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Completed the new scene for Final Battle this week. Rockin’ Robbie holding off Bob Noxious while Lord Poetry prepares to recite a sonnet to Darling Donnis (Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116). This is text I’ve been wanting to set for a long time (the Bob Noxious line, that is).

New addition to the fishlinphil attic studio.

Did I mention I really dig Audix? 1) They make great mics. After hearing people swear by the D6 as a kick drum mic, I finally added that (and the i5 for snare) to my arsenal. Spent a whole Saturday messing around with them on my son’s set and was not disappointed. 2) They make their mics in Oregon where they are based. I know there are a lot of decent sounding, cheap mics being designed here (and elsewhere) and being manufactured in China, but I’ve resisted the temptation to buy them so far. I just don’t like the economic model. I like Rode mics because they sound great and they’re manufactured in Australia. I would buy an sE mic because it’s an actual Chinese company and from what I’ve read they make quality gear. I’m not a purist about this by any stretch, but I wish I had enough money to be one. Anyway 3) Audix really gets customer service. The other day I e-mailed them with a question about one of their mics because there was conflicting information about it between the web page and the published specs. Audix e-mailed me back within the hour and answered my question, thanked me for helping them find the mistake (in the specs as it turned out), and asked me for my T-shirt size and my address so they could mail me a T-shirt. Score! This should in no way make me more likely to buy the mic in question. But it does.

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!

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.

There’s a reception at 7 p.m. and the films begin at 8 p.m. (So wouldn’t that be a pre-ception?) Tickets are a mere $5, so come out if you can. There’s a nice little preview of the evening in the City Paper this week.

About Kecow hit tamen

My father is a member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina, a tribe whose history is far more difficult to ascertain than that of other eastern native peoples. Modern Lumbee trace their ancestry to Eastern Siouan, Cherokee, and Tuscarora, with one of the enduring legends being that the tribe is descended, at least in part, from the intermarriage between members of Raliegh’s Lost Colony and the Hatteras. The Carolina Algonquian phrase “Kecow hit tamen?” means either “What is this?” or “What is your name?” The phrase was recorded by Thomas Hariot during Raliegh’s initial expedition, and, given the competing theories on Lumbee history, seems like an appropriate starting point for my own reflections on that history.

Thomas Hariot’s translations of Carolina Algonquian and additional vocabulary derived from John White’s annotated watercolors supply the best samples we have of the language spoken the by native peoples they encountered. Sadly, only a hundred or so words remain of a much larger effort and these describe mostly the local flora and fauna.

I approached the composition of Kecow hit tamen almost as I would a vocal piece, sketching a melodic fragment for the question itself and for each of Hariot’s and White’s words. These fragments then became the basis for a series of overlapping micro-variations that constitute the instrumental layer. I have not tried to mimic Native American musics in any way, but rather evoke the experience of learning a new language, with the need to say a word in different ways in order to feel where it should be in the mouth and throat. The instrumental layer then, is designed to capture the visceral feeling of exploring new words while the audio samples surround the listener with approximations of how the spoken language might have sounded.

The idea of developing Kecow hit tamen as a multimedia work emerged when my good friend Ryan Day and I were discussing his Translation series of images, works that “translate” texts into color patterns. The idea of a visual artist and composer both working with the same non-narrative text turned out to be a fruitful one, and we developed the piece collaboratively from start to finish. I will leave the detailed description of the art to Ryan, but to me, one of the most exciting aspects of this digital painting is the subtle, continuous animation that transforms the work as the music unfolds.

Kemper Center Chapel
6501 Third Ave.
Kenosha, WI

FREE

My newest composition, Dust: a Lenten Journey, is a song cycle on eight poems by my dear friend Rebecca Engstrom. The work was commissioned by Light of Christ Church in Kenosha, Wisconsin and is scored for soprano, string quartet, and live electronics. The performance will feature the talented soprano Kathryn Peperkorn with Rebecca leading  the quartet with her violin, and me triggering audio playback from my laptop. The gorgeous poster for Dust was designed by comic book illustrator Gary Shipman. You can learn more about the project here.

I hope you can join us!