dallas trip

I'm back from Dallas and the incredible premiere of Naalah (Cry of Grief) at Flower Mound High School. I had a great time hanging at the school listening to some great music as well as tooling around the Metroplex on a pre-show museum tour.

The school commissioned me a few years ago to write when god decided to invent and, although their performance was amazing, I was only their for just over 24 hours (their conductor called it my composer "smash and grab" trip). This time around they were kind enough to get me a rental car for the 4 days I was in Dallas-Fort Worth so I could experience a bit more of Texas.















How cute is this? I haven't roller skated since I was like 10 years old so this was a lot of fun. The car was that small. Believe it or not, this actually made it more fun to drive.

Once my flight got in I had a few hours to get a run in and head to supper. The guy at the front desk suggested that, if I wanted some good Tex Mex food, I eat at a place called Esparza's in Grapevine. I had these amazing seafood tostadas.
















The next day it was off to Flower Mound High School to hear the Jaguar Chorale on their commissioned work, Naalah (Cry of Grief), as well as my older piece, The Divine Image. There are seriously no words to describe how amazing these singers were. If you've ever gone to the national ACDA convention and heard a high school choir that makes you go,"Holy shit, what do they put in the water there?" then you've heard an ensemble like this one. Unbelievable.















They asked a bunch of great questions that, in some cases, flabbergasted me and made me really think about how I actually write music. I manufactured some nonsense about techno music, Britney Spears, poetry, Mozart and AC/DC and I'm sure I did some irreparable damage to their understanding of music but I had a blast.

Then they turned me loose on all the other choirs to answer questions (even though none of them were performing a piece of mine). The younger girls' choir was particularly funny. Apparently they've been teasing their director, Ms. Adela "T-Nez" Martinez, that she and I were going to get married or something. They even made a sign.















After a while they started trying to one-up each other with ridiculous-and-funny questions: "Have you ever been in prison?" Teenagers are funny.

The next day I got up early and headed into town to see the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. The building was designed by Tadao Ando and, when I told my architect mother I was visiting Dallas-Forth Worth, she suggested I go here and take pictures for her. It was rainy that day but the museum's reflecting pool is still pretty cool.

This piece was interesting. At first glance it looks like it's floating off the ground.

Then there's Felix Gonzalez-Torres' Untitled (L.A.), 1991. Can you tell what it's made of?















Green candies wrapped in cellophane. This is cool and everything but I was really curious about the logistics of the entire thing. Are they the same candies from 1991? If so, would the 18-year-old candies still be edible? Are they attached at all or are they just arranged?

Here's Martin Puryear's Ladder for Booker T. Washington. This thing was about 20 feet tall and appeared to disappear into the sky.

After the Modern I went across the street to the other famous art repository in town, the Kimbell Art Museum. It was designed by Louis Kahn and is renowned for it's use of natural light in these barrel vaults where all the galleries are. What the architect is renowned for is having two other secret families in edition to his legit one. Watch the movie. It's pretty good.

When I walked upstairs I stumbled on an ad hoc group of musicians preparing to perform something for a tour of the museum. I sat down with the tabla player for a minute or two to talk about the "syllables" of the instrument (it's a drum but the Indian musical tradition treats it melodically). The piece they performed incorporated a ton of singing bowls as well as the "Ode to Joy."

I have absolutely no idea who these people were or why they were there but they made my visit to the Kimbell extra special. I can't believe how lucky I was to stumble upon them.

Then it was off to the performance for the night (where I promptly forgot my camera). They did great on my pieces (as well as a great new work by Chris Winston called As a Tender Plant) but my favorite was their reading of Haydn's Little Organ Mass. Professional singers perform works like this because it's fun as an exercise and, with the exception of a few runs here and there, we can read them down on sight. When I hear high school singers do something at this caliber it's obvious that they love this music because of the thrill of discovery. That came through in their performance and it was totally exhilarating (as nerdy as that sounds).

After the concert I had supper Texas style with Adela, their accompanist (the aforementioned Chris Winston) and his wife to Babe's Chicken Dinner House. Not only is it B.Y.O.B. but the place is a family style restaurant where they keep the food comin' until you wave them off. At the beginning of the meal they simply ask you which meat you want. Luckily they have fried catfish and holy crap is it good.

They include in the meal some of the best creamed corn I've ever had (and it should be noted that I am not a fan of that particular dish at all) as well as some crazy good biscuits. They also have some fun signs posted all over.

And I flew home the next morning.

I can't thank Dr. Mark "Doc" Rohwer enough for commissioning the piece last summer. He is incredibly good at his job and didn't flinch when I suggested I write a piece with a weird scale completely sung in the Pakistani language of Urdu. The FMHS choral program is amazing and I'm glad I got to be a part of it for an extended weekend. Go Jaguars!