A Little Tougher Then I Expected.

So… things piled up fast. Things are already crazy, and so my opera is being moved to a secondary position due to the tremendous amount of composition I need to do for classes. I’d still like to get it done for at least next fall. I’m just going to take all of this as a challenge to crank out as much great music as I can. Step one, a string quartet with electronics. Then maybe I’ll finish that piano piece (it’s giving me a lot of trouble, the instrument seems to go back to the 19th century in my hands). However, I just received some great inspiration from the into to “Tristan and Isolde”. It’s so beautiful in the way that it never fully resolves, something I really love in Radiohead’s Hail to the Thief album. Anyway, we’ll see what time brings.

Back to School!

I’m back at Farmington in my new apartment, primed and ready for a fresh coat of education. I cannot wait to start classes. I have composition, twentieth century theory, violin lessons, possibly piano lessons, and sociology. To top it off, I get to TA the electro-acoustic music class this semester! I’m extremely excited. I also have a ton of music in the works, including a chamber opera. I’m pretty sure the opera is going to take precedence over everything else. And, the long awaited premier of my piano trio “sonality” will be sometime in October, possibly recorded to HD DVD. Wow.

My Trip.

I just got back from my hike of the hundred-mile wilderness. A friend and I hiked it in seven days. The last two days of the tip, I hiked forty-three miles. It was amazing. Whitecap was covered in up to seven feet of snow in places. A moose poked its head into our lean-to the first morning. It was a great trip.

Summer!

It’s summer time, and thoughts of veganism are on my mind. I’m really debating doing it next year (if I tried it this summer at my parents house they’d kill me). It seems like the health benefits are there (cow milk wasn’t meant for human consumption) and I’ve looked at some recipes that don’t look so bad. I’d love some tips from anyone who has tried it.

I’m also thinking some more about music, as always. I might start on a series of projects where I compose electroacoustic pieces and burn them on CD, scratch the discs, and then play live performances of them. I really love the sound of scratched discs, especially when they get stuck on one spot for long bouts. It’s really droning, arrhythmic, and peaceful. It can also be really abrupt. Modern artists have been playing with cutting a piecing parts together for this broken electronica sound, and I’m trying to work that into my classical music too. That, is tough. It’s something I’m trying with the post-human piano sonata. I might actually do the third movement with tape of some broken electronica-ish background. Hmm…

Nine Inch Nails give us “The Slip”

In a trendy move, Nine Inch Nails gave away their newest album to all their loyal fans and anyone that’s curious. Entitled, “The Slip”, it’s the standard NIN industrial fair, filled with distorted guitars, synthesizers, and electronic percussion soaked in a healthy dose of rage and heart-felt emotion. The entire album is one song, filled with instrumental tracks and some ragers including the opening “1,000,000″, an angsty track with lines like “put the gun in my mouth close your eyes blow my fucking brains out”.

The Deepest moment on the album is the song “Lights in the Sky”, is a dragging existential piano anthem with no climax to speak of, just Reznor semi-whispering/singing to someone that’s apparently leaving, and bleeds right into the next track, “Corona Radiata”, an ethereal soundscape that drones for seven and a half minutes, the perfect way to come down after the bizarre inverted climax of the album.

The last track of the album, “Demon Seed”, builds from a chopped up drum beat into a giant cacophony of noise, building and building until it fills your ears, and then it just cuts out. End of album.

You should pick it up, especially since it’s free, here.

Music Galore

I’ve started two new pieces in the past two days. I don’t think that’s a good thing. But it might be, since this last one has actually got me inspired enough to work on it. It’s for Clarinet, Bassoon and Marimba; I’m attempting to get that whimsical sort of feel. It’s been a lot of fun so far, playing with the different timbral aspects of the instruments, especially the clarinet. It’s deep register is so majestic, and its upper register is so piercing. It creates a beautiful contrast. The other piece I’ve started is a rework of my orchestra piece now composed for a full professional symphony and written micropolyphonically. It’s an understandably daunting undertaking. It takes three sheets of A4 to fit all the instruments at once. Yikes.

If anyone would like to buy me a Marimba, they should feel free to do so. Actually, I’m hoping to make one this summer. We’ll see.

A Night with Mahler and the PSO

And what an amazing night it was. The performance was phenomenal, leaving most of the audience with wishes for an encore of some sort after the amazing performance put on by the Portland Symphony Orchestra.

