoven as I have considered the symphony. As a trombonist, I’m sidelined from six of Beethoven’s nine symphonies, but as a conductor, I have been able to lead the Lakeland Civic Orchestra in four of them: the Fifth, Eighth, First, and Second. I’m not completely sure which of the bunch I heard first in performance–I think it was probably the Fourth and the Seventh with the Dresden Staatskapelle, on tour in Columbus under Giuseppe Sinopoli in 1993 or 1994. By that point, I had become obsessed with Toscanini’s renderings of the cycle with the NBC Symphony Orchestra, which to this day are my go-to recordings, in the rerelease by RCA Victor on CD. I remember a few weeks in the winter of my first year of college when I would slip up to my dorm room after lunch for a daily dose of Beethoven. I would put one of those five CDs in my player and hear a movement or so.

My symphony, of course, takes the four-movement plan that Beethoven (mostly) followed. He didn’t invent that plan, but the influence of his works makes anything else seem a little bit suspect (although the symphony-in-one-movement has enormous appeal for me as well). Like Brahms, the centrality of motivic development–and the ability to leave that technique aside at times–is important in my work. I often turn to George Grove’s book on Beethoven’s symphonies, and I remember my first reading of it realizing that Beethoven’s obsession with fugato technique was perhaps not to my liking: I once used it quite a bit in my work, but it came to seem obvious.

And then there’s that First Symphony, the harbinger of great things to come. Grove points out that, while it is good enough, if it were from the pen of a composer who didn’t go on to bigger and better things, it would be completely forgotten. We only know it because it’s by Beethoven. But in 2006, when I was thirty, I made one of my more serious abortive attempts at writing a symphony because that’s how old Beethoven was when he wrote his first–I figured it might be time, but, of course, it wasn’t.

Aaron Copland: Symphony No. 3

On the day I finished creating the instrumental parts for my symphony, July 4, 2025, Becky and I got in the car to pick up Noah and Melia from church camp. The local classical radio station, WCLV, was playing American music as befit the day, and the second movement of Aaron Copland’s Third Symphony came on. I said to Becky that this was music that I had considered a “mark to beat” as I composed, and if any one composition deserves that distinction, it is this. My professional bio for a long time said that I wanted to compose the Great American Symphony, but with his Third, Copland beat me to it by seventy-five years. The recording you’ll find in my collection is on a 1996 Chandos disc featuring Neeme Jarvi leading the Detroit Symphony Orchestra–an ensemble that looms large in my understanding of the symphony. I first heard the piece live in a 2013 performance by Marin Alsop with the Cleveland Orchestra. Copland’s Third is broad, accessible, and unapologetic. It articulates and sums up, to me, much of what audiences have come to love about its composer’s music: lyricism, thrilling scoring, rhythmic vitality. I admire the work’s honesty and its direct appeal. As I wrote a piece about faith, based on a call to praise that is also a statement of faith, Copland’s Third stood as a model for the kind of community truth-telling and celebration that the Doxology also represents. The Fanfare for the Common Man, the basis for the fourth movement of Copland’s piece, appears in a guise and fashion that in some ways supersedes the original–although that piece has been a personal touchstone longer than I have been interested in the form of the symphony as well. My own quotation of Old Hundredth in the fourth movement of my symphony, while different in execution, is inspired by Copland’s self-quotation.

Andrzej Panufnik: Sinfonia Votiva (Symphony No. 8)

Back when I was an avid purchaser of CDs through the mail via the BMG Record Club, a recording of Roger Sessions’ Concerto for Orchestra caught my eye, and on the same disc was this symphony by a Polish composer I had never heard of. I can’t say that I was particularly struck by the music or that it became something I listened to regularly, or that I was inspired to listen to the rest of Panufnik’s oeuvre. But something that did stick with me was the diagram plotting out the entire structure of the 22-minute work, included in the liner notes (and pictured in the video linked above). I was a graduate student in composition at the time, and I was struggling with how to develop larger forms. As tempting as it was to sit down at the computer and begin putting notes in to the score, I was coming to see that, as with writing words, pre-writing is an essential part of composition. Fifteen and twenty years later, I would develop my own diagrams for my Symphony in G, and take a single page–in this case, an existing hymn–as my overarching structure.

The result is, I think, as with Panufnik, a work that balances expression with structure, which is something that I find particularly symphonic. While some composers aspire to formal or structural freedom, and many listeners claim to relish it, the truth is that the vast majority of successful works are built around relatively simple approaches and structures. I’ve referred elsewhere in this blog to my favor for Nico Muhly’s “one-page sketch” for a work, and now I realize that Panufnik’s work led me to this idea several years earlier than Muhly’s music even appeared on my radar (I completed graduate school around the time Muhly started to develop an international reputation).

I’m also intrigued that the Boston Symphony Orchestra commissioned this work for its centennial in 1982. I’ve always had an interest in these big anniversary celebrations, both because I was born in the midst of one (the United States Bicentennial) and, musically, because I attended the premieres of many of the fanfares written for the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra for their centennial in 1994-1995. I love the idea of marking these milestones, especially with music. I wrote my own piece, The Lovely Soul of Lakeland, for the Lakeland Civic Orchestra to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the founding of our sponsoring institution, Lakeland Community College in 2017, and I can only hope that I will be around for the 100th birthday of the Lakeland Civic Orchestra in the late 2030s.

Alan Hovhaness: Symphony No. 2, Op. 132, “Mysterious Mountain”

I first encountered the music of Alan Hovhaness driving myself home from high school one afternoon, when WOSU (89.7FM) would usually play a symphonic work during the 3pm hour. The choice that day was Hovhaness’ Symphony No. 50, “Mt. St. Helens,” and as I drove, the still, quiet second movement, describing Spirit Lake before the eruption gave way to the final movement, “Volcano,” with its two sharp bass drum strokes exploding into chaos. I was fascinated by the topic of this symphony: although I was young, I was fascinated by the 1980 eruption of Mt. St. Helens that inspired Hovhaness when it happened, which led to my parents subscribing to National Geographic, whose 1981 issue with the volcano on the cover I thoroughly wore out. This was the 1993 recording by Gerard Schwarz and the Seattle Symphony.

I explored Hovhaness and his music more deeply through the 1990s and into the 2000s. In college, I studied his Symphony No. 4, written for winds, and looked into his other band music while also keeping an eye out for those elusive recordings–there are many released originally on LP that hadn’t been re-released on CD, and many works that have never been recorded at all from this prolific composer. When I was a high school band director, I programmed The Prayer of St. Gregory the year Hovhaness died, 2000. My first suite for string orchestra was an homage to three composers whose music was an inspiration to me in my early years: in between movements celebrating Philip Glass and Jean Sibelius is a Meditation in Memoriam Maestro Hovhaness. I haven’t had a chance to return to his music as a conductor, but if I did, it would likely be his Symphony No. 2.

I first heard “Mysterious Mountain” in the 1990s, on a concert with the Cincinnati Symphony. It didn’t make the same immediate impression that “Mt. St. Helens” made–it’s just a different kind of piece, and really, more in line with the composer’s personality. On repeated listening, my esteem for the work grew, and I now think it one of the finest American symphonies. I admire its sincerity, its craft, and its succinctness.

There is the first group of my symphonic influences. Look for a second post shortly, along with more updates on the rehearsal process in the run-up to the premiere of my Symphony in G, “Doxology” with the Lakeland Civic Orchestra on Sunday, November 9 at Lakeland Community College in Kirtland, Ohio. Information and tickets here.

Tags:Aaron Copland, Alan Hovhaness, Alessandro Sicilliani, Andrzej Panufnik, Beethoven, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Brahms, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Fanfare for the Common Man, George Grove, George Szell, Giuseppe Sinopoli, Jean Sibelius, Lakeland Civic Orchestra, Marin Alsop, Neeme Jarvi, Nico Muhly, Peter Stafford Wilson, Roger Sessions, symphony, Symphony in G "Doxology", Toscanini, WCLV
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Symphony: The First Rehearsal

Tuesday, August 26th, 2025

An old piece of advice given to composers is to not attend the first rehearsal of your piece. I think I first heard this in graduate school, when I had written Five Rhythmic Etudes for The Ohio State University Symphony Orchestra, and Dr. Marshall Haddock was fairly clear that coming to the first rehearsal–as I gladly would have–would be a bad idea.

