Taking My Time

The Probability Space Force and the Martian of Error
— Postcards From Red Squirrel Trail

Now, I’ve had enough, my box is clean.
You know what I’m sayin’ and you know what I mean.
From now on, you’d best get on someone else;
While you’re doin’ it, keep that juice to yourself.
— Bob Dylan, “Odds and Ends”

As noted erewhile, the Op. 197 Rahsaan Roland Kirk Fantasia originated in my musical brain’s interstices while the track “A Laugh for Rory” was in heavy rotation because I learnt that our parakeet especially enjoyed it. It is a score of which I remain intensely proud, and I knew directly after last year’s successful première that I wanted to reprise it this year. It is a sufficiently complicated and challenging piece for the band that (if I may be forgiven the seeming immodesty of such a comparison) like Stravinsky's Le sacre du printemps, it will wax ever better with repetition. I should therefore like to keep it in our repertory for next year (and hopefully we shall get a video document then) because there will be an interval long enow that it will not be tedious for our audience. I just need to check with the band to make sure they don’t flirt with ennui.

But I have already gotten ahead of myself. In the wake of the successful première of the Opus 197, as I believe has also been noted afore on the blog, the next piece I conceived for the full ensemble was to be a score designedly easier (far easier) to prepare, and thus was born the Op. 205 Simple Music. Last year we were able to program two concerts with the full (or practically full) Ensemble. I originally hoped for two such 2026 concerts. I feel highly fortunate (albeit my personal obstinacy was a factor) that despite months of uncertainty, we did ultimately present the 28 October program at the Library, both reprising the Op. 197 and premiering the Op. 205. I want to compose the next new piece for the full band. Still allowing ideas to flit through and potentially form, like musical coral polyps. Watch This Space.