I set up this website about four years ago. It’s been sitting out there patiently ever since, occasionally forwarding an email inquiry to me, otherwise fairly neglected, but not complaining that I was giving it no attention. Time for that to change. I plunged back into it in a good WordPress workshop session yesterday with my son Eric, the one who got me set up originally. Thanks, Eric!
At the moment, I’ve been working mainly on my list of compositions, bringing it up to date and adding in some more links to audio recordings and score samples. Clearly, I also need to start writing posts about current events. What have I been doing? What’s coming up? Here’s the first entry!
Last weekend, Jeri and I traveled to downeast Maine to hear Trond Saeverud and the Passamaquoddy Bay Symphony Orchestra rehearse and perform my new piece for violin and chamber orchestra, Asa Nisi Masa. There were three concerts: June 17 at the Eastport Arts Center, June 18 at the Centre Street Congregational Church in Machias, and June 19 at the First Congregational Church in Calais. The orchestra has been going nearly ten years now, thriving on the strength of a core group of dedicated musicians and volunteers, as well as Trond’s musical gifts, kindness, and deep commitment to the people of his community. It’s striking how rich the arts scene is in the Eastport area, with the orchestra being only one manifestation of it. Trond is very committed to new music, and had asked three Maine composers to write new works for these programs. The others were John Newell and Greg Biss. (The photo shows Trond and Greg, who conducted the two pieces that featured Trond on violin.)
Although very different from one another, our three pieces worked together beautifully as a set. John shows the strong influence of Varese, with cleanly drawn sound objects placed in dynamically contrasting relationships with one another, e.g., a single tone in the clarinet passed to violin harmonics followed by the entire orchestra filling the sonic space with a dissonant pianissimo chord. Greg’s piece featured solo violin against accumulating ostinati, sometimes singing and lyrical, sometimes pointillistic, ending with a long section that felt like everybody in the orchestra was slowing down at their own individual rates. My appreciation for these pieces deepened with each new hearing.
The program also included the remarkable pianist Evelyn Chen performing Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue and Saint-Saën’s Piano Concerto No. 2. What a wonderful opportunity for the amateur musicians of this isolated region to play with such a world-class player.
Oh yes, Portland doings. I had fun on Friday night playing in the 21-piece orchestra for Jimmy Dority’s Jimmy Do Right and the Pop Go Boom. As far as I could tell, everyone else on stage was half my age (or less)! Jimmy himself has just recently graduated from USM with a degree in composition. He has a bright future. On Monday (tomorrow), I’m looking forward to joining the cello section of the Portland Summer Reading Orchestra for the first of their bi-weekly sessions. All this with my foot in a cast for two months. (I’ve made it about halfway to the final de-casting.)