A busy month

April 2011 was a very busy compositional month for me.  Which is why I did not post as many entries here and my Listening Journals were short for a couple of weeks.  All-in-all it was a good month.  I finished Time in Memoriam including the editing of the parts.  I set up my next new composition, though I have not decided on the complete instrumentation yet.  I also received a request for a set of parts for my Concerto for Bass Trombone and Orchestra.

In addition to all of that I had to review submissions for the 9th Annual Festival of Contemporary Music.  This is a process that takes up a lot of my time.  However it is something I have enjoyed doing for the last nine years.  The program for this years FCM is set and more details will be made available in a future post.

I look forward to what May will bring.  I hope to stay busy, yet be able to spread out the projects.  It always seems that everything comes to me in bunches.  For once I would like a little breathing room between deadlines.

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.

Upcoming Projects

With the bulk of the work for Time in Memoriam completed I have begun to play my next composition.  I have been thinking about what piece I want to have performed on the 9th Annual Festival of Contemporary Music.  I have been in contact with flautist Greer Ellison about writing a piece for her to play on the Festival.  She is interested, so that is a possibility.  Right now I am uncertain if it will be a solo piece or a duo or a trio (probably no bigger).  I will need to contact Greer to see what she might be interested in.

I am also starting to plan my next wind ensemble piece.  I have a couple of "feeler" emails out right now to a couple of friend of mine who conduct high school or junior high bands.  I am checking to see if they would be interested in a new piece for their band.  I am now waiting to see who responds to the email.  My goal is to compose two or three pieces in the next year.  At the point I will be able to create a flyer and try to market the wind ensemble music.

In the meantime my first priority will be to complete the two unfinished movements of Trackings No. 2.  Even if it is finished in time, it is unlikely that this piece will be performed until next year (hopefully at the FCM).  This is due to budgetary concerns.  However, the piece will be finished within the next month.

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.

Between now and the end of the year

Over the past few weeks I have come to the realization that I have a lot to do between now and the end of the year.  I want to finish Time in Memoriam.  At this stage I figure that this piece is about forty percent complete.  Now that I have connected the A and B sections and have a couple of clear ideas for the last part of the piece it should not be too difficult to finish the sketch soon.

I need to make a couple of final edits for Night Sky.  This includes making sure all of the markings and dynamics are consistent and present.  I also need to transpose the score.  The most time consuming thing for this piece will be to extract and edit the parts.  This alone will take a couple of hours.

Ideally I would like to finish Trackings No. 2.   However, with three movements left to compose, I do not see this happening.  I do think that I can finish as least one more movement.  With my deadlines approaching I need to spend the majority of my composing time finishing Time in Memoriam and Night Sky.  So if Trackings No. 2 continues into the new year then that is not a problem.

I have also been thinking about what to compose next.  I have been enjoying composing music for younger ensembles.  I am excited to hear how these pieces will turn out.  I am debating if I want to compose another high school or junior high piece right away.  Or if I want to try to compose for a professional or college ensemble.  I need to continue to think about this and send out some "feeler" emails to people I know to see if there is any interest for me to write a piece for them.  There is still plenty of time to figure this out.

Is it stealing?

I have noticed a trend recently in the music I have been composing.  I have been taking themes or in some cases whole movements from one piece of mine and using them in a completely different piece (i.e. Trackings No. 2 taken from Birches).  I am not recomposing the same piece when I do this.  In fact the pieces that I take themes or movements from are "dead" pieces.  This means that I have no intention on continuing these pieces.  Of ten there are some interesting melodic or thematic ideas that I was either unable to develop to develop at the time or never got the chance to because of other projects.

To answer the question posed in the title, no it is not stealing.  Can someone really steal from themselves?  I think there are instances in which someone can.  However, what I am doing is taking from pieces that will otherwise go unfinished.

