Return of Arabian Nights

So I might win the worst blogger ever award. I never call, I never write, I never send flowers. But here we are again:

One of the key reasons I’ve been away is that March is government grant season, and as a grantwriter, that meant a solid month of working late, and a chunk of weekends too. But now that I’m out of that, (whew), I’m back to composing.

Things are moving forward with Harbor Opera for a second production of the score I wrote for the Arabian Nights – but this time with four saxophones instead of one, professional singers, a bigger budget, and enough time to plan the thing. We’re shooting for fall of 2010, so I’m feeling pretty comfortable about getting this done. It’s really good to know that piece is going to have a future. I worked really hard on it, and I’m really proud of a lot of the music; it would feel dreadful to leave it after one production.

The Seafarer film adaptation is progressing too. It’s really surprising how long these things take, coming from classical music. We shot last June, and now we’re re-doing the voice-over, then there’s fiddling with the colors, sound effects, and then the last little tweaks, of which there are surprisingly many. We’ve got a fantastic actress to do the new voice-over track, which is a big step, as we’ve been hung up on that for about 5 weeks.

And, seeing as, as Gaiman said, events are cowards which run in packs, I’m in Baltimore to hear Zach premiere the re-write of The Nominious Death of Z. Robert Herchen, which I wrote for him a couple years ago, and has been starving for a re-write ever since. This piece was an early attempt at acting instrumentalists and instrumental delivery of text line for me, and in the years since I’ve learned basically how to do that. So when I got back to the piece it was very easy, sort of a “oh, right, I know how to do this now”, experience. Like going back to elementary school and realizing how small all the chairs are, sort of.

And one more wolf for the pack of events: Sean Cunningham, a No Signal-er of old, is finishing his masters at McGill, coming back to New York, and planning a concert on June 19, including a premiere of a solo piece I wrote for him a good long while ago now. I’ve still got to make the ending possible for a human hand playing a violin, instead of just for four disembodied fingers obeying my every telekinetic whim, but no matter. (Actually, it’ll be fun to get to work with Sean, pick new pitches while looking at his hand on the instrument and seeing how far I can push him.)

And that’s what’s going on in my musical life. Hopefully we’ll have some news on the Lincoln 2nd Inaugural piece I’m writing for Greg Jukes and the gradual progress of Summer’s Twilight in the near future, but knowing me, even if there is news I won’t write about it till the 2010 mid-term elections.

Music and Poetry

So, I’ve been thinking about what I want for my music. In part, I think that’s a product of having less time to spend writing because of having a full time job. Do I want my music played by classical musicians and listened to on WNYC? Do I want teenagers to listen to it and find it a guide to a maturing emotional life? Do I want a hit on the radio? It’s not a question I’m used to thinking about, but the more restricted my time to write becomes, the more I want to focus that writing on what I truly want it to accomplish. So these larger scale questions are coming up for me.

An answer that seems good for me (for now) is that I want people to relate to my music the way I relate to poetry. I don’t relax to it, though a favorite line might go through my head as I wait to fall asleep. It’s something that I treasure when I’m alone, and want to feel a certain way. I take out a book, look up a poem I love, and as often as not I read it aloud alone in my room. The patterns of verse and the power of my favorite images and phrases are a delight for me.

Poetry is something I do with focused attention, and looking for a combination of a deep emotional reaction and pleasure. I enjoy reading poetry – it’s fun for me. It’s something both removed from life (and this is an important point for understanding what I want from my music) and simultaneously very immediate. I love when a poem goes from high emotional imagery to something plain and rough, like “You and I are old!” in Ulysses, by Tennyson (a poem I was planning to set, until Blago had to misquote at a press conference – now I have to wait a few years).

I’m not sure quite where to go with this idea, that I want people to relate to my music like I relate to poetry, but for now it provides a good guide to the kinds of feelings I’m trying to stir up in people. In particular I mean emotional depth and private pleasure.

Been a long time since I rock and rolled

Once again, sorry for taking so very long away from the blog. I’m having a bit of a difficult time making progress on my work. My relationship of four years ended recently, and it’s rocked me back a bit in terms of my producivity. But enough of that.

I’m still trying to get a good balance of work (by day, at Meet the Composer) and social life and writing, and it’s not quite right yet. However, having a day job has significantly slowed the cycle of getting pieces ready for performance. When I was in school I’d have a new piece performed every couple of months, and planning for than 6 or so months ahead was ridiculous. Now I’m working on putting together performances and pieces that will certainly not come to fruition for over a year, or maybe even longer. It’s a strange feeling. In part I think it comes from having less time to work, and being therefore unable to promise completion of projects as quickly as I could before. But it also comes from working on larger projects that are more collaborative, and a greate emphasis on the planning process.

