Jan
24
2012
CC licensed image by mitch98000
Violinist Wanchi Huang and I are giving a recital February 14 (yes, Valentine’s Day) at 8:00 pm in the Forbes Performing Arts Center in Harrisonburg, Virginia. The program features the première of my Violin Sonata, as well as Bruch’s Scottish Fantasy and Mozart’s oboe quartet.
Tickets are available here.
Jan
19
2012
Bartholomäus Traubeck, who is primarily a visual artist, came up with a way of using a turntable to translate the rings of a tree-slice into music. The piece is called “Years.” I’m not sure how the algorithm works, but it appears to map everything onto a c-minor scale. (h/t BoingBoing)
Nov
20
2011
CC licensed image by ken2754@Yokohama
A recording of my solo flute piece Axis Mundi, played beautifully by my colleague Beth Chandler, has been posted on the audio page.
The title was inspired by a sculpture I saw at the Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art, which reminded me of a flute stood on end. I can’t recall the artist’s name, and there are apparently a number of well-known sculptures with this title. If anyone knows the artist I’m talking about, please leave me a comment!
Sep
24
2011
Composer, teacher and mentor Frederick Fox, who taught countless students at Indiana University beginning in 1974, died one month ago today. He was a great composer and an incredible teacher, and some of the things he said to me in his irascible but lighthearted way still inform my thinking about music.
Stepping into Fred’s office was always a treat in itself—unusual, irreverent, kitschy and lewd trinkets given to him over the years lined every surface, a vast collection of wind chimes of all descriptions and materials overhung the piano, and posters such as the infamous “Expose Yourself to Art” graced the walls. Even the light switch plate by the door could offend the easily offended. On one occasion, Fred bribed me with one of his artifacts, an irritatingly funny talking ice cream scoop, to get me to change something in one of my pieces that he found distasteful. Rumors of him burning students’ manuscripts (he had a special dislike of fugues, other than Bach’s) were somewhat exaggerated, I suspect.
Beneath his prickly exterior, though, was a true humanitarian, someone who cared deeply about his students, about music, about the world. His depth of feeling shone through particularly in his music, and if you don’t know it, you can find some here and also here.
Fred was a great influence on many young composers, and for most of us who were lucky enough to be his students, we also knew him as our friend.
Aug
23
2011
Albert Lavignac (1846-1916)
The last piece on the Piano Extravaganza today was the Galop-Marche by Albert Lavignac. It’s for one piano, eight hands. If you have three minutes to spare, it’s quite a treat.
The performers were Lori Piitz, Ednaldo Borba, Eddy Janning and myself. You can hear the audience laugh a couple of times as we had to rearrange ourselves from one section of the piece to the next, leaning far back to make room for someone else, then diving back in to make an entrance.
After the concert, some of the performers went to lunch, where we all felt the earthquake that rattled the East coast this afternoon. Everyone in the restaurant seemed to take it in stride, though. No panic in the streets of Staunton…
Aug
23
2011
Check the audio page for a recording of today’s performance of Idle Hands at the Staunton Music Festival’s Piano Extravaganza concert. This was a noon concert, so I wasn’t expecting a huge crowd, but the place was packed with around 200 piano fans.
Aug
21
2011
I’ve posted a recording of the performance earlier this month of All You Can Eat for clarinet quartet. The Prestige Clarinet Quartet performs beautifully here on the last day of the 2011 International ClarinetFest in LA, hosted by California State Northridge. In case you’re wondering about the title, it has something to do with the fact that the Prestige all play Buffet clarinets. (you may groan now…)
Aug
18
2011
Pieces for piano three hands are rare, but I wrote one. In 2006, the Staunton Music Festival asked me to write it for their popular Piano Extravaganza concert. The idea is to perform music for one piano, for one hand up to ten hands. There’s plenty of music for the left hand alone, plenty for two hands of course, and plenty of duets. There are a few six- and eight-hand pieces, and there even exist a couple for five and seven–where the third or fourth player uses only one hand. My colleague John Hilliard wrote a piece for ten hands for this concert, and having played it a couple of times, I can attest to the fact that squeezing five people in front of one keyboard is in itself quite a challenge. But it’s a fun piece to play–getting a truly massive orchestral sound from the piano.
Carsten Schmidt, the festival’s music director, couldn’t find anything for three hands, so I agreed to write it. I chose to make it for three players, each using one hand, hence the title, Idle Hands. This allowed for some interesting hi-jinks involving those free hands, like using them to slap your fellow performer’s hand off the keyboard, resulting in a tone cluster. The use of quotations from other keyboard works also contributes to the general light hearted nature of the piece. That being said, it isn’t easy to play. I’m rehearsing it now with Lori Piitz and Ednaldo Borba for this year’s Extravaganza concert, coming up next week.
The full info on the Piano Extravaganza is here.
Aug
18
2011
Prestige Clarinet Quartet
“All You Can Eat,” my quartet for clarinets, was played at this year’s International Clarinet Association conference in LA earlier this month. The piece was commissioned and performed by the wonderful Prestige Clarinet Quartet. I’ll be posting a recording soon.
