After threatening to do this for way too long, I finally added a page with samples of my audio production work (for other people). Check it out…
New Audio Production Page
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And it’s only January!
So as good news goes, this will be hard to top. And it’s only January! I’ve been invited back to the Virginia Arts Festival as a Composer Fellow with the John Duffy Composers Institute. This year, I’ll be a Returning Fellow which is a new program funded by a Mellon Foundation grant that enables the VAF to bring back two Fellows from previous sessions. As a Returning Fellow (Re-Fellow?), I’ll get the chance to have scenes from my opera performed with chamber orchestra accompaniment, which is a magnificent opportunity and a real privilege!
Once again I’ll be presenting scenes from The Final Battle for Love, this time in their fully orchestrated glory. There are some minor revisions I want to make to existing scenes and I have a new scene in mind that I’ve been wanting to write, The Penultimate Battle for Love that will put most of the main characters on stage earlier in the opera, but we’ll see. Regardless of whether I do revised scenes or new material, it will be a blast. Can’t wait!
New Look for the Site
As I was updating my site after the premiere of Kecow hit tamen, I realized that my last several works had strong visuals attached to them, whether it was intended that way from the beginning or not. Ryan Day’s art for Kecow captures the static, yet continuously transforming landscape of that piece precisely. Gary Shipman’s beautiful poster for Dust really ignited my imagination, and to be honest, I think influenced my composition of the extremely stark, minimal “Her Skin” song from that cycle. The experience of seeing real singers acting out Final Battle on a real stage continues to buoy me in my efforts to secure a full production of the opera. And what is there to say about Will Zavala’s eloquent documentary on Virgil Cantini, or KnotDance’s choreography for Trouble? So I decided that rather than go for a single, abstract banner that somehow says, “I am composer! Hear me roar! Then hear me subject that roar to an array of increasingly obscure permutations!” I would populate the banner space with some of the images that have been such an integral part of my work over the years. Hopefully my affinity for the visual image and the spoken word will continue to open up more creative avenues in the years to come.
It also occurred to me that I should take a shot at more regularly blogging my activities. There’s something nice about sticking your mug up on a Web page with a reasonably up-to-date bio and forgetting about it. But I’m increasingly aware that I am better at reporting on everyone else’s activities than I am at reporting on my own. So I’m going to try posting more regularly in this space (which sounds very much like a new years resolution). Who knows? Maybe I will have more to say than I realized. And if you like it, feel free to let me know.
My Conversation with Richard Danielpour
…is now posted at the PSO Web site. Please go on over and give it a listen.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s Andy Druckenbrod on PNMNet
Pittsburgh New Music Net gets a very nice shout out from Post-Gazette Classical Music Critic Andy Druckenbrod. Here are some snippets from his post in his blog, Classical Musings.
Pittsburgh has a surprisingly vibrant new music scene for a town with not a ton of 20 and 30 somethings. In my years here, I have tried to support it whenever I can… (snip) But my role at the Post-Gazette as generalist (yes, most people would think that the classical music critic is a pretty specific post at a newspaper, but it is actually impossibly large of a beat, covering many genres and centuries), has kept me from covering contemporary music as well as I would like to…
But this is all to say that Pitt composer Phil Thompson is doing a great job catching what I miss by following the scene closely in his niche blog, Pittsburgh New Music Net. I am officially adding it to my blog roll (which is in serious need of an update). Enjoy!
He’s absolutely right about the level of new music activity going on in the Burgh. Soon after I started blogging the new music scene here I realized that I could easily post every day and not run out of things to talk about. It’s a good problem to have and I hope PNMNet helps to fill out the picture of cultural life in Pittsburgh.
Two New Projects
I’m pleased to announce two recent projects which will allow me to contribute constructively to musical life in Pittsburgh. First, I’ve been appointed to the Board of Directors of the Pittsburgh Chamber Music Society where I’ll be helping with marketing and publicity strategies. PCMS is a tremednous cultural force in the City and it’s a great privilege to be able to help with the Society’s ongoing efforts.
Second, after consulting with a number of composers and performers in the area, I’ve launched a new blog about contemproary music in Pittsburgh called Pittsburgh New Music Net. I launched the site just before Thanksgiving and there’s been a very enthusiastic response from the local contemporary music scene and steadily growing traffic as well. Although the focus is on music and musicians in Pittsburgh, I think Pittsburgh New Music Net will be of interest to anyone engaged in the alt-classical music of the 20th and 21st centuries.
(Archived post from a previous version of this site.)