Of the new choral music collective which came to be known as Triad, I first blogged here. I forbore to post sooner while it was yet to be born and yet to be christened. As a composer and conductor, I was deeply invested in the endeavor and I grew to love a number of my fellows. Over the years as divers founding members left the Boston area, we managed to recruit some replacements, but over time the attrition became a greater challenge to counteract. And at last, we reached a kind of tipping point at which newer recruits did not develop the attachment to/investment in the endeavor. I write this with no blame to any. It is a great challenge to get on as a musician, and each individual must perforce weigh their own values, make their own decisions, and allocate their energies as they deem best fit. One of our illustrious alumnæ is now a practicing attorney, and I know how it pained her to send today’s necessary e-mail message headed Dissolving Triad. At least oversight of this unavoidable rite of passage is “in the family.” Composing this post has me near tears. Mostly I am grateful for the music-making,
13 May 2025
Almost a Day of Mourning
12 May 2025
An Exercise Considered, Then Discarded
I’m not even sure why the idea of this particular thought experiment crosses my mind now but here goes:
What would you say to your 18-year-old self, if you could? At the risk of appearing to think that, as it is, I’ve always done the best I might (I think no such thing) I’m not convinced that anything I might have advised myself then (apart from practice more) could have made a difference of net better. What would I say? “Get into a different school, so that your opportunities are better?” “Marry into wealth so that you do not lack resources?” Firstly, telling myself those things would not change the fact that such opportunities did not arise for me. Secondly, no other path brings me to just this place musically as a composer. In one of the hour-long episodes of the fourth season of The Twilight Zone, Rod Serling’s “No Time Like the Past,” one Paul Driscoll goes back in time, first to seek to convince the Hiroshima police to evacuate the city; second, to attempt to assassinate Hitler; and third, to plead with the captain of the Lusitania. Failing in all these altruistic attempts to improve the 20th century, he goes back a fourth time to the 19th, to “retire” to a quiet Midwestern town. He falls for the town’s schoolteacher, but he comes to learn that she will perish in a fire. If this sounds familiar, there is a bit of an echo in Back to the Future III. Serling’s cautionary tale does not end so well for Driscoll as it does for Doc Brown, and indeed Driscoll finds himself serving as the unwitting catalyst of the conflagration. Let me not chide myself for any lack of imagination, if I cannot think of anything efficacious to say to mine 18-year-old self which might have improved the arc of my career.
11 May 2025
Ten Years Ago Today
Spam du jour: “Last Minute Mothers Day Gifts” — from Staples. What all are they thinking? “Happy Mothers Day, Mom! Enjoy your Sharpies!”
A bittersweet moment, as Triad is nae more, but highly satisfied that the Agnus Dei featured in that inaugural outing ten years since.
10 May 2025
Not About Me, Either (Brazil)
Last night, largely as a consequence of this post, I slipped Brazil into the tray. Hadn’t watched it in a while. When I watched Blade Runner the other night, I remembered how, when I saw it in the theater, that original release had explanatory voiceovers which Ridley Scott thankfully scrapped from the final cut. That recollection put me in mind also of Brazil since the studio added a happy ending resulting in what Terry Gilliam sarcastically referred to as the Love Conquers All version. Aggravated rather than caused by the world around us going haywire, I find that this visual fable gets more bitter with each viewing. I mean, I have always known that it ends badly for Sam Lowry, but the very first time I saw it, not only was I beguiled by the enormously inventive dream sequences but, for instance, one hopes, and is led on to hope, that Sam Lowry will somehow muddle through it all. Living with this brilliant movie over time becomes a matter, in part, of finding the point where it is clear that Sam’s rescue is raw delusion, and that therefore his “necrophilia” with Jill is his only moment of genuine happiness in the movie, but that Sam is not merely a victim of the machine, but something of an instrument of his own downfall. Was it Beauty that killed him? His need to pursue Jill which pries him out of the safe mediocrity of a mere functionary in a lower office of the Ministry of information, so that he begs Mr Helpmann to refresh the offer of a promotion? Yet, since he had been dreaming of Jill, how could he have done otherwise? But character is Destiny, and what with the young vandals’ destruction of the Personal Transport, Sam’s cocking up of the Buttle check, and his juvenile glee in running Jill’s truck through the gate and on: Sam sowed the seeds of his own immolation by bureaucracy. As to his friend Jack, the very fact that Michael Palin is so brilliant a comedian makes him chilling as Information Retrieval’s chief Retriever.
