Viola concerto status, with marginally relevant digressions

Posted on May 19, 2012 by admin

I have been working on the third movement of the viola concerto, trying to finish it first. As of this morning, I have maybe two thirds of it sketched out, namely the exposition of a sonata form, a cadenza, and the recapitulation of the first theme followed by a coda. For the moment, I have skipped over the development and the recapitulation of the second theme. In other words, I have the first three minutes, the last three minutes, but not yet the middle three minutes. Hopefully I’m just a week or so away from getting the last bit sketched out.

I’m still calling it “Estampie,” even though I don’t think you’ll find many estampies in sonata form.

Another interesting feature of the movement is that it will include a prominent part for djembe (again, not a terribly “authentic” instrument for an estampie, but I don’t care), which will drive much of the first theme and part of the cadenza. It’s the first time I’ve written for djembe, so I’ve been looking through Youtube for video examples to get a handle on the style. In the process of following links randomly, I came across this, which isn’t actually a djembe, but still a very fine performance on the darbuka.

Don’t worry, the djembe part in the concerto won’t be nearly as elaborate.

All my work for the last few weeks has been on the third movement. I have bits and pieces of the first two movements done, too, but I’m deliberately not working on them for now.

Finally, I’ll be attending the International Viola Congress in a couple of weeks, mainly with the hope of promoting interest in the concerto and some other viola related projects of mine. Looking forward to it.

Posted in News, Viola Concerto, What I'm doing, You should hear this | Leave a comment

Estampie (the dance, not the group)

Posted on April 12, 2012 by Dan Powers

Browsing randomly through YouTube brought me to this video, a performance of an Estampie by the Renaissance Players in Sydney, Australia.

 

Silly costumes notwithstanding, this tune got stuck in my head, and gave me the idea of writing an Estampie of my own as the third movement of the Viola Concerto. I’m suddenly awash in ideas for it, and I think I’m going to be working on it for a while. Possibly I’ll even try to finish it first, before returning to the first movement.

Posted in Viola Concerto, What I'm doing, You should hear this | Leave a comment

Long-overdue updates, and some news

Posted on March 8, 2012 by Dan Powers

Completed: Auspicious Light for 2 pianos and percussion is finished. Sort of. I mean, it is, but I expect that there will be a few edits and revisions before I’m really done. Expected premiere date is sometime this fall.

Current: I’m working on a new set of arrangements for Cameron Carpenter. This time it’s Irving Berlin songs, four of them to be exact. I’m nearly done with them, I expect to wrap things up this weekend. Cameron will give the first performance with the Carmel Symphony this coming April 14 at the Center for the Performing Arts in Carmel.

Next: I believe I’ve mentioned the Viola Concerto. I’ve had to keep it mainly on the back burner because of other projects, but with the Irving Berlin arrangements nearly out of the way, I won’t have any other pressing commitments, so I’ll be able (hopefully) to work on it exclusively for a while. I don’t know the premiere date yet, but it will be next season sometime.

Upcoming performances

  • March 10, The Carmel Symphony Orchestra will be doing a concert of Irish music with the Indianapolis Children’s Choir, including several of my arrangements.
  • March 11, Scotty Stepp will be giving the first performance of my band arrangement of the Gurewich saxophone concerto with the DePauw University Concert Band, Craig Pare conducting.
  • March 30 will be the US premiere of my Trio for clarinet, bassoon, and piano, here in Terre Haute. The performers will be Kelly Rogers Niiyama, clarinet; Chad Roseland, bassoon; and the irreplaceable Martha Krasnican, piano.

And that’s about it for now.

Posted in News, What I'm doing | Leave a comment

A possible reason why I never became a conductor

Posted on March 6, 2012 by Dan Powers

I was recently cleaning out my internet bookmarks, getting rid of links that were either dead, or that I hadn’t visited for a long time. One link went to a blog that I kind of liked, but it hadn’t been updated in six weeks or so, and I was tired of checking on it, so out it went.

Then it occured to me that I hadn’t updated my own blog in at least that long. By now, I’m probably losing thousands of readers a day! So I’m blogging again today. I actually have a number of things I could write about, so I’m planning to post several updates in the next few days.

But to get things started, I’m going to relate an amusing story I heard a couple of days ago. I’m playing with the Danville Symphony this week; among other things, we’re playing Saint-Saens’s Bacchanale, and during a break, the conductor told a funny story about the piece (which he swears is true!). This is my paraphrase of it since I don’t remember his exact words.

