Not Dead from COVID-19 Yet

July 3rd, 2020

My last post was in November 2019, and what a half-year it has been.

Much of my life so far has been untouched by history. Plenty of history has happened since 1976, of course, but the great events have almost never caused any real disruption. 1989 happened somewhere else, to older people. 2001 was a shock, and horrific, but it, and the wars that followed, happened mostly to other people. 2008 may have caused Becky and I to stay longer in Oklahoma than we had planned, but then again, it may not have, and my career has not significantly suffered.

COVID-19, however, has touched us. Luckily, we have not contracted the disease, although that remains a possibility. Early on, I told myself that our family would be lucky to come through this without that happening, and while survival rates seem high, the risk that I will lose a family member to this, or die of it myself, is not zero.

It began at the end of last year, when I began to hear the news stories on the radio about the new virus in Wuhan, China. I remember in particular one day listening to it in the car while getting the kids from school. Donald Trump’s impeachment trial was happening at the same time, of course, and that failed attempt was a bigger story at the moment. The holidays happened more or less normally, although it was Becky’s first year since we’ve been married working retail, but at some point one of my contacts on Twitter whose husband is an epidemiologist posted a thread about just how serious COVID seemed to be, and I got to thinking. This would have been by about February or so.

I’ve read about epidemics and pandemics. In college, I read Laurie Garrett’s The Coming Plague, and discussed it at dinner with friends, horrifying my girlfriend, but fascinating at least one other person at the table. I read Anthony Fauci’s book a year or so ago. I watched Ebola unfold in 2014, and breathed a sigh of relief that it stayed far away from us. COVID-19 seemed to be unfolding the same way as SARS or MERS–new, but containable. But I still kept my ear to the ground.

My parents went to Hawaii around Valentines Day, just as the first cases were started to happen in this country. They were able to return with no problem, but soon others would not. At the grocery store, I began to put a little extra in the cart every week. Our finances allowed it easily, and my contact on Twitter suggested that this would be an effective measure: buy a little bit now without stressing the system, and avoid some of the panic buying that might happen when the system started to come under stress. Pasta. Pizza supplies. Breakfast and lunch. Over-the-counter medications that we use regularly. Cleaning supplies. And toilet paper. We still are ahead on toilet paper, and never really got behind, because I bought a package a week for most of February, and have kept our supply at about a hundred rolls on hand since then. All things that would keep and that we would use anyway, so it wasn’t really an extra expense, just money that we would spend now and not later.

I continued to teach my classes as normal, and rehearse the orchestra, up until Spring Break. Sunday, March 8 was our first concert of 2020, and it went well. We collected music as usual and planned to see each other after break. I had performances of my music on February 6 and March 1, with several more slated for the spring.

Spring Break proceeded apace. As usual, my break was not at the same time as Noah’s and Melia’s, which meant some quiet time at home and some couples time with Becky. Meanwhile, more people were getting sick, and things were starting to change.

March 11, the day that I’m told is the day that most Americans started to be impacted, was the day that I had agreed to judge the annual student concerto competition at Mentor High School. The orchestra director, Matt Yoke, ran the competition, and as usual, my co-judge was Terri Herschmann, retired choir director. I waited in the car for a few minutes, listening to what had become Ohio Governor Mike DeWine’s daily press briefing on COVID-19, but went into the school before it was over. By the time we were done judging, he had made the announcement that Ohio public schools would be closing for three weeks, starting the following Monday. Matt, Terri, and I weren’t sure what this meant–we thought that it might mean that our judging would be for nought, since it would limit the time the orchestra would have to rehearse the winners’ pieces. The closure included my job at Lakeland, so child care would not be a problem for us the way it has been for so many other people. Noah and Melia would have a week of online classes–hastily thrown together–then a week of their Spring Break, and then would finish online. Lakeland extended its Spring Break by a week so that instructors could prepare to finish the term as best we could completely online.

That night, Becky and I decided that I should go to the grocery store for a few extra things. I decided to use the Giant Eagle in Willoughby, since it is a larger store than the one here in Willowick, and a trip to the local Wal-Mart seemed like insanity–I still haven’t been back to Wal-Mart, where we were shopping regularly until March. The American supermarket is designed to suggest plenty and abundance, and that night it was clear just how worried people were, as key items were out. Toilet paper, of course. Eggs were nearly gone. Bottled water was cleared from the shelves, but I noticed two large pallets of it when I finally got to the check-out. What I remember most was the line: the store was packed, and I waited for over an hour, during which time I called my parents and told them that they shouldn’t worry about trying to come for my birthday that weekend as we had planned. Prices were normal, and most customers seemed frazzled, but not agitated to the point of making themselves worrisome. My cashier was a young woman who had come to work from school, and it was about 9pm by the time she rang me up. I thanked her for being there, and told her I hoped she was able to go home soon.

The next two days I wrapped up a few loose ends, trying to get ready for what might come next. I made sure that my second term class was ready to start, knowing that it would begin on time on March 14, so that I would have time to figure something out for my formerly-in-person classes. I voted early at the county board of elections for the Ohio primary on March 17 (which was eventually postponed), but I wanted to make sure that I voted for our local school levy. In general, there was the feeling of deliberateness and urgency to get things done, but also a calm-before-the-storm sense. The Board of Elections was a busy place, but no busier than I would expect on an early-voting day. On March 14, we had my birthday dinner, and I chose Mexican food. The restaurant was fairly empty for a Saturday night, and I spent a few weeks feeling bad that I picked it, since I’m the only one who really likes it, and it was our last meal out for quite some time.

Becky worked for the first couple of weeks that the kids and I were off, and then Ulta closed, and for several weeks, we saw only each other and the essential workers with whom we came into contact. We have been very fortunate so far that our finances have been unimpacted. We were able to save most of our income tax refund, as well as our stimulus check, and although it’s possible we will still need that money, our bank account is currently more flush than it has ever been.

We worked together to help Noah and Melia complete their schoolwork, with Becky and I tag-teaming the kids once she was home. The three of us all had to complete work with just one computer, although not everything the kids needed to do was online, as their teachers had sent math books and other materials home. I would put in about 2 hours a day on my online work, which I kept to a relative minimum, thinking that my students were mostly taking my course to fulfill a general education requirement, and certainly had other priorities. In the end, I didn’t fail many students: certainly not more than I would have in a typical semester, even with some students being unable to re-engage with the newly-online courses. I was very lenient, and if someone was passing before Spring Break, I tried to give them a passing grade for the term. After my work, we would begin on the kids’ work for the day. This would extend well into the afternoon at first, but once Becky was home, it would take much longer. We had a disused tablet that we found would work to access much of the kids’ work, which also helped, although the result is that Melia has claimed it for herself and become a tablet junkie, something we tried to avoid for a long time.

