up nort yah-hey

Last Thursday I traveled up to Fargo, North Dakota with the Singers to perform for the North Central ACDA Division convention on the campus of North Dakota State University. The only time I've ever been that far north was when I went to Fargo's sister city (Moorhead, MN) to attend the Rene Clausen Choral School (which I highly recommend). It was cold.

And the scenery was beautiful...













This was taken over and hour later. The drive is all like this. It's a straight, 4-hour burn up I-94 and there is nothing to look at.













Here's a change of scenery.













We left the Cities at 7:30am for our 4:30 curtain call. The Singers were asked by the national ACDA office to perform the premiere of the Raymond W. Brock Commission for this year. In the past 17 years, ACDA has commissioned some pretty amazing composers (Gian Carlo Menotti, Z. Randall Stroope, Samuel Adler, Morten Lauridsen, Rene Clausen are a few that I love and they've commissioned Dominick Argento for their 50th anniversary in 2009) and this year they chose Canadian, Eleanor Daley. She took a text by Madeline Bridges and wrote a piece called Life's Mirror for mixed choir, piano and oboe.

For the curious choral nerds out there, The Singers performed the following:
Sing Joyfully (William Byrd)
Coelos Ascendit Hodie (Charles Villers Stanford)
Carmina mei Cordis (Abbie Betinis)
1. Aeterna lux, divinitas
2. Angele Dei
Life's Mirror (Eleanor Daley)
Trois chansons de Charles d'Oleans (Claude Debussy)
1. Dieu! qu'il la fait bon regarder
2. Quant j'ay ouy le tabourin
3. Yver, vous n'estes qu'un villain
Wanting Memories (Ysaye Barnwell)

In the rehearsal space at NDSU.













The performances took place in the Stern Music Wing. I've never been to NDSU before but I'm told the students will oftentimes gather in the Laid-Back Memorial Union.













Fellow composers Abbie Betinis and J. David Moore set up a booth and exhibited some of their wares. Both of these cats teach me daily about being an artist/vendor and I totally need to do this at some point (hopefully with them to split the cost). Fellow Singers Composer-in-Residence Jocelyn Hagen had one for Graphite Publishing as well but I didn't get a picture of it.













The only downside was that the exhibition hall was in this place. (Insert joke here.)













Seriously, the naming committee for this college just can't catch a break. First the Stern Music Wing then this. Next up: the Bharph family of Ohio donates 3.2 million for a gourmet cafeteria.

Here, JDM shows what a large sum of money looks like to a professional artist. Yep, those are ones, folks. If anyone is considering getting rich by being a composer just look at your future.













That being said it's a happy future, despite the psycho peepers look on JDM's face, because you get to mine your imagination on a regular basis.

Also in the Butte Lounge is a semi-life size statue of NDSU's mascot, the Bison. You can't really see it in the picture (unless you click to make it larger) but this thing actually has little iPod earbuds coming from its fake mp3 player (along with its enormous hemp necklace).

The Fargo-Moorhead Curling Club. The moment I made fun of this institution one of our basses turned around and schooled me on curling. I trust his judgement and, apparently, curling is an extremely athletic sport. You be the judge.

Alto Mindy Mennicke. She and I didn't know each other until we both performed with the Singers but, apparently, we go way back. We both graduated from Faribault High School (10 years apart) and went to Luther College (10 years apart). I was also in an area community theatre production of Oliver! with her dad, Hub. Welcome to Minnesota, folks.

Soprano Liz Gullick. We attended Luther College together and, aside from the 2003-2004 concert season, we've performed together every year since 1999. I sang her wedding last fall and fully intend on writing a solo for her voice at some point. She's the best.

I've blogged about The Singers often but one thing I've never said is how grateful I am to have been a member of this choir since its founding in 2004. My life as a composer and teacher is enriched every time I set foot into that rehearsal room because of the repertoire we tackle. It's like eating a gourmet dinner once a week (Poulenc, Bach, Howells, Paulus, Argento, Britten, Pärt, Mendelssohn...not to mention all the languages I've had to learn). It's definitely not easy cooking but, if you do it right, it's nutritious and delicious at the same time. Mahalo.

some really good choirs

I don't want to make posting YouTube videos a habit but three more of my choral works popped up a couple weeks ago. It's a YouTube embarassment of choral riches!