The performers and conductor just need a chance to figure out the big questions, to answer those questions in their own way, and to, honestly, make a mess. Composers can be insecure, and might panic at the sound of musicians–even good ones–sight-reading their way through the music that the composer has labored over, seemingly ignoring the details painstakingly put into the score one at a time, but also at the same time missing the very obvious big picture.

So, I suppose one drawback of writing a symphony for the orchestra that you conduct is that you must, of course, be present at the first rehearsal.

For my Symphony in G, “Doxology,” that was yesterday evening. Over the summer months, as it got closer, I became anxious about putting this music before a group–the Lakeland Civic Orchestra–that has grown to be my most cherished musical collaboration over the last thirteen years. We have come a long way, and had some great moments, and they have been patient with me as I’ve grown as a conductor and musician, forgiving my missteps and tolerating my preferences and foibles. I, in return, have tried to give them the experience they are looking for: meaningful music, played as well as we can, with opportunities for growth, and for community.

Putting this work in front of them was an exercise in mutual trust: I trust the orchestra to do their best with what I’m offering, and the orchestra trusts to put them in a situation in which they can be proud of the result.

It was the first rehearsal of the semester, so we began with a fair amount of housekeeping and preliminaries: announcements, passing out music, collecting information. It was like any other first rehearsal of the term. By 7:50, it was time to make music, and we turned to the first movement.

I had long thought about how to start this rehearsal. For better or worse, I decided that the orchestra should hear it as our audience will hear it: from start to finish, and so we began at the beginning. With a word to the violins about performing their natural harmonics, we dove in. We had a few absences last night, but a satisfying chunk of the orchestra was present, and reading overall went very well.

I think the first movement is far and away the most challenging–we took the faster sections under tempo, and it will take some work, but the music was, to my ear, mostly recognizable, and for large stretches, we stayed together. It still took about 25 minutes to get through the movement (about double the calculated time), after some starting and stopping, but I’m confident that it will arrive if not at my marked tempi, at least close. I will admit to being one of the weak links: the changing meter at this speed is going to be something that I need practice with before I can truly lead it with confidence.

We continued through the next three movements, with the members of the orchestra surprising me with their persistence, diligence, and willingness to go forward: again, this is trust between us, and it is working. Whatever concerns I might have had about a disastrous first rehearsal proved unfounded: we moved slowly, and at times haltingly, but no more than with any other reading session. I tried not to get bogged down in explanations, although the aleatoric section in the second movement took some time, but with positive results. All told, it was a successful and satisfying hour spent getting a first overview of the piece: I didn’t stop to rehearse or correct; only when necessary to regroup. I have my marching orders for the next few weeks of rehearsals, skipping next Monday for Labor Day.

My overwhelming emotion about last night is gratitude. I’ve asked 50 people to volunteer to follow my compositional whims, and they’ve accepted, so far. I’m grateful that God has put my life in such a way to make the Lakeland Civic Orchestra a part of it, and that the members of the orchestra share my vision for what a community orchestra can be. It has made my job at Lakeland a job that I can’t imagine leaving willingly, no matter how many sections of Popular Music I have to teach online.

After we played the piece, I waxed poetic about how I felt about the group: I think I truly would rather have them premiere this piece than a professional orchestra made of strangers. A performance by the Cleveland Orchestra or the Cincinnati Symphony might be good for my reputation in the wider world, but it would in many ways ring hollow: strangers would be paid to play just another work, with rehearsals governed as much by the clock. The result might be closer to perfection than what we will attain at Lakeland this fall, but it wouldn’t be nearly as personal, nearly as meaningful.

And it was a relief: this piece I have worked at for six years was not an exercise in futility. It’s a piece we can play, and there isn’t any reason to rethink the program for November 9–which is fortunate, because the news is starting to be out there. Last week in the State of the College talk, Lakeland’s president Dr. Sunil Ahuja, who has been supportive of the Civic Music Program, mentioned both the program and the fact that I was writing a piece. People are talking, at least in my little world.

Last night, one musician asked if anyone had played my symphony before, and, since we had just finished our reading, I responded, “you have.” With that, I have not only written a symphony, it has been performed, and for perhaps its most important audience, the people who I wrote it for, the Lakeland Civic Orchestra.

Tags:aleatoric, collaboration, first rehearsal, Five Rhythmic Etudes, gratitude, Lakeland Civic Orchestra, Lakeland Community College, Marshall Haddock, mixed meter, Ohio State University, orchestral music, reading, rehearsal, Sunil Ahuja, Symphony in G "Doxology", trust
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I am a symphonist

Tuesday, July 8th, 2025

In 2019, I decided to write a symphony. I have written that symphony.

Over the next few months until the premiere, I want to blog about it, so here’s the first of a series of posts.

This was something I’d been thinking about for a long time, since the 1990s when I first started to figure out what a symphony was beyond a name that some classical pieces had. I considered naming the orchestra piece that I wrote at the conclusion of my doctorate “symphony,” but in 2006, I didn’t feel like those sketches were getting much of anywhere. I’m embarrassed to say that even as a doctoral student, my approach was usually to just sit down at the computer, open Sibelius, and start at the beginning, assuming that the ending would take care of itself. I knew that there was more to the writing process from my time writing for English classes, and I had a sense that there was a certain amount of pre-writing that could be done, but it didn’t seem like pre-writing was something I could have brought to a weekly composition lesson: I needed drafts, and so pre-writing tended to be something that happened in my head, not something worked out on paper or the computer screen. I could have learned from my study of computer music and synthesis about the importance of pre-writing: using MaxMSP or some other tool to build a virtual instrument and the workspace to use it in are certainly a form of pre-writing. I did produce an orchestral piece in 2006, Five Rhythmic Etudes, but those five pieces are distinctly not a symphony, and they are studies more than they are fully fledged movements. I stand by them: they work well enough and have a certain appeal: they just aren’t a symphony.

And so I began in 2019 with a clear idea, and a timeline. I wanted this to be a 45th birthday present to myself, and I knew that I worked best with a deadline, so I decided to commission myself with a formal agreement. In the spot describing the work, I wrote:

a symphony for full orchestra in four movements of 30-40 minutes’ duration based on the Doxology (“Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow”)
Commissioning Agreement, May 29, 2019

This idea had been bouncing around my head for at least a couple of years at this point. We had attended Shoregate United Methodist Church, and on most Sundays, after the offering was collected, we would sing #96 in the United Methodist Hymnal, a song I had known all the way back to my childhood. The idea was one movement for each line of the four-line hymn, resulting in the classic plan of the symphony, with the hymn and the ideas behind it serving as a unifying element.

The timeline called for a performance in November 2021, and by the end of 2019, I had planned, sketched, and mostly drafted the first two movements. I felt well on track to complete the work, even if things were moving a little more slowly than I wanted them to. I had moved quickly through the first movement, and got to something I liked, if it wasn’t perfect. I celebrated my “golden spike moment” in a blog post in October 2019. The second movement seemed trickier: I was trying out a very different language than the first movement, and I wasn’t quite as sure that where it was taking me was the right direction. Then I made the mistake of going back to look at the first movement again, and was immediately convinced that it was a disaster. I declared in a second blog post in November that I was “in a stall,” and I wasn’t sure how to proceed.

I probably don’t need to detail what was going on in the world in late 2019, but suffice to say we were starting to hear about a new respiratory virus in China, even as the Democrats were attempting their first impeachment of President Trump, which sucked up all the news about the threat to world health. In those days, I was still active on social media, especially Twitter, which was good in terms of maintaining connections, but not always in terms of those connections being healthy. I’ve written about this before as well. I stopped composing the symphony for the remainder of the year, which led to further breaks: I have a tendency to slow down in the winter months this way that I’ve documented on this blog many times over. The second movement was planned and sketched, but the full draft remained somewhat incomplete: connected to itself at times by tenuous single threads, and yet I let it be, planning to return in the summer.

