No more opera writing for a bit as it's time to start on work for the paying customers! First up is a set of three songs in French for soprano Jessica Hardy. The last French set I wrote, Chansons des la Vigne, was a whole lot of fun and I'm looking forward to some more good coffee with my French tutor. The instrumentation will be the interesting combination of piano and harp.
This time around I've chosen some great texts by one of my favorite poets ever, Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926). The guy was German but wrote over 400 poems in French...which I read in their entirety over the summer (it took forever) along with reviewing some of the poems I flagged by Arthur Rimbaud, Paul Verlaine and Guillaume Apollinaire. Morten Lauridsen famously set a bunch of Rilke's French work in his Les Chanson des Roses and, having admired that work forever, I decided to try my hand at some Rilke.
His poetry always has such a beautiful, sinewy line to it that is incredibly difficult to try and honor with music. In fact, it's almost music in and of itself so the real challenge will be to reveal what's there already. I used an English translation of his poem, Herbst, for a choral piece I wrote in 2004 but this is my first time with his original words. It's going to be so much fun.
In other news, I just won a pair of choral awards from both coasts! First, the NYC-based Society for Universal Sacred Music chose Musica animam tangens as one of the winners for their Festival of Universal Sacred Music. There are also winners from Sweden, Italy and Switzerland alongside the other six from the U.S. so I'm incredibly honored that they chose my piece. They'll perform it next April at the gorgeous Kaufman Center in the Upper East Side.
A Grass-Green Pillow (the fifth movement of Color Madrigals) also racked up its second award in as many years; this time from San Diego's newest choral ensemble, Sacra/Profana. Artistic Director Krishan Oberoi was very gracious in our initial correspondence and I'm incredibly grateful they chose my piece to represent themselves with.
However, what I'm really tickled at is that there's a picture on their website of their selection committee holding up copies of my piece. I remember when I judged The Singers' Choral Horizons program last year with Abbie, Jocelyn, Tim and Matt and the Sacra/Profana people look a fair shade better than we did after digging through dozens and dozens of scores for hours and hours (I would imagine that you always get way more submissions than you think you will for these things). They posted an email I sent on their website so, since one good turn deserves another, here's that awesome picture. Thanks, S/P! I can't wait to hear what you do with the work!
This time around I've chosen some great texts by one of my favorite poets ever, Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926). The guy was German but wrote over 400 poems in French...which I read in their entirety over the summer (it took forever) along with reviewing some of the poems I flagged by Arthur Rimbaud, Paul Verlaine and Guillaume Apollinaire. Morten Lauridsen famously set a bunch of Rilke's French work in his Les Chanson des Roses and, having admired that work forever, I decided to try my hand at some Rilke.
His poetry always has such a beautiful, sinewy line to it that is incredibly difficult to try and honor with music. In fact, it's almost music in and of itself so the real challenge will be to reveal what's there already. I used an English translation of his poem, Herbst, for a choral piece I wrote in 2004 but this is my first time with his original words. It's going to be so much fun.
In other news, I just won a pair of choral awards from both coasts! First, the NYC-based Society for Universal Sacred Music chose Musica animam tangens as one of the winners for their Festival of Universal Sacred Music. There are also winners from Sweden, Italy and Switzerland alongside the other six from the U.S. so I'm incredibly honored that they chose my piece. They'll perform it next April at the gorgeous Kaufman Center in the Upper East Side.
A Grass-Green Pillow (the fifth movement of Color Madrigals) also racked up its second award in as many years; this time from San Diego's newest choral ensemble, Sacra/Profana. Artistic Director Krishan Oberoi was very gracious in our initial correspondence and I'm incredibly grateful they chose my piece to represent themselves with.
However, what I'm really tickled at is that there's a picture on their website of their selection committee holding up copies of my piece. I remember when I judged The Singers' Choral Horizons program last year with Abbie, Jocelyn, Tim and Matt and the Sacra/Profana people look a fair shade better than we did after digging through dozens and dozens of scores for hours and hours (I would imagine that you always get way more submissions than you think you will for these things). They posted an email I sent on their website so, since one good turn deserves another, here's that awesome picture. Thanks, S/P! I can't wait to hear what you do with the work!
1 comment:
Congrats on another well-deserved award, Josh. Took another listen to "A Grass-Green Pillow" when I read this, and it's even more beautiful than I remembered.
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