At a summer conducting institute, young student conductors gathered from all over the world to study their craft under the watchful eye of a famous European maestro, now well along in years.

At one session, a hapless young man struggled to lead the orchestra through Saint-Saens’s Bacchanale, a very spirited work, rising to an increasingly frenzied and delirious climax near the end. Unfortunately, the young man was not equal to the task, and the ending of the piece sounded flat and lifeless.

As the music ended, the maestro regarded the young student gravely for a time before he finally spoke.

“Young man, do you know what a Bacchanale is?”

“No, maestro.”

“It is an orgy.”

“…oh.”

“Do you understand now what the ending is supposed to sound like?”

“Yes, maestro, I think I do.”

“Very good. Let us hear the ending again, if you please.”

The young student turned back to the orchestra and gamely tried to lead them through the ending again, but to no avail; the piece sounded no better than it did before.

The aged maestro shook his head and said, “Well, young man, all I can say is, I hope I am never in an orgy with you.”

Posted in humor | Leave a comment

About the performance log

Posted on January 21, 2012 by Dan Powers

If you’ve visited this site in the past, you may have noticed that I had been keeping a list of all the performances I knew about, both of my compositions and arrangements. If you have, you may now be noticing that I’ve removed the list from the blog.

No good reason, I suppose. It’s just that I haven’t updated the list in almost two years, and I can’t really muster up much enthusiasm for doing so any more. Rather than keep up a flawed and incomplete listing, it just seemed to make more sense to remove it.

Instead, I’ll try to list performances as they occur, as blog entries. Seems to make more sense anyway.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

First post in far too long

Posted on December 10, 2011 by Dan Powers

I’m a little embarrassed that I’ve let the blog sit her for so long without being updated. I can only plead that I’ve had a bit too much to think about for a while. I want to try to get back on track here, so let me start by listing the various things I’ve been working on for the last two and a half months.

For the Columbus Indiana Philharmonic and Children’s Choir, I orchestated two Christmas songs. One of them, “Peace,” was written by the choir’s director, Ruth Dwyer. She seemed pleased with my effort, which was nice to know. These were performed in Columbus a couple of weeks ago.

More arrangements for children’s choir and orchestra, this time for the Indianapolis Children’s Choir and the Carmel Symphony Orchestra. This is for a concert of Irish music planned for March–I’m not sure of the date, but one assumes it will be near St. Patrick’s Day. I adapted a few of my earlier arrangments for tenor and orchestra, including an extended version of “Molly Malone” taken from the Irish Medley. I also orchestrated someone else’s song, and (this was difficult) wrote a 3-part arrangement of “Danny Boy,” written to be compatible with Percy Grainger’s string orchestra version of “Irish Tune from County Derry.”

All the while, I’ve been working on “Auspicious Light,” which is getting nearer to completion (and needs to be done soon, if it’s to be performed in February as scheduled).

This semester, I’ve also been involved in establishing Indiana State University’s first ever Electronic Music Studio. It’s a very exciting thing to be involved in, and I think is going to require it’s own post (with pictures) in the next few days.

But that will be later. Right now I have to sign off and get ready to go to a rehearsal for The Nutcracker, in which I’m playing tomorrow afternoon–after which I’ll be done with Christmas gigs.

Posted in News, What I'm doing | Leave a comment

Terre Haute Symphony Performance

Posted on September 30, 2011 by Dan Powers

Last Saturday, the Terre Haute Symphony Orchestra performed my “Overture to the Season.” It went very well, and I’ve been getting a lot of nice comments, which is always good. This was its third performance; here is a recording from the second performance by the Columbus Indiana Philharmonic (I think this was in 2006 or 2007, I’m not sure).

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Posted in News, orchestral music, performances | Leave a comment

More score videos

Posted on September 1, 2011 by Dan Powers

Two Whitman settings, including my award-winning “O You Whom I Often and Silently Come,” followed by “Sometimes With One I Love.”

My saxophone quartet, “Between Spring and Summer.”

That’s all I have for now. I hope to get some more ready eventually.

Posted in chamber music, vocal music, What I'm doing | Leave a comment

A new project, as if I needed one more.

Posted on July 25, 2011 by Dan Powers

I refuse to become one of those bloggers who apologize for not posting more frequently. I haven’t posted in over a month. So sue me.