But as 2020 became the COVID year, I found myself teaching completely online, including my private trombone students, and with the Lakeland Civic Orchestra on indefinite hiatus. Without an orchestra, it made little sense to work on a symphony, and I was already spending far too much time at the computer just to complete my teaching work. I was also helping Melia and Noah adjust to virtual schooling and supporting Becky in her work, since she was brought back to her job in retail as soon as it was deemed possible. We were lucky in our COVID experience: we didn’t get sick, and no one close to us died. Our livelihoods were never seriously in question, and lockdown and the summer after were honestly wonderful family times in many ways.

When Fall 2020 rolled around, there were decisions to be made about how the ensembles at Lakeland would function. Full in-person rehearsals were deemed impossible and unsafe, and the result was two virtual concerts–one each semester of 2020-2021. Better than nothing, but not ideal, and certainly not the place for a 40-minute symphony. Between the two concerts, there were about 30 minutes of orchestra music, with each person recording their parts independently, and then stitched together Zoom-style.

I stopped composing completely at first, and then in Summer 2020 began to write a few things, but not the symphony. I didn’t know what to do with it, and resolved to come back to it, even though it meant reconfiguring the timeline and missing the deadline. I didn’t know if the Lakeland Civic Orchestra would ever return to what it had been in March 2020, or when we might meet in person again. That turned out to not be until Fall 2021, and over the next few years, we worked to get back to where we had been in 2020: it wasn’t always easy, but the hiatus really brought a renewed sense of purpose and community and an understanding of how precious our Monday night rehearsals are.

We also aren’t quite the same orchestra as we were in 2019. Musicians come and go all the time, but we had more than a few who ended up leaving permanently, some of whom were long-time stalwarts who had been with the Lakeland Civic Orchestra longer than me. One, tubist Ken Hughes, passed away as we were preparing to return to in-person performance, and there is more than one passage in the first two movements that I wrote with him in mind. We’ve found the successors we needed, but not their replacements.

In Fall 2024, we were back in full swing, and I think our 2024-2025 season saw us back to the place we could have been in Fall 2020: good-sized sections, relatively few ringers (which the dean likes), going after challenging repertoire. It also saw Lakeland in a difficult moment, with budget cuts, declining enrollment, and a new college president whose stated goal was to balance our budget and right-size the college. I wasn’t sure what this would mean for the music program, although we lost our Art Gallery and our Civic Theater program early on in the process. I decided that if I were going to write a symphony for the Lakeland Civic Orchestra it had better be sooner, not later.

I pulled out my old sketches to remind myself of how I had been proceeding. The kernel of the third movement had been in my mind for a while: I often remember Russel Mikkelson’s dictum that “composers are like poker players who like to show you their cards at the beginning of the hand,” and the third movement behaves that way: three notes, from the bassline of the third line of the hymn, repeated. As for the first two movements, I took Nico Muhly’s suggestion and made a one-page picture of the piece, lining up sections of the music with the structure provided by the hymn tune and its bassline, while also planning out a six-minute scherzo. By the end of September, there was a continuous sketch, and by the end of October, a draft for orchestra.

In some ways, it was going back to the way I composed in 2019: I had used Muhly’s one-page idea for the first time in Channels, the Pierrot-ensemble piece I wrote for Margaret Brouwer’s Blue Streak Ensemble, and having a sense of the ending when I was at the beginning, or even the freedom to begin in the middle has been very helpful. It seems utterly naive of me now to have thought it might work otherwise for a big piece.

Then, my usual winter-into-spring down time. I worked on a few small pieces and some arranging work, but also had a teaching schedule at Lakeland that didn’t have me in the classroom: a full slate on online classes, which hadn’t happened since COVID. I felt disconnected from the College and the things–bad for many of my coworkers–that were, usually of necessity, happening there. Unlike the lockdown, I was still on campus for office hours and the occasional meeting. As I type this, I haven’t been in a classroom since December 2024, and it feels strange and wrong. I am slated to be teaching in-person in Fall 2025, but I wonder if I will ever be back to being a mostly in-person teacher.

This symphony has been an act of discipline, but also an act of faith and an act of worship. I am almost certain that I have faced spiritual warfare types of challenges on the way: the fear of COVID that led me to put all my composing on pause in favor of extra sleep for my immune system; the uncertainty of whether there would be a good moment to program this piece; the doubts as to whether this piece would be too explicitly Christian for some members of the orchestra to bear; the self-doubt and hesitancy to bring it to completion. The last year has been no exception, and the route of attack was through my son, whose social and academic struggles led him to some desperate decisions, although thankfully not irreversible ones, that have had our family in a fair amount of turmoil and worry. I will perhaps detail these at a later time, but it took enormous resolve to come back for the fourth movement.

I worried about the Christian theme of this piece, intended as it is for an orchestra sponsored by a public institution. We have done plenty of music on Christian themes over the years, of course, and a certain amount of Jewish music as well, plus music inspired by pagan mythology. The Doxology is an invitation to praise and a hymn of praise, and is nearly as ecumenical as a Christian hymn can be: if you acknowledge God, you acknowledge that He is worthy of our praise. But the last line, “Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,” marks it as specifically Christian.

There are, of course, versions of the hymn text that tone down its Trinitarianism, and they usually center on changes to the last line. I rejected these in the end, because it would be dishonest to pretend that it wasn’t the text we sang every Sunday at Shoregate that was the inspiration for this music. It would be bringing a lie into this call to praise and community that I was working on, and would only deepen the imperfection of what could only be an imperfect work from an imperfect composer. The text that stands is Thomas Ken’s 1674 lines:

Praise God, from whom all blessings flow;
Praise him, all creatures here below;
Praise him above, ye heavenly host;
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.
United Methodist Hymnal, #96.

I made my Muhly-diagram of the fourth movement in December 2024, but didn’t return to the music until April 2025 and completed the sketch on April 10. In that week, on April 8, there was one beautiful hour of creative flow. We had been attending Willoughby Bible Church since the new year, and Noah had an activity there. Normally, I bring a book or my phone, but I wanted to make some headway on my sketching. I let myself into the sanctuary and helped myself to the baby grand piano. The setting, the instrument, or just my preparation for the moment led me through a large chunk of the fourth movement, sketching development that I would eventually score in a flugelhorn solo with accompaniment. I was sure at that moment that I would finish the piece.

With four complete movements in hand, I returned to my drafts to turn them into full orchestra scores. My drafts had one staff for each type of instrument, plus notes on percussion, so it was a matter of adding staves–moving wood, as I like to think of it. There was still plenty of creative work: the matter of fleshing out the second movement, and making some decisions that I hoped would make the first movement more practical for the performers. I have long gotten out of the habit of writing notes only with no dynamics in the first draft, but there will still many decisions to be made in that department as well, along with decisions about bowings and other articulations. May was a busy month with online teaching as classes wrapped up, but by the end of the month, I had full scores for three movements, with the fourth following in June.

When to call it done? June 12, 2025 is plausible, and on that day, I exported MIDI files from Sibelius, converted them to mp3s in Audacity, burned them to a CD, and took the long way to pick my daughter up at daycamp while I listened to all thirty-six minutes in a row to make sure it was good.

But that still wasn’t the day: someone could take the score I completed at that moment and create materials for performance, but as I am not rich or famous, that someone needed to be me. I took another week to create staves for the individual parts, plus some staves that would make a more plausible MIDI playback than the way the parts would need to look in the first and second movements. The third week of June was editing the scores of the individual movements, and editing the parts lasted into July. I exported the final PDF file–Percussion 2–on July 4, 2025, just before Becky and I went to pick up Noah and Melia from a week at church camp.

