Performance blog: San Francisco Chamber Wind Festival - July 18, 2009

I was fortunate this year to have a piece selected for performance at the 2009 San Francisco Chamber Wind Festival.  This Festival is put on every year by John Bilotta and takes place at the San Francisco Conservatory.  There are two ensembles-in-residence at the Festival: Avenue Winds and ChamberMix.  The Avenue Winds is a woodwind quintet that performs a many different concerts each year throughout the Bay Area.  As you may recall, this is the same ensemble that performed the 3rd and 5th movements of Visions of a Landscape on June 6th.  ChamberMix is a mixed ensemble consisting of approximately 6 performers.  This group is founded and run by Martha Stoddard, who also plays flute in this group.

The piece of mine that was selected for inclusion at this year's Festival was Visions of a Landscape.  This piece is the result of a collaboration with photographer Micheal Vickers.  The Avenue Winds performed all five movements of my piece at this concert.  This performance was scheduled prior to the Avenue Winds/NACUSAsf concert on June 6th.  When I found out about the NACUSAsf concert I submitted Visions because the ensemble was already going to learn my piece.  If I could get another performance, then why not?

As a whole the Festival was great!  All of the performances were of high quality.  Another great thing about the Festival was that most of the composers were in attendance.  The Avenue Winds did an amazing job performing my quintet.  It is very gratifying to have professionals perform my music.  As I mentioned in my blog entry about the June 6th concert, it is such a great feeling to hear an ensemble accurately perform a fast movement at the indicated tempo.  Now, I would like to add that it is satisfying to hear a high-quality performance of my music whether it is fast, slow or in between.  This is a valuable lesson I learned this summer.  Not only with this piece, but with other pieces as well, but that is for another blog entry.

This was just another great experience I had this summer.  There were many good pieces performed on the Festival.  One that sticks out in my mind is a solo bassoon piece by Bruno Siberchicot called Chamans.  This along with another another piece I heard later in the summer has really inspired me and given me ideas for future projects (again I am getting ahead of myself).  As I look back, I think this summer will prove to be a huge step forward in my career.