A few weeks ago, before the Corona Virus had an official name or threatened New York City, I started composing Preludes and Fugues. I have several large projects holding their fire for a little while, and wanted to keep working. I decided to respond to the Well Tempered music of Bach I play almost daily on the piano. I have many times started and abandoned little fugues purely as mental calisthenics, but this time, I decided actually to compose; and as Bach did, to write in different tonalities and styles across many small pieces. It’s absolutely exhilarating, not only because each one is done fairly quickly, but also because my attention is drawn to the tiniest details. Three pairs in, under virtual lockdown, I feel
Read more →It can take a little while to answer the simple question, what are you working on right now? On the drafting table now is a quintet in an emerging series joining a string quartet with a very different instrument. The first two were Korean traditional instruments – Mudang for p’iri and string quartet, Nonghyun for gayageum and string quartet. Now, it’s a piece for percussion and string quartet. And not marimba, but unpitched (like drums) and slightly pitched (like pieces of wood and empty bottles) instruments. These pieces challenge me to stretch the quartet in new directions, and challenge players to realize the sounds I imagine. The music so far is both mystical and earthy – income ways a continuation of my fascination with the
Read more →For the second summer, I’ve piloted the South Dakota Symphony’s Music Composition Academies for teens living on the Pine Ridge, Rosebud, and Sisseton Reservations, and in Rapid City. Jeff Paul and Michael Begay again joined me as inspiring faculty. Almost every young composer who participated last year returned along with fascinating new recruits. In all, we now have 19 new works, some dealing head-on with tragedies facing indigenous peoples, some evoking aspects of the composers’ lives, some just downright fun to listen to. They will all be performed in September by the Dakota String Quartet or Dakota Wind Quintet – every note and marking having been determined by the young composers – in public venues in Spearfish and Sisseton, and in the high schools of every young composer. Word is
Read more →It’s finally here, the premiere of my major work for the South Dakota Symphony, Wind of Many Voices. It responds to my travels and adventures all over the state, which have continued apace since I finished the piece in December. Most recently, I’ve been driving all over both Dakotas hunting down my ancestors’ homes, in the dead of winter. I’ve experienced the raw power of the traditional Lakota drum and singers, arranging music for the orchestra to play to accompany them (the only time the orchestra has gotten drowned out by the voices). And I’ve heard, all in one performance, the music of the 20 teenaged composers I’ve worked with, from three reservations and two cities, writing from the heart. Now, I give back from
Read more →It Is Finished. My new work for the South Dakota Symphony, that is. The reading workshop we had in October was a huge help in clarifying my ideas, including listener comments about the role of the wind in the images I described as inspiration for the sketches. My travels in South Dakota – experiencing both landscapes and cultures – inform the piece, but it’s not at all narrative or site-specific. Sixteen minutes long, for a medium-sized orchestra, the score is now with my faithful longtime copyist Francois Grillot, getting pretty for its debut March 23 in Sioux Falls. Aside from proofing, my only remaining task is to settle at last on a title… stay tuned!
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