I have written a symphony.

It took a little more than six years, although a lot of other things happened in between: a pandemic, a lockdown, an election, an insurrection, two wars, another election, my son’s middle school years, my daughter’s elementary school years, a change of careers for my wife, my forty-fourth through forty-ninth birthdays, my father’s dementia diagnosis, my brother becoming a citizen of another country, two Summer Olympic Games, many changes in my job, my concept of who I am, and my concept of what the world is. There is no static, single person that wrote this piece, and no single moment that it depicts, but I believe that it expresses values and ideas that are at the core of my being.

I have written a symphony. I didn’t know how to write a symphony until I wrote one, and if I had known just what it would take, and how long it would be until I could say it, I might not have started in the first place, but it was time then, and over the next few months, it will be time to let others hear it.

I have written a symphony: S.D.G.

Tags:Christianity, community, composing, COVID, Doxology, Five Rhythmic Etudes, Lakeland Civic Orchestra, Lakeland Community College, Margaret Brouwer, moving wood, Nico Muhly, post-COVID life, praise, Shoregate UMC, spirituality, symphony
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Late Night Ramblings of an Absentee Blogger

Tuesday, June 18th, 2024

So, yeah… seven months has been a blur, and I don’t exactly know what happened to the first half of 2024. I certainly haven’t been blogging, and I mostly, until the last week or so, haven’t been composing.

So… it’s a hot night and it’s pushing 3am, and I already did some composing, so it must be the perfect time to blog.

Here’s why I haven’t been:

Spring 2024 was not my favorite semester at work. The inevitable happened in a long slide that reached a tipping point during the pandemic: I taught only one in-person class (plus orchestra) at Lakeland, and the rest of my full-time load was online and administrative.

I would say that I don’t know how I felt about that… but I know exactly how I felt about it, and it’s the same way that I feel about Slipknot.

I’ve been teaching online in one way or another almost all of my college teaching career. It has never not been a challenge. It has never not been frustrating for me, and certainly for my students. I like to think that I’ve gotten better at it, but it did not feel that way this last year, and it especially didn’t feel that way this Spring. I will spare my readers all the gory details of student underacheivement and the resulting instructor soul-searching and course revision: suffice to say that I’m trying some new things this summer (I’m a week into that term), and we’ll see how that goes.

But on top of that, work this Spring was all staring at the computer, implementing my planned course, seeing what students did (or didn’t) do, and putting in my rubric scores and comments.

Of course, having had all the screen time I could handle in my 9-5 work day, I just wasn’t all that keen about opening up good old Sibelius 6 and moving notes around. I gave up my 6 to 7am composition time during COVID, and I have to say, I never really got back into that groove. It’s too easy to stay up late with Becky, then read for a while and even with the best of intentions, not be energized to get out of bed with the first alarm, especially on those winter mornings. (Ahh… give me some winter mornings right now, please as we deal with the first heat wave of the summer).

So, the last couple of years, I’ve tried a different plan: get the kids on the school bus at 7:45am, have a shower by 8:15 or so, and have most of an hour before I needed to get to Lakeland. This broke down last Spring as well, as out of the shower crept later and later, and answering email took up most of the time leftover.

At one time Fridays were a time I could devote to composition, but between the demands of the online classes and Friday laundry day, that time slipped away from me.

But all excuses: because if I had really wanted to blog or compose, I would have found them time.

I haven’t been all that busy… I just haven’t wanted to.

I completed two pieces in the first three months of 2024: a one-minute fanfare for the Cleveland Composers Guild collaboration with Factory Seconds Brass Trio, and my usual contribution to the Guild’s Junior Concert, a piece for a young pianist about dragons. Nice little pieces, neither of which took much more than a few hours, total, to come up with. Then, not much of anything, when I should have been writing a trumpet piece for Matthew Swihart–I got the first two minutes in, but I couldn’t get back into it.

I missed the deadline, which was May 1.

I got a start on it over winter break, then set it aside, telling myself there was Spring Break, then telling myself there was the whole month of April, and then telling myself there was no way it would get finished in April, and sending Matt an email explaining myself.

Meanwhile, it was a fairly good Spring for performances, which was heartening: Composers Guild in January, April, and May–a total of four premieres; a fantastic trip with Becky to Williamsburg, Virginia for the William & Mary band to play Mysterious Marvels; my first performance in Nebraska, of I Live With the Fiction that I Never Get Mad by Andrew White; the premiere of my string piece for the Wake Forest Youth Orchestra; a second performance of my cello piece at Dennison University… I mean… not bad at all, really. Makes one feel like a real composer, as usual.

It’d be nice to have more of that–as always, it ebbs and flows, and lately it’s been an ebb. The News page on the old website is looking pretty thin, but I can only blame my slump as a composer for it.

But only now, a month after my mostly-online Spring, am I starting to get back to writing music. My summer section of Popular Music is small, and leaves time for writing, and Becky is home for the summer, so there is some coverage for me, and the kids don’t need me to be right downstairs with them anymore, and we’re not doing swimming lessons–I miss the poolside reading time, though. I find myself thinking about projects again that might work–would this person collaborate, or how could I make this happen.

In the last week, I took my SATB choral piece Christmas Eve and turned it into something that the Lakeland Civic Flute Choir can use, and I’ve started cutting down my organ cycle Seven Last Words into a suite that I can submit for the Guild’s collaboration with the American Guild of Organists–I’m trying to compress it to about 25% of its original size, and it’s been interesting to revisit that piece. Next up is the trumpet piece–I watched this video from my former student and collaborator Maria Finkelmeier, who wasn’t a composer when I first met her, but has now really taken the ball and run with it: one of her suggestions really hit me as a solution to this trumpet quandary, and we’ll see where it takes me.

And from there?

I listened to the symphony again last week. I think I still want to finish it.
I want to write a piece about the eclipse in April–I don’t care how cliche that sounds.
Some reading I did led me to a musical motive that I want to carry around and think about and make into the kernel of a piece.
Again, thinking about collaborators to approach.

And I’ve been tromboning again. This spring I had eight students in my studio–more than ever, and Wednesdays at the Fine Arts Association got long, but having some older students in the mix has been good as well. On top of that, fellow Guild member Cara Haxo has written me a trombone and piano piece, and we’re wrapping it up and starting to think about performances. It’s good to have different gears to switch into.

Not long ago, Becky remarked that I didn’t seem to be as interested in composition as I once was. I’m not sure that was quite correct: it’s just easy to get away from something that isn’t your job and that takes you away from other commitments. And I think I did need a break–more screen time wasn’t the answer this term. But my past experience has taught me two things: 1) that a week or so of being back at it doesn’t mean that I’m permanently back at it, and 2) it will be there when I’m ready to come back to it, even if there are long stretches where I can just think about it.

Tags:Cleveland Composers Guild, composing, composing routine, deadlines, Factory Seconds Brass Trio, hiatus, late-night, Maria Finkelmeier, Matthew Swihart, performances, taking a break, teaching, trombone, trumpet
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The (Mostly) Empty Horizon, or, Is Anyone Looking for Something to Play?

Sunday, February 12th, 2023

I was updating the News page on my website, which I hadn’t done in a while, and I realized that there wasn’t all that much to say: the horizon is mostly empty at the moment. While this would be frightening if I were a full-time composer, and honestly isn’t a great feeling for this part-time composer, I’ve accepted over the past couple of decades that composing work and performances of that work both come in fairly cyclical ways, and the storm of managing multiple projects and deadlines occasionally gives way to clear skies. In some ways, I’m reaping what was sown in March 2020: I decided to slow down my work on composing new music in order to make sure that I was focusing on what my family might need during the pandemic, while at the same time, lots of performances were postponed or cancelled. The postponed performances have now mostly been presented, but lots of people still aren’t back in their “normal” groove, and at least a few of my collaborators find themselves in different positions in life than three years ago. I took about two years to really get back into a composing routine, and even so, I haven’t been putting as much time in as I was pre-pandemic. My output has slowed, and I haven’t worked as hard on the “softer” side of the work in building connections and showing my face (we’ll see if my experiment with leaving social media last year will ultimately doom my composition career).