The Owatonna (MN) High School Concert Choir performs Go, Tell It on the Mountain at the Dorian Vocal Festival at Luther College. Last time I had a performance at Dorian was when Weston Noble conducted the mass choir of 1,200 singers through The Boy Who Picked Up His Feet to Fly. I listened from backstage and I don't think I'll ever forget that sound.

The Kingwood (TX) High School Chorale performs Gabriel's Message in Houston's Chapel de Villa De Matel. They handle the Basque language really well.

The Northwest Missouri State University Tower Choir performs Musica animam tangens. Go Bearcats!

color madrigals order

I recently got the recording for the final volume of Color Madrigals and had the opportunity to listen to all 6 movements together. One of the downsides of writing a choral song cycle piecemeal over a year is that it can be difficult to conceive of the entire cycle as a whole. In this case they had to work both as 3 different, 2-movement suites as well as then fit together somehow in their entirety once all 6 movements were done. As this is the first time I've had to hold a creative focus for such a long time (they were composed over 9 months) I thought I'd write about how it all went down.

Originally, Matthew Culloton had asked me to write something for The Singers: Minnesota Choral Artists for their May concert that had a "spring theme" to it. I had recently started reading the complete works of John Keats and found a great text that I really wanted to set but, once I started out, it seemed too short to just sit by itself. I asked Matt if I could write a companion piece and he graciously agreed.

I set out on a search for a text that might compliment the one I had already selected and, as this initial text was the seed that started the entire thing, it bears listing here:

Where be ye going, you Devon maid?
And what have ye there i’ the basket?
Ye tight little fairy, just fresh from the dairy,
Will ye give me some cream if I ask it?

I love your meads, and I love your flowers,
And I love your junkets mainly,
Bit ’hind the door I love kissing more,
O look not so disdainly.

I love your hills, and I love your dales,
And I love your flocks a-bleating—
But O, on the heather to lie together,
With both our hearts a-beating!

I’ll put your basket all safe in a nook,
And your shawl I hang up on this willow,
And we will sigh in the daisy’s eye
And kiss on a grass-green pillow.

This led to all sorts of ideas as to how to add to what I already had. Should it be another text on spring? Something to do with young love? Lust? Shepherding? Milking, maybe?

I had recently been listening to a lot of Michael Torke's works (his Book of Proverbs will remain one of my favorite choral/orchestral works of all time) and, although I still haven't had the chance to hear his popular orchestral color pieces yet (Green, Purple, Ash, Ecstatic Orange and Bright Blue Music) I had heard of them before. This led me to think of the title I had already chosen for the piece I was writing: A Grass-GREEN Pillow. Once I touched on that, I was off and running. The "madrigals" part of the title happened because I wanted the original piece to have that sort of feel: optimistic with a quicker tempo. I'm also a huge fan of Morten Lauridsen's Madrigali: Six Firesongs on Italian Renaissance Poems (they are his most eclectic cycle) so it seemed natural.

Since I started out with a John Keats text I decided to make his poetry the unifying factor for the song cycle as a whole. I read his collected works (it took forever!) and found 5 more texts that mentioned colors. Matt listened to my idea of a 6-movement choral song cycle and agreed to premiere the first 2 during their May concert.

Volume 1
1. Serpents in Red Roses Hissing
2. A Grass-Green Pillow

Since there really isn't a choir out there that commissions 25-minute choral cycles (and Matt eluded to performing another volume with The Singers next season) I decided to find another ensemble who might premiere at least another volume at some point. Enter Vicki Peters and The Summer Singers (who are not actually affiliated with The Singers: Minnesota Choral Artists in any way other than sharing a few members). We had been talking about doing something together for a while and, when I asked her about premiering another 2 pieces, she jumped at the chance.

Volume 2
1. Purple-Stained Mouth
2. Yellow Brooms and Cold Mushrooms

This was the only volume that I knew would be performed "as is" in the final product since the purple one ends on the same unison note that the yellow one begins on. I chose the poetry for the Summer Singers' pieces because that choir loves to have a good time (both texts have to do with being drunk). I'm not saying they sit around and get loaded all the time but, because this choir meets during the summer, they have a generally more laid-back attitude than a lot of other ensembles and really enjoy each other's company. Add to that the fact that they put out a great sound and you have a possible Combustible Edison. Premiering these pieces was a whole lot of fun.