This is the case with Fate of the Future.  This is a wind ensemble piece I began sketching in 2001.  There are a couple of melodies and themes that I have always liked in the piece.  However I was unable to develop those ideas at the time and complete the piece.  I have decided to adapt those melodies and themes into Time in Memoriam since I feel that they would work well for this piece.

One day I do plan on composing a piece titled Fate of the Future.  I like this title and I am going to keep it in mind.  Right now I am just not sure what this piece will be.  All I know is that I will not be using the music from the original sketch.  It will be an all-new piece.

Preliminary thoughts on future projects

Now that I an about halfway through with the orchestration of Night Sky I have begun to think about what I am going to compose next.  I have a couple of projects lined up, though none have any firm performance dates yet.  I have talked with a high school band director Lee Morrison about composing a piece for his ensemble.  Lee and I have know each other since out days at Bowling Green State University.  While I am uncertain about starting another large ensemble piece right away I do have some ideas for this piece.  The first is the title: Time and Memoriam.  This is one of the few times in which the title has come to me before starting the piece.

As inferred by the title the piece will take on a reflective and possibly introspective mood.  Another initial idea I have is to incorporate the Dies Irae into the music.  I am thinking that this chant music will be one of the primary focuses of the piece.  I will try to reshape it and create new melodies from the pitch material to blend in creativity and originality.

Another project I have in mind is my second collaboration with photographer Micheal Vickers.  This time our idea is to do a "reverse" collaboration.  In our first collaboration I composed a woodwind quintet inspired by five different photographs of Micheal's.  This time he is going to take a series of photographs inspired by my music.

I am still try to decide the ensemble for which I will compose the music.  I am considering revising Birches for cello and bass.  If I were to do a revision of this piece I would ned to expand the instrumentation.  One thought is to add alto flute and bass clarinet.  This would allow for a variety of timbres between the instruments.  I am also considering adding only piano to the cello and bass.  The piano could be a good choice as it is able to create a wash of sound through the use of the pedal and can assist in percussive attacks.  Both of these are elements that I believe this piece needs.

As I have said, I am not sure which project to take on next.  I have been kicking around other ideas as well, but I wold need to contact the performers I have in mind prior to giving those projects too much thought.

New Opportunity

I am currently in talks with a friend of mine to compose a piece for his middle school band.  We are looking at the possibility of a performance this coming fall.  As a result I have decided to yet again put aside Dream Cycle.  A motivating reason to put aside the songs is that a piece for middle school band is a different technique than my "usual" style.

I have been thinking a lot about this.  One of the primary challenges in composing such a piece would be simplicity.  The melodic and harmonic content would need to be much more simple than the music I normally compose.  Because of this I have been considering composing a series of etudes so that I can revisit the idea of simplicity.  These etudes would be for one or two instruments, though most likely one.  It is possible that some of the material created in these etudes could go into the band piece.

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.

A look ahead at some Fall projects

In trying to get motivated to compose again after a long, busy and sometimes stressful summer, I have been thinking ahead to what projects and pieces I will work on in the coming months.  The first thing I am going to do is complete Dream Cycle.  In previous posts I have noted that I am currently setting the text Mutability by Percy Bysshe Shelley.  In the cycle I have already set A Dream by Edgar Allen Poe and Echo by Christina Georgina Rossetti.  I am also considering 2 additional short texts by Walt Whitman I Dream'd in a Dream and A Clear Midnight as interlude songs, songs to fit in between the 3 main texts.

My next project will be an orchestration of my large chamber ensemble piece Playing in the Shadows.  The idea for this project came from a call for scores for the 2010 New Music @ ECU Festival.  Normally, I do not compose anything for a specific call for scores.  To me it does not seem like a good idea.  If a piece I am composing or want to compose happens to fit a call for scores, then I will consider submitting it.  For example, there is a call for scores that would be good for Dream Cycle so I am going to consider submitting to that call.  Also, I want to do this orchestration project because I have been wanting to revisit this piece and this is a good way for me to do so.

There are other projects/compositions I am thinking about working on.  Right now these are the two that I will be working on in the immediate future.