You get energy out of a system when you put energy in, and I truthfully have been putting less energy in over the last couple of years. It isn’t that I’m no longer interested in composition: it’s just that, as for everyone else, life has been in the way. I recently listened back to a podcast interview I gave to Kendall Halman six years ago when I was in a really different kind of place, and I don’t recognize everything about myself (unsurprisingly). I don’t know that I like the guy in the podcast better, exactly, but I was honestly more assured about my place in the music ecosystem.

So, I’ve been trying to do better: submitting to more out-of-town opportunities, for one thing, although outside of the conference circuit, which I haven’t really done since 2020, I’ve never had much luck here. My sense is that most opportunities online are simply deluged by applications, so getting picked for even one is like winning the lottery. A couple of these over the years have gone my way, and it’s always gratifying, even when the only thing you get is the performance and maybe a recording or video, but my sense is that building one-on-one relationships with performers is a better way to go.

So this post: I’m going to put two lists here, and I might even decide to break radio silence on social media and share this post there: I have no idea if anyone ever looks at this blog besides me, and in some ways, I’ve felt for more than a decade that I’ve been shouting into the void with it.

If you’re interested in anything from either of these lists, use the contact form on my website.

List 1 is pieces that are ready to go, but that I think are underplayed, or which have not even had a premiere.

Orchestra: As we all know, getting performances of orchestral music is really darn hard, but if you’re looking for something, I probably have it for you.

I happen to think 2015’s …into the suggestive waters… is a really good piece for small orchestra that audiences can really enjoy, if they have the chance to hear it. It’s only had one performance, but if you think you might want to change that, give it a listen.
My 2014 Concerto for Piano and Orchestra has had two performances, and if you’re a pianist looking for an exciting 20-minute piece, look no further.
If string orchestra is more your style, my three-movement Suite for String Orchestra from 2012 pays homage to three of my favorite compositional influences; it’s had a few performances, but it’s due for a revival, and can be done by as few as nine players.
Gamer Troll Loses Control had a good premiere in 2021, and is the same instrumentation as Saint-Saens’ Carnival of the Animals. About nine minutes long, it is a tone poem based on an original fairy-tale.

Band/Large Wind Ensemble: Once upon a time, I was actually afraid to be “just” a band composer, and I knew I was wrong to feel that way. Here are a few gems:

One of my relatively few works from 2020, Majestic Fanfare is for symphonic brass ensemble. The commissioning group, Ohio Valley Majestic Brass, played it around in 2021-2022, but because of the nature of their gigs, I didn’t get a recording to share.
The last work I had premiered pre-pandemic was Mysterious Marvels for concert band (one cancelled performance was never rescheduled). It’s had one performance, and is ripe for more (it’s probably a grade 4.5 or 5).
I’ve played the solo part in 2005’s Homo sapiens trombonensis twice, and I’d love to see another trombonist pick it up. The solo part is for an advanced player (but not as hard as the Creston Fantasy), and the band part is probably a grade 5.

Choral and Vocal Music: I have two a cappella choral pieces from the last few years.

Christmas Eve from 2021 had a great set of premiere performances by Choral Spectrum that year. It’s about 3 minutes long, for SATB with a few divisi, as you can see in the score-follow video that I’ve linked.
A piece that is currently orphaned is my setting of Yeats’ Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven from 2019. Some choirs have expressed interest, but no luck yet. It’s about five minutes, for SSAATTBB.
And I Live With the Fiction That I Never Get Mad, for baritone and piano, is a long standalone song that had a premiere in 2019. I’m particularly proud of my approach in this piece, and if a baritone is looking for repertoire that addresses the impact that media can have on our lives, this might be for you.

Chamber and Solo Music: The most orphans live here, I suppose, along with a few pieces that need a second hearing.

Child’s Play from 2020 for bass clarinet duo needs a premiere. It’s about 10 minutes long, uses a few multiphonics, and is inspired by the short story of the same name by Alice Munro. I’d be up to rework this piece for another instrumentation if there’s interest.
Gamer Troll Loses Control (also listed in Orchestra) had a good premiere in 2021, and is the same instrumentation as Saint-Saens’ Carnival of the Animals. About nine minutes long, it’s a tone poem based on an original fairy-tale, itself based on children’s artwork.
Duo Capriccio is a set of variations on *that* theme by Paganini for flute and clarinet, if you need something to give variety to your recital. It had a premiere in South Dakota in 2018, and I think it should go out there again.
Autumn Fantasy from 2016, eight minutes in one movement for alto clarinet and piano, is another orphan of the collaborative process that has never had a premiere as far as I know. I’d be up for reworking this for bass clarinet, or English horn, or some other woodwind.
Meditation for cello and piano is a ten-minute, one movement piece from 2015 that had a great premiere, but needs to get out there more: it’s one of my favorites from the 2010s, and is inspired by the writings of Marcus Aurelius.
One more orphan is my 2009 Piano Trio, which had a reading session, so I have a good recording, but never a public premiere, and I think the piece deserves one. It’s about 8 minutes in one movement.

I have many more pieces for solo piano and other solo instruments with and without piano, ranging in difficulty from fairly short and simple to college-recital or professional level. Why not go check out my Works List and see what might be there for you!

List 2 is pieces that I’ve been thinking about or dreaming about, often for decades… if you’ve ever been interested in playing my music, but wondered when I’d get around to writing for your instrument or ensemble, now is probably a great time to reach out.

Music for worship. My faith is an important part of my life, but I don’t always get the chance to combine it with my compositional work. I’m not talking about contemporary Christian music here: that stuff is fine, but it’s not my bag. Let me write for your choir, organist, brass ensemble, soloists, or some combination. Anything from an offertory to a full cantata is something I’d be up to discuss.
String quartet. I wrote a student piece string quartet based on some favorite children’s books back in 2006, but I’d love the chance to do something more serious and extended for the ensemble.
Choral and vocal music. Yes, please! If you have poetry that you want set, or if you are a poet, or you just want a new piece for you or your chorus, reach out. I haven’t had enough chances to write for voices, but I love to do it when I can.
Trombone ensemble. How have I not written for trombone quartet or octet or choir before?
Band or orchestra music. Definitely something that I won’t write (usually) without a guarantee of a performance, even though I love to do it: it’s just too much work otherwise. It would be cool to take another crack at creating a silent film score like I did in 2013 for Georges Melies’ Voyage Dans La Lune. Really big bucket list piece: I have half of a forty-minute symphony written based on the chorale tune Old Hundredth (the Doxology in many churches).
Similar vein: fanfares! So much fun to write, and so exciting to put together, and I love pushing the idea of what a festive, bright, piece can be. Let me write your concert opener!
Percussion music. I’m tired of being intimidated by the cool kids in the back of the room. I want to tackle percussion ensemble, but I want to do it as a collaboration with players who will guide me through the process.
I’d love to collaborate on more dance projects. I’ve conducted for ballet, and had one of my works, Martian Dances, form the basis for some beautiful choreography. I’m a terrible dancer, but I can provide a good beat.
I’m often inspired by science, especially space. Let’s write a cool piece about the Universe, or nature, or the human brain, or DNA. What are you into?
I’m always game to write more piano music. Piano was my first instrument, although never my best. I’d love to write a second piano sonata, or a suite of pieces based on Lake Erie and its shoreline here in Northeast Ohio, or something inspired by whatever inspires you!
Solo instrument with piano. There are a few standard instruments in this combination that I’ve never tackled, and I’d be up for that, plus I’d be happy to return to any that I’ve already done. What about: viola, euphonium, double-bass, horn, trumpet, trombone, tuba, saxophone, English horn?
Any sort of ongoing project that results in multiple pieces and performances. I don’t know–hit me up! Multimedia isn’t really my thing, but I’m happy to collaborate with non-musicians.
Whatever chamber ensemble you’re a part of, no matter how weird. I’m always happy to help build someone’s repertoire!