08 May 2025
Not About Me (Blade Runners and Beatles)
On 28 Apr 2020 Chris Voss at WCRB informed us of the program for that night’s instalment of “Festival 1750” [The broadcast festival featured music created immediately before and after the pivotal year of 1750, when the elaborate vibrancy of Baroque masters Bach and Handel began to give way to the grace and proportions of composers like Haydn and Mozart.]
But did not explain why the program includes the Beethoven 7th Symphony (composed in 1813) nor even the Mozart Clarinet Concerto (composed in 1791) . . . not that it is Chris’s fault.
Tuesday night I rewatched Blade Runner 2049. When it came out I gave it a wide miss. My prejudice was not deeply ingrained nor was it especially strong, but it was completely ill-founded. At last, however, my native curiosity prevailed and I did actually watch it,.I find it an excellent slowburn and as beautiful to watch as the original. The score plugs into the Vangelis vibe, too. Entirely predictably, I love Edward James Olmos’ return as Gaff, and I am delighted that this screenplay also is by Hampton Fancher. I don’t believe I had previously made the connection that this was the same director (Denis Villeneuve) who is doing the new Dune movies. As to the latter, I enjoyed Part I without being besotted with it. I suppose that my not being a great fan of Herbert’s source novel is related to my not finding anything greatly disappointing in the old David Lynch movie. I haven’t yet watched Part II, but neither am I strenuously avoiding it. I’m walking to the Library today, perhaps I’ll check Pt II out.
And so last night I revisited Ridley Scott’s original, still gorgeous to the eye. Probably unsurprising: the new movie imparts an interesting “pre-echo” to the final scenes of Deckard finding Rachael in his apartment and leaving with her. These days I speak exclusively in terms of Ridley Scott’s Final Cut, for which I am richly grateful. Back when there still a Borders on Washington Street in Boston (that used to be a bookstore chain, by the way) I bought a discounted DVD of Blade Runner. I wound up returning it unopened as my subconscious was pricked to do some investigating, and I learnt that the Final Cut edition was imminent. I found the Dangerous Days documentary on YouTube (it seems to have dropped off since) and my Blade Runner Fever was really pitched up. To shift gears only slightly, Terry Gilliam’s brilliant Brazil (another dystopian classic) fell afoul of the Studio, which edited it into what Gilliam wrily dubbed a Love Conquers All version. Gilliam waged a PR war and won. To return to Blade Runner, Scott was compelled to make similarly-motivated modifications. Deckard eloped with Rachael and we see outtake landscapes from Stanley Kubrick’s helicopter shoot for The Shining, and we have grandfatherly voice-overs not only “explaining” that romantic escape, but upstaging Rutger Hauer’s touching rooftop soliloquy which concludes the film’s drama. Decades had passed since I watched the film in the cinema but I recalled (notwithstanding my overall white-hot enthusiasm for the movie) rolling my eyes, albeit only to myself. The Final Cut restores Deckard’s dream of a unicorn. The origami unicorn that Gaff left outside Deckard’s apartment thus suggests not only that Deckard is himself a replicant, but that Gaff is aware of that fact, and that his LAPD colleagues are leaving him and Rachael be. Deckard thus has the question he had posed to Tyrell (How can it not know what it is?!) turned back upon himself. Atop the discovery which astonished those in the BR 2049 lab, that a replicant could bear a child) we have the related puzzle that Deckard was created capable of inseminating a partner, and Tyrell (apparently) so designed them (Deckard and Rachael both.)