I’m working with an opera company in the early stages of doing another production of the score I did for Mary Zimmerman’s Arabian Nights adaptation last summer. But where in the past my approach was to pick a date on the calendar when I thought it would be ready, and then do as well as I could in the time allotted, now I’m doing a lot more work in the planning phase, working more on making sure what we’re up to is really what we want to be doing.

I think this way of working on a production is pretty analogous to the way my writing has changed recently. Instead of banging out as much as quickly as I could, now I spend most of my writing time planning what it is I want to do, and less and less time actually choosing notes.

In the long term it’s better, and it’s definitely influenced by working at a non-profit, and seeing how Meet The Composer treats long term planning and execution. Nevertheless, it’s difficult to get used to. Where I used to have some pretty good validation through performance every few months, now I have long term projects (2 films, 2 plays, 1 opera, 1 acting percussion piece for Greg Jukes) in various stages of long term work. It takes a deal more patience, commitment, and faith in what I’m doing than the old way did.

Now it’s time to restate my hope of posting more frequently, and obviuosly of writing more music about which to post. And now it’s time to close.

Back to Arabian Nights

It’s been a couple months, but it’s felt like forever. I’ve been away from the play since the run at Theatre Hopkins in Baltimore. Now we’re talking about bringing it back with Harbor Opera in the Spring of 2010. That’s in the very early stages, and I’m preparing some songs from the play for further discussion. We’re talking about working with the AM/PM saxophone quartet for music. It’s still a long way from reality, but the chance to take another whack at all the sweat that went into the play the first time is very exciting. I’d have four saxophones instead of one, and a cast of trained opera singers – it’s a very exciting thought.

The trouble is that I’ve never had to dig this deeply into something I’d finished before. This play had its months of taking over my life, and it’s nine performances that got me my first proper reviews – and they were very good ones too. But now I’m going back into it again. I’m taking melodies I wrote for one cast and reconceiving them a year before we’ve cast anyone, and long before we’re even sure we’re going to do it – it’s a very strange feeling.

It’s times like these I have to remind myself how long composition takes; it really is the epitome of delayed gratification. At any rate, it’s a strange experience digging in this wonderful mud a second time.

Working on a play

I’m working as an assistant director/stage manager on my friend Rose’s production of Antigone, which is running at the Manhattan Repertory Theatre in Times Square on December 18, 19 and 20, by the way. Technical theatre seems a weird thing to throw yourself into as a composer, and I had to think about it a fair amount before committing, but commit I did, and I’m really enjoying the work. Since so much of my work is theatrical, to me it seems completely natural. That’s both worrying and encouraging about the wisdom of the decision. Also, as I’m working on Summer’s Twilight, for which the principal challenge is dramatic, I think it will be good to spend time working on a play while I write. On another note, I’m still not writing the way I want to be writing. I think there are a few factors contributing to that. Chief among them is that I really enjoy my job at Meet The Composer, and I often stay late, cutting into my writing time. Also, I’m still trying to get the balance right of how many nights I see concerts, how many I have fun, how many I see my girlfriend, and how many I write. Frankly, I’d expected to have that balance sorted out by now, and to have a regular schedule of writing established. I’ll keep trying to balance everything I do, and see how happy I am with the arrangement at Thanksgiving or Christmas.

Writing on the Train

Now that I’ve got a full-time job, finding time to write music is not the easiest thing. I’m doing a lot of it on the weekends, when I can dedicate large chunks of time to it, but I’m surprised at how much I can get written on the train. When I’m working out harmonies and melodies I need quiet and an instrument, but working on Summer’s Twilight I have a lot of work that I can do with just a notebook. Writing this opera, I’m finding, involves a lot more thinking about plot points, characterization, structure, and similar issues than actual time writing pitches. I’m writing about how I want to do this piece in notebook after notebook, and then writing each scene one or two times only. It’s a little surprising as a way to work, but I’m liking the way it’s coming out, and I’m really liking that I can write on the train this way. I’ll be even happier when this piece is finally done, but I’m glad I’m taking the time to do it right.

