As a lifelong Buckeye, it’s hard for me to admit that there might be some positive qualities about anything at the University of Michigan, but I have to admit…  Some stuff on that campus is acceptable.

First thing’s first: the people there are a little weird…

… and they all wear pajamas to rehearsals…

… but I kind of loved them. I was a guest at the University of Michigan for four days last week, and I don’t know that I’ve been treated better anywhere. Michael Haithcock (the Director of Bands) and Kristy Kuster (a member of the world-class music composition faculty at Michigan) couldn’t have been better hosts. It all started on Tuesday evening, with a tasty dinner at Paesano’s with Professor Haithcock and also Mary Schneider (Director of Bands at neighboring Eastern Michigan University). After dinner, it was off to a 90-minute sectional rehearsal on “Harvest: Concerto for Trombone” with professor David Jackson (trombone professor at U. Michigan) and the percussion section from the Michigan Symphony Band.

I wish I had time for more percussion sectionals in general. As many have seen — anybody who has been subjected to one of my band coaching sessions — I’m a little, er, particular about the percussion. I want the drums that I want, and I want the mallets that I request, and when I don’t get those things, I tend to throw a tantrum.  Probably 75% of the notes that I give in any rehearsal will be notes for the percussion section, so having the luxury of 90 minutes with just the percussionists, the conductor, and the concerto soloist made for probably the most productive single rehearsal I can recall.

Michael Haithcock and David Jackson were very flexible in dealing with my tempo and dynamic requests, and the student percussionists… Okay, I’m just going to put this out there. I think the percussion studio at the University of Michigan, under the instruction of Joseph Gramley, is currently the best percussion studio in the country outside of Juilliard.  They have every piece of equipment I could imagine — and it’s top-notch equipment (you should have heard the bass drum they use in the concert hall!) — and they play the hell out of everything.

The depth at the studio is kind of stunning.  The second band was rehearsing Aurora Awakes while I was on campus, and I’ve never heard the mallet parts sound so good.  Every note was crystal clear (never covered by the ensemble, which is, I’m sure, largely thanks to Rodney Dorsey, who was conducting the group with great energy), and every percussion note had a great sound — and things were in the right place.

Moving to the players in the Symphony Band, there was a sense of time and feel that was exceptional.  If I asked them to try a different mallet, they had it on hand — there was no “I only brought this mallet today” argument (one of my biggest pet peeves in a rehearsal).

I don’t want to seem like some sort of percussion nazi.  I’m open to suggestions — that’s how I’ve learned how to request the mallets that I request in the first place!  There’s a part of the trombone concerto where the tom-toms and the djembe have a back-and-forth duet.  Although I marked the tom part “sticks” at the beginning of the part, that’s the only notation I made, and in the middle of the piece — during this little duet — I noticed that the player (Quincy Brown) had switched from sticks to hard yarn mallets.  I hadn’t asked for a change there, but I also hadn’t explicitly asked for him to stay with sticks, so he wasn’t ignoring what I’d requested — he was adding to it.  And the change to hard yarn from sticks in that place honestly made the piece better — so much better that I’m making that revision in the next printing of the parts.  (For those currently rehearsing the piece, it will switch to hard yarn at measure 255 and then back to sticks at measure 269.) Here’s a shot of Quincy rehearsing the part.

It wasn’t all rehearsals, of course.  There was some tasty food, too, like this meal at Logan.

On Thursday, I had the opportunity to visit Eastern Michigan University to work with old friend Amy Knopps on “Sasparilla,” which was a lot of fun. I also got to coach a student sax quartet on “Strange Humors,” and I realized that I’d never heard the piece live before! How weird is that?! (I’ve also never heard “Sultana” live.  Come to think of it, I’ve never heard “Sultana” — period.)  This picture captures why I’m not a fan of wide-angle photography of people.  I’m short, but I’m not literally half the size of your average tenor sax player.

The students all did a great job, and man, they were awfully kind. At the end of rehearsal, the students presented me with a birthday cake — a homemade carrot cake with cream cheese icing (my favorite, for the record).  Thank you, Charlotte Anderson, for taking the time to bake such a delicious birthday cake!

Yes, the next day was my birthday (I’m now 21), and it was a pretty excellent birthday. I was happy that Loki remembered my special day…

… and sent me balloons! Mr. Kitty, I don’t know how I’m going to fit these in my suitcase, but I’ll try.

That wasn’t the end of the birthday treats, though. On Wednesday, I’d hung out with several of the Michigan student composers, and I mentioned my love of Buckeyes — not just the team, but the food, which is a chocolate-dipped peanut butter ball. Wow, I love those things. So what did I receive for my birthday from Katie Mueller? (That’s my security detail behind us, by the way.)

A Tupperware full of homemade buckeyes! These were the best buckeyes I’d ever had. Recipe please, Katie.  Nice blue top and Michigan “M.”  Cute.  But maybe Katie was onto something.  Maybe Buckeyes and Michigan could get along somehow?  More on that in a moment…

Mmmm. Buckeyes.

I also got a hell of a performance for my birthday. Michael Haithcock, David Jackson, and the entire Symphony Band were in top form for the concert that night. The concert also included Ricardo Lorenz‘s piece, “El Muro” — the piece from which I originally stole the idea of putting a Kevlar drum into Asphalt Cocktail.  I love Ricardo’s piece (and he’s an awfully nice guy).

I even got birthday cake at the post-concert pizza party!

I was especially happy that my dad had driven up to Ann Arbor for the performance. Here he is modeling the silk scarf that he suggested I should start using in concerts. His idea was that I’d dramatically throw a silk scarf into the audience while bowing after every performance. He seemed convinced that this could be my “thing.”