The novelty of returning to Scott’s original last night was having the following sink in: Deckard asks Zhora for leave to check her dressing room for “Little, uh, dirty holes they uh, drill in the wall so they can watch a lady undress.” And then we see Joanna Cassidy in the shower. The echo of Hitchcock’s Psycho impressed itself on me so strongly last night, I near wondered I had missed it before. Deliberate on Ridley Scott’s part or serendipity?
Entirely separarely, I am slow-reading The Beatles Anthology. The experience is reminding me that at the time of my first descent into the Beatles rabbithole, I did read two books dedicated to them so, as with the DVD Anthology, it is a mix of some few factoids of which I was already aware, and a wealth of new info.
07 May 2025
Five Out of Six
The Henning Ensemble rehearsed this afternoon, and the sounds were pretty exciting. We had initial readings of the Rahsaan Roland Kirk Fantasia and Dark Side of the Sun. The quest for potential concert dates is ongoing, but we’ve pinned down the next rehearsal, this time of the full sextet.
Some Tidying
A footnote to Jazz for Nostalgic Squirrels: One discovery we made when we revived the piece in 2023 ... through mis-handling the mouse, I gave Peter an erroneous cue in his alto flute part. And in case you were wondering, yes, an erroneous cue (in this case, a measure off) is indeed worse than no cue at all. And I failed to remember this when exporting the Alto Flute part from the newly expanded score. So, yesterday afternoon I cleared out the stale cues and inserted fresh cues. Even though we shall be missing Todd I am eagerly looking forward to today’s rehearsal.
03 May 2025
A Landmark of the Before Time
Even though neither of the pieces I submitted was selected, I very much enjoyed twice participating in the Rapido! competition, because (especially prior to my stroke, when my stamina was perforce greater) I exulted in the exercise of composing to a short deadline. In both cases I wrote music I could take pride in having created. For the first of the two contests in which I contested, I wrote the Dances of Exhilaration and Nonchalance, which are the subject of this post. I see in another post that at first I dubbed them Dances Defiant. As the point of the contest is not knowing the instrumentation until the starting gun goes off, there is no direct preparation for the contest, per se, but to prepare generally, I decided I would compose a piece for myself in rapid order, and the result, dedicated to my artist wife, was Deep Breath, a piece for clarinet solo accompanied by strings. My hope was to perform it myself, collaborating with a local group. While my stroke has dramatically interfered with that intention, I do hope both to play it myself someday, and that the première of the piece may not wait upon my own rapprochement with the clarinet. I certainly wrote it to be just the sort of piece I should enjoy playing particularly as it is a sort of musical love letter. I promised Maria long ago that I would write her a piece. My first thought was a piece for piano trio, but I have never yet made the acquaintance of a trio with whom I might collaborate, and I didn’t want the piece written for my wife to sit on the shelf. Well, to be sure, Deep Breath has rested a good while on the shelf itself, but as I composed the piece, my hope was better. It is worth pointing out that the inherent musical inadequacies of the MIDI export are in a couple of cases aggravated in this piece (not only the actual sound of a passage of string tremolo but passages of rhythmic freedom in the solo part which the machine is incapable of handling artfully.)
Before wrapping this post up, the only major loose end would be, the second piece I wrote for the Rapido! contest, The Mask I Wore Before.
02 May 2025
On the Opp. 138, 161 and 163
As I’m basically taking the week off, and as this recent post set me to thinking of the time of my stroke, I have recalled a touching incident whose memory is dear to me. To begin at the beginning, though, in what I feel certain must have been April of 2016, while riding the Red Line with Becky and Peter Bloom back from a recital at King’s Chapel, Peter invited me to write a piece for Ensemble Aubade, so a piece for flute, viola & harp, and since they often toured the harp part should also be suited to piano, since Mary Jane Rupert could not travel far with her concert harp. If I do not misremember, It was Peter, as we were rolling along the track somewhere between Harvard and Porter Squares, who originated the thought that such a piece might be the first of a set of three. It appears that I first posted of this project in August of that year. The Ensemble have been big fans of the resulting piece, Oxygen Footprint, Op. 138 from the start, and when possible, they take the piece on tour with them. The first extra-Massachusetts performance of the Footprint appears to have been in Jacksonville, Illinois in April of 2017.
