Category: Composing
Notes on my inspirations and processes when I write music
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Marketing a new Choral Piece
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Read more: Marketing a new Choral PieceNew choral music for Christmas, arrangements of unusual Christmas songs, seems like an easy sell. Doesn’t every choral director need something fresh for the regular December concert?
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Versions of Pipe Dreams
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Read more: Versions of Pipe DreamsI was searching for an album name for a collection of computer-generated tunes by the Spindrift Virtual Ensemble. They have the feel of fantasy landscapes to me, so I settled on the name Pipe Dreams. Then I thought I’d search to see what else has used that name. Every evocative word has already been used,…
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Shepherds and Angels for chorus
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Read more: Shepherds and Angels for chorusShepherds and Angels is a new choral piece that I wrote last fall. It’s got several American Christmas songs arranged for SATB (soprano,alto,tenor,bass), violin, harp, and tamborine. I think it’s a great addition to the harp-based Christmas repertoire, with an emphasis on Appalachian and New England tunes. I’m looking for choruses who might like to…
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Black Bear Dance, first horns, then clarinets
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Read more: Black Bear Dance, first horns, then clarinetsA couple of years ago, I wrote a piece for horn ensemble and community drumming group called Black Bear Dance. The notes about the piece say: “In Black Bear Dance, I indulge my love of drumming, which really energizes the horn sound. The title comes from a line in the text for my choral piece…
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Storing Old Vellum – Why?
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Read more: Storing Old Vellum – Why?Why do I still have a pile of vellum for music copying? I’ve got sheets with layouts for quintets, quartets, parts, chorus. It’s such old technology. I never want to go back to copying music by hand with pens on transparent vellum, which are then copied using a diazo machine. For those of you who…