April 5, 2008
Food and Vegas fun
AEJ and I are off to Vegas Sunday morning for a few days of R&R. We’re having some great meals, and I’m sure it’ll be a good time, as it always is in Vegas. If you need to reach me, be aware that I won’t be around until Tuesday evening.
P.S. Happy belated Easter.
April 4, 2008
Damn Clocking
Lots of new content on the site today. I figured with the fancy new re-design (design courtesy of AEJ, and jointly coded by us), it wouldn’t hurt to bring everything up-to-date and add some new fun things. So, as of today, we have…
Clocking: a new wind band piece, commissioned by the Central Oklahoma Directors Association. Was to have premiered in January 2007, but canceled due to an ice storm, it finally premiered this January. The recording is from a performance in February of the University of Oklahoma Wind Symphony, conducted by William Wakefield. The score is also available.
Damn: an old piece for amplified clarinet with percussion quartet. Until today, only an excerpt of the audio was available. Now, the entire piece (both score and audio) is available.
The handful of downloadable MP3 files have been replaced with streaming MP3 files due to the amount of MP3 bot sites that have linked directly to the MP3 files. (I’m now sending out over 2 GB of bandwidth per day, and a good portion of that, I think, is going to MP3 sites.) If you need a downloadable MP3 for some reason, please contact me.
I have a few other things coming over the next few days, like the Florida State recording of “Turning,” and a completely-insane performance of “Breakdown Tango.” Until then…
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Love the new design.
Those Antiphonal Dances sound quite familiar... :]
I see what Alex is saying..
Some things in Antiphonal Dances do sound vaguely familiar..
:-P
I can't wait to here the FSU version of 'Turning'..
Clocking was interesting.
sounded like a tango that had no dancers...
Some background...
"Antiphonal Dances" was an orchestrated version of three movements of a five movement piece originally for string quartet and brass sextet. The original was commissioned by the Parsons Dance Company in 2001. I re-worked it for orchestra for the Greater Twin Cities Youth Symphony, but that version (as you've heard) doesn't really work so well. The best version, by far, is the version that became "Kingfishers Catch Fire." But that left one movement of "Antiphonal Dances" not yet transcribed for band, since Kingfishers was only the last two movements of "Antiphonal Dances"...
So then there was "Clocking." The second movement of "Clocking" is a transcription of that other movement of "Antiphonal Dances." The first movement of "Clocking" (the slow movement) is a transcription of the middle movement of "Voices and Echoes" -- a work commissioned by Jeanne Ruddy Dancers in Philadelphia. In 1999. So don't listen to "Clocking" and think that I'm "doing something new;" the notes themselves were first written between 7-9 years ago.
So, "Clocking" is a combination of two movements from two different pieces, both originally commissioned as chamber works for dance companies.
And yes, I'm now completely out of pieces to transcribe for band. ;P
Well, unless I transcribe those outer movements of "Voices and Echoes..." :)
I thought Anitphonal Dances sounded familliar...
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April 3, 2008
If you enjoyed “August Rush…”
I watched “American Idol” this week, as I always do, and I will admit that I was really taken by David Archuleta‘s performance of Dolly Parton’s song, “Smoky Mountain Memories.” I like Dolly’s music (from “Light of a Clear Blue Morning” to “Hard Candy Christmas” to her bizarre version of “Stairway to Heaven”), but I didn’t know this song, so I figured I’d go to iTunes and buy it.
So I head over to the iTunes Store from the comfort of my desk, and I see this in the “Just for You” recommendation window:
Let’s see… some Dawn Upshaw, okay, that makes sense. A few country tunes (am I giving something away?)… and wait, what’s that at number 5? I kind of love having Audra McDonald, country singer Jamie O’Neal, and Redline Tango on the same list — and I particularly love it that iTunes picked my own piece to recommend to me. That’s almost creepy.
When I told this story to Loki, he didn’t really care much about the Redline Tango thing. He just wanted to sing #7, John Rutter’s arrangement of Joy to the World. Funny kitty.
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That is pretty awesome! Go you!
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