Night Sky score and recording posted

Today I posted the complete score and recording of Night Sky.  The recording is from the premiere performance on May 31, 2011 by the Symphonic Band at Joaquin Moraga Intermediate School.  More details about Night Sky can be found at bicemusic.com.  Click her for a direct link to the page for Night Sky: http://bicemusic.com/?page_id=35.

Performance Blog: Joaquin Moraga Intermediate School Symphonic Band - May 31, 2011

Last night the Symphonic Band of Joaquin Moraga Intermediate School premiered Night Sky.  This piece was commissioned by Adam Noel, the band's director, for the Symphonic Band.  The band did a great job performing the piece.  It is not an easy piece, but they managed to do it justice.

One thing I noticed about this band and performers of this age is that you can definitely hear when they are comfortable and confident about the music they are playing and when they are not.  This was apparent in the first couple of minutes in my piece.  I do not fault the band for this.  The section after the introduction is more exposed and somewhat difficult to play.  The confidence was not there, however they did a good job getting through it.  The rest of the piece was a lot more confident and they took control of it.

I am very grateful to Adam Noel and the Symphonic Band at Joaquin Moraga Intermediate School for the opportunity to compose Night Sky.  This was a wonderful experience.  Adam and the Symphonic Band should be proud!

Upcoming Performance: Night Sky - May 31, 2011

On Tuesday, May 31, 2011 at 7:00 p.m. the concert band at Joaquin Moraga Intermediate School conducted by Adam Noel will premiere Brian Bice's Night Sky.  The program will also include Joseph Compello's Gypsy Dance, an abridged arrangement of Schubert's Unfinished Symphony, a medley from Les Miserables and Corsage for Winds by John Cacavas.

Night Sky was commissioned by Adam Noel for the Joaquin Moraga Intermediate School Concert Band.  This piece is Brian Bice's first journey back to composing wind ensemble music since he composed Homage in 1999.

Rehearsal Blog: Night Sky - May 25, 2011

Today I went to Joaquin Moraga Intermediate School in Moraga, CA for a rehearsal with the concert band for my piece Night Sky.  This was a very interesting experience.  As a composer I have not worked with performers of this age group.  I did not know what to expect.  I did enjoy watching my friend Adam Noel lead the rehearsal.  Though we were classmates as undergraduates, it was the first time that I got to watch him conduct.

I feel as if the group is doing a good job with my piece.  They seem to have the notes down, so most of my comments were directed towards the group playing as an ensemble.  Playing together as a group can be difficult at any level.  This group seems a little ways off in this department.  This is something that will be learned as they gain more experience.  With some more rehearsal over the next week I believe that the piece will sound good at the concert.  I am definitely looking forward to the concert.

Night Sky rehearsal session

On Wednesday, May 25, 2011 I will be working with the concert band at Joaquin Moraga Intermediate School.  We will be working on my piece Night Sky which they will premiere on May 31, 2011.

I am looking forward to this because it will be the first time I get to hear this piece performed.  My goal in this rehearsal session is to help fine tune the group's performance of my piece.  Based on what I have heard from the director, Adam Noel, the kids are doing a good job with this piece.  Hopefully I can add a little something to the performance.

Beginning a new piece

On Saturday I began work on a new piece.  I am composing this piece for Greer Ellison, a flautist who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.  I met Greer a couple of years ago when I composed Shadows of Dreams for the flute ensemble she conducts at the University of California at Santa Cruz.  The title of the  piece is Flit and will be for solo flute.  I chose this title because of the light and quick nature of some of the motivic and thematic ideas I began to work with.

Starting a new piece is always fun.  There are so many possibilities for the piece.  There are lots of new ideas to try and old ideas to develop in a different way.  My hope is that this piece will come together more easily than Time in Memoriam.  That was a piece that underwent a few formal revisions before growing into its final form.

I am looking forward to getting into this piece.  This is definitely a more intimate piece opposed to the couple of wind ensemble pieces I have composed recently.

Should have double checked

So last Sunday I emailed parts for Time in Memoriam to Lee Morrison.  As I was creating the PDF part I did not double check to make sure that the formatting came out right.  Of course it was not right.  The original page size of the score is 11"x17".  When I extracted the parts I reduced the page size to 8.5"x11".  However this did not change the printer format size to 8.5"x11".  It was still set at 11"x17".  So all of the parts came out as 8.5"x11" on 11"x17" paper.  When printed to 8.5"x11" paper the printed area came out smaller.  Lee emailed me about the problem so I spent about an hour on Monday recreating the PDF parts, this time in the correct size.  Monday evening I sent the parts to Lee.  Now I know I should have double checked the parts.

Time in Memoriam: parts done and sent

Last weekend I finished editing the parts for Time in Memoriam.  At this point I feel like I am becoming a pro at extracting and editing parts.  Earlier this year I extracted and edited the parts for Night Sky for Adam Noel's concert band.  I still need to finish editing the parts for my Bass Trombone Concerto to send to Jonathan Warburton.

On Sunday night I sent the parts in PDF format via email to Lee Morrison, director of the New World School for the Arts High School Wind Ensemble.  Lee said that they will read the piece sometime this week and he would let me know how it goes.  I am looking forward to hearing feedback about the piece.

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.

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.

Time in Memoriam score is completed

On Saturday, April 16, 2011 I completed the score for Time in Memoriam.  This wind ensemble piece is composed for Lee Morrison and the New World School for the Arts High School Wind Ensemble.

There were times in the compositional process in which I wondered if this piece would ever be completed. The form and direction changed so many times that this piece hardly resembles the diagrammatic sketch I created when I first started thinking about this piece.