Online schooling was not ideal, by any sense, but it also showed just how much of the school day is used for non-instructional time, and how much more quickly learning can happen individually. It also showed me where some deficiencies lay. Noah was behind in math, and, to my thinking, at risk of falling further back, and so this summer we have embarked on a review of fourth-grade math. Piano and trombone lessons also moved online. Noah’s teacher continued to work with him, although the process was frustrating for him. I stayed in the room for lessons to act as a tech person–I used binder clips to attach my phone to the music stand to get the right angle, and we used the now-ubiquitous Zoom app for both piano and trombone with a degree of success. Mrs. Rita (Cyvas-Kliorys) even arranged for a virtual recital at the end of the term, but she has now taken the summer off–it must have been exhausting with a studio her size.

For the seven weeks that Becky was completely off from Ulta, we stayed home almost all the time. I took the kids outside every day for at least an hour, and within a week or so, the weather was pleasant enough to ride bicycles (although occasionally with winter coats on). Melia had not mastered her two-wheeler by the end of last summer, but this spring she was ready, and has taken to it. The three of us have gone on two extended bike rides of about eight miles. The Richland County B&O Trail, the Ohio & Erie Towpath Trail, and the Cleveland Metroparks have all been destination rides, but we’ve also been around much of the neighborhood. We’re now at a point where the kids are a little more resistant to the bike riding, but I tell them that their father needs to do it, and we go all the same, and after a few hundred yards, they are all in.

I planned three meals a day at home, with a once-a-week carry-out or drive-thru meal. I suffered “breakfast for dinner,” which isn’t my favorite M.O., but is beloved of our kids, and we invented the “smorgasbord” dinner of popcorn, pepperoni, cheese, fruit, and hummus that has become a favorite for Melia. We instituted a nightly movie night for much of the lockdown, with most movies taking two nights. With Becky back at work from early May, we’ve gotten out of this habit, with later dinners. I got out of the habit of reading to the kids every night, but last week picked up a copy of The Hobbit with a gift card I received for Father’s Day, and we’ve started it back up.

My reading has been way off pace. Too much time on Twitter, perhaps, but also missing the three or four karate classes, dance class, and piano lesson, and Cub Scout meeting each week where I can sit and read while the kids do their thing. By the end of June, I had read only 20 books, 6 off my book-a-week goal. I have also been studying German through the DuoLingo app, and am almost through that course, so there is reading time lost as well.

Cub Scouts ended after a socially-distanced Pinewood Derby on March 15. Noah’s den leaders were phoning it in this year at any rate, and I haven’t heard from them at all. Summer camp was cancelled, a real disappointment to Noah, and by extension, for us–last year’s camp was one of the great experiences of his life so far.

I made the decision to prioritize sleep and limit my computer time, so while I had started sketching a brass fanfare commissioned by the Ohio Valley Majestic Brass in the days before the lockdown, I put my composing aside until the end of the school year. I had been in a slump since stalling out on my symphony at any rate, and some time away made sense. Since May, I have been back at it, and I completed the fanfare and received payment for it last week. I’m also most of the way through a short suite for the local Ekklesia Reed Quintet, called Mind, Body, and Soul. After that, I’ve promised a big band chart to Ed Michaels for next season, and then, I suppose, there will be the symphony. I haven’t opened those files since November.

Several performances of my work had to be cancelled. The Cleveland Chamber Symphony had been slated to play a new chamber orchestra version of Martian Dances in April, and the Lakeland Civic Band was scheduled for a second performance of Mysterious Marvels on my birthday, but the concert was cancelled. Lady Glides on the Moon was down for two performances in Illinois this spring, but I haven’t heard anything about them since, and the Cleveland Composers Guild has morphed this year’s Junior Concert into an online presentation, which will, at least, include a short piece I’ve written for guitar. In mid-March, when it became clear that we were cancelling our remaining three concerts for the season, I began sending out a “piece of the day” for the Composers Guild, sending music by our members to the membership and posting to social media. This has been popular among our membership, and a great opportunity for me to get to know the work of my colleagues, and to just stay connected to the composing world. I’ve had ideas about what I might do in the way of collaborations or getting work out there, but it just hasn’t happened yet. I would love to make videos of Twenty Views of the Trombone, for instance, but I just don’t have the right equipment. I tried to record and video a part for a band piece by a student composer I know on Twitter, but I’m not completely sure that I was able to create something usable.

I haven’t heard any live music since those auditions at Mentor High School, other than Noah’s and my practicing. I had one concert remaining on my Cleveland Orchestra subscription, and of course ended up donating my ticket. It will be good to get back to that.

Noah and I were planning a trip to Germany in April to spend ten days with my brother and his family. I hadn’t been there since 2001, and Noah had never been at all. That trip was in the works for months–we had our passports and flights booked, of course, and it would have been an exquisite experience that I was very excited to give my son.  We had planned our spring around it, and even bought new luggage, and it still stings every time I think about it. One result, though, is that Nate and I have done a better job being in touch.

Since Christmas, we’ve only seen my parents one time–to meet in a Wendy’s parking lot and have lunch in separate cars on Mother’s Day. Since then, we’ve seen my in-laws several times, but my parents have decided to stay locked down as much as possible, and declined to meet us on Father’s Day. Hopefully, this will mean many more opportunities to see them when this is all over.

I feel like I’ve handled things remarkably well, given that all of this started during my annual winter slump. It has forced me to focus on practicalities and on taking care of my family, and myself. My diet has never been great, but I haven’t succumbed to the temptation to eat nothing but junk food, although our ice cream consumption is up, and for the first couple of weeks, I was buying Easter chocolate like mad. The regular outdoors time has been good for the kids and me, and we mostly get along. I thrive on routine, so a daily shower, exercise, work and artistic goals have all been critical.

That said, I am nervous about the future. We are in contract negotiations, and I don’t think that will be good news, as college enrollment is down for the fall. I scheduled my usual in-person classes as hybrid in-person/online, and they are not filling, meaning that I will likely end up taking from adjuncts to make load, my nightmare scenario, and a particularly bleak prospect that it would pain me to inflict on people I consider my colleagues and friends at a time when it will be difficult for them to find other work in the field. Yesterday came the announcement that K-12 schools will reopen with in-person instruction in the fall, and this makes me nervous, amidst the current surge in cases of COVID-19 and with no news of a vaccine. Tonight, Melia woke me up at 4am having had a nightmare, and after I put her back to bed, I was unable to get back to sleep myself: once the birds started chirping, I decided to come write this post, which I’ve been meaning to do. My first truly sleepless night of this era, and really, in a long time.