Here’s something new I’ve started. Over the past year or so I’ve noticed that a lot of composers are posting YouTube videos of their music with the score displayed. I’m enjoying this phenomenon, as I’ve always preferred having the score to look at when I hear a new piece, and this is introducing me to a lot of interesting new pieces. Look at this fearfully complex piece by Brian Fernyhough, for instance. Amazing!

Last year, I was helping to look for repertoire for Cramped Spaces Ensemble, and found J. Ricketson’s Blue Shift on YouTube, which led to the work getting performed here at ISU. I took from this that it might be a good idea to jump on this trend, and a few days ago I got started doing just that.

To get my feet wet, I slapped together a score/video of my Scherzino for piano. I took a recording from my CD “Spring and Fall” (Martha played it, of course), saved the score as a series of TIFF images in Finale, and put them together in Microsoft Movie Maker (whose main virtue is that it’s a free program). Here’s the result.

It wasn’t too difficult or time-consuming to do, but Movie Maker is kind of a clunky program to deal with. You get what you pay for, of course, so I went out and got Sony Vegas Platinum to continue the project. My first attempt was with my Prelude and Bacchanal for violin, horn, and piano. At first, I wasn’t happy with it because the music was just too difficult to read on screen. But then I figured out how to zoom in closer to the music with the crop/pan tool, and use keyframes to make the music scroll down. The result was much easier to read.

 And my most recent effort, with a slightly more elaborate use of keyframes; Spring and Fall.

More will follow soon.

Posted in chamber music, vocal music, What I'm doing | Leave a comment

First steps toward a new look

Posted on June 23, 2011 by Dan Powers

I am trying out a new theme for the blog. The old one was one I designed myself with the aid of Artisteer. It’s a useful program, but using it doesn’t make me a website designer any more than owning a hammer makes me a carpenter.

Bottom line, the site just looked amateurish and I got tired of it.

I am now trying out Twenty Ten as a blog theme, which I plan to customize a bit as soon as I figure out how to do it. It looks a lot nicer, but needs a more appropriate header image, which I’ll change when I come up with a good one. The rest of it I think I’ll leave alone.

Posted in off topic | Leave a comment

New blog title

Posted on June 22, 2011 by Dan Powers

After giving it a bit of thought, I’ve decided on “Imperfect Consonance” as a title for this blog. I’m hoping it’s better than my last idea.

Next will be to consider a new design. I really have to come to terms with my limitations and accept the fact that I really don’t know how to design WordPress themes. So…stay tuned.

Posted in News | Leave a comment

I know, I know

Posted on June 12, 2011 by Dan Powers

Regular readers of this blog (and I know there are one or two of you–Hi, Mom!) may have noticed that I haven’t written one of my project updates for a few months now. Sorry about that. I kind of lost interest in doing it a long time ago, and there hasn’t really been much to report that’s at all interesting. I keep plugging away at everything a little at a time, and everything’s inching toward completion by slow degrees, same as usual.

I think I’m going to try something different. I will continue to post occasional updates from time to time, but I’m not going to try to be regular about it. Instead a post will go up when there’s something interesting to report.

So, having said all that, here’s a little update on things.

Work on Auspicious Light took an unexpected turn a few days ago, followed by an equally unexpected turn around. I had been working on a long passage that I was expecting to be the beginning of the piece, but something didn’t seem quite right about it. After a while, it seemed to me that something was missing, and that something was an introduction. The music I had been writing seemed to need something in front of it.

So I sat down to try to come up with a brief introduction, which came pretty quickly, but then something unexpected happened. The piece seemed, of its own accord, to go of into an entirely different direction than I had intended. It was as if I had accidentally started writing an entirely new piece.

Bad idea! I don’t have time for this!

Today, I started making a few adjustments that I think will make my introduction work with the music I’ve already written. It feels a bit like a carpenter trying to force a badly fitting joint, but I think it will be doable. So, Auspicious Light is still on track.

So, that’s about the most interesting thing that’s happened recently.

While I’m here, I might as well mention a little progress that has taken place on Death Carol. Some weeks ago I worked out two drafts of a sketch for the beginning of the piece. Some interesting things are starting to happen, but at the moment it sounds a little too Gorecki-like to suit me. When I have time to come back to it, I’ll need to try to make it sound a little less Eastern European.

Also in connection with Death Carol, I entered my sketch for the second section in Finale, mainly so I could hear what it sounded like. The texture is still pretty bare-bones at this point, but I’m quite satisfied with it. I’m looking forward to working on it further.

Posted in What I'm doing | Leave a comment