2022 Wrap-Up
I’m enjoying reading all the year-end wrap-ups people are posting. I don’t think I’ve posted one in the past, but it’s been an important and productive year of transition – leaving the deanship and focusing fulltime again on composing - so I want to try and capture some of that here and share my gratitude. If you want any information about what follows, I’ve also posted this as a blog on my website with links.
It has been a year of reconnecting with old friends and meeting new ones. All in all, a composer could not wish for more positive energy from collaborators so this is, first of all a big, public THANK YOU!
2021 ended having worked intensively to realize a project I’ve had in mind forever – a concerto for Miranda Cuckson. The recording of the piano reduction with Yoko Hagino was remarkable and we’re looking forward to the orchestra premiere, hopefully next season.
As 2022 began I was so, so fortunate to have residencies at Copland House, The Studios of Key West, and Bogliasco taking me all the way to the end of May. So much gratitude to all those who made these possible. With that support I was able to complete some music I did not even know I would write, including a piano trio, a two-piano piece (and a second version of it for two marimbas), and some songs on poems that Barbara wrote during the same period. We are deeply grateful to Stephanie Lamprea and Baichuan Hui who recorded two of those, ENCOUNTER and THE TREES, almost as soon as they were written. I also made a solo and choral setting of a Wallace Stevens poem.
One long-term project that I was honored to edit, mix and co-produce was Stephanie Lamprea’s forthcoming recording of the complete Aperghis Recitations for New Focus. Thank you Stephanie for trusting me with your brilliant, ambitious work. And thanks to Anthony Oliart for, as usual, all the advice and brilliant mastering work. I hope everyone will support her and buy a copy when it is released in 2023.
My trip to Key West was my first visit since I lived there at age four and it was a powerful, emotional experience. It was during this residency too that I met new friend, visual artist, Lisa T. Watson who invited me to create a sound piece for her upcoming show, AVANT GARDENER, which has since opened in Savannah and Hilton Head with Statesboro coming up.
At Bogliasco I composed the forty-two-minute sound piece and a seven-minute electroacoustic work, VISTA DAL GIARDINO DI BOGLIASCO, using the same materials. Also at Bogliasco I completed EXTINCTION, a new piece for clarinet and fixed media with a text I co-wrote with Barbara, for a consortium of wonderful clarinetists led by Ben Fingland. Ben will be premiering that at the Andy Warhol Museum with counter)induction at the end of January. Josh Rubin is planning a west coast premiere and several other friends are currently discussing their own plans for the piece.
In working with the sound piece materials at Bogliasco, I created some granular synthesis materials that suggested another unexpected direction and by July I had completed THE WINGS THAT BEAR THE NIGHT AWAY for violin and fixed media. Just posting the news on social media, I had a few requests for the score and Mari Kimura jumped on it (we recently remembered we first met at a festival in 1992 in Stockholm! That was arranged by our mutual friend Bill Brunson). Mari is always so invested and set right to work editing and fixing my errors (thank you!!!) and creating a MAX patch to be able to synchronize with the media which is anything but transparent. She premiered it on a Brightwork concert in Los Angeles in October (thank you Aron Kallay!) and recorded it a few weeks ago in Boston at Dimension Sound Studios with Dan Cardinal.
The entire fall was full of travel. In September I was able to travel to Leicester, UK to diffuse my AS A KIND OF KNOWING through a beautiful Genelec and Meyer surround system at The Convergence Conference. There were two trips to NYC to rehearse with Ben Fingland, and workshop for a new quartet I am just starting to write for a consortium led by Talujon. Those trips gave me the chance too to visit many friends and family and attend Matthew Rosenblum’s Talujon premiere and the New York Philharmonic premieres by Tania Leon and Marcus Balter, with collaborator Levy Lorenzo.
My premiere of a concert version of some of my GHOST SONGS took place in Cambridge on October 28th on a program by Winsor Music. Sincere thanks to directors Gabby Diaz and Rane Moore and to Rane, Sonja Tengblad and Yoko Hagino for a stunning performance.
In November I travelled to Hilton Head for the opening of Lisa T. Watson’s AVANT GARDENER with my sound piece, WHAT SHADE OF GREEN IS OUR HORIZON. Then Barb and I flew to London to give a lecture/concert for Brandeis alumni centered on the influence of the Beatles. We had a fantastic time and as a bonus got to visit with Tonia Ko and her husband, LSO oboist, Olivier Stankiewicz.
Finally, on December 10th, the Lydian String Quartet premiered the concert version of my Second Quartet, a piece that I composed for them in 2019 at MacDowell but, like so much, was delayed by covid. The original idea was a museum installation starting with players dispersed in different corners of the space, unsynchronized, but after forty minutes that reconvene in a central space and perform the concert piece, focusing the materials previously heard floating in the museum. We did rehearse that version just before lockdown, and it was just beautiful in the Rose Museum. The Lyds will record the piece in January and hopeful we can arrange a performance of that full version at some point. The various attempts to get to this premiere involved a changing line-up for the quartet and so I need to express my gratitude to Andrea Segar, first violin, Judith Eissenberg, second violin (who had the original idea for a spatial piece), Rhonda Rider (who filled in for Josh Gordon back in 2019 before we were shut down) And for the premiere itself, thank you to new second violin, Julia Glenn, violist, Mark Berger and cellist, Josh Gordon and a special thanks too to Clara Lyon for stepping in as first violin on short notice so brilliantly!
As 2023 starts, I am honored to be able to look forward to the new percussion quartet for Talujon (with a currently forming consortium), a viola and fixed media commission from David Bursack, and the Koussevitzky commission for a big song-cycle/monodrama for Jeffrey Means and Sound Icon. Here we go!
