I just returned from a big trip to Athens (the one with REM, not the one with flaming cheese) and Kansas City (the one in Missouri, not the one in Kansas). I’ll write the debrief soon, but in the meantime, if you have a Facebook account, I have to ask — do you belong to the I Love John Mackey * group?

* Please note that the I Love John Mackey group is in no way affiliated with nor sanctioned by Mr. John Mackey nor OSTIMUSIC.COM, and Mr. Mackey only learned of the group from numerous links back to this blog. Mr. Mackey does not formally endorse any of the content found on the I Love John Mackey group. Although he can not officially encourage nor discourage you from joining, he may in fact think you’re cool only if you do belong to said group. Just sayin’.

Mr. Mackey does, however, officially endorse the group, “Dr. Puckett: The Greatest Music Theory Teacher of All Time.”

I’m home after two solid weeks on the road, having attended countless rehearsals and six performances of four different pieces in four cities in two states. I’ve been home since Sunday, but I’ve spent the week catching up on orders (everything is on the way, I promise!), catching up on emails, and most importantly, writing music. It’s been a while since I’ve written a new piece, and this one — the piece for Cheryl Floyd’s band at Hill Country Middle School in Austin — is hard work. I’ve never written for young band before, and it’s a real challenge. I have about 90 seconds completely done, and the whole piece will be a hair over five minutes total. It’s due in about four weeks, so I’ve canceled several trips I had planned to take in March.  (No trip to Baylor, no trip to the CBDNA convention in Omaha, and Reno is up in the air.)

There’s one big trip I can’t cancel, and I’m leaving town one last time at the crack of dawn on Sunday morning. That trip will take me to the University of Georgia for a residency and performance of “Kingfishers Catch Fire” with the always-excellent John Lynch. From there, I fly to Kansas City for a performance of a fairly new piece, “Clocking,” with the University of Oklahoma Wind Ensemble, conducted by William Wakefield, at their regional CBDNA convention. After that, I fly back to the University of Georgia for a recording session of “Kingfishers Catch Fire” (on the Naxos label, no less! I’m in good company on that CD) before flying home Sunday night.

I’ll have to be sort of brief with the recap from the recent trip, but I did take a few pictures.

That picture is from a rehearsal at UT-Austin. I was there for nearly a week, working with Jerry Junkin, the legendary Harvey Pittel, and the UT Wind Ensemble on their premiere of my Concerto for Soprano Sax and Wind Ensemble.

The performance was great. Holy hell — that band is just insanely good. I think it’ll be a long time before I hear the accompaniment that crisp again. Harvey was a pleasure to work with — and he has the biggest sound I’ve ever heard out of a sax! I had worried that maybe I needed to re-score the first and last movements to fix the balance, but not so. There were places where I actually had to ask the entire band to play louder because I couldn’t hear them over Harvey. It was astonishing. The slow movement, I think, was the most beautiful I’ve ever heard it, with Harvey circular-breathing to hold the last note for an eternity. Bravo, Harvey — and as always, a sincere thanks to Jerry Junkin for that UT hospitality that nobody can top.

After the concert, we had a tasty dinner — one of several that week. Jerry’s wife, Stephanie, ordered the same dessert that I did, but hers was prettier (of course), so she let me take a picture of hers.

Can I just say how much I love Austin? Maybe my visits there have been a little unreasonably pleasant, but I have to say, if I ever leave LA, I may have to move to Austin.

That UT concert was on Sunday evening. Early the next morning, I flew to Dallas to work with the Poteet High School Wind Ensemble — the 2008 4A TMEA Honor Band. (That means they were judged to be the best 4A-size high school band in all of Texas this year. These guys don’t mess around.) I was there for a rehearsal and concert with Scott Coulson (Poteet’s Director of Bands) on “Strange Humors.”

The band sounded sick on “Strange Humors.” I don’t think I’ve ever heard it sound so good live. It was so damn good, their performance is now the reference recording of the work on this site. They performed the piece both in Dallas on Monday night, and again at their TMEA Honor Band concert in San Antonio on Friday night that week. Both performances were great.
Tuesday morning, I flew to Tucson, Arizona, home of the University of Arizona, to rehearse with Gregg Hanson (UA’s Director of Bands) and Timothy McAllister (UA’s sax professor — and among the greatest soprano sax players in the world) on my Sax Concerto. While waiting for rehearsal to start, I hung out in Dr. Hanson’s office. I don’t have a photo of Dr. Hanson, but I did take this photo of his portrait.   I need a portrait.

