one of the more unique premieres i've had

A few weeks ago I took a trip out to Seattle to see the premiere of a new piece by The Esoterics. The circumstances of this commission were quite a bit different than pretty much anything I've ever done since, as I mentioned last May, the piece had to be textless and based on a work of art. The resultant piece was "songs about most of my friends" (titled after an Adam Svec lyric) and the entire trip out to the west coast was, thankfully, just as adventurous as the commission itself.

The premiere itself took place at the Olympic Sculpture Park Pavilion on one of the campuses of the Seattle Art Museum. The park has dozens of modern sculptures placed throughout the path and looks right out onto the Puget Sound.

Inside the pavilion is where they gave the concert and my piece featured a projection of Gregory Euclide's amazing piece, floor bloom drop needles, which he graciously allowed me to use. Here's a poorly-taken shot of how it was projected onto the performance space.

And here it is all by itself. I am so grateful that Greg allowed me to use it for this piece and, having spent so much time with this work in particular, it has become one of my favorite things to look at. He is a legitimately famous artist (Will.i.am. commissioned him, for Pete's sake!) who just happened to be working with me when I lived in Minneapolis and the fact that he was willing to entertain my music being associated with his incredible work is a responsibility that I didn't take lightly. Here's the work itself. Thanks, Greg!

That being said, one of the other interesting things about this concert was that The Esoterics commissioned two other composers (Shawn Crouch from Miami and Bernard Hughes from London) to write a similar piece. They both wrote incredible music which was seamlessly synced up with two different video presentations and, along with pieces by Finnish composer Jaakko Mäntyjärvi and Artistic Director Eric Banks, there were five world premieres on the program. How often does that happen?

Eric also programmed a previously-written work by Shawn, Bernard and myself for the first half of the concert and, since they sang only the second full performance of my Color Madrigals, the decor on the inside of the pavilion seemed appropriate.

I'm wracking my brain to think of a more unique venue that I've had a premiere in and I'm not coming up with anything. There was a silver tree and some giant red monstrosity right outside.

Here's a shot looking at the pavilion from the sculpture park. It's clearly not the usual place where you would find a bunch of new choral music being performed and, for that reason, it epitomizes the ridiculous amount of fun I had.

This is also the first time that I got to sit in the very back of the audience and watch their reactions to the pieces they were hearing. At the point in my green madrigal where the Keats poetry goes, "Ye tight little fairy just fresh from the dairy/Will ye give me some cream if I ask it?" there was a guy two rows ahead of me whose jaw dropped before he immediately reached for his program to see if the supertitles above the choir were correct. Once he read them in his program he laughed for the rest of the piece (which is exactly what I was going for). Then, at the end of "songs about most of my friends" there was another dude actually headbanging to the last few pages (or at least the non-distracting, classical equivalent of headbanging, that is) and, frankly, I think that's the best compliment I've ever gotten. He had a badass handlebar moustache as well.

Musically, it was an absolute blast. Eric and The Esoterics sang a full 30 minutes of my stuff (they performed the 20-minutes of the Color Madrigals on only one pitch given before the first movement!) and the last time I heard that much of my music in one sitting was a few years back when Vox Musica gave an entire concert of my nonsense in 2008. It's so rare to hear that much of your music back-to-back and, although I can't speak for my colleagues, I would imagine that they're as grateful as I am for such a unique opportunity. Speaking of which, here's the Formal Picture that takes place whenever more than one composer is at a concert. That's Shawn, myself, Bernard and Jaako all suited up for the second night of concerts.

Aside from the concert, there was a whole lot more. The great thing about The Esoterics is that they know how to make people have fun and, during the four days we spent in Seattle, they pulled out all the stops for their visiting composers. Case in point: they took Bernard and I on a tour of Seattle's underground. In the mid-19th century the street level was one story lower than it is now and there are entire city blocks "hidden" underneath modern-day Seattle. To give you an idea of what I'm talking about the "ceiling" in this picture is actually the sidewalk for the legit street above it.

The Seattle Underground Tour isn't really much to look at but, if you're a fan of history, it's perfect because they use the various sites as a vehicle to talk about how Seattle came to be (i.e. a shitload of taxes on prostitution, for instance). Bernard summed it up perfectly when he said, "They make a lot out of a little."