Becky’s long-running insomnia continues, although she seems to be sleeping better for having to go to work. She injured her shoulder, and has an arthroscopy scheduled for later this month, but meanwhile is in even more pain than usual. I have been giving her at least one massage a day for years now.

Noah goes through times when he is anxious, restless, and discontented with the state of affairs. He is resourceful, though, and has found ways to occupy himself. He has built a large layout of Legos based on the Normandy beach of the D-Day invasion, and has been studying World War 2 to try to make it realistic, inspired by a stop-motion animation that he found on YouTube. Melia has been reporting chronic stomach pain, and has a doctor’s visit scheduled. The kids have become closer, and somewhat more self-reliant, as I typically leave them to their own devices after breakfast while I work for an hour or two. A year ago, they would have required much more direct supervision, and I would have had to be scrupulous about waking up early to work before breakfast–today is an anomaly.

We press on then, and for all my apocalyptic visions of a pandemic, fueled by books and movies, history’s touch on our has been relatively light thus far, and for that I am thankful. I am planning to ramp up my grocery spending again, as our March stockpile is looking a little depleted, and cases are on the rise again. The Germany trip is postponed indefinitely, as is the vacation to South Carolina we had planned. School will resume in some fashion, as will musical life, and I can only hope that we are lucky to be observers of the worst.

Posted in Cleveland Concerts, Composing, Personal Reflections | Comments Closed

The Symphony: In a Stall

November 27th, 2019

In aviation, a stall is a dreaded moment: an airplane climbs at too steep an angle, and doesn’t have sufficient thrust to maintain airspeed over the wings, loses lift, and begins to fall out of the sky. This is a problem so basic that even working on Aviation Merit Badge as a Scout (where the national BSA policy was that you wouldn’t actually leave the ground), I found myself in a simulator and put the simulated plane into a simulated stall within seconds of taking to the simulated sky. Stalls happen for a number of reasons, including pilot error, and every pilot needs to know how to correct (and avoid) them.

In writing my symphony, I am in the process of drafting the second movement, and I find myself in a stall. Late September and the first part of October, as detailed in my previous post, saw me composing a first movement in a white heat–consistently getting up early for my 6-7am timeslot, taking advantage of days when more time was available, working through a plan–both for work and for the form of the piece–that I was very happy with. It was my usual productive fall–I’ve seen this before, and I’ve mentioned my season-correlated cyclic energy levels. The months of September and October are important–I am rested from summer break, the days are getting shorter, but they are often sunny. After my blog post on October 20, I deliberately took some time away from the symphony, though. I knew that I was only at the beginning of a long journey, and that it is important to let the project rest and marinate from time to time. After a week, though, it seemed like enough, and I dove into the second movement: my first sketches are dated October 30, and I proudly wrote “Reformation Day” at the top of my outline for the second movement.

For the first part of November, all was going well, although I notice that my work on the sketches doesn’t reflect every day. My musical language in this movement is different, and I made the decision to incorporate some quotations from a piece that I wrote for my father’s aunt, Nancy Turner Sturdivant, who passed away this month (I wasn’t close to her, but I admired her, and she was very special to my father; there should be a blog post on her). I have also been working with string glissandi and some use of the kind of controlled aleatory. Not a piece that goes easily into Sibelius, and not a piece that, frankly, matches well with the first movement I was so excited about. About a week ago, in a fit of procrastination, I went back to the first movement and listened again, and now I’m worried that, in order for what I’m doing in the second movement to make sense, the first movement will require some major revisions.

Self-care is a word that gets thrown around a lot by composers, and I’ve been trying to make sure that I give myself time and space to do good composing on this project–my dream project of a quarter-century. I pretend that my work and my composing are two different worlds: my job at Lakeland Community College is a very good one, but there is no expectation in it that I be a composer (a conductor, yes, but not a composer). As the semester pushes forward, my job changes: I add an online class during the second 8-weeks of the term, more work is due in the full-term classes, the end-of-semester tasks begin to loom, and the things that were started earlier in the semester have to be wrapped up. Just as I know my seasonal rhythm, after thirteen years on the semester plan, I know this rhythm as well. My job isn’t especially stressful (at least not the way I work), but it requires mental energy that comes from a limited supply, and when things ramp up there (an orchestra concert in November, with another looming on December 9; my post-tenure review due; switching over to my 2nd 8-weeks classes; beginning to think about Spring semester), it starts to impinge on my creative work.

Then there is the reality of family life. Becky is under tremendous stress right now. In October, she accepted a promotion in her job at Ulta Beauty to a full-time management position. I whole-heartedly support this, but it has meant a different schedule, as she is now opening and closing the store at times, and just working more hours. Is October the best time to take on additional responsibilities in a retail environment? Maybe, maybe not. I don’t think she is struggling at work in any way, but it is still a source of stress, and she feels that she is pushing herself, just as I am pushing myself in writing this symphony. On top of it, her parents are in the process of downsizing, and it hasn’t been an easy process for anyone, which compounds her stress at work.

So now I find myself taking time away from the piece: days when I find something else to do with my hour; mornings when I hit the snooze bar and lose part of my hour; mornings when my hour isn’t productive because I’m too tired from staying up late to support Becky or just to read a science fiction novel. I am in a stall at the moment.

Like the pilot facing a stall, I have seen these things coming: I knew that Becky’s job would shift some things at home onto me. I knew that the workload at Lakeland would shift as the semester progresses. I knew that my fall energy would fade and that the excitement of beginning this project wouldn’t last. This was completely predictable.

  • Just as any pilot is trained to break out a stall, I have an idea of what to do:
  • Allow myself the time away, firm in the knowledge that the work will be there when I come back to it, and that there is plenty of time: the better part of two years before the final piece needs to be ready for a November 2021 premiere.
  • Get more sleep. Going to bed much after 10pm means that my 6am composition slot is not a healthy habit. For a few weeks, I wonder if I ought to make a rule that I’m not getting up early if I go to bed late and stick to it.
  • Change up the routine: I have this opportunity coming with the end of the semester. I have a couple of weeks where I may not have to rely on my 6am hour as much. As good a thing as it is, some of my best work happens when I am able to break out of the 6am slot and compose in other times and places.
  • Exercise. I can’t get the sunlight I was getting earlier this semester, but I can at least get my body moving.
  • Diet. Halloween put a temporary end to my attempts to lower my refined sugar consumption. Since then, it has been a cookie or a piece of candy whenever I feel like it, and that can’t continue. I’ve gotten into a 2:30pm diet cola habit at work, too, and I need to break out of that.
  • Confidence in my training. I know that I can write this piece. I know that I know what to do to keep going in the face of a loss of lift.