A few days after the November 2018 Triad concerts (on which Sudie Marcuse and I performed my Mystic Trumpeter ... one of a number of Triad performances for which I wish recordings had been furnished to me) I suffered my severe stroke. When Becky & Peter came to visit me in rehab, they reported that Aubade had included the Footprint on their November tour and that the piece was well received by audiences. My musical brain was by then beginning to re-awaken, and my friends were a great encouragement. Peter lent me a portable CD player and also brought me some manuscript paper. I greatly appreciated the moral and emotional support. The first use I made of the MS. paper was actually to write a toy piano piece for my friend, David Bohn, Penny Candy. Before long, though, I also made the first sketches for a new piece for Aubade, which I would continue in earnest when I was discharged from rehab, the piece which became Swiss Skis, Op. 161. Before long, Bicycling Into the Sun (Feel the Burn), Op. 163 followed. The latter trios have not as yet burrowed their way into the Ensemble's affections, but I hope their fortunes may improve. One reason I am especially fond of the Burn is, for the coda, I salvaged a lovely bit of music I had originally nominated sand dance. I had composed sand dance for a Fifteen-Minutes-of-Fame call from a flute/harp duo. I see this pertinent post. My incorporation of that unloved submission into the Op. 163 may thus be a flagship salvage operation, lest some music of which I thought highly had lapsed forever into obscurity.
01 May 2025
Ah, Yes—Knew I Was Forgetting Something
My post yesterday ran to sufficient length that I do not greatly bemoan having left some business yet unfinished. I noted that the next thing is to rehearse and present two concerts here in Woburn by our fresh new sextet. But then what, eh? When I am ready for more creative work, there is the third Opus 178 flute duet, Janky Juke Joint, on which I have made a highly satisfactory albeit brief start. The Opus 200 band piece which I have begun scheming. Why, there is even the habitually neglected O singer bashful and tender, I hear your notes, on which, if as yet I still feel no burning motivation to resume work, I feel an easeful confidence that when I do at last turn attention back upon it, the work will move quickly. For me a more nearly urgent item of unfinished business (although this waiteth entirely upon the grace of others) is the limbo into which the two new pieces for Ensemble Aubade (Swiss Skis and Bicycling Into the Sun) have somehow fallen. I am seriously entertaining the idea of creating an organ solo version of the former for Robt Jan August. Lastly, I should report that I have sent ther recording of the Viola Sonata to, yes, a violist who is a recent acquaintance, and I have sent A Dance Floor for the Introverted to my friend Orlando Cela.
30 April 2025
The Catching of Breath and Reflection on a New Life
Having at last finished the additive operation to the scores of Nostalgia Ain’t What It Used to Be, Down Along the Canal to Minerva Road, Jazz for Nostalgic Squirrels, Dark Side of the Sun and the Op. 197 Rahsaan Roland Kirk Fantasia, I am conscious of an achievement seemingly outsized to the mundane nature of the work. And yet, there was creative work involved in there, too, so let me not denigrate it as mere housekeeping. So let me acknowledge the accomplishment as being as grand as it feels. The What next? is clear enough: the need to set dates both for the two concerts, and for more rehearsals (at present, the only rehearsal in the books is this Wednesday. Today, as I listed all the above-mentioned pieces, it is borne in upon me how in fact, it is a bigger program than it needs to be. We’ll strike Snootful of Hooch and revive it at a later date. Having so substantial a portfolio of pieces for the Ensemble is obviously a serious musical asset.
