I finished the parts for the second of two commissions last night and emailed everything at 10:45PM — with 75 minutes to spare. It’s a relief to have both pieces done, and to have somehow delivered them both on time. I don’t intend to boot Finale again for at least six weeks, when I start work on the Saxophone Concerto.

AEJ and I are on our way to the UCLA/USC game this morning. We’re having lunch at the Chancellor’s Tent, and then watching the game as guests of the UCLA band. A huge thanks to Gordon Henderson for arranging this!

I’m taking the camera, so hopefully there’ll be good shots to post soon. I’d say I’ll post them tomorrow, but I might be busy driving around LA looking for a Nintendo Wii. I really, really want one, but am somehow unwilling to pay $600 on eBay. Wish me luck!

Where the hell have I been? Why aren’t I posting pictures of our (already decorated) Christmas tree?!

I, foolishly, agreed to deliver two completely separate commissions on the same day. That deadline? Tomorrow.

I was offered these commissions over 18 months ago. Between the Midwest Clinic in December 2004 and the National CBDNA Convention in New York in early 2005, I suddenly received several commission offers — the SEC (which led to “Turbine“), the American Bandmasters Association (“Strange Humors“), a consortium of high schools, led by my high school friend Josh Thompson (“Turning“), plus the two that are due tomorrow — the Central Oklahoma Directors Association (an honors wind ensemble, to premiere the piece in January, conducted by Rick Clary), and a consortium for seven bands in Japan.

Why would I agree to two commissions with the same deadline? At the time that I received all of these commissions, I had literally just quit my day job, but that wasn’t the motivation. The truth was that until that point in January 2005, I had been writing commission-to-commission. That is, I’d get a commission, write it, deliver it, and then look for more work — returning to my day job while I searched for another project. When I suddenly had multiple commission offers at once, I thought, “Wow, this has never happened, and will never happen again, so I need to not screw this up. If I space these out too much, the people asking for the works will lose interest, and I don’t want that to happen, so I’ll just make it all work. Plus, December 2006 is almost two years away! I will be totally fine.”

Well, that was… naive. There was one other commission — due in March 2006 — and I had to pull out of that one a few months before it was due, because I knew I couldn’t do it in time and make it any good. I still regret that. (I’ll add that it’s not much fun to write a check back to somebody for the original retainer fee.) Then I had to postpone “Turning,” which was originally to be delivered in March, then April — and ended up delivered in August. “Turning” kicked my butt, and as soon as it was done, I started the fall travel — Arizona State twice, UT at Austin, Texas Tech, LSU and U. Kansas, U. Tennessee, plus rehearsals at USC — all while working on these two new pieces whenever I could.

Somehow, the scores for both pieces are done, and I’m cautiously optimistic about them both. The parts for the Oklahoma piece won’t be done until Monday or Tuesday (only about 3 days late — that doesn’t even count as late!), but I’ll be able to send the Japanese consortium commission — score and parts — later today.

It’s fun to clean up the score and finally see it as a finished product, as that’s when it seems like (or at least looks like) “real music.” Here are three pages of the Japanese piece, in PDF format, for those who are curious about such things. Here’s a different single page with a bunch of notes. The French horn parts in this piece are going to be rough…

The agenda for today: finish the parts for the Japanese consortium and send them. Tomorrow: work all day on parts for the Oklahoma piece. And Saturday: the USC – UCLA football game. That’s right, AEJ and I are going to the big USC-UCLA game, and we’re sitting with the UCLA band. You can bet that photos will follow. For now, though, it’s coffee + lots and lots of Finale part extraction. Woo. Hoo.

I arrived in Knoxville on Sunday, November 19, after an eight-hour trip (including a 3-hour layover in Dallas). Gary Sousa (no relation — I had somebody ask), the director of bands at the University of Tennessee, picked me up at the airport, swung me by my hotel to check in, and took me to rehearsal.

First up, I worked with Don Ryder and the UT Symphonic Band on “Strange Humors.”

I had a one-hour rehearsal with each band on only my two pieces. It was awfully generous of the conductors and the students to do this. (Sometimes I only get a total of 20 minutes with a group — 20 minutes for my entire time on campus. At Tennessee, I ended up working with each band 3 times!) “Strange Humors” is only 5 minutes long, and the band sounded really good from the first playing that I heard, so after about 40 minutes, I had nothing else to fix. It’s a great group. We sent the band home, and the Wind Ensemble started setting up for “Turbine.” The timpanist looks stressed. Dude, you’re great! No worries!

“Turbine” sounded awesome, even in the band room. It was a little weird, because I now have a mental list of things to fix with each group, but this group seemed to have figured everything out in advance, leaving me without a whole lot to say. We still managed to work on it for 45 minutes or so, partially just because I loved hearing them play it. Here, Gary gives them the “thumbs up.”

One issue with “Turbine” is always the suspended steel plates. At UT, they spared no expense, and had custom plates cut. They sounded sweet — clangy and brash, without being too piercing — but they rang a little too long. This percussionist had the most brilliant solution I’ve seen yet: he attached two bed pillows to the plates with his own belts. Awe. Some. The belt on the left is particularly sweet. This guy wins the Best Problem Solver award. If I had a sticker that said as much, I’d have given it to him.

I think conducting “Turbine” would be hard. Even when it’s not changing meters, the rhythms are all over the place, and it’s non-stop at quarter=190 for over eight minutes. I don’t know where Gary gets the energy.

It wasn’t all music, of course. Being in the south, I had some good food, too. At all but one meal, I drank sweet tea, or as they say it there, “swaayt taaaay.” The TAs kept trying to get me to order it with the Eastern Tennessee accent, but I was afraid I’d get my ass kicked.

On Tuesday afternoon, I did a little composer chat. I’ve done these at some schools, and literally had one person show up. I can’t figure out why so many people showed up at UT. Maybe they thought there’d be a raffle or something. (Everybody loves a raffle.) I just wish I’d had something interesting to say.

They put me up at a nice hotel. I went for runs on the treadmill in the hotel gym each day, which helps me deal with my jet lag. (If I can’t fall asleep for a nap, running several miles seems to wake me up just as effectively, if only for a few hours.) The gym was pretty nice, but all of the TV’s were tuned to…

It was fine. It made me run faster, and kept me fair and balanced.

The percussionists in the Symphonic Band used two beautiful drums in “Strange Humors.” The smaller drum is a djembe, as the score calls for. The bigger drum is unknown, but presumably of African origin as well. I ask for a “bass drum” in the score, but allow for anything with a good bass tone. Some schools use muted concert bass drums. UT had the most interesting solution yet.

This is a real action shot. Okay, maybe it’s posed. (This “spontaneous action shot of djembe playing” has happened before.) Regardless, these guys were great, and their groove for the concert was awesome.

I don’t have any pictures from the concert, but both groups (plus the Concert Band) were fantastic. Everybody at UT showed me a great time, from their performance to their attempts to teach me the Eastern Tennessee accent. Aaaaaay laaayk yuuuuuu.