I can pull out of this stall.

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Composing, Personal Reflections | Comments Closed

The Symphony: A Golden Spike Moment

October 20th, 2019

In May 1869, the Transcontinental Railroad was completed, working from both ends simultaneously, with a golden spike at Promontory Point, Utah. This morning, I had my own Golden Spike Moment as I completed the first rough draft of the first movement of my first symphony.

I decided to write a symphony earlier this year, from an inspiration I had several years ago. The hymn “Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow,” which our church sings to the tune Old Hundredth nearly every Sunday as the Doxology, struck me one Sunday as an interesting possibility, and each Sunday, as we sang it again, I was pulled closer to it, thinking about what an extended meditation on that hymn might be like. While it isn’t perfectly ecumenical, it is a broad acknowledgement of a Creator God who loves us and wants us to be happy.

Earlier this year, I was in a difficult place creatively. My mid-winter depressive tendencies seemed to strike especially hard, and must difficultly, I had only one small project with a specific deadline (a piece that I was very happy with as it turned out). Despite a promising start to 2019 in terms of performances, nothing specific loomed on the horizon either, and creatively, I felt stuck, with no specific reason to continue. I even failed to complete another piece in time for the call for scores for which I envisioned it, which turned out to be a real missed opportunity. I was wondering if I had a future as a composer. This doldrum lasted well into the summer, and a fanfare commission which should have been done in a matter of weeks dragged on, actually interfering with the symphony project. Part of me was wondering if I had a future as a composer at all.

For several years, I have been telling myself that I would write a symphony for 2021, the year I turn 45: my last attempt was a false start when I was composing my doctoral graduation piece at age 30–that piece ended up being Five Rhythmic Etudes, and the tale is cautionary, because despite a strong premiere of the outer movements, I have never heard the complete piece. Would a full-scale symphony find a place on anyone’s program? As the director of the Lakeland Civic Orchestra, I knew that if I tailored the work to their strengths, we could perform it.

In May of this year, I cast the die: doubling down on my uncertainty, I wrote a commissioning agreement, as I usually do for my compositions, only this time, I commissioned myself, for a forty-minute symphony based on Old Hundredth to be delivered in time for a November 2021 performance. The goal seemed far enough away to be possible, and I didn’t tell anyone at first. If this is my final work as a composer, then I have accomplished most of what I hoped I would do when I started writing music: I have dreamed of composing a symphony for about 30 years now.

The next step was to take the large goal and set smaller ones:

Date Goal
September 1, 2019 Planning and Sketching Completed
November 1, 2019 1st Movement Short Score
January 1, 2020 2nd Movement Short Score
April 1, 2020 3rd Movement Short Score
July 1, 2020 4th Movement Short Score
September 1, 2020 1st Movement Orchestrated
November 1, 2020 2nd Movement Orchestrated
January 1, 2021 3rd Movement Orchestrated
March 1, 2021 4th Movement Orchestrated
June 1, 2021 Full Score Finalized
August 1, 2021 Parts to Orchestra
o/a November 7, 2021 Premiere Performance

This in hand, I relaxed, and here was a mistake. My depression continued into the summer, in part because a course I had planned to teach was cancelled for low enrollment, and I just wasn’t putting the time in. I was staying up late at night and sleeping through my early-morning composing sessions, finding it difficult to get back on track. A week turned into a month, and by August 15, I had nothing sketched. I also had a fanfare for the Lakeland Civic Band that was still undone. With the start of classes at Lakeland, however, I had an incentive to reset my sleep schedule, and I got back to work. By early September, the fanfare, Mysterious Marvels, was completed, and I turned my attention to the symphony.

I began with the chorale, thinking that each phrase could be expanded into one of the four movements of the standard form. I examined the harmonizations from several hymnals, and settled on the one in use in my current church, No. 95 in the United Methodist Hymnal. In mid-September, I made a few sketches, and then created this overall plan:

The one-page outline of the first movement of my symphony.

The one-page outline of the first movement of my symphony.

The date, September 19, is somewhat later than I had hoped, but I was on my way. On the back of this page, I wrote:

What makes music “symphonic?”

  • “combining of tones”–whole is greater than sum of parts
  • development–motivic, thematic
  • explanation of a musical thesis
  • timbral variety and contrast
  • block scoring
  • weight and depth of emotional impact
  • breadth of expression and variety of means of expression
  • public, community-oriented statement meant for a broad audience

What do I want from this symphony?

  • summation of my work thus far (but do I break new ground here?)
  • statement about who I am now
  • cohesive, unified design (Panufnik, Lutoslawski)
  • playable, enjoyable for musician and listener
  • praise to God: four movements based on Old Hundredth, but is that
    • structural
    • motivic
    • more explicit?
  • but also ecumenical–invitation to praise and community, but faith is private

I began sketching on paper–a technique I have started to rely on increasingly over the last couple of years, and with the sketches I had created ahead of the one-page outline, I began to develop a plan that expressed the outline. It was only a single line of music in places, but by the end of September, it was continuous music from beginning to end of the movement. I then began to put ideas into the computer–still using Sibelius 6–and flesh them out as I described my process: a short score, with one staff for every instrument. As it happened, I started scoring the end of the movement first, from “D1” in my outline, and when I reached the end, I went back to the beginning, and so today, I reached D1 again, and drove the Golden Spike with a staccato D for low strings, oboe, and bassoon. A gentle hammer blow, since gold is soft.

This project has invigorated me: I have my usual fall energy for it, and the music has flowed easily. My years of composing have led to a workflow that I feel I can rely on: I don’t wait on the muse for inspiration–I sit down and write when it is time, and it is now time. With a movement under my belt, I am confident that two years from now, we will be rehearsing for a premiere.

And so today, I listened to my entire draft of the first movement, about 11 minutes of music. I will tweak it a little, and then lay it aside while I compose the rest of the symphony. Last week, my wife asked if she could hear it, and I had to respond that it was not yet ready–when she wakes up, I’ll tell her that it is today, because I have driven the golden spike.

 

 

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Composing, Personal Reflections | Comments Closed

A Week of Music

October 18th, 2019

A quick post so that I can get back to the major project in which I have been immersed.

It has been a busy week for my music and for my experience of music.