So: rehearsal with five of the now six members on May the 7th. Once I finish exulting in the present victory lap, my musical mind is ready to take a few days off. Perhaps I’m just a father crowing over newborn twins, but I’m full of a feeling that Dark Side and the Op. 197 Fantasia are the best music I’ve written thus far. I am just so pleased with and so damned proud of them. This experience somehow sets me to remembering when I was in rehab after my stroke and my musical mind was champing at the bit to be about creative work again. At the time of the stroke neither White Nights nor the Symphony for Band was finished. I was full of a sense both of gratitude that my new life permitted me to complete those two projects and of renewed purpose: the simple fact that if I don’t write my music, there ain’t nobody else will. I was overjoyed to bring both the ballet and the Symphony to completion. So there is some similarity to my feelings this week. But I’m vividly aware of and rejoicing in a wonderful difference: In the spring of 2019, the Opp. 75 and 148 were (obviously) pieces, music I knew of already. Both Dark Side of the Sun and the Rahsaan Roland Kirk Fantasias represent a musical expression completely new to me, musical accomplishment of which I was completely unaware in the Before Time. So my pride and gratitude are deeper still. There are not merely personal but cultural reasons why it was granted to me to survive my medical “event.” And notwithstanding the challenges and uncertainty in my musical life which remain, I consider that today I simply do not yet know what pieces I may find myself able to compose in future.
Nuts and Bolts of the Op. 197a
Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In
I don’t know what good it is.
In incorporating the bass clarinet and bassoon into the Rahsaan Roland Kirk Fantasia, sometimes I added material, sometimes I redistributed what was already there. The redistribution wasn’t any matter of robbing from the rich and giving to the poor, but rather of enjoying the expanded color palette. The changes fell into the following categories: In a couple of points of imitation, adding new entrances for the new instruments, at times in augmented rhythm. In a chorale or two, adding the two new voices. Adding, as noted yesterday, a bass clarinet/bassoon soli to the “trading solos” section. Most especially, though, in the spirit of adding the new colors as contrast without necessarily “bulking up” this or that passage, in places where I had essentially cannibalized the Opus 198 Second Fantasia for recorders, snipping entrances from higher voices, and swapping them into the lower. The last category: as occasionally I did with the similar expansion of Dark Side of the Sun, letting the bassoon double the double-bass, in the manner of basso continuo. Overall, the exercise has put me in mind of a compliment paid me by a parishioner at the Cathedral Church of St Paul when I served as Interim Choir Director. On Easter Sunday, we brought back two trombonists who had collaborated with us for my Evening Service in D during Lent. Since we had them assisting in the Service already, I had them double the tenors and basses for the Hallelujah Chorus, which we were singing for a Postlude, if I recall aright. “That was symphonic,” the parishioner enthused. My present point being that adding two instruments augments the whole to a greater degree than the mere number two might seem to suggest.
28 April 2025
It's Easier Than You May Think
What do we do your information?
What do we do your information?
What do we do your information
Ear-lye in the morning?
Porridger’s Almanack (Breakfast of Ganglions)
No one would believe me in a sheet.
Robt De Niro, turning down the role of Jesus in The Last Temptation of Christ.
Work on expanding the Fantasia on a Theme of Rahsaan Roland Kirk scoring
(which I succeeded in finishing yesterday) is the second time I have somehow triggered
a bug in Sibelius: I’d been working on a score, everything is comme il faut and then for some mysterious reason after a copy-&-paste operation, the file no longer plays back. I tried closing and re-opening Sibelius. Tried shutting down and re-starting the laptop. Since I work with
an old version which I bought outright and do not subscribe to the newer version, I get no Customer Support (which was always on the spotty side, really.) Anyway, I reached the
point where I believed the work to be done, though I should really have wanted playback of the
state of the score for my ear to confirm that my fingers did the work I intended.
I am fortunate in having a patient friend who has graciously permitted me to outsource the
occasional MIDI export operation and mine ears appear satisfied.
At an early-ish point in the process, I half-wondered if I might be spoiling an excellent, streamlined piece. But I soon set that nagging down to an echo of (rightly) having discarded my first attempt in the opening statement. Once I realized that my initial notion was wrong, and the real way forward dawned upon me, the work very nearly did itself. The fact is, too, I love the “fatter” sound. I don’t believe I’ve muddied things. In a way, my gravest concern was that the clarinet solo (in m.263) which answers the flutes and which, when I first composed the piece in December, I presumed that Dan would play, well, I felt a pang that Todd was “taking that away” from Dan, which felt like shabby treatment on my part. Since it’s all pretty mad imitation, though, the easily obvious solution was adding an entrance for the bass clarinet. And I almost immediately decided that the bass clarinet and bassoon should play it in unison and thus we enjoy an entirely new color.