So… this took longer than I expected, but maybe something will come of it, and if you don’t work with me for whatever reason, find another living composer and work with them! It’s good for our art form!

Tags:collaboration, composer seeks performers
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Back with Beowulf

Sunday, October 9th, 2022

A few weeks back, I had an exchange with my Lakeland colleague Natalie Hopper after reading Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf over the summer. I immediately thought, “hey, this would make a good blog post,” after not posting anything since March. So I jumped over to the old website, and quickly discovered that there was A Problem, and I was unable to log in. Fast forward eight crazy weeks of teaching and parenting, and I was able to get things worked out with my hosting service, so now I give you my take on Beowulf, translation, transcription, and arranging.

In music, we have something similar to translation, namely arranging or transcribing music originally for one ensemble to be playable by a different ensemble, say, taking a piece written for organ and turning into something for concert band. It’s been done throughout the ages, by just about everyone: Bach reworked his own music, along with music by people like Vivaldi, into new combinations, and Beethoven actually paid a good number of his bills during the economic inflation of the Napoleonic Wars with arrangements of all sorts of folksongs. If you’re learning to orchestrate, making arrangements and transcriptions is a time-honored way of doing it. Some of the first orchestra music I ever had performed was an assignment for an undergraduate class to arrange a Bach keyboard fugue for the students we had available in the class.

I actually came to composition through arranging and transcribing other people’s music, mostly for the students I was teaching when I was a K-12 teacher… the list of composers I’ve arranged is long and distinguished, and includes the Gypsy Kings, K.C. and JoJo, the Beatles, Bach (of course), the Moody Blues, Dave Brubeck, Debussy, Schubert. I lived in Macon, Georgia for a while, and I knew the personnel manager with the Macon Symphony Orchestra, which led to doing some arranging for them, including a whole evening of Otis Redding songs for rock band and orchestra, with Otis Redding’s grandson as the vocalist. That one paid for Becky’s and my honeymoon. By that point, I had also started composing: it isn’t a big stretch from having to come up with an intro, an outro, or a transition, to writing a piece “based on” an existing tune, to just writing a whole new “freely composed” piece.

I completely get Heaney’s moment of discovering one little nugget and then working out the rest: that’s pretty much my experience much of the time. “Oh, this line would be great for clarinet,” or “I can hear this combination here in the accompaniment.” Then, there’s a certain about of just workmanship that happens, what my dad’s woodcarving teacher used to call “moving wood.” Inevitably, there are the places where things don’t quite line up, and you have to get clever and creative. Music notation software makes the process so much more bearable… I don’t think I would be a composer if I had to do everything by hand.

I guess another equivalent in writing would be rehashing old stories. I took a creative writing course in college, and the prof had us take one of the stories we admired from our anthology and type a few pages into the computer just to see how it looked… many of my classmates realized that their writing was far too small compared to that year’s Best American Short Stories (especially the frat boy who wrote a four-page ripoff of Reservoir Dogs). He also had us attempt a style copy: mine was Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery.” We were on quarters, so all this, plus writing our stories, plus critiquing our classmates’ work fit into 10 weeks!

I had a big arranging moment this summer: The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra performed my arrangement of Florence Price’s Adoration, which was originally for organ. This is the composer equivalent to starting for the Guardians (having an original work performed by them would be like starting for the Yankees or Red Sox). At any rate, it’s The Show. A conductor I’ve worked with (as arranger and composer) hired me to create two versions of the piece during the lockdown: one for ten musicians, and another for small orchestra. Then, he was named the Cincinnati Symphony’s diversity fellow, and he called me up for a third, new arrangement, “worthy of the Cincinnati Symphony.” I was able to write for a larger orchestra (really, I could have gone as big as I wanted, but I fit my requirements to the other music on the concert) and also write with a full-time professional group in mind. It was actually quite a lot of pressure to make sure absolutely everything was right—there’s no time to figure out how to fix something that isn’t working, because rehearsal on this relatively simple piece consisted of a couple of run-throughs in the two days before the concert: that’s all they needed, and their time is collectively worth about $1000 a minute. This is an extremely savvy group who has played everything worth playing, along with tons of arrangements for pops concerts: they would know immediately if I had screwed up or if I was worth their time, and not just by the sound, but by the look of the printed parts I was providing. So that’s how I spent my Spring Break last year.

In June, the kids and I drove down to Cincinnati to hear the thing: because of copyright laws and union rules, I wouldn’t be getting a copy of the recording (this annoys the crap out of composers, but it’s for everyone’s own good). So we had to be there, and they did comp our tickets. This wasn’t a subscription concert—it was at a great big megachurch in the suburbs as part of the orchestra’s community outreach program. The results of my work and the CSO’s playing were splendid: all the effects I had hoped for were there, and they all made sense, and I think I did justice to the composer’s intentions (Florence Price’s story is heartbreaking, as shouldn’t be a surprise for an African-American woman who died in the 1950s). My kids were amazed, and they proceeded to tell everyone around us that I was behind that music. Overall a good weekend. Since then, I’ve sold that sheet music three times, which is selling like hotcakes for me, to orchestras in Philadelphia, Atlanta, and Mankato, Minnesota—another conductor has picked up the piece and programmed it this fall, and I hope Antoine finds space to use it again.

I went to college at the University of Cincinnati, and my trombone teacher was the principal trombonist for the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra (he’s long-retired now). I’ve probably heard that orchestra in concert more times than any other, so their sound and their approach is basically what I hear when I compose or play trombone. It awes me to think that something I arranged is now in their library, waiting for the next time they need it. I haven’t seen my royalty statement for it yet, but I think it will probably be a chunk…

So, I guess I’m back now.

Tags:Adoration, Antoine Clark, arranging, Bach, beowulf, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Florence Price, Macon Symphony Orchestra, Natalie Hopper, Seamus Heaney
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Springtime Projects Old and New

Saturday, March 26th, 2022

The kids and I have both had our Spring Break, and since they didn’t happen at the same time, I didn’t end up travelling, although Becky took the kids to Mansfield for a couple of days this week. Lakeland’s Jazz Festival returned partly in-person last weekend, with live performances, but we won’t have adjudication of high school bands again until next year. I played fourth trombone with the Lakeland Civic Jazz Orchestra on their concert last Sunday, something I haven’t done in a very long time, since I was the regular bass trombonist with the second jazz ensemble at CCM in my first two years of college, where I met my first composition teacher, Wes Flinn (who I am currently serving as a partial sabbatical replacement for… so many connections).

I have five or so performances of my work coming up this Spring as musical life comes back together post-COVID.

COVID ruined three big events that I had planned: two trips (one to Germany and one to South Carolina) and a performance. We made the South Carolina trip a year late in 2021, and the Germany trip is on a longer-term hold, but might happen in 2023. The performance cancellation that stung was the Cleveland Chamber Symphony’s premiere of a new chamber orchestra version of Martian Dances, the piece that gives its name to my web domain and that I once considered to be my “signature” composition; if nothing else, it was my first mature composition, and the first major piece I wrote while in graduate school, where we played it several times. The original version is scored for the unlikely septet of flute, clarinet, trombone, viola, double bass, marimba, and harpsichord, and eked out two-and-a-half performances in 2005 at Ohio State. I reworked it a few years later for a Pierrot-plus-viola-and-marimba ensemble, but that version has never been performed. This latest version is for a large chamber orchestra: single winds, harp, piano, and strings, and will have its first hearing on April 22 at Baldwin Wallace University, with a dance performed by Verb Ballets. A big night for me.

Not only does Martian Dances hold a special significance for me, having a performance by the Cleveland Chamber Symphony takes me another step closer to being a “Cleveland” composer. The ensemble was founded by local legend Edwin London, and has played music by both local and non-local artists for decades. I even have a recording of them performing Donald Harris’ Mermaid Variations, commissioned by the ensemble. A lustruous recording of a colorful and appealing piece, it would have been recorded around the same time that I first heard Don’s music, a performance of his Symphony in Two Movements by the Columbus Symphony Orchestra when I was a senior in high school.

