A dawning, and Moonrise

As with the long-delayed dots I recently connected, so that I finally showed the Cello Sonatina to Kirstin Peltz, another delayed (happy to say, not missed) opportunity suddenly shines upon my heretofore darkened mind.

Even so, the path was not a straight line.

Earlier this year, I wrote the clarinet choir piece in 15 parts, Misapprehension;  and am presently writing for the clarinet choir's director, Timothy Phillips, the clarinet-&-marimba duet, just what everyone was expecting.

On Facebook, a trumpeter I know has recently "Liked" the page of a brass quintet.  With the latent thought that perhaps a conversation will someday ensue, I have now "Liked" their page, too.  My thoughts turned to Moonrise, the brass quintet (with flugelhorns substituting for trumpets) which I wrote in fruitless hopes that the Synergy Brass Ensemble would perform it, even own it.

Well, Moonrise is a piece of which I am particularly proud.  I think it is beautiful, evocative music, and that it gives a quintet ample room both to demonstrate their collective skill as an ensemble, and to ring out with delicious chords and chilling unisons. Over the years, I have written several pieces "on spec" which wound up unperformed (and which lie on my shelf unperformed still — this never happens to John Williams), and of course I wish that they had.  But that sense that a piece which fellow musicians and listeners would hold in high regard, if only the piece might be created in public, is probably sharpest in the case of Moonrise.

Thus (and call this one of the many reasons why I am glad of the daily, albeit generally incidental, musical newsfeed on Facebook) the "Liking" of the Facebook page, the view of Bobby Thorpe's familiar head-shot, and the memory of hearing the Synergy quintet reading Moonrise in a parlor in Needham (they had a recorder to hand, why, oh why, did they not have tape running?  I tell you, this is a piece you'll like) — This fair morning, my heart welled with a longing that Moonrise should no longer languish unlistened-to.

The thought of the Troy University clarinet choir so fresh in mind, the idea of creating a clarinet quintet arrangement actually occurred to me first (and I think it a good idea).  But then (Dawn Breaks Over Marblehead) methought:  Charles!  The NEC wind ensemble department!

No good reason why it never occurred to me, all these long years, to mention the piece to Charles.

Guess what I have in mind as a Thing to Do today?