Tim McAllister is… I don’t even know what to say about him. When I heard him play the first movement of the concerto with the band, I was speechless — and that’s just the little two-minute prelude. Good lord, you should hear what he did with the nearly-impossible second movement of the concerto. In fact, go ahead. I just posted it. (Either go to that page and click for the audio for “Felt,” or click this direct link to the streaming MP3.) You won’t believe his control. Every dynamic on the page is there, every alternate fingering request is met, every pitch bend is spot on and ends precisely back in tune. He somehow moves seamlessly from the most lyrical moments to the most aggressive honks. The concert on Sunday was simply stunning.

After two days rehearsing in Arizona, I flew back to Texas — this time to San Antonio, to attend the Texas Music Educators Association (TMEA) conference. In a definite sign that my career can only go downhill from here, I had the incredible fortune of having three performances at the convention — Poteet’s performance of “Strange Humors” (as I mentioned), as well as performances with two of the three TMEA All-State Bands. John Lynch was conducting “Turning” with the TMEA 4A Symphonic Band — and they were using my new Waterphone! (Yes, that really is my own Waterphone, a hand-made Richard Waters original. The knock-offs have nothing on the real thing. Anybody wants to rent this thing for a performance of “Turning,” you just shoot me a note…)

It was pretty sweet to hear “Turning” with a 150-piece band. If ever I’d written a piece that benefits from 15 trombones, this was it. (Actually, most of my pieces would benefit from 15 trombones.) Here I am with Maestro Lynch after the concert.

The 5A Symphonic Band was performing my still-new piece, “Kingfishers Catch Fire.” This group — the top all-state band in Texas, and I would feel safe saying it’s the best all-state band in the country — literally sight-read “Kingfishers” at tempo. The tempo of the second movement is quarter note=174. That’s crazy-fast — and they sight-read it that fast. Here is Thomas Lee, Director of Bands at UCLA — and the founder of the UT-Austin Wind Ensemble (now Junkin’s Group) — conducting the ensemble.

The band was one of the best bands I’ve ever heard — all the more impressive with their massive size. (How can this many people play together so cleanly?) I missed their final full rehearsal on my piece (I overslept that morning), but when I heard their last pre-concert run-through, I was literally brought to tears. If you tell anybody that, though, I will kick your ass.

This was one of those performances I’ll never forget. A funny little back story… As I’ve probably mentioned here before, the second movement of “Kingfishers Catch Fire” has 30 high C’s in the French horn part. The highest note on the French horn, in traditional view, is that high C. It’s a silly-high note to ask for once in a piece, so I asked for it 30 times. As a result, some horn teachers in Texas got a little “upset,” concerned that their students would blow their lips off preparing for the audition and the concert. Now, those 30 high C’s are all optional; every one of them is covered in an alternate trumpet part, but I have never had a horn player ask to be relieved of a single one of those high C’s. The Texas 5A Symphonic Band horn section was no different — well, except that they had even less trouble with those C’s than I’ve heard anywhere else.

Tom Lee is a great conductor, and he’s also somewhat of a bad ass, as I learned last week. The final bar of “Kingfishers Catch Fire” has the entire band play a big F major chord, and while they’re holding it, the French horn section — all in unison — plays one last unison rip up to their highest high C. Tom Lee, to make that last moment even more insane, asked the horn section — all 12 players — to stand up to play that last note, in clear view of the entire audience. Every last one of the players nailed that 30th high C, Tom held them on it for an impossibly long time while crescendoing, and when he gave the final cutoff, the crowd… well, they seemed like happy campers. Texas high school horn players are f’ing awesome. It was amazing. Bravo, Tom Lee: Official Bad-Ass.

It was an exhausting two weeks, but it was one of those trips that made me feel humbled and grateful for the incredible fortune I’ve had. The trip also made me hungry. Fortunately, in Texas, they have slices of carrot cake the size of a moose head. (Don’t worry; I think it’s dead.)

Thank you to Tom Lee and the 5A Symphonic Band, John Lynch and the 4A Symphonic Band, Scott Coulson and the Poteet Honor Band, Jerry Junkin and Harvey Pittel and the UT Wind Ensemble, and Gregg Hanson and Timothy McAllister and the UA Wind Ensemble. Life as a composer doesn’t get any better than that.

