Yesterday was my last day teaching at Cal State Long Beach. It was a one-year position, one day a week, generously offered by John Carnahan, and accepted because I’d never taught before and thought it would be fun to see what it was like.

The verdict, now that the year is done: I loved it. I had five composition students, plus the composition seminar each week. The seminar was basically just a weekly discussion about whatever we felt like talking about — from Corigliano’s “Circus Maximus,” which many of the students had heard at Disney Hall, to the relevance of music theory in actual composition, to self-publishing and the business of making a living as a composer, to the merits of Guitar Hero III. I’ve spoken at other schools where the comp students sat silently in seminar, either too scared or too bored to ever say anything, but the students at Cal State were always engaged and they were definitely a verbal bunch. I don’t know how useful I was, but as you might imagine, I definitely had some opinions to share with them.

The individual lessons were great, too. Before I started, I had no idea what to expect from the students — or what I’d end up telling them. I had given single lessons to composers during residencies at colleges, but I had never seen the same students week after week. In lessons over the past few weeks, I was really struck by the level of improvement that I saw in every student. A few of them even wrote pieces that have completely stuck in my head. (I fell asleep last night with Ryan Luevano’s violin piece in my head, and woke up this morning with Travis Melvin’s piano concerto stuck there.) One student, Matt Carlson, was a finalist for an ASCAP Young Composer award this year — an honor that I only received in grad school. Then there’s Sean O’Kelley’s percussion ensemble ear worm, and Brian Manolovitz’s awesome new bassoon piece with a harmonic language that’s completely over my head but still somehow fantastically attractive.

It was especially fun, looking at each student’s finished pieces, and seeing just a tiny bit of influence in each one. There’s something great about telling a student, “this moment doesn’t quite work,” and seeing it perfected by the next week. I get the reward of seeing it improve, but it’s a whole lot easier than writing the piece myself.

I’m going to miss the students a lot. I hope a school in the Austin area will provide a similar opportunity, ’cause this teaching thing is pretty great — particularly when the students are so good.

(left to right: Sean O’Kelley, unknown, Matt Carlson, Travis Melvin, Ryan Luevano, Emily Kilimnik, and Brian Manolovitz)

Let me preface this by saying that I love attending the Midwest Clinic every December in Chicago. It’s a huge gathering of over 15,000 music educators spending five days attending concerts by some of the best middle school and high school bands in the country — and usually at least one unbelievable performance by a non-American band, often from Japan. Last year featured the band from Michigan State University, conducted by Kevin Sedatole, giving what, by many accounts, was probably the best concert ever heard at Midwest. The year before, Jerry Junkin conducted the Dallas Wind Symphony at Midwest. I’ve had great performances at Midwest, and I’ve consumed incredible quantities of spirits post-concert. I plan to attend every year for the foreseeable future, largely because it’s an opportunity to see friends. (You can read about last year’s Midwest Clinic in this entry.)

The other element, besides concerts (and cocktails), is the clinics themselves. This year, the American Composers Forum had the idea of presenting a very cool clinic at Midwest. The proposal was to have composers and conductors talk about the process of commissioning, working with composers, incorporating composition into the classroom — interesting stuff like that. The panel was to include Craig Kirchoff (Director of Bands at U. Minnesota, and series advisor of the Boosey and Hawkes “Windependence” series), composer Michael Colgrass (winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Music, and composer of some of the great band literature including Winds of Nagual), composer Frank Ticheli (perhaps the most performed American band composer), and me (hack). Doesn’t that sound great? Good lord — Ticheli and Colgrass on a panel together?! I would attend that even if they’d have the sense to leave me off the panel! Hundreds of people would go to that clinic. I mean, who wouldn’t want to see such a panel?

The Midwest Clinic. They nixed the clinic proposal.

So if you attend the Midwest clinic this year, and you wonder why you’re instead attending clinics like “The Euphonium is Not a Cello!,” “One, Two, Three, Four, We Declare a Rhythm War: Why Mixed-Meters are Bad for Marching,” or “Mustache Maintenance: The Cutting Edge for Today’s Band Director,” you’ll know why.

(What? Me, bitter? And don’t even get me started on their policies regarding programming restrictions…)

I’m back from a quick two-stop trip over the weekend. It started on Friday, when I flew up to the California central valley for a performance of “Strange Humors” with the Lodi High School Honor Band, conducted by David Vickerman.

The performance was at PM Hutchins Street Square, which in the past has hosted performances by such luminaries as 70’s “magician,” Gallagher…

… and New Age “musician” George Winston!

The concert had theatrical lighting and video projections. Here, David conducts a performance of Steve Bryant’s piece, “Dusk.”

Hey, I’m up next!

The performance — and the djembe soloist in particular — was awesome.

Here, David thanks the donors, including this monkey.

It was David’s final concert with the band before he leaves to attend grad school. The band and the parents gave him a warm send-off.

And the band gave me perhaps the coolest souvenir I’ve ever received from an ensemble — the head of a djembe, destroyed during a particularly enthusiastic rehearsal, signed by the entire band.

Thanks for the great visit!