Daniel Powers

The Cole Porter arangements for Cameron Carpenter and the Carmel Symphony are finished, score and parts have been sent in, and (most importantly) I’ve gotten paid for them.

My main project now is the Star Spangled Banner, which I mentioned a few posts back, but had to put aside for a while due to the urgency of the Cole Porter arrangements. Now it’s back on the top of the pile, and has an urgency of its own. I’m supposed to have a choral score ready this week, so they can start recruiting and rehearsing the chorus. So my main focus is on that; so far there isn’t much down for the orchestral parts. For example, I still have no idea how the arrangement is going to begin or end, apart from the fact that these sections will be orchestral only (no chorus). It’s the exact opposite of the way I usually work, which is to get the beginning and ending down first. But I suppose, to be successful, we must learn to adapt our working habits to the situation at hand.

Once that’s done, other projects are in line to follow. Plus I’m trying to get a promotional postcard out to orchestras this week, and update the Swan’s Wing Press website to include online ordering (if I can figure out how it works!).

Some random net-surfing a few weeks ago brought me to Pharyngula, a blog by Dr. P. Z. Myers consisting mainly of “random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal.” Most of the blog deals with evolution and anti-creationism and related subjects, which isn’t really my area of expertise. So I was kind of surprised when Dr. Myers veered unexpectedly into modern art music in this post here. But, of course, the piece in question bears directly on his area of interest.

The piece in question is called Generation After Generation by Australian composer Rob Davidson. It’s a “speech-melody” piece, in which he took recorded speech, transcribed it into musical notation, and wrote an ensemble piece incorporating the original speech treated as an instrument in the ensemble. Cool stuff, which has to be heard to be believed.

The speech in this case is from Ken Ham, creationist and perpetrator of the Creation Museum, and apparently Pharyngula’s arch nemisis, or one of them.

Listen to it below:

Is this what we’ve been building up to here? Getting us to listen to Ham’s nonsense by accompanying it with cheesy music?

The song itself it’s an abomination, musically and content-wise. This should have never been created.

I lasted a whole ten seconds before turning it off!

The people who participate in Pharyngula seem to be mostly pretty intelligent and scientifically literate. I suppose it would be too much to expect them to be musically sophisticated as well.

The last response in the thread (as of today) is actually by the composer, but I guess he got wind of it too late. By the time he wrote in, everybody else had lost interest and moved on. Sad. But at least Rob Davidson got one more fan out of it! I hope to hear more of his music one day.

Little new to report. All my attention has been on the Cole Porter arrangements for Cameron Carpenter. Anything Goes and So In Love are finished. I have just started Let’s Misbehave for the third time, finding it difficult to get right. Deadline is looming, so this has to be done soon.

Other than that, I seem to be lacking ideas just now. I hope this will change soon.

For some reason, posting my monthly update just completely slipped my mind till now. I’m probably thinking too much, or maybe it’s advancing age. I am turning 50 next week after all!

Oh, let’s see…I am working on many things, but it seems I’ve been working kind of halfhazardly recently. So many projects on the table, I’m tending to work on stuff whenever it occurs to me to do so, I’m not really being very organized about it. But still, I’m working fairly often, since it’s Summer and my schedule’s pretty light. So…

I have several things that can be considered top priority. As I mentioned last month, I’ve been asked to arrange several pieces for the Carmel Symphony. Cameron Carpenter will be performing with them again this October and I’m arranging a set of Cole Porter songs for the concert. Anything Goes is just about finished except for some details. Next up will be So In Love, then Let’s Misbehave. (I’m actually working on them in the opposite order that they’ll be performed).

In February, the Carmel Symphony will be moving into The Palladium, a new, state-of-the-art performing arts center. For the occasion, I’ve been asked to do a special arrangement of “The Star Spangled Banner.” This won’t be your usual arrangement. For once, I’m arranging the whole song. It’s odd that you never hear anything except the first verse. For me, the song doesn’t make any sense unless you hear all four verses (well, actually, I could live without the third). So I’m happy to try to rectify the situation in a small way. The arrangement will include a 250-voice professional chorus, and extra brass, so just color me happy! This isn’t a chance that comes along every day!

Other stuff; I’m trying to get a choral piece started. The Sycamore Singers suggested something with a Christmas theme, but I’m sick of Christmas music, so instead I’m looking for some poems on a more generally Winter-oriented theme. Today I sketched out a few ideas for a setting of Witter Bynners The Wintry Mind, and am also considering other poems by Bynner and Robert Frost. But nothing definite yet on that front.

