News from my music studio

I’ve been working more on infrastructure than writing music lately: updating my web site, putting more recordings online, and planning new ones. I’ve been doing more teaching, first leading nature walks at Habitat Nature Education Center, and now musically with free-improv classes. I’m ready for more music writing, plus concert production in the Spring.

 

New Class: Free Improv for Classical Musicians

This Fall, I started teaching a free improv class at Lexington Music School. We’ve done lots of rhythm patterns, melody exercises, and follow-the-leader drills. We’ve worked on accompanying patterns and textures. We tried “reading” poems as a melody.

Do you secretly want to improvise?   Here’s an idea to try at home. Describe a musical idea or shape (for example, gentle-loud-gentle) and play that idea for one minute -- interesting as a solo, even more interesting to hear ideas develop and evolve as a duet. Then do the same idea again, but make it different somehow. Even if you’re not a musician, you can try it with your voice and some kitchen noisemakers.

Improvise with us   Classes will continue this winter and I’d like to invite you, dear reader, to join us. Try it for a month and you’ll be hooked. If you’re curious about improvising and are at least an intermediate-level musician, student or adult, sign up now! First session is free. Classes are Thursdays at 6pm. Read more at Spindrift.com.

 

Spindrift Commissioning Guild - Now Tax-Deductible!

In 2005, I organized Spindrift Commissioning Guild to accept monetary support for music projects. Starting in November, the Guild can accept tax-deductible charitable donations. Spindrift Commissioning Guild is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. Contributions in behalf of Spindrift Commissioning Guild may be made payable to Fractured Atlas and are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.

New Projects  Now that I can offer tax-deductibility to donors, I’ve revived the Guild with two projects for early Spring 2010. Please consider supporting these projects, in any amount:

#1  Future of Life trombone sonata, an expansion of the trombone music I wrote in The Future of Life, choral version. For a while, I’ve wanted to hear more of the trombone music. I’m envisioning three or four movements, with percussion and piano accompaniment.

#2  Lexington, MA concert of Quinteto sobre los Poemas de Carlos Pintado, tentative date is March 12. I’m lining up string players and pianist now. I was thrilled by the Quinteto performances by the South Beach Chamber Ensemble, in May in Miami, and again in August in Wisconsin. Carlos Pintado was there to read the poems. Audience members gave all of us such enthusiastic feedback. One person observed Messiaen influences in the atmospheric textures, and another requested a CD so she could listen several more times. You can listen yourself, online at SoundClick.com.

Read more about the Spindrift Commissioning Guild and these projects at Spindrift.com. Then, become a Guild patron by supporting these projects at FracturedAtlas.org! Thank you!

 

New CDs

Living Artists   Elusive Sleep has been released on Living Artists CD #13, Just In Time Now and Then. Musicians are Rafael Popper-Keizer, cello and Carmen Rodriguez-Peralta, piano. The CD is a reunion of Just In Time composers Hayg Boyadjian, Marc Rossi, John Sarkissian, Jorge Grossman and myself. You can order CDs from me at Spindrift.com, as well as from Amazon and CDBaby.

Beauport Classical   Clarinetist Monica Duncan plays Summer Into Winter on the new Beauport Classical release Ghosts. Another local composer on this disc is Carson Cooman, who I thank for supporting my Guild projects in the past! Thanks also to composer Robert Bradshaw, who runs Beauport.

 

Tidbits

Prizes   Body and Soul Volume 2 won honorable mention for the Gideon Prize from the International Association of Women in Music. These songs, part of my Art-Poem-Music collaboration, were played at the Feminist Theory and Music Conference in Greensboro, NC in May. Artist Sirarpi Heghinian Walzer and I drove to North Carolina, bringing a carful of paintings as part of our presentation. Our third partner is poet Elizabeth Kirschner.

Quinteto sobre los Poemas de Carlos Pintado received a Composer Assistance Grant from the American Music Center to help with copying costs.

 

Online listening    I invite you to listen to some recent recordings at these web sites:

SoundClick.com   Listen to the Wisconsin performance of Quinteto, among others

YouLicense.com   Check out nature soundscape Frogs, Mockingbirds and Alligators, Oh My!, High Flight played by flutist Jessi Rosinski, and the multilayered High Flight Remix.

Black Bear demo   I just finished a transcription of Black Bear Dance for clarinet ensemble, for Guild patron and clarinetist Charlie Learoyd. Thank you for your interest in this piece, Charlie! Read about it at my Elusive Music blog. Listen to the virtual-instrument demo and let me know what you think.

Thank you for your interest, support, and feedback!
                              Best wishes,
                                                   Pam