The evening began with a piece by Locklair entitled “Phoenix”, a piece originally composed for organ but transcribed for orchestra at the request of Robert Moody, the PSO’s new conductor. The piece was full of overly clean intervals and chords, had very little in the form of dissonance, was lacking in counterpoint, and was steeped in a tacky repetition. Basically, it sounded like an organ piece transcribed for an orchestra. The piece is probably decent on the organ, but not really translatable into the orchestral setting.

The shining moment of the night was, of course, Mahler’s first symphony. The piece began with all the tranquility we’d expect from a piece about the forest, perfectly executed by the talented PSO performers, and energetically conducted by Robert Moody. He even danced in some sections, really trying to pull every facet of emotion out of the performers. I can see him becoming a real draw for audiences; seeing him twice now he has already managed to make the concerts that much more exciting for me that I feel comfortable being there rather than young and out of place. I hope this aura brings more young concert goers to the PSO, a trend I saw tonight in much of the audience. My only complaint about the performance was the weak attacca between the third and fourth movements. A critic’s review of one of the original performance’s of the piece mentioned the woman in front of him losing her hat at this point, and all other performance I have listened to or seen on DVD have had such a “Jumpy-horror film effect” that left me a little disappointed tonight when no one fell out of their seat. The moment ended up being extremely subdued in favor of another point a few minutes later in the piece. However, the end made up for it with a very strong finish. When the horns, trumpets, and trombones all stood and gave their last resounding blasts at the audience, the entire piece reached the fevered pitch it had avoided the whole way through. The performers all did an amazing job, my personal favorite being the double-bass soloist.

The funny moment of the night was between the first and second and the second and third movements. A little girl in the audience began clapping feverishly, and part of the audience slowly joined her. The “more-experienced” concert-goers all sat in awe, not sure whether to try to quiet them or join them. It was one of those moments in which it was clear that the taboos and rules surrounding classical music are breaking down, most likely for the better. The less these trivial “codes of concert conduct” scare people away from the music the better. Really though, it was just cute to see an audience take a cue from a small child.

Mahler!

I’m very excited to get to see Mahler’s first symphony tomorrow night at the PSO! Mahler is a composer I know very little about, but from what I’ve heard I feel like I should get to know him more. I’ll try to put together my review of it tomorrow night after the show. It should be interesting to here Robert Moody talk about the piece too. This is one of those pieces that was edited by it’s composer many times, and so there is a choice to make regarding which version to perform. They will be performing the newest version of the piece (as new as a piece from 1906 can be). I think it would be fun to hear both versions and make my own decision regarding their quality. The main difference is in the removal of one section of the first movement. In a sense, it’s a change in overall structure. Changing the length and flavor of the first movement changes the way we then relate to the following movements and the overall piece. Researching the piece now, many people believe that extra section to be something Mahler tacked on last minute, and couldn’t quite make up his mind as to whether he should keep it or not. Oh, the picture below is a painting called “The Huntsman’s Funeral”, and ironic work in which forest critters are holding a funeral for a hunter. Mahler had this painting in mind when writing the piece. Anyway, I’ll work on a review tomorrow and come up with my opinion for the two versions. Look the piece up if you have a chance.

My Future Home

I stumbled upon this awhile ago, and have decided that this is what my house will be like.

http://www.simondale.net/house/index.htm

Orchestra

So, we finally got to see the results of our orchestra pieces last night. I finished mine just before we started. It was a great time. Three other composers here also brought in pieces to play. The contrast between the four pieces was amazing, each fit with the personality of the composer completely. The orchestra was fantastic as well. They handled everything we throw at them, from having a bassoon play a viola part to asking them to play random pizzicatos. And, I must give a bravo to an amazing flute player. She did an amazing job sight-reading this one line from one of the pieces. It was amazing to see a high school student with that skill.

My piece started off with these chords that glissed together in the strings, one note at a time, acting as a breeze that blows through some eerie landscape. The winds played these echoing chords, cued by the trombone, that fade into the distance. The horn comes in with a solo, filled with disjointed love, and meets up with the trumpet. Then, it all breaks down into these huge chromatic chords, while the strings start plucking random pizzicatos, (I would have done micro-polyphony, but I didn’t know how many strings would be there.) which sounded just like rain. The effect builds, echoing through the whole orchestra. This is met with a second horn solo, ending in a huge cadence with the whole orchestra. I’ll try to put the recording up soon.

It was fun to see such a huge collaboration from all these forces at UMF, and the opportunity was equally valuable to everyone involved. I hope I get to do more with them. It was a great time.