16 September 2008
I just returned from a wonderful two-week stint conducting with the Juventas! New Music Ensemble in Boston. I'm delighted to have accepted a job as Associate Conductor of that fine ensemble, and look forward to more work with them later this season. In the meantime, I'm looking forward to conducting Portland's Filmusik: The Superman Orchestra in November both live at the Hollywood Theaer and on Oregon Public Broadcasting's LiveWire. Then it's down to work on a new commission from Classical Revolution PDX.
30 July 2008
Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen...
I'm about half-way through 8 weeks of solitary living in the mountains in northern California. At the end of it all, I'll have a finished Second Symphony ready for rehearsals to begin in September with a (vastly expanded) Eugene Contemporary Chamber Ensemble, as well as a new piece for the Percussia Ensemble (NYC) with soprano Melissa Fogarty (NY City Opera, Seattle Baroque Orchestra, etc). I'll conduct Rachmaninoff's 2nd and Beethoven's 3rd piano concerti with Julia Lin and a UO project orchestra in November as well.
In other news, my first bit of so-called "scholarly work" is to be published this fall in the James Joyce Quarterly. Look for it in a major research library near you.
7 April 2008
Some upcoming events: the chamber orchestra suite from my first symphony, Les Carnavalesques, won the Oregon Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra's composition contest and will be played in Portland in May; David Russell, principle cellist of Opera Boston, will play my new solo cello piece, Butterscotch, Hopscotch, & Scotch in NYC later this month as part of the Tobenski-Algera concert series (bravo, btw, to these young impresarios for bringing back the old school, "Concerts Koussevitsky"-style trend of naming series after their organizers), and I'm going to Boston sometime next year to accompany Laurie Monahan of Tapestry in the premiere of my piece for mezzo / narrator, It was the first time I'd left the house (in years).
Tonight I'm conducting ECCE's final performance of our all-Ravel program for the Eugene Sympony's Ravel Festival, and the American Music Center is giving me a grant to represent ECCE at the National Performing Arts Convention in Denver later this year. In short, I'm excited to be doing what I'm doing right now.
19 February 2008
In the next 10 days I'm conducting 10 pieces, 2 of them full-length symphonies and 8 of them world premieres, recording a new vocal work of my own with Laurie Monahan of Tapestry, and filling in at the last minute for a Balinese gamelan concert. It should suffice to say that I'm a bit terrified.
Fall 2007
Back to work after a marvellous summer travelling in Italy, Switzerland, and France. I had some great performances in Tuscany at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana where I was fortunate to be able to work with Maestro Azio Corghi and numerous young Italian composers.
I premiered my Piano Trio No. 2 in it's entirety on the Collier House Evenings of Contemporary Music series in November. Heidi Wait (flute) and David Roberts (cello) battled nobly through the long and virtuosic score, and my warmest thanks go to them for that. As director of the Eugene Contemporary Chamber Ensemble I was proud to give the premiere of the unsurpassable Jesse Jones' Chamber Symphony No. 1, as well as perform music by Los Angeles composer Joseph Trapanese and Darius Milhaud's magnificent ballet La Création du Monde.
Looking ahead to the winter, I'll be enjoying some time in California visiting family, catching up with old friends in NYC for New Years, and finishing pieces for both the Fireworks Ensemble and mezzo-soprano Laurie Monahan of Tapestry.