I’ve programmed my own work with the Lakeland Civic Orchestra on Sunday, April 24, when we will give the second performance of The Lovely Soul of Lakeland, which I wrote for the College’s 50th anniversary in 2017-2018. I think it’s important that a college have concert music associated with its songs, and Lakeland’s alma mater, The Soul of Lakeland College, provided excellent material for this project. It seemed like this year, with our return from COVID to live performance, was an appropriate time for this piece to make an appearance, on a program of short works featuring the various components of the orchestra and shared with the Lakeland Civic Band.

On May 6, the Lakeland Civic Flute Choir, directed by Judith Elias, will perform Nod a Don, my palindromic piece for eight flutes commissioned by Katherine Borst Jones in honor of Donald McGinnis, a mentor and inspiration to both of us, on his 95th birthday. This will be the second performance of this work in Cleveland, after the Greater Cleveland Flute Society’s performance a few years ago. Lakeland’s flutes have been rehearsing it during their Thursday morning rehearsals, and at least once I’ve had the pleasure of walking by the auditorium doors to hear my music coming out at me.

Also in May, on the 15th, I will have a composition featured on the thirtieth installment of the Cleveland Composers Guild’s Creativity: Learning Through Experience. In this case, a short piano piece for Nathan Hill, a student of Coren Estin Mino.

Then in June, something that for me is a huge deal. My frequent collaborator, Antoine Clark, asked me in 2020 for arrangements for small orchestra and chamber ensemble of Florence B. Price’s Adoration, for the college and chamber orchestras that he conducts. I created them, and they had their premieres, and Lakeland also performed the small orchestra version in 2021. Then this fall, Antoine called again, and asked for a large orchestra transcription of the same piece, this time for no less than the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. Antoine and I are both alumni of the University of Cincinnati, and my trombone teacher Tony Chipurn was the principal trombonist of the Cincinnati Symphony. It would be a close count, but it’s possible that I’ve seen them in concert more than any other orchestra, and certainly saw them very frequently during my formative musical years. The sound of their Telarc recordings from the 80s and 90s is also burned into my head, whether as the Cincinnati Symphony, or as the Cincinnati Pops. So, I’ve been working on a transcription of the Price that involves all my knowledge of orchestral writing, and honors Price’s talents and music, and the tradition of an orchestra that I admire. The premiere is on a community concert in Cincinnati on June 11.

I’m still struggling with what my composing looks like, post-COVID. Getting out of my early-morning habit was a good idea for many reasons, but it hasn’t been good for my creative productivity, and there are projects I want to pursue, but don’t feel like I have time for right now. My 6am composing was for a long time a badge of honor, but I don’t see how it would fit our current schedule and my current responsibilities: or, I’m just being lazy and too in the habit of staying up late. Next fall, Noah and Melia will ride the same buses to and from school, so there is the possibility of a reset and a reconsideration of my routine, and I aim to have this worked out by then: there is more music to be written, and that music needs time to be worked on.

Tags:Antoine Clark, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Chamber Symphony, Cleveland Composers Guild, Coren Estrin Mino, Donald Harris, Florence Price, Lakeland Civic Flute Choir, Lakeland Civic Orchestra, Martian Dances, post-COVID life, spring break, Tony Chipurn, University of Cincinnati
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Playwriting with Tecia Delores Wilson

Friday, October 22nd, 2021

Lakeland hosted playwright Tecia Delores Wilson for a workshop earlier this week, and I treated myself to attending as a midterm reward. Her approach of devised theater was intriguing. I signed up for the workshop for several reasons that involve my work: composition also deals with dramatic ideas; I may someday collaborate with a poet or librettist and need to understand some of that process; I have, over the last several years, written a play about some of my experiences. Devised theater could play into many of these needs for me, although not as directly as I had expected, as it turns out.

For a writer, it is tempting to start from words, but devised theater, as we experienced the process on Tuesday, begins with movement, and goes from movement to story. It was almost as much about dance as it was about language, which is many ways made it more relevant to my creative work.

In an email later with Jamie DeMonte, I expressed an idea I hadn’t really mused on before: while we tend to “silo” the arts into writing, theater, music, visual arts, dance… the reality is that they often lie more on a continuum, and that one can impact the other. I’ve blogged here before about people like woodcarver Spirit Williams and writer Kiersi Burkhart and how their ideas about working in other forms have impacted my own working process, but it’s also fascinating to see how those “disparate” arts themselves can be work that is neither-nor, or both, or all.

Tags:art, devised theater, Jamie DeMonte, Kiersi Burkhart, Spirit Williams, Tecia Delores Wilson, working process
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Effort-Shapes and Ideas from Architecture

Sunday, October 3rd, 2021

I’m amazed that it’s October already.

I was feeling very behind on some things for work and school, and my wife, Becky, got tired of my grumpiness about it and gave me the incredible gift of time last week: she took time off from her job so that she could be around and give me some relief from some parenting duties. I took advantage of that time to get back into my morning composing routine: waking up an hour ahead of everyone else to work. It feels good to be back on it. Plus, I was able to work ahead on some of the things I normally do on Fridays and clear the decks for most of a full day of composing this week. It felt good: too good… because it had me thinking about how it might work if I did that every week, and spent that day just building my composition business. It seems possible, but risky, but possibly very rewarding.

I suddenly find myself with multiple projects. Last month, Ted Williams of Choral Spectrum contacted me asking for Christmas music. There is a history there: eighteen years ago when I was living on the West Side of Cleveland, I joined that ensemble, starting the same concert cycle that Ted did. They performed one of the pieces that I submitted as part of my grad school applications, and I haven’t done a great job keeping in touch, but I’ve been in contact with Ted now and then. I found a nice, short poem by Ella Higginson called “Christmas Eve,” and suggested it as an original piece. I finished it this week, after creating a draft in my parents’ dining room in September, and rehearsals will start on Monday, for premiere performances in December.

Next, I’m returning to the first piece I wrote after graduate school, the fourth in my series of sonatinas for woodwind instrument and piano, in this case, oboe. There is a connection to that same time with Choral Spectrum, because I used the bassoon piece, the first in the series, as a part of grad school applications as well, including a recording with fellow Spectrum member Andrew Bertoni on the piano part. I’m now reworking the oboe piece, which has never been performed, for Justine Myers, and we are hoping for a performance on a Cleveland Composers Guild concert this spring. As I was working on both these pieces, I had advice from Donald Harris in my mind: “let the music breathe.”

Then, to the carillon project, I suppose. Last summer, Guild members had a tour of the McGaffin Carillon with George Leggiero for a collaboration that will feature our compositions for the instrument this fall. Fall is here, so I need to get started on mine.

After that, it will be the band piece I’m writing in memory of Chuck Frank for the Lakeland Civic Band . I have an idea for a wordless vocal soloist and Heidi Skok is on board, so while that part will be cued in the instrumental parts, it will be a great way to feature one of our great local musicians.

And then… I want to return to the symphony. Delayed first by COVID, now just by my procrastination.

The amazing thing is that these projects represent the fruits of a decade or more of collaboration, networking, and community-building. My goal since returning to Ohio has been to become a Cleveland composer, and I feel like I have achieved that, at least at the moment.

Now to the title of this post:

Two ideas for analytical or compositional tools came over my transom this week.

The first was when I went to observe Scott Posey’s Acting I class as part of my duties as a College Credit Plus faculty liaison. I had watched him work with his students at Lake Catholic before, but he started his class with a warm-up and review of something called “effort-shapes,” coming from Laban movement theory. This was immediately highly suggestive to me as a way to think about the physical expression suggested by a passage or piece of music. I also wonder if there is any similarity or connection to Dalcroze eurhythmics, which I have never had the chance to study.

