Christian Knapp conducted the original orchestra version of “Redline Tango” at the Eastern Music Festival on Saturday. I couldn’t be there, but the report is that he — and the players — did a great job. I hope they send me a recording.

My iPhone — my second one, mind you — had to be replaced yesterday because the speaker was no longer audible. There have been widespread reports about the ringers being too quiet, but mine was beyond even that (the guy at the Genius Bar heard it and said, “yeah, that’s lame.” Indeed.), so I took it back to Apple, and they sent me home with a new one. Let’s hope the third one’s a charm.

“Redline Tango” and “Strange Humors” have officially been added to the Texas UIL Prescribed Music List. This is a good thing, because it means that high school bands in Texas can play those pieces at contests without first obtaining special permission. Hopefully this will lead to more performances at the high school level in Texas. A shout-out to Grapevine High School, Permian High School, Friendswood High School, and Poteet High School, for playing my pieces before they were on The List.

For the curious, I submitted four works for consideration — Redline Tango, Strange Humors, Turbine, and my percussion ensemble piece, Mass. Turbine and Mass were not accepted.

A PML shout-out to Michael Markowski, whose excellent piece, “Shadow Rituals,” was also added. I’m not positive, but I’d bet that Michael is the youngest composer on The List. Oh, and congratulations to John Corigliano, whose “Gazebo Dances” was also added. Maybe that will give Corigliano the professional boost he deserves.

Speaking of that Corigliano guy, I heard his “Circus Maximus” again on Sunday. That work is a masterpiece, plain and simple.

In other completely different news, I’m accepting a part-time teaching position. I’ve been invited to teach composition lessons and run the composer seminar at California State University, Long Beach, this fall. It’s kind of a perfect teaching gig — just lessons and the seminar, and only one day a week. No theory, no administrative duties, no “music for non-majors,” none of it. And did I mention no theory? I’ll have six students. CSU knows about my travel schedule, so they’re making the lessons flexible. For now, it’ll just be for the fall, and then we’ll reassess to decide if I’ll stay on.

I wonder what it will be like teaching the same students week after week. When I give master classes or lessons when I’m doing a residency, I see everybody just once. Listening to a (usually) finished piece and making comments is easy (“meh, this part here kinda blows”); helping to shepherd a work from start to conclusion is something else entirely. I’m excited to figure out how to do this. Maybe it’ll help me figure out how to write better, too. (My teacher in undergrad, Donald Erb, always said that students made him a better composer. Maybe he was just trying to convince us we weren’t wasting his time.)

Finally, on our drive back from Napa on Sunday, we passed the coolest town in California. I’m totally moving there someday.

I was fairly productive today, spending most of the day orchestrating the sax concerto. I did take a few breaks to play with the new lens, as well as the lens attachment — the 500D Close-up lens. This is a little piece of glass that’s basically just a fancy magnifying glass that screws onto the end of a lens. It lets you focus on things much, much closer than you normally could. The result is that it turns a standard lens into a macro lens.

For comparison, here is a shot of our oldie-time donut phone, as taken with my 50mm lens.

Here is the same phone, as shot with the 400mm lens with the 500D attachment. (Isn’t the grime lovely?)

I can also open the aperture and get a much much more shallow depth of field. It’s so narrow, it’s a little silly.

It’s not a blog entry without a picture of Loki. Not exactly a macro shot, but kind of cute.

Remember the sucker from Japan that I used for size reference yesterday? Here’s a close-up of that same sucker.

And, just because, here’s a quarter. So, you know, you can call someone who cares. You should see this sucker at full size. (Unless you want to see a massive 10 megapixel image, don’t click that.)

Not much else to report, I’m afraid. Just trying to get as much work done as possible before leaving for the weekend. It’s slow-goin’…

The new (and last, for a while) lens arrived today. I wasn’t going to play with it — I have too much work to do — but a transformer blew on our street, and we were without electricity most of the day. So, what the hell…

This is my new Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS. To translate for the non lens-obsessed, that means it’s a zoom lens with a range between 100-400mm (for comparison, the popular Canon PowerShot SD800 IS is equivalent to 28-105mm), shooting at a maximum aperture of 4.5-5.6, depending on zoom amount (essentially a measurement of how “fast” the lens is), it’s part of the Canon “L” series (that’s the line of white lenses you see at sporting events), and it has in-lens image stabilization.

It’s enormous. I put a Japanese sucker next to it for reference.

Here’s another angle.

It uses a “push/pull” type of zoom. I can adjust whether I want the push/pull to be “smooth” or “tight.”
I’d comment further, but a mixed-age audience reads this blog.

I messed up the exposure on this one, and it turned out pretty sweet.

Here it is between two of my other lenses. Somehow, this shot feels kind of dirty.

Here’s a picture of a flower taken with the 100-400 lens. I took this picture from the deck — across the street from the flower. I was probably 75 feet away. This image wasn’t cropped.

Here’s Loki, from about 10 feet away. The focus isn’t right, but the color is nice.

And here’s Loki from about 10 feet away, but at only 180mm. When I went to 400mm, I only got (most of) his head.

I’ll take it for a walk sometime this week and get more shots in a more practical (and less cat-heavy) setting. I’m very excited to take it to the zoo.

This weekend, AEJ and I are driving up to Napa to hear the University of Texas Wind Ensemble perform “Circus Maximus” at Festival del Sole. Corigliano will be there, and I’m sure it’ll be a great weekend. I think I’ll have to bring the camera.