Squirrels in training

A great deal of activity, which I don't like to have the blog remain silent on . . . .

Excellent rehearsals both Sunday (cl/gt/db) and last night (the grand squirrel musicke).

Charles Turner's piece for clarinet and guitar, Spinning, is especially lovely music, a pleasure to play. And Jim Dalton draws beautiful colors from the guitar.

Lots of hard work on (and good progress with) the Jazz for N. Sq. And with Charles's The Unarmed Man. Another rehearsal this evening . . . and I should find myself getting some more sleep, too.

A very nice message came in yesterday morning, requiring parts for the saxophone choir version of the first Intermezzo from White Nights, for a read-through tomorrow (Wednesday). Hoping for good things.

And Peter tells me that the mezzo is indeed game for a new work for voice and baritone saxophone. This will be the first I am writing for baritone saxophone since . . . Out in the Sun, I should think (not counting the Intermezzo, which was a matter of arranging a piece composed earlier). I've decided to set Leo Schulte's "The Crystalline Ship," which is one of the texts I had chosen for the Cantata (that piece which pretty much waits on when I can settle upon the accompanying ensemble). [I plan still to set the Schulte as part of the Cantata, and it will be completely independent music.] So I have started work on that, so far just attending to the voice line.

For the 15 March concert, they need only perhaps 5-6 minutes (I have told Peter that there are more texts for an expanded opus . . . so, yes, pretty much thinking of it already as "Cantata № 2").

Baritone sax . . . I am thinking of judicious, nay lyrical even, use of a multiphonic or two, which in the case of the saxophone can mean more a differently-colored primary pitch, rather than a "chord. " I think I want to get something notated, and then compare notes (!) with Peter while the work is in progress.