I had never intended all the volumes to be made up of a primary color and its opposite on the color wheel but, by the time Volume 2 was done, that was just how it turned out: red with green, purple with yellow and, for the final set, blue with orange.









Volume 3
1. Blue! 'Tis the Life of Heaven
2. Orange-Mounts of More Soft Ascent

The Singers performed the final volume last January along with a whole bunch of Minnesota music in honor of the state's 150th birthday and, last week, I got the recording. I could finally listen to all 6 pieces and see how they fit together with actual voices performing them. I had a few ideas but didn't actually settle on the final arrangement until very recently. That being said:

1. Serpents in Red Roses Hissing
2. Blue! 'Tis the Life of Heaven
3. Purple-Stained Mouth
4. Yellow Brooms and Cold Mushrooms
5. A Grass-Green Pillow
6. Orange-Mounts of More Soft Ascent

The set is 20 minutes and change, the keys flow pretty well...

1. A major
2. C major
3. D major
4. F major/A Lydian (E major)
5. E major
6. F# minor/B minor

...and the harmonic language is unified.

I'm really happy with all 6 pieces and I've already received orders for them from choirs around the country (including the world premiere of the entire set in a concert of my choral music with Vox Musica next month!). The orange piece was featured on Minnesota Public Radio and the green madrigal went on to win a choral award from the Cambridge Chamber Singers. In fact, they will be the first release from my new publishing company (which has yet to be named...I'm juggling a few options).

And that's that. 9 months of composition in the can.

Since you've made it this far I thought I might throw in some completely unnecessary pictures from the archives that have said colors in them and, in the spirit of this little screed, they're in the final order of Color Madrigals: Six Songs on Texts by John Keats. Enjoy!














































































For the curious...
Red: cherries from Pike's Place market in Seattle
Blue: Guster in performance at the MN Zoo
Purple: the house Chiante from a restaurant in Florence, Italy
Yellow: flowers on Culloden Moor near Inverness, Scotland
Green: a pool table in Ashland, Wisconsin
Orange: fruit in a punchbowl at a New Year's party

in like a lion

I was going through the pictorial archives the other day and stumbled across these two. I took them exactly a year ago (March 1, 2007) when the sky fell on the Twin Cities. The school district I work for almost never cancels school because of snow (it's Minnesota, right!) and they ended up having two snow days in a row.

This was out of my apartment window.













Here's the other one from that day. The picture's quite different now. It's clear skies and there are actually workers re-siding the building in the pictures as I type this.

through rain, sleet and snow...

I drove to Ankeny, Iowa (a suburb of Des Moines) yesterday to work with the choirs at Ankeny High School on a few pieces of mine. Although the weather in the Twin Cities was awesome when I started out, there was supposed to be a winter storm for the Des Moines area. I was about 90 minutes out when one of those weather status billboards informed me that "eastern" Iowa was having an enormous amount of snow. I should have known when they mentioned a large area of an entire state that I was in for something awful. It turns out the weather people were right and it took me about an hour and a half to go 45 miles into Ankeny in a drive that would have made a mailman nervous. The exit numbers were all frosted over and I actually had to stop one time and ask where I was. It was a white knuckle drive and, by the time I finally got to Ankeny, I was really stressed.

Luckily, the local Chili's was close to my hotel and had my prescription.













I met Brandon Dean (the director at AHS) and his wife there for dinner. They brought their son, Carter (who barely said a word the entire time) with them. He takes a good picture and, as I found out the next day when he and his mom, Ashley, dropped by to watch some of the rehearsals, he is the unofficial mascot of the choir program. I think he was fascinated by the blinking red light on my camera.













Apparently they had some sort of advisement period before I got there and the students like to make grilled cheese sandwiches during this time. How often does a choir room smell like Kraft singles? They also had the dry erase board all decked out.













First, I worked with the Ankeny Singers on The Boy Who Picked Up His Feet to Fly. They sounded awesome. This is their "fun" picture.













I hadn't heard that piece live since 2003 so it was fun to get to know it again. It was like visiting an old friend that I hadn't seen in a while. I wrote it six and a half years ago and it was in good hands with Mr. Cacciatore and his singers.