The second is from a YouTube video. I’ve been watching architecture videos by Stewart Hicks lately, and his video on Francis Cheng’s Form, Space, and Order really struck me. Where Laban seems to suggest itself as a tool for medium-scale analysis, Cheng’s five basic building plans (centralized, linear, radial, clustered, and grid) are highly suggestive of ways to understand the overall structure of a larger piece. Of the standard forms, fugue would be centralized; sonata would be regular; rondo would be radial; variations would be radial or clustered?; and something with a repeated bass or harmonic progression would be grid. Perhaps? Something to consider… Orchestrating or arranging for large ensemble often feels like working with a grid as well. Penderecki’s Threnody suggests a clustered approach; while Lutoslawski’s Fourth Symphony is more radial. Intriguing set of possibilities.

Then, yesterday, we went to Cedar Point. My approach to fun at theme parks is a little different than most people’s, I suppose, but I enjoy looking at how the place works, and at how people interact there and flow throw the space. I find that standing in line for rides gives plenty of time to watch how those rides work, and how people interface with them, and to think about what I’m seeing. Recently, one of my contacts on Twitter posted Baudrillard’s thoughts on Disneyland, and that was running through my head. While Cedar Point is in many ways a theme park in search of a theme (beyond, as Noah and I discovered, “Eat. Ride. Repeat”), it functions in much the same way Disneyland does on a technical level. This may not be true from a cultural standpoint, though. Disneyland also does not have nearly the history and layers that Cedar Point does, where there is an 80-year head start and any number of callbacks (such as the Blue Streak roller coaster) to earlier eras of American pleasure-seeking. I’ve decided that I’m going to have to read Simulacra and Simulation.

Tags:Andrew Bertoni, Baudrillard, Blue Streak, Cedar Point, Choral Spectrum, Christmas Eve, Chuck Frank, Cleveland Composers Guild, composing, Dalcroze eurythmics, effort-shapes, Ella Higginson, Francis Cheng, Heidi Skok, Justine Myers, Laban movement theory, Lakeland Civic Band, Lutoslawski, McGaffin Carillon, oboe sonatina, Penderecki, Scott Posey, Stewart Hicks, symphony, Ted Williams
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Writing for the Fine Arts Association

Friday, July 16th, 2021

I’m currently wrapping up a commission from the Fine Arts Association for a concert their faculty will be presenting next month. The second half of the program will be Camille Saint-Saens’ Carnival of the Animals, so the instrumentation of my piece is the same: flute, clarinet, percussionist, two pianos, and string quintet. The resulting piece is about nine minutes long, and has turned into a tone-poem called Gamer Troll Loses Control.

This piece is my heftiest composition since the start of COVID, when I deliberately backed away from composing to focus on other things that needed to be done. Teaching almost completely online meant I had more computer time in my life than I needed, and I was loath to add to that. Additionally, I made the decision to forego my early-morning composing routine and add an extra opportunity for sleep to help keep my immune system in good condition in the event of illness. So, since March 2020, I’ve written a short piano piece, Power Play, two arrangements for small orchestra of Florence Price’s Adoration, a short piece, Mind, Body, and Soul for the Ekklesia Reed Quintet, and a bass clarinet duo, Child’s Play, for Just This. I put two long-awaited projects on hold: Thomas Lempner and I have been discussing a Carmen Fantasy for baritone saxophone, but other than listening through the opera and some score study, I haven’t got started on it yet, and of course, the symphony, which was stalled before COVID hit, and while I’ve listened through the Sibelius playback a couple of times, I haven’t done any work on it.

But I think about composing a lot. I’ve been studying Tchaikovsky’s The Seasons at the piano, and thinking more and more about a “yearlong” cycle of pieces about Lake Erie. Going to the bluffs here in Willowick has become one of my regular activities, and this project may be in the future. I’m also planning to write a new piece for concert band for the Lakeland Civic Band in memory of their founding director Charles Frank, to be premiered on a memorial concert for him. And, I’m starting to want to write a second piano sonata–partly inspired by Richard Danielpour’s American Mosaic for Simone Dinnerstein. I’m still not ready to write my COVID piece–which isn’t surprising. My experience of the pandemic has been of routine, and waiting, not of personally momentous events, and for that I’m thankful. I’m not saying I need to be personally impacted by the virus before I can write about it–but I’m not interested in writing for the sake of writing about it, which would feel forced and inauthentic. It may be some time, and I may never write a COVID piece.

So, in late Spring, Michael Lund Ziegler, director of education at the Fine Arts Association (FAA), called to ask if I would contribute to the first in their series of concerts for 2021-2022, and I agreed (I will appear on my own recital this winter, performing Twenty Views of the Trombone). We quickly finalized the instrumentation, which will mostly be provided by the FAA faculty, with Michael conducting. I suggested that we base the piece in some form on student work–this would bring together the music and visual arts sides of the FAA, and highlight the students, who are the reason that the FAA exists in the first place. We brought Melissa Sextella into the conversation. It was, fortuitously, near the end of the term, and several of her classes had final projects that could be helpful in generating some possible characters. She sent me four wonderful images, and I started thinking about what a piece about these characters might look like, and I contacted several of the artists to pick their brains. The kids were very helpful–down to the five-year-old creator of “Greenie Meanie,” a grumpy octopus on the lookout for walleye.

Then I went on vacation. We spent a week in Charleston, South Carolina, and I brought manuscript paper, but didn’t touch it. I did make a note in my travel journal that I was leaning toward a single-movement structure rather than a suite of pieces: and that has worked out. The result is more Till Eulenspiegel than Pictures at an Exhibition. I also decided to make references to Carnival of the Animals, since the two pieces will be paired at the premiere, and having the same forces, may be performed together down the road (in fact, I already have some interest in just that).

Upon returning home, I decided to start by writing a story. I decided on a fairy tale: Gamer Troll wakes up one morning and can’t find his video game controller. There are echoes of Band Camp 1993 in this inciting incident, for anyone who is reading this who happened to be there, although the ending is completely different. Being fairly stupid, as trolls are, Gamer Troll trudges to the beach, meeting some wacky surreal birds, is swept out to sea where he is almost eaten, saved by a mermaid princess, and sent back to the beach. He trudges back home to his parents’ cave, where he flops down on the couch to discover that his controller was in his pocket the whole time. The moral, in troll-like fashion, is, “It’s always the last place you look, because when you find it, you stop looking.”

Read the whole story here. I have to say I think it came out pretty well, and I read it to Melia, age seven, as a bedtime story, and it proved satisfactory for that purpose. Maybe I have a career as a children’s author?

Finally, it was time to write the music. My story was too in-depth to depict every nuance in music, at least not in nine minutes, but the highlights are there. I’ve never written a true tone-poem like this that attempted to adhere closely to a narrative and express it to the extent possible, but I started with a few sketches of motives (Gamer Troll saying “No controller, no games,” a combination of Saint-Saens’ chickens and cuckoo for the wacky birds). Conveniently, lots of rippling water and bubble music, and my two giant waves are in homage to John Luther Adams’ Become Ocean. The percussionist will add to Saint-Saens xylophone and glass harmonica (I assume that will be glockenspiel) with a snare drum and suspended cymbal. I didn’t study the Saint-Saens in great depth, and my piece is much more of an ensemble piece, where Carnival is more a piano duo with some obbligato parts. My pianist colleagues will have their hands full with Saint-Saens anyway, so they don’t need a second virtuoso piece. It was tempting to consistently have one instrument play each character, but I didn’t want to limit the roles: while Gamer Troll is featured continuously, the other characters are not, and the ensemble is too small to reserve one or more instruments for short sections.

I’m currently wrapping up layout and part extraction, and I’m looking forward to rehearsals and the premiere in the third week of August. Here is information on that (you have to scroll down past all the theater productions).

Tags:Become Ocean, bedtime stories, Camille Saint-Saens, Carnival of the Animals, Charleston, composing, COVID, fairy tale, Fine Arts Association, Gamer Troll Loses Control, John Luther Adams, Melissa Sextella, Michael Lund Ziegler, trolls
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