Despite being sick of Christmas music, I’m trying to get a couple of new titles ready in time for the Christmas season. One is the arrangement of Carol of the Birds that I did a few years ago for 10 solo strings, and am now adapting for string orchestra. Also, a new engraved edition of Leon Jessel’s Parade of the Wooden Soldiers, which is actually finished except for a program note at the beginning. Hopefully both will go to the printer soon.

I’ve been looking at Strings In The Earth And Air from time to time. With everything else that’s going on there’s been no time to work on it, but I really want to finish it soon.

My a capella arrangement of Back Home In Indiana got back from the printer a few days ago. Need to send out a letter about it soon.

And other things as well. Like I said, too much to remember.

Since I finished the Trio last month, I admit I was looking forward to being able to relax without any deadlines for a while. Well, that didn’t last very long.

I’ve been asked to write a work for 2 pianos and percussion, for Cramped Spaces, an ensemble made up of ISU people. While I’ve been mulling over a few ideas, I haven’t started anything yet. But since they want to perform it next spring, I have to start soon.

Also, the Sycamore Singers, one of ISU’s choral groups, wants me to write something for them to sing in the Fall. I believe I mentioned that last month. Again, I’m thinking about various possiblities, but haven’t started on anything yet.

Actually, my main composition project for the past month or so is a return to Strings In the Earth and Air, for tenor voice, viola, and piano. I’d sketched most of this last year before putting it aside. After finishing the trio, I got this out again and started working on it. It seems now that I need to re-do parts of it before I can work on the finale score. But I’ll get it done one of these days.

Since May 20, I’ve been working on a transcription of Liszt’s Benediction de Dieu Dans La Solitude, transforming it from a piece for solo piano to a piano duet. Beverly Sims, a friend from ISU and a colleague of Martha’s in Cramped Spaces, requested this. As of now, a draft is finished. I want Bev and Martha to read through it as part of the proofreading process, then there’ll be a lot of polishing and layout to finalize, but the hard part is done.

Coming up, another set of arrangements for organ and orchestra, for Cameron Carpenter and the Carmel Symphony Orchestra again (I guess they liked what I did last year). This year it looks like they want a set of Cole Porter songs. This will need to be done in time for a November performance, so once I find out what songs they want, I’ll have to start right away.

There are a few other possible projects as well, but since there’s nothing definite to report, I’ll hold off for now.

Suddenly there’s too much stuff to keep track of, but I guess there are worse problems to have.

As of this morning, I can claim that Trio for clarinet, bassoon, and piano is finished!

At least, a fairly close to final draft is finished. There’s still going to be some editing, and likely corrections, then layout and fine tuning before I’ll be releasing it to the larger universe. But at least the hard part is over (I can only hope!).

Hopefully, this will be the last update in which I say that the Trio for clarinet, bassoon, and piano is still in progress. As of today, the first and third movements are done, and the second movement is well under way (the beginning and ending are done, and I’m figuring out the middle section–I’m just all over the place with this). With any luck, the next time I post an update, it will be to say the piece is finished.

In the past few weeks, I’ve made a tentative start on a series of arrangements for string quartet. I haven’t yet decided if this is going to go anywhere, so for now I’m keeping the details to myself.

For the future, Mark Carlisle, a colleague of mine at ISU, has asked for a choral piece for his chamber choir, the Sycamore Singers. It will be Christmas themed, but beyond that, I haven’t had time to give it much thought.

I also have several unfinished projects that I’d like to get back to. I hope by next month’s update, I’ll be able to report that I’m at work on a few of them.

Here’s where I’m at right now…

I’ve gotten several pages of sketches for the second movement of Trio for clarinet, bassoon, and piano. As always, I’m not as far along as I’d like, for the simple reason that other things keep coming up. At least now I have a pretty clear idea of what the form of the movement is going to be. If I can only clear my desk for a few weeks, I should be able to finish it soon, but we all know how that goes.

One of the “things that keep coming up” was a new project that came up late last week. Sarah McKelvie, a colleague of mine in Columbus, plays viola in a jazz quartet, if you can believe that, and asked me for an arrangement. They have a gig this Sunday, for which they need a medley of “she Swanee River” and “Back Home Again In Indiana,” so she asked me for one. I finished it this morning and e-mailed it to her. It was short notice, so I had to put it at the top of the pile this week.