27 April 2025
As a Matter of Fact, It's All Dark
This may be just as well.
Firstly, Greta, Marie and Josh did a lovely job with the Opus 192 Fantasy on When Jesus Wept this morning, playing with very good sensitivity and lovely expression. It is highly gratifying to have one’s compositional work warmly appreciated by fellow musicians and fellow listeners alike.
Secondly, as I revisit the expansion of Dark Side of the Sun to a sextet, I like it.
26 April 2025
Allowing the Music to Find Itself
25 April 2025
A Little More Darkness
Yesterday I pretty much got the bassoon part complete, always allowing for further tweaks and other modifications. I made but a start with the clarinet part. As I noted in yesterday’s post, today’s PT will put me on the bench (the simile relates to sport and not to jurisprudence) for the day. That did not stop me, however, from putting my as-yet-untaxed brain to musical work on Dark Side of the Sun this morning. Thus have I brought the clarinet part up to measure 72. I took advantage of this operation to cure truly an egregious error in my original: in one point of imitation, I failed to notice that I had assigned an impossible written low B to the Alto Flute. In our first read-through, I allowed Peter to raise it an octave. Reassigning that phrase to the clarinet, though, solves the problem of that note, and I re-wrote the Alto Flute in those measures.
See you Saturday!
24 April 2025
Enrichment of the Dark Side
The tablet was not chalky like aspirin and not exactly capsule-slick either. It felt
strange in the hand, curiously sensitive to the touch but at the same time
giving the impression that it was synthetic, insoluble, elaborately engineered.
I watched her sit at the cluttered desk for two or three minutes, slowly rotating
the tablet between her thumb and index finger. She licked it and shrugged.
“Certainly doesn’t taste like much.”
"How long will it take to analyze the contents?”
As I reported yesterday, I made a good start on incorporating the clarinet and bassoon into the Op. 197 Fantasia. It was my intent to work more on that today but I really did not have the steam. I did, however, realize that I needed Todd and Greta to participate in Dark Side of the Sun as well. So I began the inclusion of clarinet and bassoon therein. Good work done. Tomorrow is PT, so I do not count on pursuing that task further until Saturday. Read all about it here, Gentle Reader.
Airy Daring
Riskier skier
Wally at the Hallelujah Luau
The Persian Perjurer
Set sail on the Lovecraft!
— Postcards From Red Squirrel Trail
I have not always been diligent to post things in a timely manner. I am, accordingly mildly surprised to find today that more than 12 years ago, I did indeed make note of Meerenai Shim having acknowledged receipt of Airy Distillates, which I had written expressly for her. Although I posted optimistically then, we subsequently fell out (the fault on my side, I should suspect.) However, Peter H. Bloom having so brilliantly interpreted the piece on bass flute, the composer finds himself completely content with the fate of the Opus 110.
23 April 2025
The Odd Thought
I dreamt last night that I was workshopping an arrangement for full orchestra of Down Along the Canal to Minerva Road (a task which I am in no way actually contemplating) with a friend’s orchestra. Or perhaps I parenthesized over-hastily ... an adaptation for chamber orchestra? Well, not unless some more definite sign come to me from the Universe. I am in fact ruminating an arrangement for saxophone quartet for, well, the friend of a friend, whom I met Easter Sunday. It was certainly a propitious occasion. And unlike the dream, this project is eminently practical. I wrote to him today to verify scoring, so the project awaits that response.
Thoroughly separately, the few measures of bass clarinet and bassoon which I had added to the Opus 197 RRK Fantasia did not age well in my inner ear. Happily, I formed a much better and clearer idea of how to proceed. In brief, where such work in the case of the Opp. 191, 149 and 117 largely consisted in filling out textures/harmonies, those first tentative measures taught me that such an approach would not serve the Op. 197 well. I was going to let the matter rest until tomorrow (today having been rather a busy day) but I found myself ready just to get in a start. I am pleased with the new take, am downing tools for the night, and chilling while the chilling is good.
