In advance of the Clocks in Motion concert at Interlochen on 5 March that will feature the second performance of my Percussion Duo, the fantastic Dave Alcorn has put together a fabulous set of videos featuring Sean Kleve and Jennifer Hedstrom performing the work.  He’s posted them to YouTube, and I have links to the videos on the Watch/Listen page.

In other news, I’m rapidly finishing up my Time Sonnets for Jerry Hui.  I’m setting Shakespeare’s Sonnets XII and LX for baritone and piano, and he will premiere these works 29 March at Our Savior’s Lutheran Church in Menomonie, WI.

It’s 5:30pm on a Friday.  I’m standing on Vineland Place, facing north towards the Spoonbridge and Cherry.  It feels cold but not too cold.

Making my way towards the bridge, I’m happy to see that there’s no one else about.  No one.  At all.  This is wonderful.  Despite all the sounds of traffic just to my right, no one else is in the Sculpture Garden.  It seems miraculous, yet it occurs to me that I don’t think most people would choose to venture here at 5:30pm on a Friday in mid-February.

This will be perfect.  I’ll take a picture of the Spoonbridge, and no strangers will be in the shot.  Wonderful.  Exquisite.  I’ve always wanted to take a picture of it with no strangers in shot.

However, as it would have it (not luck,naturally), two people, who, at first glance, look like two women, as it is difficult to tell because they, unlike me, have hats on to keep warm (apparently that’s what you do) venture into (actually, it occurs to me a bit later that one might be a man) my eyesight.

“Oh damn,” I think. “Why are they coming here?  Why would anyone come here right now?”  (Here’s where it occurs to me that one of these women is a man.)  The one that looks like a man (but maybe he is a woman after all), walks towards the frozen pond beneath the bridge.  I walk onwards to the left and then turn right to walk farther north towards the Molecule, annoyed that I can’t take my picture of the bridge without strangers in the shot.

Continuing north, the Molecule reveals itself.  It’s red.  For some reason this surprises me.  I can’t remember the last time I made this walk.  I pass by this garden at least once a week (in a car, sadly), but I clearly haven’t taken the time to actually go into the garden in years.  It’s free.  And I don’t go in.

As I take this picture, there is another couple, a woman and a man (I could tell because they were sensible and weren’t wearing hats), but a man and a woman with a dog, who are about twenty feet from me.  (I believe dogs aren’t allowed in the garden, but what person would bother enforcing this rule at 5:30pm on a Friday in mid-February?)  These people don’t bother me because they’re not getting in the way and doing anything ridiculous like walking underneath the Molecule.

Satisfied with the shot, I continue north, then turn right (I’m now facing east for those keeping track) towards the city centre (in other words, downtown).  As I seem to have forgotten about the red molecule, I, too, forgot about the Alene Grossman Memorial Arbor and Flower Garden.  Or did I?  I’m looking at it wondering what could possibly be wrong with it.  It reminds me of an outline of the tunnel an Underground train might travel through.  This conjures up images of Yeti with web guns and soldiers with normal guns that don’t work and a doctor telling a young highlander to, “DON’T TOUCH THE RAILS!”

Fortunately the electricity is off.

But, there’s a shortage of this frenetic activity as I walk down the Alene Grossman Memorial Arbor and Flower Garden.  And, this time, rather than be annoyed that there are people about to liven things up, I get annoyed that there aren’t plants and flowers growing about and over and on top of the memorial to liven things up.  This winter really has put a damper on things in more ways than one.

At this point, it occurs to me that my hands are actually quite cold, so I put them in my pockets.  I make fists to hopefully help warm them up more quickly.  But, seriously, though.  “How long were my hands that cold for?” I wonder.

I make my way to the far east end of the memorial and then head back south.  “I do hope those women are gone from the spoonbridge, now,” I hope.  “Were they both women?”  “I just don’t know.”  “I don’t think one of them was.” “Yes, I don’t think so either.”  “But I think they both were.”  “Hmm…”

The spoonbridge returns, and as I walk by it, I see that I have the spoonbridge all to myself.  Grateful that there isn’t activity about it (like a possibly mannish woman and a woman who both might both be women looking at it, probably), I quickly rush (well, walk quickly at a moderately slow pace) to the west side of the bridge.  (Actually, I didn’t rush nor did I walk quickly at a moderately slow pace; I just rather walked.  Normally.)

And there it is.  The shot I’ve dreamt of taking for years.  Now I did it.  I have it.  It is done.  The Spoonbridge and Cherry with downtown (that’s city centre) in the background.  I saw a similar shot in some sort of flyer or something of the bridge, and for some reason I’ve always wanted to replicate the shot.