I learned that Ankeny High School is known throughout the state for having a great show choir program. They have these enormous full-length mirrors right in the choir room to fascilitate rehearsal.













After the Ankeny Singers I worked with the Concert Choir on their commissioned piece, Renascence. I used a portion of a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay and set it for choir and piano. This ensemble--for only having maybe 40 singers--puts out a ton of sound. They are very serious about doing a good job (like really serious...they wouldn't laugh at my jokes...which, come to think of it, might have been because they just weren't funny) and performed the bejeezus out of the piece. Since I wrote it way back in October, it was awesome to finally hear it. I really can't say enough how awesome this choir was. It was awesome. Did I mention how it was awesome?

Here's conductor Brandon Dean warming them up before I got on the podium and ruined everything. They also performed a really cool hymn setting that Mr. Dean wrote.













After the Concert Choir I worked with their women's ensemble, Cantamus, on The Arrow and The Song. I took way too much time to work with them and, unfortunately, didn't get a picture. However, this isn't a comment on how the rehearsal went because, as I'd come to expect by this point in the day, they did not disappoint.

As I said before Ankeny High School has an awesome show choir program (they told me a story about how one of their competitors drove 3 hours across Iowa to videotape them prior to the competition...can you believe that!) and there are a ton of trophies around the room to testify to this fact. Since they had an extra few to go around, Mr. Dean and Mr. Cacciatore presented me with one (that was taller than me) in honor of my visit.













I was happy with my new gift. I have no idea where this is going to go.













Okay, they didn't really give me the trophy but it certainly made for an internet-worthy picture. Thanks to Mr. Dean, Mr. Cacciatore and all the awesome singers I worked with in my short time in Iowa. It made the trip through all the snow completely worth it. Go Hawks!

honors choirs + sufjan

We're blessed with a wealth of choirs here in the Land of 10,000 Lakes and it obviously wouldn't be a proper 150th anniversary if we didn't have a kajillion choral concerts honoring that aspect of the state's heritage. I've been through one already and, last Sunday, I had the opportunity to go down to Rochester and work with the Honors Choirs of Southeast Minnesota on a few of my pieces for their March VOICES concert.

I've been involved with this organization off and on since 2003 as a subsitute conductor for rehearsals but this is the first time they've actually done any of my compositions. I spoke with the Treble Choir (5th and 6th graders) about The Arrow & The Song and worked with the Concert Choir (the advanced SATB choir of high school students) on when god decided to invent. Both choirs did an understandably amazing job and I'm anxious to see how my pieces will fit in with the concert as a whole.

Here's the Concert Choir doing some sort of weird, kinesthetic warmup excercises.













On a side note I just bought Sufjan Stevens' Avalanche album. It's all material that got cut from his 2005 Illinoise album...which was already 22 tracks to begin with. Heap on top of that Avalanche's 21 more and you come up with a grand total of 43 songs for one recording session! This guy just doesn't know how to disappoint. In fact, he plays almost everything on the album. And I'm not talking about just playing guitar, drums and bass, either. He plays flute, English horn, oboe, trumpet and a bunch of other stuff. It's ridiculous.

















So that's that. It's a pretty slow blog season at the moment. Work on the opera has slowed to a (temporary) halt and I don't have any residencies until late February. I'm thinking about doing some more philosophical stuff that might be a little more interesting to read. We'll see, I guess. Happy trails.

mpr interview

Minnesota Public Radio just uploaded the performance that The Singers recorded last Monday for their upcoming concert. You can read the brief article and listen to the segment here.













It's always funny to see what they use and what they don't. I talked for a couple of minutes with Steve Staruch but they ended up only using 2 or 3 sentences. Oh well.

Last night was the first concert that the Singers did in the Twin Cities proper and it was a full house of composers. We all posed for the obligatory (and sometimes maddening) If There Isn't a Picture it Never Happened picture. Can you pick who's still in concert dress?













Left to right: Minnesota poet Michael Dennis Browne (some of his poetry was included), conductor Matt Culloton, Stephen Paulus, David Evan Thomas, Abbie Betinis, Craig Carnahan, Jocelyn Hagen, Tim Takach, some bald guy and Edie Hill.