News from my music studio

Vortex improvising and CD release

This season I really upped my involvement with improvisation. I joined the Vortex Planning Group to help Todd Brunel produce the Vortex Series for New and Experimental Music. Todd is an extraordinary clarinetist, improviser and dedicated proponent of improvised music. He has connections deep into the free-improv community and I've met a lot of great players.

The Vortex shows at the Zumix community music center in East Boston and at the Somerville Armory have covered a wide range of music, including robot performers, dramatic noise making, planned improvs and totally off-the-cuff performances. I'm still getting used to the idea of going onstage with new friends with no plan at all!

In addition to the concerts, Vortex has released its first CD Vortex Live, with tracks selected from several Vortex concerts, edited by Todd, with mastering and graphic design by me. If you haven't been to a Vortex concert, you can hear all about it by getting your own CD from CDBaby or Spindrift.

Performances at the Vortex Live CD release party: Garrison Fewell, Todd Brunel, Dennis Warren, Dave Maxwell; Esther Viola and Matt Samolis; Pam Marshall and Ben Dicke

Nature Soundscapes CDs and
downloads for sale on Bandcamp

Costa Rica Soundscape and Frogs and Mockingbirds and Alligators, oh my! are the first two CDs on my Nachursona label. You can get them now as downloads or CDs in the new Spindrift Bandcamp store.

These are pure soundscapes -- no music, just the on-location recordings, mixed and spliced a little bit. Costa Rica is calm and meditative, and Frogs, a Florida Everglades soundscape, is quite a bit more lively. People at my massage therapist's office have really enjoyed the Costa Rica disc.

The Bandcamp service, new to me but very popular with indie artists, looks like another page on my Spindrift web site. It's easy to listen to the whole tracks, and Bandcamp handles purchasing if you want to download or buy a CD; Bandcamp handles the downloads and I ship the physical CDs.

Two more albums are in the works: Pipe Dreams, a collection of older and recent electroacoustic music, and Playbook, piano pieces written for students, beginner to advanced.

New choral music

Shepherds and Angels for SATB, violin, harp and tamborine, includes a prelude and nine American Christmas songs, including New England and Appalachian tunes. I found them in the collection "Southern Harmony", Ruth Crawford Seeger's "American Songs for Christmas", and collected works of early New England composer William Billings.

Tell your favorite chorus director and schedule a performance near you! Two performances are scheduled for the 2011 premiere season.

Deepest Shade for SATB a cappella or with gentle doubling, is a text and music of anguish and love about being left behind as a beloved parent travels deep into the fog of dementia. It was a piece that I felt compelled to write. Ask for a perusal score and suggest it to a choral director you know. I would be deeply moved to hear this in performance.

Tidbits

Facebook When you click the Like button on the Spindrift Facebook page, you'll get timely Facebook notifications of concert announcements and other news. I'm planning some contests and music giveaways in the fall.

Elusive Music In my Elusive Music blog, I write about composing and improvising, the business angles of composing, using audio software, the influences of nature, and other topics that strike my fancy. Subscribe via RSS to get the latest updates!

Parma licensing My recorded music is available for licensing for film and TV through Parma's licensing division. They have a great outreach program with documentary TV and film companies.

Athena Mix The 60x60 Athena Mix from the Vox Novus project included my composition Waves (version 1) for virtual orchestra. The Athena Mix is a set of 60 one-minute pieces composed by women and was presented at the Athena Festival in Kentucky this spring. Vox Novus has been creating collections of 60-second pieces for several years.

IAWM contest coordinator and Flagstaff congress
As a Board member of the International Alliance of Women in Music, my assigned task is coordinating the annual Search for New Music contest for IAWM member-composers. What a big job of organizing data from online and paper submissions, and what a fascinating result with so much interesting music submitted! I'm also looking forward to my first IAWM Congress in Flagstaff, AZ in September. Last year's board meeting was near Yellowstone so David and I combined my Board duty with a photography vacation, and now I'll be traveling to within striking distance of the Grand Canyon! I'm looking forward to meeting many more IAWMers.