My recent horn-trio miniature, The Hedgehog's Dilemma, has been chosen as one of the winners of the Red Hedgehog Trio's inaugural Call for Scores! The premiere will be on February 15, 2015, at the Whitney Center for the Arts in Pittsfield, MA, as part of the 10x10 Upstreet Festival. Looking forward to hearing them tackle this thorny little guy!
Here's a sneak peak at what to expect:
For the past decade or so, I've used a series of Moleskine Art Plus Music Notebooks to map out ideas: motivic materials, rhythmic schema, notes to myself, sketches (musical and otherwise), etc. They've become an integral part of my creative process, but they've also served as creative waypoints; I flip through them every few years to see how I've developed, where life's taken me, that sort of thing.
Now that I've crammed the last bit of material into one (a sixteenth-note G sharp on a bass clarinet, for those of you keeping score at home), I figured I'd flip through this puppy and highlight some especially memorable moments from the past couple of years.
And so it begins ...
Left: Memorizing lines for Wax Wings Productions' THE TRAGICAL HISTORY OF DOCTOR FAUSTUS; Right: Mapping out clarinet multiphonics for CHARLES & RAY
Left: Measuring furniture in preparation for our move to Lincoln, MA in February of 2013; Right: The first harmonic sketches of STEEL SYMPHONY
Left: Notes from our "birthing class" at Mount Auburn Hospital (where our son was born a few months later); Right: Figuring out the ending to STEEL SYMPHONY
Left and Right: Mapping out an array of extended techniques utilized throughout THE TOWER
Left: While walking through the Lincoln wilderness, I stumbled upon a new "office" (to which I've returned many times since); Right: Mapping out isorhythmic material for THE TOWER (used in the "winding staircase" section
Sketching out ideas for the poster design of Wax Wings Productions' HAMLET: PRINCE OF DENMARK
Left and Right: Notes from an especially productive Fifth Floor Collective meeting at a coffee shop in Brighton---we were mapping out our first-ever collaborative composition, TRIPTYCH, about which much more information will be coming soon
Rounding out the final page---182---of this current notebook: motivic sketches for my upcoming loadbang piece, COME SOON, YOU FERAL CATS. More info on this one coming as well!
This was the dress rehearsal. There were more than zero people in the audience, I swear.
The Birmingham New Music Festival was a success, and I'm a little in awe of just how much the organizers were able to pull together. It was a pleasure to be a part of it, and the players did a great job with abstractEXTRACTION. The piece got a nice little mention in a review from AL.com, too.
And it was great getting to poke around Alabama for the first time! We had a nice mini-vacation, and Jude got to celebrate his first birthday (!!!) at the Birmingham Zoo.
Announcements on upcoming pieces coming shortly, so be on the lookout!
I've always found formatting the final score to be a bit daunting. With a piece as long as this one is, it's just about impossible to catch everything---and sometimes, when you do correct an error (collisions, auto-spacing disasters, etc.), it somehow sets off a chain reaction thirty or forty pages away. Notation software is a tremendous asset, but self-publishing means you're not just accountable for the music; you're accountable for the professionalism of the final, physical product as well.
It's pretty damn enjoyable when it goes well, and just about the worst part of writing music when it doesn't. I've checked and re-checked this whole beast a few times, though, so I'm hoping it came alright.
Anyway, here are a few shots of the finished product!
Front cover - pretty straightforward
Back cover - geometric rendering of a key scene.
Performance notes page - loadbang is an extremely adventurous ensemble, so I've tried to give them plenty to work with.
The first batch is done! They're currently en route to NYC.