Not the “Prime Directive”
20 April 2025
Squirrels Now Completely Jazzed
I think we want a combination of imagining the viola to be a bandoneón, and, “If we build a large wooden badger . . . .”
Porridger’s Almanack (Breakfast of Ganglions)
The bassoon and clarinet added themselves in to the Opus 117 quite readily. Those squirrels have come a long way, baby! The next (final?) task is to add a bassoon and bass clarinet to the Op. 197 Rahsaan Roland Kirk Fantasia. I set to work a bit this afternoon, but I perceive that my process ought to be quite different in this case. Going to let it cure for a bit. Timing is good in that sense, as I am preoccupied with some housekeeping for a couple of days.
19 April 2025
The Weeping
My friends of the Redeemer Recorder Consort did a lovely job with the plaintive Op. 162 at last night’s Good Friday service:
18 April 2025
On to the Squirrels
This morning I added a bassoon to Jazz for Nostalgic Squirrels, and I rather feel as if it ought always to have been there. Today is PT, so the addition of the clarinet must wait until tomorrow.
17 April 2025
Two Down Now
Groundwork for the Opus 200
From the Department of Gawdelpus: “N.’s music is, in the deepest sense, a spiritual journey.” Dial down the unctuousness, please. More matter and less phosphorescence.
Porridger’s Almanack (Breakfast of Ganglions)
You know, a lot of people don’t bother about their friends in the vegetable kingdom. They think, “What can I say?...”
— Zappa, “Call Any Vegetable”
I may or may not have duly reported the following in a timely fashion, so this is Old News. I met Matthew Marsit, Music Director of the Charles River Wind Ensemble on the occasion of a performance of the same in Lexington. He was (and always remains) gracious and welcoming. I mentioned a variety of scores I already had in my portfolio, such as Out in the Sun and In the Artist’s Studio, but he gently advised me that in the case of this group, he considers only pieces for the full ensemble, so that there should be musical occupation for everybody. Fair Enough. On returning home, therefore, I began work on a piece for full symphonic band, The Nerves, which I already planned for the first movement of what would become my Symphony N° 2 for Band, Karl’s Big (But Happily Incomplete) Map to the Body. Here is a blog post from that era. Matt & yours truly had a very nice refresher conversation at the latest CRWE concert. I am in some hope that he may consider programming the Opus 148. The principal concern, so to say, simply being that a 35-minute Symphony is perforce half a program. My takeaway is that in all events, I should have in my portfolio some pieces (yes, I’ll use the plural there) of shorter duration for not only Matt’s consideration, but for that of any other Band Director. That is where the Opus 200 will come in. Now (id est, at this time) of course, I am perforce happily pre-occupied with adding a bassoon and clarinet to a number of pieces for the present Henning Ensemble concerts, but a corner of my musical mind wished just to plant a stake in the sonic ground, so I have just done (what I seldom do in my advanced compositional age) some “pre-compositional” work, nothing as yet elaborate, just a bare outline with verbal cues for my musical mind. As in the past, having a sense of overall architecture can be an aid, always with the understanding that when I do set to work, I may modify or stray from the schema as the music itself may please. My present thought is a twelve-minute piece, and whether the piece says what it needs in twelve, or stretches to 15, we shall see hereafter.
Today, however, it’s more work on Down Along the Canal to Minerva Road.
16 April 2025
Further Along the Canal
Visa dolorosa.
Porridger’s Almanack (Breakfast of Ganglions)
Five years ago, I was a four-stone apology. Now, I am two separate gorillas.
— the late, great Vivian Stanshall in the persona of Mister Apollo,
a parody of body-builder Charles Atlas.
“Wrestle poodles and win!"
15 April 2025
Sommes-Nous Devenus Sixtuor?
to give warmth and light and to keep you strong.
