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A few things to share from this past spring
As the semester winds down, I have a few things to share from the past few months:
– League of the Unsound Sound premiered my Faulkner-inspired Selfish Houses on Blood Strange Roads, for bassoon, vibes, piano, violin, viola, and double bass. You can check out the piece here, along with reviews of the DC and Baltimore shows (best sentence from a review ever: It was a subtly balanced dissertation on space and distance, time and transference, para-mountaineering, dis-tempering solace and crystal gravy, from the Baltimore What Weekly).
– Maya Stone premiered 8-bit Divertimento, for bassoon and electronics. Go here to listen to the piece and watch a video assembled from clips of old-school 8-bit Nintendo games.
– Listen to David Searle and the CUA orchestra play the heck out of a new revised version of Diaphony:
Diaphony
– I’ve joined the video revolution: I finally have a youtube channel.
Pushing Ahead
I’m really pleased to announce that Push, my piece for 12 percussionists commissioned by the Moores School Percussion Ensemble at the University of Houston, received a CAP Grant from the American Music Center. This past fall, Blake Wilkins and the group premiered the work and gave several performances of it on their fall tour. Below is the live recording from their November 13th performance at the Percussive Arts Society International Convention. Push was composed this past summer, just after returning from my honeymoon in Turkey. The title refers to the gradual pushing forward of the tempo, as well as the canonic activity on the musical surface. After the slow, spacious opening, the music breaks out into what is probably the most dance-like, groove-oriented music I’ve composed in several years. Thanks to Blake and the ensemble for doing a fantastic job with this:
Push
More info on the piece can be found here.
After a January/most of February spent in hibernation, I’ve got a busy few weeks lined up: Collide-O-Scope Music rides again, with shows in Brooklyn at the Issue Project Room on Thursday Feburary 24th, and in a special performance on Friday March 11th on the Intersections Festival DC at the Atlas Performing Arts Center here in Washington (along with pieces by Cage, Xenakis, Nono, and Chris Bailey, both of these shows will feature some improvised material from me on electronics, and Noah Getz performing my sax and electronics piece Echoes of Amber). On March 19th the League of the Unsound Sound premieres Selfish Houses on Blood Strange Roads, my tribute to William Faulkner’s As I lay dying, in DC at Catholic University, followed the next day by a performance at the Windup Space in Baltimore, MD. The Catholic University Orchestra will attempt another performance of Diaphony (they tried last year, but were thwarted by the snowpocalypse…March 22nd and 25th should be late enough in the season to not be stopped by another few feet of snow). Bassoonist Maya Stone and composer Spencer Lambright are coming up to DC for a show at Catholic University on Wednesday, March 30th, which will feature premiere’s by both Spencer and myself. This will be followed by a roadtrip down to Murphreesboro, TN, for a repeat performance at MTSU on April 7th.