Time to turn out the parts

About ten days ago I sent Lee Morrison the score for Time in Memoriam via email.  He wrote to me today saying that the piece looks good.  As it turns out the ensemble has a concert on Friday and then they are going to start looking at new music.  Lee has asked me to email him the parts so the wind ensemble can read the piece next week.

This is great news.  So I guess now it is time to turn out the parts so that the New World School for the Arts High School Wind Ensemble can read Time in Memoriam.  Unfortunately this adds a lot to my already busy work load.  I am working on re-extracting parts for my Bass Trombone Concerto to send to bass trombonist Jonathan Warburton.  I am also in the middle of re-orchestrating Off you go... for a possible performance in July.  For this piece I am changing the percussion part to a piano part.  I am going to be busy, but it is all good.

A reason for revision

Yesterday I was talking to one of my friends and he mentioned that he is looking for music for a concert coming up in July.  The ensemble has an interesting instrumentation: flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano. However, I do not have any pieces for that type of ensemble.  He told me that a subset of the ensemble would work as well.  I started thinking about Off you go... for flute, cello and percussion.

Off you go... is one of my favorite pieces that I have composed.  I have been thinking about expanding it into a large scale work for years now.  I have also considered changing the percussion part to a piano part.  This concert opportunity gives me a good excuse to take another look at the piece and change it to a flute, cello and piano composition.

This change is not at all difficult to do as most of the percussion part is for the vibraphone.  I would need to recompose the sections that use suspended cymbal and brake drums.  That should not be hard.  The main priority would be to keep the same or similar rhythmic ideas.  I do have a couple of ideas of what to do in those sections.

The ensemble director would need the score soon to decide if they want to program the piece.  So basically I have until the end of April, in other words this week, to get it done.  I am confident that I can have it done on Saturday to send to my friends so he could pass it along.

A look ahead

With the sketch score for Time in Memoriam complete and the full score nearing completion I have started to think about what my next project(s) will be.  First and foremost I need to finish Trackings No. 2, my second collaboration with Micheal Vickers.

I have recently been thinking about revisiting a couple of pieces I compose a while back.  The first is Concerto for Bass Trombone and Chamber Orchestra.  As it is I have always considered this piece the final movement of a larger piece.  I have had various ideas overs the years for other movements.  However, without a performance opportunity there is no real reason to compose this other than for myself.  Lately, I have been thinking that maybe this is something I can work on with Jonathan Warburton, the bass trombonist who contacted me about a month ago.

The other piece is Off you go... my trio for flute, cello and percussion.  I have always liked this piece, but like the Bass Trombone Concerto I view it as a larger multi-movement work.  I have been talking with flautist Greer Ellison about composing a piece for her.  Expanding Off you go... is an option I may explore.

In keeping with my current compositional focus I do need to start looking for another high school or junior high school band to compose a piece for.  There are a couple of friends I am considering contacting, though I am unsure of who to contact first.  Maybe I will just contact both and see what happens.

Influential Pieces: Kaija Saariaho - Cendres - Part 4

After listening to Cendres I knew that this was the type of piece that I wanted to compose.  When I was finished with the piano piece I was composing, I began to think about this Cendres-influenced piece.  I checked out a copy of the score from the university library and began to study this piece.

The primary focus of Cendres is timbral.  This means that texture and tone color are as important as harmony and themes.  After figuring out some of the primary techniques Saariaho employs to create her sound world, I began to think about how I could use these techniques in my music and make it my own.  Breath tones in the flute and vertical motion of the cello bow (up and down the strings rather than just across them) were two of the techniques that really stood out to me.

The piece I composed that was inspired by Cendres was Off you go... for flute, cello and percussion.  I used a similar instrumentation to that of Cendres which was alto flute, cello and piano.  I opted to use percussion rather than piano because of the large palette of sound available with percussion instruments.  The three primary percussion instruments I chose to use were vibraphone, suspended cymbal and brake drums.  The vibraphone was a logical choice as there are a few different ways to play the instrument.  These ways include with mallets, with a bass bow on the edge of the tone bars or with the hands.  Also this instrument can sustain pitches like a piano.

Inspired by Saariaho's exploration of the instruments she used I looked at some extended techniques for some of the percussion instruments.  I found that using a bass bow on the edge of the tone bars on the vibraphone creates a thin, sustained sound which complements the flute and cello tones.

The gradual unfolding of the harmonic language is another aspect of Cendres that I wanted to explore in my piece.  This was accomplished by using the extended techniques.  By changing the way in which the tone is played the sound will be different while the pitch stays the same.

Listening to and studying this piece has given me tools that I have used in my piece Off you go... and still use today.  This is one of the pieces that has really helped me to develop my compositional voice and one that I think deserves the label: Modern Masterwork.

Fall Projects Update

I have been looking at my list of pieces I would like to compose.  I have also been thinking about my next project.  In an earlier post I wrote that I will be doing an orchestration of Playing in the Shadows for the call for scores for the 2010 New Music @ ECU Festival.  The deadline for this call is coming up in a couple of weeks and I realize that I do not have enough time to meet this deadline.  Therefore, I have decided to put this project on hold.

My first priority remains the Dream Cycle.  I will be resuming work on Mutability this week.  On Tuesday, I finished editing the score for I Dream'd in a Dream.  I have decided to include A Clear Midnight as the fifth song (but not necessarily fifth in order) of the cycle.  As I get closer to finishing Mutability I will start thinking about the order of the songs.

I am not sure what my next project will be after I finish Dream Cycle.  I may try to find an outlet for the complete version of Off you go... and work on the rest of that piece.  I am also planning another collaboration with Micheal Vickers.  For this I have been brainstorming ideas for instrumentation, but I have not yet settled on anything.  I am leaning towards something with winds and strings as opposed to a standard quartet or quintet.  I am open to the idea of a "standard" ensemble, but I am not sure of what I want right now.  There is a lot I would like to compose, I just do not know what I would like to do next.

Narrowing the Scope

About a week ago I had described a musical idea that stuck in my mind as I was listening to a piece by Webern.  I began sketching this idea and I became attached to it.  Well, as I have been working on this quartet, I have been trying to focus on the scope of this piece.  What is my overall structure?  Will this be a multi-movement or a single-movement piece?  What kind of sound world do I wish to create?  I decided that this will be a single-movement work.  This decision is in large part because many of my recent works have been multi-movement.  I want to challenge myself to write a longer piece in a single movement.

With this decision, I have had to look at the varying sketches I have created.  Some will work in this piece, however some will not.  The sketch mentioned above fits into the latter category.  The idea is solid, but it is not suited to work in the structure and sound world I have created.  Most likely, I will be using this musical idea in my flute, cello and percussion trio, Off you go...  This is a multi-movement work I began in 2003 of which one movement has been completed.  This piece may receive further discussion in a future post as it is a very important piece to me.

The point of this entry is that I have finally narrowed down the scope of this piece.  I have gone back and forth lately on whether this is a single-movement or multi-movement piece.  Since I have now figured out my direction I may go back and review the sketch score and see if revisions may be necessary.