What I Did on my Summer Vacation Part 2 (July & August 2009)

By the time July 1st rolled around summer was half over and four of my six scheduled performances had occurred.  As a matter of fact June 7th until July 17th was the slow period compositionally for me.  I mean, I had a lot to do to prepare for the 7th Annual Festival of Contemporary Music, but I did not have any performances lined up and I did not do much, if any, composing.  The was due in part to the fact that for the second summer in a row my wife and I moved.  This was not exactly what we planned on doing this summer, but with my promotion and transfer to Stockton, CA (about 40 miles away from Modesto) it was a necessary evil.

My next performance this summer took place on Saturday, July 18th at the 2009 San Francisco Chamber Wind Festival.  The Avenue Winds were set to premiere my woodwind quintet Visions of a Landscape.  All five movements were performed on this concert.  Prior to the concert photographer Micheal Vickers and I set up a display of the five photographs we used in this collaboration.  This display was setup so that people could view the photos on the way into or out of the concert hall.  All-in-all the concert was wonderful.  The performances were great and I am very pleased about how my piece turned out.  For more thoughts and details about the Festival check out the Performance Blog entry about this concert (posted September 22nd).

Two weeks after the San Francisco Chamber Wind Festival the 7th Annual Festival of Contemporary Music began.  The FCM is my pet project.  The Festival began in 2003 and this year was entering its 7th season.  This year we were hosting two concerts, the 9th and 10th concerts in the Festival's history.  The two concerts occurred on Saturdays August 8th and 22nd.  This year we decided to space out the two concerts by two weeks for two primary reasons.  The first is to give us a little rest between events.  Also, and more importantly, we thought that there is a greater chance for returning audience members if the concerts were spaced out.  I think that it worked.  The audience for the concert on August 22nd was at least as big as on the 8th.  It seemed to me that the audience may have been bigger (more on that in a future posting).

August 22nd also saw my last performance of the summer.  Philip Santos performed, once again, my violin piece Glimpses of the Moon at the 7th Annual Festival of Contemporary Music.  The performance was great.  I could tell that he was really starting to better understand the piece.  Philip's performance was full of nuance and subtlety.  I am very happy with the way this performance turned out.

So this was my summer.  It was very busy, productive, exciting and eye-opening.  This period of time was the first in which I was really glad my wife and I moved down to California from Oregon last summer.