A week ago, I awoke in Mattoon, Illinois so that I could drive up the road to Eastern Illinois University for my first Society of Composers conference in five years. I haven’t deliberately stayed away, but timing and location have conspired against me. I was able to enjoy five of the eight concerts, including performances of Daniel Perttu’s preludes for piano, my own Maximum Impact for jazz ensemble, and Kevin Wilson’s cello sonata. My personal highlight of the conference was James Romig’s Still. This hour-long solo piano work, with a very low density of notes, might have lulled me to sleep after a long weekend of driving and conferencing, but quite the opposite–I found the work intriguing and invigorating. The other highlight was getting to spend time with Becky, especially on Friday evening, when we reconnected with Dan Perttu and Magie Smith, who is professor of clarinet at EIU. It was practically a grad school reunion.

We left the conference early so that we could drive back on Saturday because on Sunday, I needed to attend the first Cleveland Composers Guild concert of the season at Cleveland State University. I can’t remember a stronger program, in no small part because of the performers, including Peter Otto and Randy Fusco playing Margi Griebling-Haigh’s Rhapsody and the Cavani Quartet playing Sebastian Birch’s Life in a Day. But of all eight pieces, there were really no duds. The premiere of my song And I Live With the Fiction that I Never Get Mad by Loren Reash-Henz and Ben Malkevitch went off very well, and the lyricist, Janice Reash, was in the audience and quite impressed. I wasn’t quite sure that I liked the piece until I was able to hear a performance of it, and I believe that I will keep it in my catalog, because it really does work well.

An embarrassment of riches, this week, really. Last night I went to hear the Cleveland Orchestra for the second time this season. The “build your own” subscription allowed me to pick exactly the music that I wanted to hear, and I was excited to hear Louis Andriessen’s newish work Agamemnon. Life intervened: conductor Jaap van Zweden was called to his family, and the replacement conductor, Klaus Mäkelä, was presumably unfamiliar with a work premiered by van Zweden. This was disappointing, but I determined that whatever music the orchestra would play would be excellent, and decided to not feel short-changed.

I was not wrong. A lesser orchestra would have thrown a familiar piece onto the program: a Brahms overture or the like, but we were given instead a reasonable replacement: Olivier Messiaen’s little-heard Les Offrandes oubliées. This early work was a revelation–especially the ending, which was reminiscent of Holst’s Neptune. Violinist Augustin Hadelich played Prokovief’s second violin concerto beautifully, although that work is not one of my favorites–there remain only a few violin concerti that really connect with me after all these years. After intermission, Mäkelä’s rendition of Beethoven’s Seventh was splendid: full of the life and vigor central to that work. I hope that he will be engaged again.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Cleveland Concerts, Composing, Personal Reflections, Travels | Comments Closed

Cleveland Orchestra Plays Neuwirth and Mahler

September 27th, 2019

Last night, September 26, 2019, I returned to the Cleveland Orchestra for the first time in the 2019-2020 season. After the orchestra addressed some of my concerns in personnel and programming, I am, again, for the time being, a subscriber. I particularly appreciated the addition of an option this year to build my own series instead of choosing a curated series and then having to swap out tickets to get to see what I wanted to see.

This was my first encounter with the music of Olga Neuwirth, an Austrian composer less than a decade older than me. Masaot/Clocks without Hands was a fascinating work, and the main reason that I chose the concert: while I love Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, I didn’t expect it to be a completely new experience (more on that to follow). I was able to examine a blurry online perusal score from Ricordi prior to the concert, but there appears to be no commercial recording available, which is unfortunate, as my experience last night suggests that the work would bear repeated listening. A tribute to Mahler, Masaot/Clocks without Hands captures that composer’s eclecticism in very direct ways–a klezmer-type ensemble keeps making appearances in a texture that is otherwise mostly concerned with sound masses and subtle timbral shifts. The look of the score belied the experience (again, I only had access to a tantalizing image of the score in my preparation)–I had expected a more driving, rhythmic sound, but got instead the subtle, nebulous textures that Franz Welser-Most seems to favor in new music; his approach on the podium was nearly as metronomic as the three metronomes in the score (but what other choice did he have, with them ticking away like that?). Ms. Neuwirth is clearly concerned with time and the perception of time, and that worked successfully in this piece. If there is a motivic structure, it was difficult to perceive on first hearing (again, another chance to listen would help), but there was sufficient interest that 20 minutes was not too long, and I will be interested to hear more of this work and others by its composer.

This was, of course, not my first encounter with Mahler’s C#-minor symphony. I was able to review my notes in my copy of the score and reread my blog posts from nine years ago on the piece, and it brought back some of my questions about the work from that period. While last night’s performance helped answer some questions, it raised others. In his pre-concert talk, Baldwin Wallace Professor Michael Strasser played exceprts from Bruno Walter’s 1947 recording of the work, which seemed unbelievably fast to me in comparison to the Bernstein recording that I have used as my reference for the last 25 years. Walter, of course, knew Mahler’ personally, so there is more authority to his reading, although he also had to take the limitations of his media into consideration in his preparations. At any rate, Welser-Most’s interpretation last night was deeply affecting, if not as free as Bernstein’s. I was able to appreciate a more brisk approach to the piece–the Adagietto does indeed come off better when it is around 7 or 8 minutes (by my timing) than a lugubrious reading that labors over each note. I was troubled by the decision to bring principal horn Nathaniel Silberschlag to the front of the stage–in the position between the concertmaster and conductor, as a concerto soloist–during the scherzo. I’m not sure what this added musically to the performance–the first horn part is extensive, of course, but it the movement never struck me as a feature for the horn. Mahler writes for the horn in a particular way, namely, as a fourth section of the orchestra. This is evident from the First Symphony on, as the eight horns in that piece (six in the Fifth Symphony) provide a counterweight to either strings, woodwinds, or heavy brass. To me, this is the exact reason Mahler favored a larger horn section. Taking the leader of that section away from the group–a good 30 to 40 feet away–makes him less able to lead in the section passages. I can only wonder if this is some kind of hazing, or a trick of the “dog and pony show” type that the orchestra engages in from time to time. Despite Mr. Silberschlag’s highly accurate and especially prominent performance, I’m not sure that the decision to feature him in this way was the right one. The orchestra played impeccably, and Michael Sachs’ opening trumpet solo struck the right balance for the entire work.

I look forward to my next trip to Severance Hall, in a mere three weeks, for music by Andrieesen, Prokofiev, and Beethoven, led by a conductor I have heard about but not yet seen, Jaap van Zweden.