That’s it, then.

But not quite done, though.  I decide to take a stroll in Loring Park, heading up and over the Irene Hixon Whitney Bridge to get there.  Traffic continues to breeze and burr and squeal away.  Cars and trucks and various other things zooming slowly in and out of the Lowry Tunnel.  The westbound tunnel reminds me of a continuous stream, vomiting ridiculously inept inventions that we think are necessary.

My walk through the park is a moderately fast stroll with a kind of slowish touch.  Not too slow, that is.  It’s more of a slow meandering but with a quiet purpose.  To be sure, it’s a far more satisfying stroll than the vehicles coming out of the Lowry Tunnel, seemingly stuck in an infinite string of grey.

Not aware of it at first as I make my way through the park, there are lots of crows squawking away.  I mean, they’re really squawking.  I’m using the word squawk here.  They are so loud.  I do believe they are louder than the generic traffic sounds of the freeway.  In fact, I forget about the sounds of traffic all together and fixate instead on the squawking.

Seriously, though.  My ears hurt.  They literally hurt.  I’m literally using the word literally literally here.  It occurs to me that I think squawking couldn’t do that.  Well, I imagine if someone were to put me in an isolated chamber with 100 crows in it that the sound would hurt after a time if not immediately.  But out in the open air of Loring Park?  Surely not.

“Actually, what’s the temperature?” I wonder.  I take out my phone and see that the Weather Underground says it’s -11 (so, whatever that is in Fahrenheit).  I suppose that it is quite cold.

“Oh yes!  Of course.  I’m sensible and don’t wear hats in the winter, so naturally my ears hurt.”

What a winter.  Winters don’t usually get to me, but for the first time in years, it is so cold (and -11 isn’t really cold) that my ears hurt on the inside, not the outside.

But, wait a moment.  -11 really isn’t that cold at all.  How could it be that the inside of my ears hurt?  I’ve been out and about without a hat on in far colder weather.

I make my way back to where I started, heading over the Whitney bridge, the eastbound traffic reminding me of an unhealthy metal consuming unnecessary amounts of grey in a kind of infinite stream of loud, back south along Hennepin towards the Walker ,then a fast right down Vineland.  I pass by a shopping cart with bits of bric-a-brac, ephemera, and blankets, my ears hurting too much too find the strength to wonder where the cart’s owner is.

Back where I started, I get in my car, and practically instantaneously my ears begin to stop hurting.

“Of course,” I realize.  “My ears are hurting because all winter long I’ve probably not spent more than five minutes at a go staying outside willingly.”  We are all inside that much.

And then the cart returns to me.  Whose was it?  How did it get there?  Why was it there?  How long was whoever had the cart outside in the cold?  Did their ears hurt?  Were they able to save their ears from the pain of such cold?

The cart is a beautiful cart, though, a sad cart, a cart that reminds, a cart that exists, a cart that bites ears.

Thank goodness I can just get in my car then, ears no longer ringing without color.  I have my pictures.

I didn’t take a picture of the cart, though, but I have a picture of it more vivid than any of the other pictures I took.  It’s still biting my ears, but I’m inside.

It’s after 5:30pm on a Friday in mid-February, probably.  I imagine no one would choose to be out and about.

I’m pleased to announce that Clocks in Motion will perform at the Interlochen Center for the Arts on 5 March at 8:00pm in the H. Lewis Dance building.  They’re preparing a brilliant concert featuring Marc Mellits’s Gravity, Paul Lansky’s Threads, John Luther Adams’s Drums of Winter from Earth and the Great Weather, and my very own Percussion Duo.

I’m going to be making the trip over, so I hope to see you there!  If you unfortunately cannot attend, please check out a brand new recording of the duo featuring the always wonderful Jennifer Hedstrom on piano and and the ever brilliant Sean Kleve on marimba and vibraphone.

Take a listen to a quite fantastic recording of my Percussion Duo, featuring Clocks in Motion performers: the brilliant Jennifer Hedstrom on piano and the incredible Sean Kleve on stacked marimba/vibes.

Movement I

 

Movement II

 

Movement III

I’m spending some time today working on my next bit of music: Time Sonnets.  I’m setting Shakespeare’s twelfth and sixtieth sonnet to music for baritone and piano for good friend and composer Jerry Hui.

As with the work immediately previous to this one, I’m continuing in a vein of so-called “absolute music.”  Much of my work prior had somehow been programmatic, inspired by other media, and figuratively painted.  So, the music in this case will serve the words and not the other way around.

Allowing a taste of things to come, expect angular baritone lines with minimal piano involvement.

So, I thought I’d take a rare moment (indeed, perhaps unique until the next time), to post something unrelated to music.