I’m here in Austin — stop number one on the two-week world tour. (Or, tour of Texas and Arizona.) Fortunately, with all of this flying and hauling of luggage, I have a fancy new light-weight laptop! (For the tech geeks, I got the SSD model, not the hard drive model. The computer — running off of a flash drive instead of a disk drive — is weirdly silent.)

I arrived on Tuesday night, and had rehearsal with Harvey Pittel (sax professor here at University of Texas at Austin) and Jerry Junkin and his wind ensemble. I only snuck a few pictures at rehearsal, and none of them are very good, so you’ll have to take my word for it. (I’ll try to get more pictures in rehearsal tomorrow and Saturday — and at the concert on Sunday afternoon.)

I had a nice dinner last night with the Floyd’s. Cheryl Floyd is the band director at Hill Country Middle School, the group for whom I’m currently writing a piece. Cheryl realized that I was going to be free today, and she invited me to the school to hear the group rehearse.

It’s a great band, and it’s hard to believe they’re middle school students. This is a middle school band where every percussionist learns to play with four-mallets! In middle school! Seriously — what do they put in the water in Austin?! It made me think that maybe the piece I’m writing should be a little more difficult… (Don’t worry; it won’t be.)

Before rehearsal, Harvey Pittel took me to hear the rather spectacular sax choir at UT. It kind of made me want to write a piece for sax choir — someday. I still need a little sax break…

Tonight, Jerry Junkin took me out for dinner to a great sushi restaurant in Austin called Uchi.

We went nuts and ordered the “omakase” — the thing I wrote about in the blog entry about the recent dinner in Japan, in which the chef selects each course for you. As such, I won’t remember what some of these courses are. I believe the first course was:
“hirame usuzukuri” : thinly-sliced flounder, spanish olive oil, smoked sea salt, yuzu zest, daikon, and crispy quinoa. It was excellent.

Course number two: I may get this one wrong, but I think it was:
“cobia crudo” : caribbean black kingfish, shiitake bacon, toasted sesame vinaigrette. The “shiitake bacon” was kind of amazing. How the hell did they make a mushroom taste like bacon?!

Next, I think, was:
“hotate tomorokoshi” : maine diver scallops, miso-corn pudding, yellowfoot chanterelles, and black truffle vinaigrette. Basically scallops served two different ways — one was basically ceviche (in the foreground with the corn — my favorite thing all evening…

… and the other was more traditionally cooked but with chanterelle mushrooms.

Next up was perhaps the greenest-looking soup I’ve ever had:
“mame tamago” : soft-boiled farm fresh egg, English pea soup, mint purée, perigord black truffles. It was very good. It tasted as green as it looks, if that makes sense. It seemed extremely… fresh. Thumbs-up all around.

It turns out that Jerry and I both love yellowtail, so this next dish was another keeper:
“hamachi cure” : sugar-cured maple wood-smoked baby yellowtail, yucca crisps, asian pear, garlic brittle. It was something. The yellowtail was very smoked-tasting.

Next was one of the few cooked courses:
“shun no sakana” : Australian turbot, smoked sofrito, basil picada. Tasty, but it still had the bone in it and the skin on it, and that made it rather awkward to eat with chopsticks, and also a little trickier to share. I would have preferred that it be de-boned.

Next up: something I didn’t expect in a sushi restaurant. Fois gras. I’m not huge on fois gras, but it was admittedly very tasty. And rich. Lordy.

The last big course: “wagyu yaki” : oak-grilled wagyu toro, French bluefoot mushrooms, uni butter, mustard greens. This one, surprisingly, was a little disappointing. It tasted amazing — just incredible flavor — but the texture wasn’t right. Instead of melting, like wagyu beef should, it instead seemed a bit fatty. I think that great wagyu should barely need to be chewed; it should be like eating beef-flavored butter. (What’s better than that?!) This, though, was quite chewy of the “fatty beef” kind. This place obviously has great sources for fish (some of it is flown in from Tokyo), so maybe this was just an off-cut. Again, though — the flavor was fantastic.

So — awesome dinner. The sushi chef was a really nice, interesting guy, and we enjoyed chatting with him a bit. (He was a real foodie.) The next time I’m in Austin, I’ll definitely go back to Uchi. It’s not quite as “greatest thing ever” as Jinpachi in LA, but for a few thousand miles from the coast, it was pretty damn close.