Yesterday was the world premiere of Sanctus, a work for double SATB choir and soloists (SSA). It was commissioned by Marika Kuzma, conductor of the UC Berkeley Chamber Chorus, and premiered by that ensemble. And it was, in short, a lot of fun, and a really unusual project for me. First of all, it was the first choral work I've ever had performed. I've arranged for choir many times in the past, I had a shady double life in college as an a cappella group arranger, and I wrote a choral piece a few years ago that's never been (and probably never will be) performed, but this was my first time having a performance of my own choral work. It was also unusual in that it was a setting of a liturgical text, which I've never done before. The text of the Sanctus is my favorite section of the ordinary, for the simplicity of the text and the vividness of its imagery, so it was really helpful to begin with that.
A lot of the fun, though, was the experience of writing for an ensemble of which I am a member. I've been with the Chamber Chorus for four years now, and it was a pleasure to write for musicians that I know in the way that you know people you've performed alongside for years, in many cases. Writing for friends and making friends through performances is, very luckily, not new for me. But writing for a group of which you're a member is a different kind of intimacy; it's fun to have something you know so well be a source of inspiration, and a special kind of thrill to hear your music performed by a big group of your friends. You end up feeling like a somewhat undeserving recipient of a great deal of goodwill.
So, a big and heartfelt thanks to Marika, the soloists (Emily "SuperFrey" Frey, Chelsea "C-Span" Spangler, and Melanie "No Nickname But Nonetheless Amazing" Anderson), and the rest of the group, for a deeply satisfying and exciting concert. I had a fabulous time.
Coming up is the premiere of Renderings of Things We Couldn't Take Home for percussion quartet. The world premiere of the piece will be on April 4th with the Berkeley New Music Project, and the East Coast premiere will be on June 1st in New York City by the Iktus Percussion Quartet. The piece was written for Iktus as part of a set of pieces written for a labyrinthine structure of percussion instruments. As the members of Iktus play through the pieces, they will navigate the labyrinth. The other composers featured on the Iktus labyrinth program are Christopher Bailey, Meg Schedel, Joseph Waters, Michael Barnhart, Robin Estrada, and Jenny Olivia Johnson.
Also coming up in between those two performances is one of the New Spectrum Ensemble's premiere concerts, on April 17th in San Francisco, which will include two of my older pieces, Spaces Between and This Empty and Luminous Room, on a concert including works by Dan Becker, Elliott Carter, and Beethoven. The New Spectrum Ensemble is truly brand-new, and it's an honor to be a part of their debut concert as a full ensemble. (One earlier concert will feature the ensemble's directors, Sandra Gu and Kathryn Bates Williams.) It'll also be strange and (hopefully!) good to hear these pieces again. They were written right at the time when I was just starting to experiment with musical directions that have become really important to me since then.
Up next for me, compositionally, is a work that's essentially written as an exercise for orals. The composition professors on my orals committee decide on an instrumentation, and I have one month to write a piece for that instrumentation that we'll discuss during my orals exam. I wasn't originally looking forward to this, but I have been ever since I realized that it's basically a "Project Runway" challenge. I now cannot wait to get my instrumentation, which should be happening soon. I don't know what the musical equivalent is of making a dress out of coffee filters, sandpaper, and rivets, but I'm really ready to find out. I hope it's truly weird. Like, tuba-trio-with-clarinet weird.
After that, I'll be taking orals. Doom!
Assuming I survive orals, I'll be in residence at Millay Colony for the Arts this summer working on (maybe? hopefully? possibly?) an opera. And in the fall, there will be a theatrical collaboration with Caitlin Marshall on a work using synthetic vocalization machines. That's all that I can say definitively about that project at this point, but I'm really excited about it. It's going to be something new, and wacky, and very, very cool. Stay tuned!
Edited to add: I've just heard that I will also be in residence at the MacDowell Colony this summer as well! I'm so, so excited.
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