Tags: , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Cleveland Concerts, Mahler symphonies, Personal Reflections | 1 Comment »

Extracting Parts: Not the Worst

September 14th, 2019

I don’t know what the worst part about being a composer is (probably the rejection), but many of my colleagues feel that making parts out of a large-ensemble score is just about the worst. I disagree: with a change in attitude and correct workflow in your notation software, extracting parts doesn’t have to extract its pound of flesh, and it can even be joyful.

Joyful? you say. How can something that is just mechanical drudgery, a chore to be completed after the long slog of creating a score that looks halfway decent–essentially the creation of twenty to forty more little scores–how can that be joyful?

My answer lies in outlook: what is it that we are really doing when we create parts?

For me, the music I create is for people: for the people who will perform it, and for the people who will hear it. I don’t write it so that I can print a beautiful score, sit it on the shelf, and put the MIDI playback on while I sip a beverage. The music needs to go out there, mingle with performers and audiences, and in so doing allow all of us to have a conversation about something. Perhaps, as Libby Larsen says, about what it means to be alive (if I have done my job).

It can’t get out there without the parts. A score is great for the conductor, but we can’t hear it without the parts. Theorists and musicologists and other composers need the score, but for a performance to happen, we need parts (unless there is going to be a page turner for every musicianon stage).

When you are making parts, you are creating the material that will allow your music to come to life. You are creating the thing that will ultimately allow someone to bring your music to life. This isn’t a chore: this is the final link in the chain, and the musicians in the ensemble are honoring you by spending time with the parts you create. You need to honor their time and effort by giving them material that is clear and easy to work with. There is no music without the parts that you are about to create.

That’s the philosophy. Now, how do we manage workflow to make part extraction less painful? (I use Sibelius v. 6, so ymmv).

The approach I’ve found is that you actually do what composers started out doing at the dawn of polyphonic music: you start out by writing the parts. This doesn’t mean some Percy Grainger setup where you write thirty parts on thirty different pieces of paper, but it really isn’t far off.

I start with a short score (a debatable practice as I discovered recently on Twitter) as my first computerized step (these days, I do a fair amount of sketching at the piano with pencil and paper first). If I’m writing a band score, one staff for each instrument or even family: there will be three b-flat clarinet parts eventually, for example, but for right now they all go on one staff, if I’m writing a band piece. If it gets very polyphonic within the section, I may jump over another staff and make a note to myself. It’s still a sketch, after all.

The next step is crucial, and it’s something that honestly took me far too long to figure out. For many years, I left dynamics and articulations to the end phase of the process, but as I’m more comfortable and mature as a composer, I am more confident  deciding on these factors earlier on. The result is this: there is quite a bit of copy-and-paste in the next couple steps, so why not copy and paste all of those dynamics and articulations right along with the notes?

Having fleshed in the short score to the degree possible, and decided that I have essentially written the piece, it is time to create the parts. In Sibelius, I create a new instrument for every part I intend to have in the final version. Each instrument gets its own staff. This is crucial. Then, I copy and paste from my short score staves into the new instruments. The result is what I call my “ultrafull” score, but it really is all the parts, with one exception: every percussion instrument gets its own staff at this point.

I will admit to being less than confident as a percussion writer. You would think, that a few decades as a trombonist sitting in front of the percussion section, or as a conductor dealing with all manner of scores and solutions to printing parts for the percussion section, I would have a little better idea. The truth is that for some reason, I am intimidated by writing for percussion the same way that I am for guitar, or organ, or accordion. Other composers may be able to think of percussion much more integrally then I do, but it seems like I always get to the end of the sketching phase, and discover that I have bars and bars of rest for the percussion section, when they should be playing a much more active role.

The ultrafull score then, is the place where I rectify my percussion writing with reality. I hope that I have by this point determined just how many percussionists are available to me, and what instruments the commissioning group has in their closet. If not, it’s time for that conversation. On my most recent band composition, I had to spend some time whittling 6 percussion parts down to 5 after the director had a slight shortfall in the back row. Once I have exploded my short score to ultrafull, I have all the parts, since the next step is to render all the individual percussion instruments into the appropriate number of parts, playable by one musician each. I strongly recommend making a chart with color coding for each percussionist so that you can think about how long it takes to change instruments, and just how much work everyone in the section will have.

The next step, once I have my “score of parts” is to reduce parts onto the staves that I want to appear in the score. In Sibelius, I am going to keep all of my single instrument staves. Some of them will appear in the score, for example, there is usually only one piccolo part. If there are the typical two flute parts however, I will create a new flute instrument that will show both parts and will end up in the conductor’s score. I have to be pretty sure that I don’t want to make many changes at this point, and if I do, I need to make sure that I change both the single player staves and the full section staff, but Sibelius’ Arrange function makes it fairly quick to get more than one part on a staff. By paying close attention to where there are unisons, rhythmic unisons, or multi-rhythmic moments, I can work through the part fairly quickly, with a minimum of error. As the Arrange dialog box always suggests, it’s best not to try more than a few measures at a time. This is also the moment, when I add a2, divisi, or similar markings.

I will typically mute these combined scores in the Mixer window, so that my single instrument staves are the ones I hear on playback. This eliminates some of the clunkiness that happens when too many instruments are on the same note. Truth be told, I am still using Sibelius Sounds as it came out of the box, partly because I am a cheapskate and all of my equipment is old, and partly because of my maxim that if you can make it sound passably good in MIDI, there is an outside chance that it might sound good with human players. If I were better at audio, I might have a different approach here.

With the score staves muted, then, the next step is somewhat ironic. To make my full score, I now hide all the staves  that are actually playing back, i.e., the staves that will be my parts. (I typically do this using Focus on Staves in Sibelius.) The staves you hear are not the ones you see, and the staves you see are not the ones you hear! This means, that if say, 1st and 2nd clarinets are playing the same music, you hear two clarinets in the playback. Again, I don’t put a lot of stock in MIDI playback, but it’s an old habit that dies hard.

With the score finalized, that is, with the score staves visible and the part staves hidden, it is time to turn to the parts. I found an old score recently that I had created in Sibelius v2, and my score was in a folder with a bunch of other scores that represented the extracted parts. I know that I am not the only person whose workflow was revolutionized by the Dynamic Parts function of Sibelius, and to this day it is one of my favorite features of the program. It means that when it is time to create parts, all of my parts are right there with dynamics, with articulations, and basically ready to go. Remembering to set as many things in the Parts menu that will apply to everything as possible, it is just a matter of opening the part, checking the layout, making sure that page turns are sensible, finding those collisions that always sneak in, and creating a PDF.