I am excited to have completed this piece.  I am happy with the way it turned out.  I look forward to receiving feedback from Lee.  It is such a relief to finish a piece like this.  The next step is to extract, edit and print the parts.  That is when the whole package will be done.

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.

Busy times

I realized this morning that it has been over ten days since my last post.  Lately I have been quite busy with a lot of non-compositional things.  So my composition time has been drastically cut.  I guess I should get used to it with a baby on the way.  Like most people I say it will not affect my time.  However, I know it will all be about finding a balance.  Balancing family, work and composing will be a difficult task, but one I can do.  I guess that is why, in part, I have this blog.  I will use this blog to make me accountable for my composing.

As for the recent past, the little composing time I have had has been devoted to entering the dynamics and expressions for Time in Memoriam into Finale.  I am almost to the halfway point of entering these items.  Fortunately I have learned many shortcuts on entering these items and cleaning them up so my hope is that it will not take too much longer to finish editing the score.

Program Notes: Night Sky

Night Sky is an aural representation of the journey to night time.  The journey is from the perspective of the moon.  The opening chords signal the sunset where the moon breaks through the horizon to start its ascent in the sky.  This is followed by twilight, the time where the sunlight has almost faded and the mysteries of the night awaken.  The ostinato that rises out of the mysteriousness symbolizes the rise of the moon as it marches forward in its ascent of the sky.  The themes and motives that appear around the ostinato represent other aspects of the night-time sky such as stars, meteors and birds.  The piece ends with the moon reaching the apex of its journey in the night sky.

Composing Session: March 26, 2011

Most of my composing time on Saturday was spent editing the score for Time in Memoriam.  After completing the orchestration last week I printed off a copy of the score.  I have been marking the dynamics and expressions on this copy.  I still have one or two sections to mark before I begin entering these markings into Finale.

In this process I noticed a couple of inconsistencies in my score.  In the B section there are phrases that come back and I saw that in a couple of them parts were missing.  I will need to go over these sections again and fix the omissions.

Editing the score for dynamics and expressions is a tedious yet crucial part of the composition process.  While I am not looking forward to inputting them into Finale, I am excited about completing Time in Memoriam.

Time in Memoriam - score finished

I am pleased to announce that the score for Time in Memoriam is finished.  Today I completed the orchestration of the section between measures 156 and 182.  I also added four measures starting at 186 to smooth out the transition to the next section.

The score, however, is not one-hundred percent complete.  I still need to edit the score for dynamics, articulations and expressions.  I will start by marking them on the printed draft of the score I printed today.  The I can begin the laborious task of entering them into Finale.

I am really excited to have finally had the opportunity to complete the music for Time in Memoriam.  I cannot wait to send the completed score to Lee Morrison.

Composing Session: March 12, 2011

Yesterday was the first productive day for composing I have had in over a month.  I started by expending the orchestration of the section between measures 88 and 106 of Time in Memoriam.  I also had to double check the consistency of the brass orchestration between measures 80-83 and 88-91.  The intent is for these phrases to be repeats of each other.  However in the process of orchestrating measures 88-91 I tweaked the brass orchestration to make the voice leading better, so I needed to be sure the two sections were the same.

I then took a look at the section between measures 135 and 151.  This is a similar section to the one I was working on.  I spent time expanding the orchestration and developing this section.  Most of the orchestration and parts were similar to those at measure 88 so this was a fairly easy section to work on.

Later on Saturday night I was thinking about the section from measure 96 to 106.  In this section I developed the brass theme by fragmenting it and putting extra space in the phrase.  I started to think that it was a little too disjunct.  I thought that I should tighten it up a little and make it more of a secondary phrase to the melody rather than a development.

So I did just that.  I tightened up the phrase and it worked.  I placed it as the second iteration of the brass theme.  In the section starting at measure 135 there were, initially, two iterations of the brass theme, one a repeat of the other.  To create a better continuity between these two sections I added the secondary phrase at measure 143.

Most of what remains is to orchestrate the sections starting at measures 107 and 159.  These two sections have similar themes so the orchestrations will be similar, though not a direct repeat.  After these two sections are completed I will need to go through to tighten up a couple of other sections that may not be as strong and then add the rest of the expressions and dynamics.  There is a bit of work left, but at least now I can see the end.

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.

Another rearrangement

I have said it before, but this time I know it will be the last.  I have changed to form of the piece yet again.

The other day I realized what was bothering me about Time in Memoriam: the opening.  It is not that the opening I had composed was bad, rather it did not create enough or an impact.  As it was the introduction consisted of long tones that slowly faded in.  It was more textural rather than thematic.  For a high school piece it was not the way I wanted to go.

I moved the clarinet solo and subsequent section to the beginning after a four measure chimes introduction. I did keep the textural section as it does what I want it to do.  I realized that it was just not suitable for the beginning.

With this shift the music seems to flow better.  The opening is stronger and that will help to make the piece stronger.  Of course, this is what I have thought with all of the changes I have made up to now.  Why is this time different?  No matter what happens I am going to push on and concentrate on finishing Time in Memoriam.

Time in Memoriam - sketch complete

I have been wanting to say this for quite some time.  The sketch for Time in Memoriam has been completed.  I had to rearrange the score (yet again) to make this happen, but those detail are for another post.  I really like the way the piece is now.  So the form is set and the themes and melodies are in line.  All that is left to do is fill out all of the voice and add expressions and dynamics to the score.  Maybe I can finish this piece within the next month.