For some of us, we are in the so-called holiday season, and with it comes a myriad variety of holiday parties with friends and family, endless celebrations and sales at our favorite stores, restaurants, and bars, and–the most dreaded of them all–office celebrations amongst coworkers and family reunions where we meet a phenomenon called “the second cousin once removed.”

For years and years and years, I rather assumed that everyone hated–and I mean hate, here–the worst offenders of this list: the office party and the family reunion.  Apparently, however, some people actually like going to these things.  And those of you who do like going to these things no doubt are probably asking me: “But, what are they offenders of?  What are they dreaded for?”

Well, for us introverts, these functions drain our soul.  They drain our soul in a figuratively literal kind of way.

These events are exhausting.  We leave them feeling so tired and sapped of all recollection.  Sometimes the very thought of these events deplete us of the will, and sometimes we’re bored of conversing with people before we’ve even conversed with a single other human.  And if we haven’t found some reason not to attend, we leave at the earliest possible convenience, preferably quietly and without saying goodbye to anyone.  In fact, I plan things like not hanging up my coat, parking the car in a certain location, noting all exits, just so that I can leave without causing a fuss that I’m leaving.

Let me be clear about something, though.  We are not shy.  Rather, being alone energizes us.  Large groups of people (and by large groups of people I mean somewhere around six or more, perhaps as many as four or more) exhaust us.  More specifically, it may not actually be the size of the group that exhausts us.  Rather, the nature of the conversation does.  I love conversation, to be clear, but a certain kind of conversation.

Usually at office parties and family reunions, conversations float about such topics as hair cuts, travel plans, cars, and children.  If someone says to me, “I like your hair cut,” the amount of energy it takes to say, “Thanks,” is monumental.  Furthermore, it’s difficult for me to remember that we’re supposed to say something in return like, “I like the check pattern in your trousers.  Very 1963 with a 2005 twist.”  Apparently, however, this is way too much, when a simple, “I like your pants,” suffices.  I’ve done this on several occasions where someone asks what I do, but then I forget to ask what they do only because I honestly have no desire to know (i.e. if this is an individual that I have no desire to get to know beyond this single serving).

I do like to have conversations, though.  About life, the universe, and everything.  Or existentialism, mindfulness, and religion.  Or musical philosophy, art theory, and architecture.  Or the top ten Super Nintendo games, the top five episodes of Doctor Who, and the greatest scenes from Community.  Indeed, I was at a party where we were celebrating the Cambrian explosion.  (Yes, the Cambrian Explosion. [No really… we were celebrating the Cambrian Explosion.])  And we wanted to try to figure out what the first plants were.  We did the usual Google searches for “first plants,” “original plants,” “first plant cells,”  but were having difficulty finding an answer.  Then my cousin Audry said disdainfully, “OK, fine.  We’ll Google, ‘what were the first plants on Earth’!”  And then it occurred to us that some people would find this whole Google search absolutely bizarre, responding incredulously, “What?  You were at a party and you Googled what the first plants on Earth were?”  (I was also at a party where the goal was to learn something new about each of the U.S. presidents… something that wasn’t obvious like, “Lincoln was tall,” or “FDR got elected for four terms.”)

And I’ve stopped myself on occasion.  My office building has this rusted iron monstrosity of an industrial-style awning to welcome visitors as they enter the main doors.  Someone made a comment about how ugly it is (and it is, indeed, ugly), and before the words, “Well, I think it comes from that movement in architecture called brutalism,” I stopped myself, because I knew that they would respond with, “What?  Brutalism?  Why do you know this?”

Before I get too far ahead of myself, I’m perhaps running aground towards some slippery embankments.  I realize I’m sounding a horn a little too close for comfort that announces that introverts are intelligent and extroverts are superficial, and I don’t necessarily want to suggest this.  Although, I recently discovered that research actually shows this to be true.  (Well, at least that introverts are more knowledgeable, not that extroverts are superficial.)  And, to be sure, I don’t think extroverts are superficial.  Rather, I think that extroverts’ ways of energizing themselves through idle chit-chat (so sorry… it’s difficult for me not to add pejorative qualifiers like idle) is puzzling and difficult to understand.  But, it becomes easier to understand when I remind myself that they say the same regarding how we introverts energize through quiet alone time in the woods on a long camping trip.

So, why am I writing about this?  Why do I think this is such a big deal?  Well, first one last story to suggest my point.  I asked someone recently if his work does the “office picnic” thing, and he said they do, but that he avoids them as much as possible by volunteering to work during the time the picnic happens.  And what does he get in return?  First of all, he gets the wonderful treat of not having to go to the picnic.  Second of all, he gets a gift card.