I don’t want this post to sound too much like an advertisement for Sibelius, and I can’t really speak to Finale, which I haven’t used in 15 years, or Dorico, which I have never used. I have dabbled with Lilypond, and it seems like a similar process might be possible in that program. I consider myself to be a highly proficient user of Sibelius v6, but there are lots of nooks and crannies in that program that I have yet to explore. What I can say, is that I started with an ultrafull score this morning at about 7 a.m., made a few final corrections to it, and then started extracting parts. By 10:30a.m., I had 35 parts saved as PDF files for a 4-minute concert band piece. Tomorrow, I will give them a final proofread, and then send them off. Making them was a little bit tedious, and I was glad to take a break to make breakfast for myself and my kids, but it all went very smoothly in the end. Within a month, the commissioning band will be reading from the parts I created this morning, and my goal of bringing a new piece of music to a fantastic group of people, some whom I have known for years, and some who will be playing my music for the first time, will have again been accomplished.

 

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Composing | Comments Closed

Miller’s Habits: A Reflection

August 22nd, 2019
Photo of a list on slightly rumpled white paper, stapled to a bulletin board.

My copy of Ms. Miller’s Habits of Mind, standing watch on my office bulletin board.

 

In the fall 1991, my tenth-grade year, I took an English composition class with Ms. Betsy Miller. Her class was the first class I ever took that only dealt with writing, and she ran it as a writer’s workshop: we kept journals, read, wrote papers, discussed them, edited each other’s work. She was a passionate and dedicated teacher who put in countless hours outside the school day: she joked once that as she lugged a carton full of our work out to the parking lot, Mr. Van Fossen, our geometry teacher, would walk by empty-handed and jingle his keys at her.

Ms. Miller was in her mid-30s when I knew her, and was one of those “cool” teachers: stylishly-dressed, with a house in Columbus’ Victorian Village, and progressive in her outlook—just try to call her Miss Miller or Mrs. Miller!  Her approach was frank, direct, and honest. She was able to set us at ease with her and with each other, which was crucial, because we would be sharing our writing with our classmates as we edited each other’s work, and discussed it in class. I hope that students come to college having had teachers like her and find more like her once they are there.

One day, as a journal prompt, Ms. Miller handed out a list of Habits of Mind. I love lists, and taped my copy into my journal, and wrote about it, not just in class that day, but off and on throughout the semester. At the end of the term, when composition turned into British Literature, which I took from a different teacher, I carefully removed my copy of Habits of Mind from my journal and put it in the back page of my planner, and from there to my bedroom wall. When I went to college, I left it at my parents’ house, but I kept thinking about it. It had made its mark on me.

The years passed. At some point after the dawn of social media, I reconnected with Ms. Miller—now married to one of her colleagues (although she kept her maiden name), and retired from teaching. I mentioned Habits of Mind, and how I would like to share it with my students, thinking she could just email me the file. Instead, a few days later, an envelope arrived with a hard copy, printed in early-90s Macintosh type. I was immediately transported back to her classroom in the south wing of my high school. It is stapled to my bulletin board in my office as I type these words.

I still think Habits of Mind is a pretty good list of the things a college-educated person should do. I often tell my students that their goal should be to get an education, not just a degree, and to me, an education means this set of behaviors: thoughtfulness, curiosity, self-discipline are the virtues that are behind this list, but the list itself is a set of tools that a person will need to navigate whatever future might be ahead. After a certain number of years, the facts we learn and teach in a course will be out of date: practices change, skills become obsolete, technology moves forward, and older research is supplanted by new. But these two dozen habits are timeless, and making them habits makes us permanently interesting and forever prepared to make our contribution.

Ms. Miller certainly made hers.

 

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Closed

Homeschooled at 43

August 12th, 2019

I was back in Columbus to see my parents with the kids again this weekend–my third time in my hometown this summer, including a quick trip for our anniversary at the end of July and the early July trip that I wrote about in my last post.

You can’t go home again, of course, but the visits have been good for everyone, I think.

This weekend, I figured out a few things, so I’m putting them down.

I dated a girl, Krista, in my senior year of high school, and I’ve not stopped mulling it over for twenty-five years. She often comes to mind when I’m home, and there’s nothing to be done about it now, since she was murdered about 10 years ago. I’m not going into all the details of that, or of our relationship in high school, which was hesitant, largely because of me. Suffice to say, that I realized this weekend that, at age 17 and 18, I was nowhere near mature enough to be a good partner to her, and it wouldn’t have worked out even if I had done better. I wonder if the ex-boyfriend who killed her and then himself had the same problem.

My mother, who is 71, took the kids and I to the public pool, and my father stayed home. Mom got in the water with us, which wouldn’t be a big deal for most people. When we arrived, she unhesitatingly took off her yoga pants and got in the water in her one-piece suit–no skirt attached, her large surgery scar on her back showing between the straps. I didn’t say anything, but in the van on the way home, she told me that she used to be self-conscious, but has realized that she spent many years letting that keep her out of the pool, even though she loved going in the water, and she’s done with that. Go, Mom! Maybe if she can withstand the stares of judgmental Upper Arlington moms at the pool, I can keep remembering to put myself and my music out there in a serious way (more on that in a future post).

Also at the pool (we went two evenings), my kids learned a lesson about money and justice. We arrived at about 7pm and planned to stay the two hours until close. The Hastings pool has a lap area and a diving well, but also a pair of waterslides, a lazy river, and a large shallow end perfect for Noah and Melia, who are still learning to swim. On Saturday night, we arrived at seven, paid the admission fee, and swam for the first hour until break was called. At the break, we were informed that the pool was closing for a private party–we weren’t told this when we entered, and they claimed there was a sign about it, but we hadn’t seen this, and it wasn’t evident as we left. No refund was offered, but my mother was told that we could go to one of the other city pools, but by the time we could have gotten there, there would have been little point. The kids were disappointed, of course, and I decided it was time for a lesson in society, so I told them this: “In our country, with enough money, you can do whatever you want, but that doesn’t always mean that what you want is right or good. Now you know how it feels to be kicked out of the public pool because someone was willing to pay to have it closed for a private party. Remember this feeling.” We also practiced nonviolent protest by using the restrooms and fully deflating our pool toys before leaving.

The last thing I learned this weekend was something I read in Ella Frances Sanders’ wonderful book Eating the Sun: Small Musings on a Vast Universe, which I would recommend to anyone as a collection of wonderful little vignettes combining fact and poetry in a Carl Sagan vein. This quotation from page 63 is going to be my apothegm and motto for the coming academic year:

Be one of the ones who doesn’t stumble about with eyes closed and hands in pockets.