More Summer’s Twilight

Sorry to be away for almost a month – I’ve been moving, starting work at Meet The Composer while still looking for full-time work, going to a wedding in Rhode Island, that sort of thing. It always takes me a little while after a move to feel comfortable enough to start writing again, but I seem to have settled into my life in New York enough to work. It is still heavy lifting working on Summer’s Twilight – it seems that the longer I spend working on this piece the more inertia it acquires, the more complex even simple decisions become. That said, I’ve got a very strong re-write of the opening. It used to be an aria I was very proud of, and now is a slightly shorter arietta, with more space for the ideas to breathe. The problem was that the original aria, Hermia’s, was too wordy and strong. I want the piece to open with Hermia’s reaction to the threat of forced marriage to Demetrius; we start with her terror, which is subsequently explained. This re-write strengthens the Hermia’s fear by not giving her complex metaphorical language to dispense while in intense emotional distress. The biggest issue still facing me is the question of ensemble architecture. this is one of the big questions for any kind of music-theatre. If people are singing at the same time, why? They can sing very similar music simultaneously to show, usually, a similarity of feeling, or they can sing wildly contrasting music either simultaneously or alternately to show conflict. A particular question for me is this: where should I strike the balance between quick dramatic moves and expansive, emotive music? If I speed the drama along too quickly, the music will become pointless, and an impediment to storytelling instead of an aid. If I luxuriate in beautiful sounds too long, even if those sounds express perfectly the character’s inner state, the drama will stagnate, and the audience will be bored. My current goal is to draft a range of different ensembles, and get some hard data to help guide the rest of the writing process. Let’s hope it works out.

Back into Midsummer again

So I’m finally back to work on Summer’s Twilight, my one act opera of Midsummer Nights’ Dream. I’ve been away scoring Theatre Hopkins’ Arabian Nights, and Baltimore Shakespeare Festival’s Twelfth Night, and moving twice, and graduating, and doing a job search, but now I’ve got a few days of lull. Just a few, but I’m taking the time to get my head back on my favorite project. I hate my favorite project. Getting my head back into it means putting together a dozen different copies of every scene, notes from notebooks, libretti, score drafts in print-out and manuscript, and whatever thoughts I have in my head. I’ve been making tweaks here and there, but mostly I’ve been doing information hygiene. It all comes back to what I want to do with the piece. Do I want to create a completely musical performance? Not really. Do I want to play with the relationship between text and music? Obviously. Do I want straightforward songs with verses and clear form that everyone will understand? Far more than I ever have before. That change means I have to dig deep back into the play and play lyricist instead of editor for a while. I’ve come back to this piece, and re-imagined different sections of it, and even the entire concept, a dozen times at least. I’m a little afraid that I’m going back over the same ground instead of making progress, no matter how far off the actual score page I’m making it. It’s hard having passages in the piece that I’m so proud of, but knowing how much more I have to do before I can show it to anyone. Well, back to the salt mines of plot diagrams and song lyrics.

No More Catchy Tunes!

I will not write another catchy tune for a long time. Theatre Hopkins’ Arabian Nights is up, and reviewed very nicely by a Baltimore radio station, and the Baltimore Shakespeare Festival’s Twelfth Night is going up on Friday. This is definitely the summer of straight plays, and when actors sing in straight plays, they need catchy tunes. People don’t usually ask me for catchy songs with memorable tunes, but now people have my ‘Come Away, Death’ 12-bar blues stuck in their heads all day, and I wake up singing the fart song from Arabian Nights at 3 AM. I’m proud of the work I’ve done on these two plays, but now it’s time to write something that just isn’t catchy. No clean four-bar phrases, no regular chord changes, and Nothing Catchy for at least a month. Until then I think I’ll dive back into chamber music with an expansion on the piece I wrote for SONAR last February. That was a five-minute piece for Pierrot quintet, loosely referencing the Goldberg Variations. I’m planning to expand it with a section based on a Machaut Rondeau treatment I did for another piece a few years ago, and some fiddling around with the Epitaph of Seikilos, which is the earliest piece of written music we have. Maybe, maybe when all that is done I’ll write another song with verses and a chorus, maybe……

Still not stopping for sleep or food

Hey team. I’m just checking in again in the middle of my marathon of work. Arabian Nights is finished, and opening a week from Friday. We’ve got a lot of work to do in that time, but luckily the cast is very talented, and very devoted, and I think we’re going to open strong (::knocks on wood::), even though we’re opening on Friday the 13th. Check out the Theatre Hopkins web-site for tickets. I’ve also got another job, writing songs for the Baltimore Shakespeare Festival’s production of Twelfth Night. This is the summer of plays for me, and I’m loving it. The production is set in 1920s New Orleans, but we’re not putting up a sign saying ‘New Orleans’ or anything. I think that’s a great way to go, and so far I’m very pleased with everyone I’m working with. This is a lot to write in a short period of time, but honestly, that’s exciting for me. One last thing, we scheduled the Seafarer shoot, and are going ahead with the river at dawn scenario. Managing the truly preposterous number of details involved with a film shoot is a great, but difficult, new experience for me. I am, though, going through metaphorical stress-balls at a rate hitherto unseen on planet earth. Good thing I love my job, and love long hours. I’ll check back in when my blood pressure is enough to form diamonds.