So, to hell with it all.  I don’t want to go to these parties.  I want my gift card, damn it!

But now I have to stop myself once again, because now I’m a spoiled child.  We can’t always get what we want… I know this.  And I might be making a Mount Everest out of a rolling hill, to be sure.  But, surely there’s a midpoint somewhere where we can meet.  The next time someone says, “You know that party you didn’t go to?  Well, you missed a good time,” I want to respond with, “No, I probably missed something I find worth missing and that makes me happier,” and then not be called a stick in the mud or a wet blanket because I wanted to stay home with my cats and read Austin.

Or, let’s just cut down these functions to, say, once a decade.  No?  Once every five years, then?  (OK… so sorry…)  Once a year, then.  Or better yet, have as many as you want, and I’ll just come to one or none.

Just so long as I get my gift card and your unassuming acceptance of how I prefer to celebrate.  Alone, by myself, or with three or four of my geeky friends over a bottle of zinfandel, watching Tom Baker in Pyramids of Mars or The Seeds of Doom, admiring how the taste of the wine befits the velvety atmosphere of those greatest years of a fine television show.  (The greatest years of Doctor Who are 1974-1977, by the way… no contest.)

So, that’s that, then.  I’ll come to these large gatherings as little as possible to talk about hair cuts.  Just know that I’m not enjoying myself when I’m there, and please be OK with the fact that I’m not enjoying myself.  And then I’ll try be OK with the fact that you’re having a really great time.

Hopefully, then, we’ll somehow all end up having a great time at some time at some place on our own time.

First of all, hats off to Clocks in Motion for a fabulous concert last Friday.  All around excellent performances of John Jeffrey Gibbens’s Allhallows, Iannis Xenakis’s Persephassa, and my own Percussion Duo.  The Well-Tempered Ear described the duo’s second movement in particular as “hauntingly beautiful” and admired the “kaleidoscopic shift[s] in color” throughout.

Monday night Sean Kleve, Jennifer Hedstrom, and I recorded the duo at Audio for the Arts with Steve Gotcher as our engineer.  We still need to work through the edits, but once that’s completed, I can’t wait to share with you the recording on SoundCloud.

I had a chance to re-visit with some old friends.  I spent time meeting with Brian Grimm, and we had rather composerly talk about process and practice and craft.  I also had a chance to meet up with old school chums Chris Walczak and Jerry Hui.

I availed myself the use of the always wonderful Mills Music Library, doing some initial research for a project (a blog? a book?) about the music of Doctor Who.  Most of my time was spent reading about Delia Derbyshire, Tristram Cary, and Norman Kay, composers who worked on some of the very earliest episodes of the now 50-year-old television show.

Lots of new work also came out of my visit: a song for Jerry Hui and sonata for piano and clarinet for Rosemary Jones.  These, in addition to my commission from Pittsburgh’s Incidental Music Players means I’ve got my work cut out for me indeed.

Lastly, I’ve added a new page called simply “Gallery,” which I’m going to use to chronologize my goings-on in a picture format.  Nothing special in the way of photography, just iPhone stills, but hopefully a neat new addition to the site nonetheless.

Just a reminder that Clocks in Motion will be performing my Percussion Duo this Friday 13 December at 7:30pm at the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery.  The performance will feature Jennifer Hedstrom on piano and Sean Kleve on marimba and vibraphone.

Also on the night of Monday 16, we’ll be making a professional recording of the work, and I’ll post to SoundCloud.

In other news, the Pittsburg ensemble Incidental Chamber Players has commissioned a work from me for flute, oboe, piano, and possibly mezzo.  The premiere will happen sometime in the spring.

Tickets on sale now for Clocks in Motion’s concert at the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery in Madison, WI.  The concert is 13 December 2013 at 7:30pm.  The evening will feature John Jeffrey Gibbens’s Allhallows, Iannis Xanakis’s Persephassa, and my very own Percussion Duo.  It’s going to be a fabulous evening!  I hope to see you there!

Yesterday I sat in on an absolutely fabulous rehearsal with Sean Kleve and Jennifer Hedstrom as they worked on my Percussion Duo.  As ever, I enjoyed my time immensely working with them, and it’s always so rewarding listening to performers bring something I wrote to life.  We also went over some performance practicalities, and I ended up making some adjustments to the score… notably, the very last chord to accommodate an otherwise very awkward placement of arms and hands for Sean.

The premiere will be 13 December at 7:30 at the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery in Madison, WI.  We also talked future collaborations with Clocks in Motion, something I took them up on immediately, as well as bringing the group to venues in Minneapolis.