Procrastinating

My last post was around the time of my concert at CCM. It went well. The recordings are now all on YouTube.com. If you want the full concert, listen to them in this order:

Remembering the Night Sky
Labyrinth
From Her Husband's Hand

Meanwhile, I've been teaching and setting a new arrangement of Paradiso for orchestra. It's similar to the unperformed original version, but I needed to remove the piano and soprano saxophone. I had already removed the harp in the two smaller versions, but I was able to reinstate the tuba part. Like the original, this version is essentially for chamber orchestra, rather than sinfonietta.

Coming up, I am still working on the piece for Tenor Sax and string quartet. At one point, I had a name for it, but I never wrote it down, and I've since lost that train of thought. Maybe it will come back to me.

During the next few months, I'll be setting parts for an opera (not mine), so composing time will be hard to come by. I've had some more thoughts on the wind ensemble piece and Temps. I still have a desire to write my 4th symphony and another piano concerto (a real concerto this time), but I'm hesitant to start on either before I have a sniff of a performance, or a performance of Sym. No 3 or Chaos.

And, of course, there is that two minutes of Bass Trombone Concerto or Concertino that is waiting to be continued.

I'm supposed to be working on that opera, so I guess I need to get back to it...

I hadn't realized that it's been so long ...

Lots has happened since my last post. Self-funding a recording is currently off the cards, for non-musical reasons which I won't go into. I'm still thinking about it, but I'll need to find considerable funding before I can take the plunge.

I have a faculty recital scheduled for Sept. 30 at 4 pm in the Werner Recital Hall at CCM (University of Cincinnati). Featured on the program will be a new chamber version of From Her Husband's Hand, with Diane Hunger on Alto Sax. She will also play the chamber version of Remembering the Night Sky. These two works will be split by Labyrinth, which was recorded last January by the Society for New Music. I made the first edits during the summer, and I look forward to hearing the rough cut.

I recently discovered NotePerformer3 and have made good quality audio files of Symphony No. 3 and Chaos. Although there are some minor balance issues (software related, I think), both recordings sound almost real at times. I've also embarked on a revision of Symphony No. 1, basically to take away the embarrassing bits in the third movement and clean up some other spots that sound a little square. I don't know if it will ever be as good as the second or third symphonies, but I there are some good things in it which deserve to be heard. It should sound pretty good in NotePerformer, since there isn't anything unusual in it, like aleatorics. FWIW, Dystopian Sunset sounds really good, too, except for the "Clouds" which seem to no longer be a 1/4-tone after the first cloud. I don't know why it resets and I can't seem to un-reset it. The balance between the two ensembles is wrong, too. Again, I can't seem to adjust it.

I've got a few projects on: a piece for Tenor Sax and string quartet for Diane Hunger. I'm not entirely sure about another project. I have some piano concerto sketches and more symphonic sketches, one of them being part of the piano concerto, before the piano comes in. It may be two pieces, a second piano concerto and Sym. No. 4 (or a concerto for orchestra), since I'm not sure the material goes together.

I must go teach now, so I'll post more when I have time.

Chaos and order

I now have a fully-scored 4 minutes of a piano concerto. I spent yesterday afternoon re-scoring Chaos, and while it might not be a conventional concerto, the pianist has a lot to do, playing almost constantly, but I still need to move things around a bit. The 16th-notes are relentless, and there is very little in the left hand. When Chaos was still a band piece, I was worried that the piano had too much to do. I'm not worried any more.

The midi sounds good, although I don't think everything is audible. I still need to tidy up the strings, but I'll wait until I've written the next section. That will be new material leading back to the free stuff of the middle section of the band piece.

There is some difficulty there, but I don't think it is too difficult. The weakest section of this orchestra is the strings, and at the moment they aren't doing too much.

I'm feeling much better about it now.