Since my stroke and my subsequent extended separation from playing an instrument, I have been alive (shall we say) to the lack of clarinet in the Henning Ensemble. Of course, recently Dan Zupan has stepped into that gap and I do not mean at all to slight so capable and bold a colleague. I am only at present referring to an old dream, as it were. For at first, years before we were fortunate enough to recruit Dan, the clarinetist I should have greatly wished to bring into the fold was Todd Brunel. And lo! what should happen but Todd’s most gratifyingly powerful affection for the Op. 197 Rahsaan Roland Kirk Fantasia has caused the realization of the old dream. Furthermore, by most peculiar but altogether felicitous coincidence, I have also succeeded in recruiting an old friend, bassoonist Greta Rosen. (Now, if only there were money to recompense them for their talents.)
For the time being, therefore, I am shelving composition of new pieces, and creating parts for Todd and Greta in pieces already in line for our two Woburn concerts. Indeed this morning, literally before dawn, I expanded the scoring of Nostalgia Ain’t What It Used to Be. On to the next ....
The Joint Opens
Well begun is half done, goeth the old saw. When I was wondering what the musical matter of Janky Juke Joint might be, my inner ear immediately heard a mildly hopped-up version of “Three Blind Mice.” No, not aught like the opening of Dr. No. I still did not have much steam yesterday, so I wasn’t going to get much composing done. But sufficient juice to transcribe what I was already hearing? That, I had. And so, Gentle Reader, we have the first 15 bars of the Op. 178 № 3. I do think it a good start, and I am letting the further composition cook slowly in the background ...
14 April 2025
Tentative Spring-Summer Henning Ensemble Program
—Don Delillo, White Noise
Now that we appear to be closing in on actual dates for two concerts with the full quartet (plus, but I shall address that fascinating and delightful development hereafter) the band required guidance as to what music should be on the stands. The standing wish has always been, upon logging another concert at the blessedly welcoming venue of King’s Chapel, now that we’ve laid in the work of preparing the music, to bring it out in more performances. Thus, the program is a balance of music recently performed and stuff which is hot off the press.
KH: Down Along the Canal to Minerva Road, Op. 149a 7;00
Pamela Marshall: Carvoeiro Clifftop Walk (revised version) 7:00
KH: Jazz for Nostalgic Squirrels, Op. 117a 7:00
KH: Dark Side of the Sun, Op. 193 (première) 8:30
KH: Snootful of Hooch, Op. 159a 8:30
KH: A Dance Floor for the Introverted, Op. 178 № 2 (première) 6:00
KH: Nostalgia Ain’t What It Used to Be, Op. 191 2:00
13 April 2025
The Un-Hip Hop Warn’t the End of It
All through the weeks that Carol and Peter were preparing Music for the Un-Hip Hop for the concert Tuesday last at King’s Chapel, they repeatedly offered me two assurances. Firstly, that it isn’t easy and secondly, that they find it fun to play. This is the sweet spot: to write music which accomplished musicians will find a fair (not extreme) challenge, and which they find sufficiently rewarding to repay the effort to learn it. That alone was (so to say) music to mine ears, but atop that they encouraged me (again—more than once, so they were in earnest) to write two more pieces so that the Hop would be the first in a set of three. (In a delightful intstance of the Universe cooperating with itself, my publisher also likes the marketability prospects of a set of three.) Practically immediately upon returning home from Tuesday’s concert I set to work on Opus 178 № 2, A Dance Floor for the Introverted. And lo! I did complete it yesterday. Furthermore, both Carol and Peter like it already, And now, while I am deferring actual work upon the piece until tomorrow, I have decided on the title of the Opus 178 № 3—Janky Juke Joint.
A couple items in addition.
I have had very nice feedback from several listeners who have listened to Tuesday’s concert either live or since it was “finalized” on YouTube. So the Henningmusick audience groweth.
My old friend Greta Rosen is game to play bassoon in the Henning Ensemble, so our lower register choir is strengthening.
And my friend the superb clarinetist Todd Brunel has taken a great fancy to the Op. 197 Fantasia, so he will come play it with us. I believe this will require the addition of a bass clarinet part for Dan so that he not be bumped from the lineup.