spring has sprung + currently listening

The deadlines keep rolling closer and, with a bit of luck, I won't be missing any of them for this season. I finished up the piece for Brownsburg High School, Spring, this past week and I think it's going to be really, really good. It's quite a bit simpler than the winter and Autumn movements of the cycle but I think that flows from the poetry by Sara Teasdale rather than any sort of compositional decision I made.

I used her poem, Twilight, to fill out part of the dramatic narrative and was extremely tempted to quote a musical device from the craptacle (that's my combination of the words "crap" and "spectacle") movie that came out last year but, alas, it slipped my mind. I plan on moving to the Pacific Northwest and brooding about this for a few weeks before coming back to the Midwest where brooding is discouraged from birth.

But I digress.

I'm still just under two weeks ahead of schedule in my grand scheme of commissions this season so I have the feeling that I'll be working quite a bit on my piece for The Singers in the coming weeks. I had originally set myself a February 1 deadline for that piece but I think I'm going to aim closer to early January instead. Some end-of-the-year projects have presented themselves recently and I need to get cracking on them if I want to--oh, I don't know--not go insane.

I've limited my iTunes habit to 4 albums a month (one a week) and so far I've been doing okay. I made some good buys recently that you should totally check out. First off we've got a great album by Jay Farrar (of Son Volt) and Ben Gibbard (of Death Cab for Cutie) called One Fast Move Or I'm Gone: Music from Kerouac's Big Sur. It uses passages from Jack Kerouac's novel, Big Sur, set to music and it's pretty much been on a loop in my Uptown apartment when I'm not watching old episodes of thirtysomething on DVD (remember that show?).

I've never been a huge fan of Kerouac (although this blog used to be named after one of his techniques for "modern prose") but I did try to get through On The Road at some point. Having listened to this album for a while I may have to go and visit Big Sur now because I'm definitely intrigued.




















There are some interesting songs on the album and, although I'm more a fan of the ones that Gibbard sings, it's all pretty good. I like the title track in its straightforward telling of a story but my personal favorite is "The Void." It uses this strangely-constructed melody over some bluesy, modal stuff that gets completely hypnotic and reminds me of chant. Here's a shaky, YouTube video from a live show the two of them did last October.

Then, in a huge departure from those songs, I've had Lady GaGa's new album, The Fame Monster, going for the past few weeks during my hi-speed morning burn down I-35W. Waking up before 6am is tough unless you have a fresh cup of coffee in hand and "Bad Romance" pounding out of your speakers at 55mph. (Combine that with an occasional buttermilk scone from the bakery next door and you've got a possible Combustible Edison.)

God this album is so good. "Alejandro" and "Teeth" are my personal favorites but I love the part in "Bad Romance" where she mysteriously starts singing in French. It's impossible to resist.

Is it bad that this thing has only been out for a few weeks but I can't wait until she comes out with a new album? I think I'm about to unrepentantly become a fan.

On to the next composition. I'm looking to use a really great Wendell Berry text for what I'm writing for The Singers and I think I've got some good stuff in mind (including an orchestration trick that I've known about for a while but haven't had occasion to use quite yet).