Musings of a Composer

I keep trying to shift my focus to holiday shopping, and packing for our short trip to NYC for lots of singing around the piano, but find that I'm still hearing my piece in my head off and on, and dreaming about parts of it, and assimilating the rich experience I had attending rehearsals and then multiple performances of Celebration of the Deep.  My head and heart are so full of all that happened I'm finding it hard to write about! Saturday's performance at the church was glorious, the overall best the piece has sounded; I was so pleased, and my Mom was proud!  My two sisters as well - it was grand to have my family come from Oneonta for the event.  Working out the kinks Friday night and Saturday during the run-through was the sort of fun challenge and on-the-spot problem-solving that I love.  All the musicians were doing all they could to give the music their best, hearing how the acoustics of the church needed to change how they played, assimilating the parts tha...

First I've heard the whole program, including Saint-Saens bassoon concerto (orchestrated by Cayenna from sonata for bassoon & piano), lovely Brahms for lower strings & woodwinds, horns, plus tricky Elgar.  I still get a kick out of my piece referred to as "the Boel".  Like "the Brahms". My piece suffered a bit from missing players - both the pianist and the contrabass players were absent, though we had 4 horns, and a fuller woodwind section (only missing the second bassoonist).  Luckily Cayenna asked Diana Geiger, the assistant conductor to play the bass part on the piano, so the parts with the string accompaniment had the downbeat present.  And overall it is coming together well! Interesting phenomenon (missing parts) that all the players are doing really well with - and I can just hope that this flexibility can continue - there are parts that will be heard only on Saturday - timpani, xylophone, second bassoon, and I trust that hearing them for the ...