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in Personal Reflections, Travels | Comments Closed

The Music Man

July 6th, 2019

Almost every summer since I was 9, I’ve gone to at least one movie at the CAPA Summer Movie Series at the Ohio Theater in Columbus. My parents started taking me in 1985 or so, with a screening of My Fair Lady, and I’ve listened to Clark Wilson play thousands of songs on the Morton organ–almost always arriving early.

I’ve missed a few summers when I was living in other places, but have always taken the opportunity to see classic films on the big screen whenever I can. My wife and I even had our first date there in 2004 (Ghostbusters).

Last weekend, Noah, Melia, and I were in Columbus while my nieces are visiting from Germany (they flew here as unaccompanied minors with plan changes and everything… total pros). I went to a Columbus Symphony Picnic with the Pops for the first time in about 25 years (their Columbus Commons venue is miles better than the old location at Chemical Abstracts), and I was amazed at the redevelopment that has happened downtown since I last lived in Columbus in 2007. City Center Mall, which was a cornerstone of my experiences downtown as a teenager and through my twenties, turns out to have been a millstone holding back the area, and Columbus has finally got the exciting, vibrant downtown it deserves–not the Continent, not the Short North, not the Brewery District, not the Arena District, but cool stuff happening right at the center of the universe, within spitting distance of Broad and High (it’s the center, because that’s where the street numbers start). As someone who has been going to downtown Columbus since the 1980s, I have to say that it has never looked better. Good job, Columbus!

We went to a showing of the 1962 film adaptation of Meredith Willson’s The Music Man. I first saw this movie in middle school general music class (when it was only around 25 years old!), and have loved it ever since. It was something I showed to students regularly during my K-12 teaching years, and a part of me has always dreamed of playing Harold Hill. This was my first time seeing it on the big screen, and the first time my kids saw it. Noah got into it and had a good time; much was lost on Melia, who was restless, but she’s five and seemingly possessed of perpetual motion.

I’ve always gotten a little soft about this movie, especially at the end, and this time, having not seen it in quite a few years, I had a lump in my throat through most of the last 30 minutes. There’s so much to unpack:

The show is genius, and watching on a big screen with a crowd really helps drive home how wonderfully comedic it is–jokes always land better at the Ohio Theater, and The Music Man is full of them, from obscure slang of the 1910s to the outrageous hats of the women of River City, to the one-liners and sight gags that are relentless–not relentless in the way that Mel Brooks are the Zucker Brothers are, because every comedic moment is tossed off casually and serves to build the characters.

And the characters are endearing–they all have quirks and tics that make them familiar and unique–the mayor’s wife has about seven of the ten really great lines in the film (“What Eleanor Glynn reads is her mother’s problem!”). Yes, they are broadly-drawn, but it’s a musical–we don’t have time for character development beyond the principals, and yet, it seems to happen, at least in Winthrop and some of the River City ladies.

The romance between Harold and Marion is one for the ages, and predicable, but Willson uses music in such a perfect way–in the scene just before Harold’s arrest, we are shown that Harold and Marion have been literally singing the same song the entire time. They both have their pretensions and their ideas about life, about music, and their discovery of each other erases the cynicism with which they enter the film.

It speaks to this former band director on another level: I don’t know that I suffer from impostor syndrome, but there are times I feel like I might, and Harold Hill is a band director who is an actual impostor. And yet, his love of music carries him through, somehow, in the end.

And of course the incredible library dance sequence (and the bag of marbles that actually contains marshmallows–more of Harold Hill’s misdirection and trickery)!

Experiences like this are why I keep coming back to the Ohio–congrats on 50 years of summer movies, and here’s to 50 more!

Tags: , , , , , , ,
Posted in Personal Reflections, Travels | Comments Closed

Catching Up

April 12th, 2019

It’s been a while… still no posts in 2019? Well, this isn’t exactly true. I’ve been working on a series of posts about my first year as a public school teacher, which was 20 years ago this school year. It’s been taking up my time.

Some things that happened:

1. Four world premieres in a month

Between January 10 and February 10, I enjoyed the premieres of no fewer than four compositions:

  • Duo Capriccio by Tammy Evans Yonce in Brookings, South Dakota on January 14
  • Channels by the Blue Streak Ensemble here in Cleveland on January 17
  • Alexandrite by Trent Glass in Willoughby on February 8
  • My Uncle Was In Derry by the Chamber Music Society of Ohio in Cleveland Heights on February 10 (repeated on February 17 in Akron)

Makes one feel like a composer!

2. The Lakeland Jazz Festival, March 15-17.

Always a set of great performances, but a really nice headline act in the form of the Ralph Moore Quartet playing the music of John Coltrane.

3. College Music Society Great Lakes Conference at the University of Wisconsin-Stout, April 5-6.

Becky and I made a nice trip out of it, thanks to my mom, who came to be with the kids for five days. I gave a paper on the Cincinnati Symphony Centennial Fanfare Commissions, a set of pieces from 1994-95 that I remember from my first year in college at CCM. I’ve only begun this scholarship, and I’d love to see someone else pick it up–there is probably a good thesis or DMA document in it. Olivia Kieffer and Zach McCoy gave a great performance of the clarinet version of Lady Glides on the Moon, and I had an excellent time talking about the sax version with Aaron Durst, who is in the process of recording it.

Becky and I spent a couple of extra days as well–it is a long drive to Menomonie! On our free day, we drove to the Twin Cities to see the Mall of America. Becky loves shopping, and I have a fascination with malls–so strange to see one that isn’t half-empty these days. I’m starting to think that I’m inspired to write a piece about malls. I have very mixed and complicated ideas about them, having seen them in their heyday of the 1980s and watched them fall into disuse.

Coming up: the premiere of First Chapter, a violin and piano piece for the Cleveland Composers Guild’s Creativity: Learning through Experience program, my fifth contribution in this vein. These are always exciting, and I’m looking forward to meeting with the violinist next week.

Work has been busy–this has been a rough year with a new dean, a new class to teach, and a search committee, all of which have been quite educational.

Becky has also gone to work–a big change in our lives at home, but one that has been good for her.

So composing has been a little on the back burner–other than the violin piece, I haven’t finished anything in 2019. I got most of the way through a setting of a short Yeats poem for choir, but didn’t get there before the deadline for the upcoming collaboration between the Guild and the Cleveland Chamber Choir, which I’ve been kicking myself for. I’ve had some encouraging experiences the last few weeks, though, so I’m getting ready to get back in the saddle.

 

Posted in Composing, Personal Reflections, Travels | Comments Closed

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »