shirking my duties

hi there from your sheepish but joyfully exhausted composer-in-res. it was such an amazing last couple of months that i found it impossible to experience it, in all its richness, AND archive it here. so - alas - i hope you will extend a little leniency while i retell it all, in little chapters, from this blissfully nostalgic point of view. it allows me to relive it all again!

last time i checked in i was looking forward to the club cafe concert on feb 5 on which synopses 9 and 10 were unveiled. this concert was on super tuesday (remember that? back in our campaign youth, when all candidates and voters seemed so innocent and fresh?) and it had the distinction of being highlighted on WGBH radio, on its new program 'classical connections,' produced by michelle sweet. check out the pic!

it was great fun to announce election results between pieces - and to hear kate vincent roar through synopsis 9: i don't even play the bassoon (for solo viola), and jennifer slowik's lyrical rendition of synopsis 10: i know this room so well (for english horn). i remember being alarmed that, after finishing the double violin concerto just a couple of weeks earlier, these two little pieces were hatched. they ended up being sort of surreal spin-offs of elements of the concerto, actually - impossible to put it to bed, yet.

after this festive little evening, which included some wonderful romps through the musical landscapes of eric moe and jacob ter veldhuis, among other greatly contrasting offerings (including the berio violin sequenza - go gabby diaz!), i dove headlong into proofreading and parts copying and great anticipation for the big month of march. YES i took photos! so here's what i propose: over the next few days i will offer event-by-event reminiscences of march, including: the radcliffe institute lecture i gave on the double violin concerto, on march 19; the rehearsal process of the double concerto and the three other world premieres on the march concert; the special club cafe concert featuring my violin soloists carla kihlstedt and colin jacobsen, their collaborators and their music; the world premiere of the concerto and the 3 other works by derek hurst, alejandro rutty and ken ueno; the recording session of the double concerto; the new york premiere of the four pieces in the BMOP-MATA festival coproduction concert on april 1 (as part of the 10th-anniversary MATA festival!); and finally - the april 8 club cafe concert, featuring synopses 11 and 12. whew - did it all really happen????

i look forward to sharing it all with you, thereby enjoying it all again...

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i know this room so well

well, it does seem apt - this title for synopsis 10 - since i am sitting here in the room where the double concerto was written (mostly), gazing at the detritus of a 5-month project. it's quite lyrical, actually, and the title comes from an aria i wrote around 15 years ago (yes, like many composers i have an unfinished opera that is probably now juvenilia...) with my good friend, playwright erik ehn. the main character, a 14-year-old girl visionary who traverses several centuries during her adolescence, gets thrown in jail as a witch and sings an aria about how comfortable she feels there. she sings, "if in the dark a chair has moved, i can move around it. i know the room so well." i found myself going back to that aria for this english horn synopsis, i suppose much as prokofiev went back to his childhood notebooks for his piano sonata 3. but of course both of these synopses (9 and 10) are spin-offs of the concerto too. writing these two little pieces in the wake of finishing the concerto has actually been a gentle way to begin letting go of the concerto, or at least the creative chapter of it. always a little separation anxiety - - -

kate vincent came here to my all-too-familiar musical jail today and we worked on her synopsis 9: i don't even play the bassoon. what a great pleasure to feel that a musician totally gets the zeitgeist of a piece, particularly one as eccentric as this little piece. i guess she brought it out in me. great fun, can't wait for tues!

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i don’t even play the bassoon

taking a wee break between synopses, having just sent off a pdf of synopsis 9: i don't even play the bassoon to kate vincent, of firebird ensemble fame. we had a great talk last week about how both of us seem to have lived 9 lives already and yet we still seem to be the kids in the back of the bus. anyway, it is true that i don't play the bassoon, and neither does she. now i will switch gears and wrap up synopsis 10, which is for jennifer slowik on english horn.

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everything at once

well! now i know that when it's time to finish a double violin concerto, everything else goes by the wayside. YES! it is finished, as of less than a week ago. meanwhile there was a significant gap in my visits here, so i shall attempt to catch up with you!

the club cafe concert in december was sold out, and the performances were superb. it was especially fun to see rachel braude playing the final vamp of 'synopsis 8: most rumors about him are true' while walking out of the room (yes, this stage direction is in the score), encountering various challenges like oblivious cocktail waiters on the way out. also great to hear gorecki's 'sonata for two violins,' a fierce little piece which i subtitled 'what it's like to be polish.'

so then we went headlong into the holidays, which i spent partly in nyc and partly here in cambridge, working very hard all the while on the concerto. the holidays are great for work in a way, because things get very quiet! just before xmas carla, colin and i got together in nyc for a few hours of concerto draft read-throughs. that was certainly inspiring, exciting and also terrifying because i realized how much more work i had yet to do.

seems like a long time ago now, but i did work every day for increasingly long hours, and last week i had the exhilarating satisfaction of handing gil rose the score. my post-partum depression antidote was a week of rehearsals and then the boston conNECtion concert on fri night. so great to spend the week with all of the musicians for whom i had just completed a piece! and it was a richly varied concert too - ranging from ezra sims's beautiful microcosmic microtonal world to william bolcom's luxurious and masterfully vernacular violin concerto, with works by my trusty colleague michael gandolfi (a brightly-colored and elegant bassoon concerto), NEC student composition contest winner oznat netzer, and a composer i have a special soft spot for: schoenberg disciple leon kirchner. so great to hear that splendid twelve-tone lyricism in all its nostalgic vitality!

so now i am racing to finish a couple of synopses for the upcoming club concert, which is only a little more than a week away. ok it's true i got a little behind, what with the concerto and all... so! i've enjoyed bouncing ideas back and forth with violist kate vincent, whose synopsis (this is number 9 already, gasp...) is lovingly titled, 'i don't even play the bassoon.' it is informed by a recurring anxiety dream of mine. i'm sure you have one just like it ("and what happened to my pants?") i'm almost done with it kate!

ok more here soon, i am happy to be back here in blog life - i've missed it! hope this update makes you feel like i've been here all along.

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synopsis 8 in NYC

hello from NYC, where i am getting reacquainted with my own subletter-free apartment (he left on thurs), and spending a week in rehearsals for the carnegie hall concert performance of philip glass's 'einstein on the beach,' which certainly brings back memories! the 1992 einstein tour was my very first year with the glass ensemble, and it was a major sea change in my musical and professional life. in addition to singing the usual soprano solo stuff, i put together the 16-voice chorus that will be onstage with me thursday. lots of old friends there, many of whom traveled around the world together doing this massive piece.

always one to enjoy extremes, i am spending the interstitial times between rehearsals finishing up the tiniest piece in the universe, Synopsis 8 for solo piccolo! ok it's not that it's smaller than the other synopses - it's just that it is for piccolo, so it inhabits a rather small universe. many thanks to various folks who have contributed new 6-word titles to the pool! this time i went with a moment of gut inspiration and settled on Most Rumors About Him Are True, for my fellow social anthropologist Rachel Braude to premiere on the Dec 11th club concert. (rachel and i enjoy frequent side-bars in which these kinds of rumors are analyzed and tested for logical flaws or conflicts with other such rumors. important work in our close-knit community...) synopsis 7: Where's the Guy with the Directions? will also be unveiled that evening, for rachel's husband, BMOP concertmaster charles dimmick. can't wait for this one - it will be a good time.

but before then i need to sing thousands of notes, so - back to my nerdy process of hydrating and humming.

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excuses excuses

ok i know! it's been a long time here - but i'm working very hard on the double violin concerto these days, and meanwhile life in the blogosphere speeds by. several things to share - firstly, thanks to the inimitable davy rakowsky, i have photos to share from the november concert! (thank you davy! you are my deus ex machina!) now i can show you what it was like to see joanne kong playing both piano AND harpsichord at once in michael colgrass's concerto:





and here is the inimitable marilyn nonken, burning up the keys in davy's piece:





and here's a great shot from the recording session at mechanics hall in worcester MA, which is where BMOP does much of its recording. a fantastic sound in there!





now - wanna hear another excuse? i have also been to wels austria and back since the concert, to participate in the music unlimited festival, guest-curated this year by carla kihlstedt! although i did actually perform my piece 'a collective cleansing' in conjunction with the release of my new CD on tzadik, i was quite focused on hearing carla play in all of her various incarnations. it was a very intense few days, hearing music for hours, getting ideas from her playing and from things i heard, going back to the hotel and scribbling. here are a couple of shots from my performance, which was in a little chapel-like space there that i love. what an intimate performance experience - so many people, and so many were standing. i love this kind of no-fourth-wall context for this piece. it really brings it home:









after this intensive carla-fest, now i am getting ready for the silk road project's harvard residency, which brings colin to my doorstep, just as i am grappling with gnarly fingerings and brain-frying violinistic technicalities. perfect timing!

the piece is coming along nicely - i've been working primarily on the long and fast last movement, and also continuing to study these amazing research materials that my radcliffe junior partners have collected for me. my favorite quote so far: laurance picken, in his 1954 report on instrumental polyphonic folk music in asia minor (at the 80th session of the royal musical association) says that in anatolian folk vocabulary, "two strings struck simultaneously are said to ache together."

wow. that's pretty hot.

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why i don’t write much electroacoustic music

well, in a bout of characteristic technical ineptitude, i managed to erase all of my photos from the concert and recording sessions from my camera. this was quite a feat, since there were many of them! sigh - that's why i love writing for the orchestra: it's a no-tech universe! (or at least it is when i write for it these days...)

so here is what i am able to share, in any case - two great pix of gil rose and anthony davis rehearsing with BMOP. enjoy! and i promise to take the basic requirements of my job as photo archivist seriously. perhaps one of my radcliffe research assistants can give me a lesson on how to use my camera!

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keyboard heaven

well i have some splendid photos of rehearsals but no time to upload them now - off to dress rehearsal and then the concert! tonight's concert features many many notes played on all kinds of keyboard instruments ranging from harpsichord to toy piano to prepared piano. it's an extravaganza of dexterity! and a great chance to reunite with several composers from my past. two of these guys actually knew me when i was a kid, since they were friends with my father, who is one of their colleagues and peers. on the run now but i'll have lots and lots of pix after tonight!

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we’re doing fine!

...the double concerto and i, that is. i know it's been a long time since i checked in here. this piece and i have really been getting to know each other and it can be a little jealous of my time, as is often the case in the deepening stages of a relationship. when i walk into my studio at the radcliffe institute, the piece beams at me from the piano - "pick me!" - and i can't really resist, so i neglect the blog. the truth is, i can't remember a friendlier piece than this one, at least not in recent memory. it likes to come with me everywhere. i worked on it all the way to london and back this past weekend (the glass ensemble did a performance of 'music in 12 parts' at the barbican - one of my favorite performance experiences, that piece), on the plane. it even likes to come to lunch with me, which leads me to this next question, directed at some of you boston/cambridge natives: is there a cafe/coffee shop somewhere around here (harvard sq) that has no music playing? i think we'd like a change of scenery from time to time. in nyc i always go to the hungarian pastry shop. i'd love to find the harvard equivalent of this columbia hang.

some details of the piece that are fun to share: the radcliffe institute has hooked me up with a couple of very smart and fun harvard undergrad composers as research partners - liz lim and matt mendez, both alums of the new york youth symphony making score program, of which i am assistant director. they will certainly be busy as copyists when the score and parts are coming together, but for now they are doing some research into ornamentation and its notation in all different kinds of musics from various historical times and parts of the world. wow, what a pleasure! it's a great way to let the piece enjoy its research-rich birthplace (the radcliffe fellowship includes access to all of the harvard libraries!).

liz found some terrific articles about the ornamentation traditions in various musical communities in hungary, australia and china. having already spent weeks working with a phrase from the gregorian chant setting of the 'lamentations of jeremiah' (i just can't seem to stop with the lamentations thing) (and this time it's really absurd, because in this piece it's a joyful, vibrant rhythmic setting of this famously tragic tune - i have absolutely no explanation or excuse for this...), i was delighted to read the following in the article by katalin paksa entitled 'connection of style and dialect in the ornamentation of hungarian folksongs:'

"In the zobor region several medieval tunes have survived within the wedding ceremony, e.g the tune of picking winter-green preceding the wedding, which is related to a Gregorian antiphon. Its embellishments usually consist...."

wow my first page of research material and i discover that my instinctual desire to make rhythmically vibrant and fancifully embellished treatments of gregorian chant melodies puts me squarely in the tradition of hungarian folk music. woohoo!

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back to work

ok enough of this scooting around to events and premieres and rehearsals and parties! (ok it's true there's never enough..) but it is time to hunker down again with the concerto. i seem to remember these sketches, vaguely...

and i seem to have scribbled some quotes from lawrence durrell's 'black book' in the margins - odd bedfellows with the goethe, but not entirely incompatible:

"what a curious adventure another person is!"

"he flings his head back as if searching for new planets, new constellations."

"i have been a secretary (i sing), a secretary to love..."

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