I was very pleased to get an envelope with a completed commissioning agreement in it from Wes Flinn the other day, which means that I’m writing a tuba-euphonium quartet for him. The whole-consort genres can be intimidating, but I’ve generally had some success with them–my Sevens for four trumpets won an award, and Nod a Don is being played both here in Cleveland and at the National Flute Association conference in Chicago in the next six months. These kinds of short chamber pieces aren’t necessarily the enormously thrilling kinds of work (like a piano concert0) that I long to do, but it’s a pleasure to write for an old friend, to get a performance relatively quickly, and to not write something that is as consuming as, say, a piano concerto. In fact, since we have a new baby this year, I’m deliberately giving myself more small projects that will fit better into the time available for composition. Other projects this year (I think) include a piano cycle based on L. Frank Baum’s Oz novels and a band version of my 2008 piano cycle Starry Wanderers.
Two weeks ago, I enjoyed a fantastic premiere of Azteca Dances, a woodwind quintet that I composed “for the drawer” back in Oklahoma. The performers weren’t completely satisfied, but I was, so there’s that. I’m happy to have found the Cleveland Composers Guild as an outlet for my work, although there will need to be more than that to really sustain things in a performance sense.
Not much to this entry, but nothing in particular to say right now, and I want to get to composing tonight!