On my own, I’ve had the idea to do a series of arrangements for string quartet. Most of the ones I’ve done so far are pretty gig-worthy, consisting of operatic excerpts mainly, and also a Faure piece.

Ancillary to the quartet project, I’ve been working on a quartet arrangement of five movements from Stravinsky’s Histoire du Soldat. I’ve had the idea to do this for close to twenty years now, but waited until recently to do anything with it. Four movements are mostly done, but then I got hung up on the Three Dances, because I couldn’t decide how to transcribe the percussion part in the Tango. This totally stumped me for the longest time. I thought about doing knocks with knuckles on the body of the string instruments in lieu of drums, but that seemed cheesy. I think what stymied me was the unavoidable harmonic implications involved in taking an unpitched part and changing it to pitches. No matter what I did, I ran the risk of changing the harmonic structure of the original, and I didn’t want to do that. Then, just a few days ago, I remembered that Stravinsky himself had transcribed several movements for clarinet, violin, and piano, including the Tango. And luckily, the library had a copy, so at least I have a reference to something Stravinsky actually did when faced with the same issue. So as of yesterday, the Tango is under way.

The orchestration of the Gurewich Saxophone Concerto (referenced in my last post) is nearing completion. Good, lets get all these projects out the door!

Oops! Halfway through the month already and I only just realized that I forgot to write my monthly update.

The third movement of Trio for clarinet, bassoon, and piano is finished, and the second movement is underway. I’m hoping it will be finished soon–I’ve been working on this for far too long!

A new project, for my friend Scotty Stepp, saxophone professor at DePauw University, is an orchestral version of the Presto from Jascha Gurewich’s Saxophone Concerto, op. 102. Interesting story behind it; the concerto was written for saxophone and band in 1926, but the band materials seem to have vanished or something. A Google search reveals that several saxophonists are interested in performing it with band, but nobody seems to know where the band parts are. All we have is the piano reduction, published by Rubank. So Scotty has me doing an orchestral version of the third movement only, and if all goes well, we may work on the first two movements as well. We’ll see what happens with that.

Another friend of mine who is a massage therapist has been after me for a while to record some relaxation music, and I’ve taken a few stabs at it. Surprisingly, it’s turning out to be more difficult than I would have thought. I’m attracted to the idea of simplicity in writing, but the challenge is simplifying my style without letting it become simplistic.

Martha and I drove up to Carmel last night to hear Sylvia McNair with the Carmel Symphony, in a program that included eight of my arrangements. It was fun hearing them all, and of course she made them sound wonderful! Now, of course, I wonder if I’ll ever get to hear them again…

Still working on the Trio. I’m nearing the end of the third movement. Second movement is still to be written, but I’m planning on something simple that won’t take long.

I’ve also started on a major update to the Swan’s Wing Press site. As of today, there isn’t much there, but I’ll have to try to get it done ASAP.

The West Side Story arrangement is done and has been sent in, and with that all my arrangement projects are finally off the table! This, and the Sondheim arrangements, are due to be performed Feb. 6 in Columbus IN, and March 13 in Carmel. I’ll post more information later. I’m looking forward to hearing Sylvia McNair sing them!

As much as I enjoyed doing all those arrangements of the past few months, I’m glad to finally have them done and out the door. Now, hopefully I’ll have time to devote to composition. I’m anxious to get back to the clarinet trio and finish that as soon as I can. I also have several unfinished pieces that I’d like to try to finish. Most of them are pretty minor, but still it bugs me to have them sitting around.

Here’s hoping for a busy and productive year!

Tomorrow is New Year’s Eve, and that means it’s time to look back over the year. When I did this last year, I noted that I’d done a lot of arrangements, but not much composition. I had hoped to reverse that trend, and I did better this year, but not quite as well as I’d hoped.

So, looking back…

New compositions

• Cloudscapes for flute choir
• one movement of Trio for clarinet, bassoon, and piano
• two settings of poems from Joyce’s Chamber Music (I Would In That Sweet Bosom Be and Who Goes Among the Greenwood) for male chorus and piano
• various unfinished pieces

New arrangements

• Two Gershwin songs for organ and orchestra, for Cameron Carpenter and the Carmel Symphony.
• Three Sondheim songs and three songs from West Side Story (the last one still in progress, but nearly done) for soprano and orchestra, for Sylvia McNair and the Columbus Indiana Philharmonic (also the Carmel Symphony).
• Rachmaninoff’s Vocalise for cello and orchestra, for Kurt Fowler and the Terre Haute Symphony.

Here’s hoping next year will be even better.