It really was a wonderful trip, from the first rehearsal through each subsequent rehearsal on both Harvest and Aurora Awakes, to some social time with the student composers, to the visit to EMU, to the Michigan composition seminar (where I always feel a little inadequate), to a faculty party hosted by Kristy Kuster, to the great performance, to a post-concert pizza party — well, it was awesome. Maybe Buckeyes and those Michigan folk can get along after all? AEJ thinks so, so she created this character to represent the possible unity of Michigan and OSU. I present to you: Michigan Buckeye. Can’t we all get along, at least until late November?

NOTE: RECORDING NOW OFFLINE.  STUDIO RECORDING COMING NOVEMBER 2010.

Well, it doesn’t get much better than last night.  (That’s what she said.)

Back in March, when Joe Alessi premiered “Harvest: Concerto for Trombone” with the West Point Band, I blogged about the concert, and I thought at the time, well, how could that ever be matched?! Let’s put the piece away, ’cause it’s done.

I, obviously, don’t intend to diminish the West Point performance in any way — that concert was insane — but in the six months since that performance (and recording session), Joe Alessi has gotten to know the piece even better, and when he arrived at UT for his first rehearsal two weeks ago, he had some ideas about things that would make the piece even more effective.

It all really came down to dynamic shape. As anybody who has performed my music knows, I tend to over-mark dynamics. That’s largely because, in my mind, dynamics say more about “energy level” than actual volume. If I mark something FFF, it doesn’t necessarily mean, “blast your chops off,” it means “this needs to be intense.” But writing everything on the computer, as I do, contributes further to less-than-artistic dynamic markings because computer samples generally sound better either really loud or really soft. (For samples that are really soft, check out the demo of “Hymn to a Blue Hour.”)

I’m aware, of course, that variation of dynamic intensity is much more interesting musically. I’m fine with loud stuff, but at some point, the piece needs to shut the hell up before getting loud again or it all just becomes a wash of noise. (Even “Asphalt Cocktail,” which is tremendously loud, has moments that are marked PPP, where nobody plays but a single harp. In that piece, those moments are intended almost as a joke — hey!  I can hear the harp! — but it does make the power-chords that follow much more effective.) Something that’s important to keep in mind as a performer, though, is that even if the printed dynamic doesn’t change, you can shape the line dynamically. A phrase marked PP can still contain a large dynamic range and still be considered PP. Dynamics are not a set number, unless you’re MIDI, and if you’re going to play like MIDI, I’d rather just listen to MIDI.

But back to Alessi. The big thing he wanted to do was make dynamics more extreme in range, not by making the loud parts even louder, but by pulling back from sections that were marked as being loud, saving the biggest volume for the real arrivals. This is something that Jerry Junkin does intuitively while he’s conducting anyway, so the combination of Alessi with Junkin — and these incredible UT players — was inspiring to watch.

FFF generally stayed at FFF, but sometimes FF would become MF, PP would become PPPP. Even those FFF sections might start FFF, move gradually to MF, and back to FFF by the end of the phrase. With every change, Alessi would ask me in the rehearsal room if it was okay with me, which was an awfully courteous thing to do, but his (and Junkin’s) ideas were always the right choice. No notes or rhythms ever changed, and none of the changes really demand that the parts be revised, but they did go into my rehearsal score so I can try to reproduce these interpretive choices when I work with other ensembles.

I’d promoted the live webcast here and on Facebook. As many people learned, the combination of Joe Alessi and the UT Wind Ensemble last night managed to break the internets.  It seems those UT servers can only handle so much, and this was beyond that.  The servers crashed, and nobody heard any of the webcast until the servers were restarted in time for the second half.

No worries.  I’ve (temporarily) posted the recording from last night’s concert, as it would have sounded had the stream not failed.  Just visit the main page for the Trombone Concerto, then click “Score and Audio.”  Alessi, Junkin, and the ensemble played the absolute hell out of this thing.  This was, without exaggeration, arguably the best performance I’ve ever had.

Backstage, after the performance, Alessi asked me when he could play “Harvest” again, as if it were somehow up to me. Joe, if it were up to me, you’d be playing it again this afternoon, but nooooo, somebody had to go home to play with the New York Philharmonic this morning. Hmph.

Go check out the recording from last night’s performance — keeping in mind that not a single thing is edited.  It’s astonishing.  Thank you, Joe, Jerry, and everybody in the University of Texas Wind Ensemble.

NOTE: RECORDING WILL GO OFFLINE AT 11:59PM CST on SEPTEMBER 27.

This post is short and sweet, just to let you know that this Sunday, September 26, at 7pm CST (or, as I like to call it, “7PM Elvis Time”), the University of Texas Wind Ensemble, under the direction of Jerry Junkin, will perform my recent piece, “Harvest: Concerto for Trombone” with Joseph Alessi — principal trombonist for the New York Philharmonic.  The concert also includes the premiere of the wind version of Frank Ticheli’s piece, “Playing with Fire,” featuring the Jim Cullum Jazz Band.  The full program:

Kingfishers Catch Fire — Mackey
Harvest: Concerto for Trombone (featuring Joseph Alessi, trombone) — Mackey
(intermission)
Postcard — Ticheli
Playing with Fire (featuring the Jim Cullum Jazz Band) — Ticheli

The concert is at Bass Concert Hall here in Austin.  The hall seats nearly 3000, but reports seem to indicate that you should get tickets in advance if possible.  Not anywhere near Austin?  Then you can listen online.  Just follow the link on this page starting a few minutes before concert time (which, again, is at 7pm Central Time on Sunday evening).

This concert will be, and I can’t stress this enough, epic.