If you've ever been to downtown Seattle you'll notice these grids of glass on the sidewalks. Turns out they're actually skylights for the underground level and our tour guide had us yelling "Help!" at the top of our lungs every time someone would walk across.

Various shots of downtown Seattle.

One of the funnier things that happened over the course of the underground tour was that Bernard told us that he had mysteriously never been to a Starbuck's and, because of this, he wanted to go to one in Seattle because it didn't feel like selling out. Consequently, we made a stop off so the Englishman could have a tea.

How many people get to say that the only Starbuck's they've been to is in Seattle? Interestingly enough, coffee tastes less corporate when you're there because you're, like, supporting the local economy.

After the underground tour two members of The Esoterics took Bernard and myself out to Ivar's for some incredible seafood right on the water. I had the salmon with these crazy julienned pears on a bed of mashed potatoes.

And the view right off our table wasn't bad either. I've been a landlubber all my life so I never get sick of this stuff.

In further evidence of how entertaining The Esoterics are, they took all four composers out on one of Seattle's duck tours. During the event you ride around the city in one of these things (which is skippered by someone who has "personality" and a "sense of humor") before plunging into Lake Washington, sailing around for about 20 minutes and heading back.

It was so much fun. They play cheesy music, the captain wears funny-hats-and-wigs-n'-shit, people on the street look down their noses at you and, in my case, you sing "YMCA" along with Captain Oliver DuRhode (his name is a pun) at the top of your lungs as you pull back into the station.

It's just good, campy fun that you'd have to be an idiot not to enjoy. For instance, every time you see a Starbuck's on the tour you're supposed to shout, "Latte!" Here's Captain DuRhode in his mullet/cowboy hat ensemble he threw on when he started spinning Willie Nelson's "On the Road Again":

We drove by the waterfront location where The Real World: Seattle was filmed and, if you were anything like the 1998 version of me, you have seen this building on TV more than a few times. This was the last season of TRW I watched because, after that, the show just became a caricature of itself and it was more about being young, drunk and outrageous than the earlier, more interesting seasons. That being said, that's totally the spot where Stephen slapped Irene! Me-at-17 was glued to the screen as he threw her stuffed animal into those very waters. What a douche.

While tooling around the lake we also sailed past the house from Sleepless in Seattle...a movie I have never seen. But it's famous so here's the abysmal shot I took with my digital zoom.

The duck tour was a massive amount of fun and I prefer the Composer Picture taken at the end of that journey instead of the Formal One that I listed before. These three guys (and our "Eso" cohorts that came along) were a ridiculous amount of fun and the fact that The Esoterics managed to make a mish-mash of four nerdy musicians from Miami, Austin, London and Helsinki have such a good time together is one of my favorite things about being a composer.

(p.s. I win the competition for who has the most pockets. Don't mess with Texas.)

And if that weren't enough, they gave us all gifts once the concert was over. This might look like an engraved paperweight...

Oh but there's a clock inside! Boo-yah!

So this visit to Seattle (which is legit one of my favorite cities in the entire world) was awesome and, in going through the pictures I took, I found two that personify the pervasively fun time that I had. The first was from a coffee shop right on the Puget Sound where, apparently, the morning guy had a kickass first name and someone had doctored a concert poster for A Fine Frenzy to make him feel even cooler:

(On a side note: I'd like to mention here that I have never been so caffeinated in my entire life. I had forgotten how coffee is so much a part of the culture of this city but I suppose the stereotype exists for a good reason. I usually only drink about a cup a day but I routinely had two or more on this trip. It lead to some very jittery afternoons.)

The other picture is one which I took at Eric Banks's place before the Saturday concert and it epitomizes the fact that I love ironic juxtaposition. One of Eric's cats decided to befriend me because of my warm lap and, in the background is Jaakko Mäntyjärvi. I've loved his pieces ever since I heard a choir sing "Pseudo-Yoik" for the first time...and here he was--all the way from Finland--staring at me from across the room while I took a picture of a cat with a cartoonish expression on its face.

Thanks, Esoterics. I owe you one.

Josh