Composing Session: January 20, 2011

I had planned on taking yesterday off.  I had a lot of non-musical things to do.  However, I saw an opportunity to send two pieces of mine to an ensemble director at my undergrad school.  He had written back to me requesting score and parts for both pieces.  The two pieces in question are Trackings (No. 1, but not labeled as such) and Day Moon.

The biggest task for these pieces was that I had to rework the instrumentation.  Trackings was originally composed for flute, alto sax, violin, cello, piano and percussion.  For this ensemble I rearranged the piece for flute, alto sax, tenor sax, trombone, piano and percussion.  I am fine with this switch mostly because Trackings has yet to be premiered.

Day Moon was originally composed for clarinet, bass trombone and piano.  For this piece I re-scored the clarinet part for alto saxophone and switch from bass trombone to trombone.  This was primarily a simple transposition of the clarinet part.  I did have to change octaves on a couple sections of the bass trombone.  Otherwise the switch to trombone was negligible.  Day Moon was premiered on August 18, 2005 at the 3rd Annual Festival of Contemporary Music.  I do like the change to alto sax.  I think it will add an interesting timbre to the piece.

I was able to get the score and parts for both pieces sent out last night.  So now I wait to see if either of these pieces will be programmed.