The obligatory "whatcha workin' on?" thread

[Steve Layton]

Latest composition you're in the middle of, just finished, or is an idea just swimming around in your head? Performance on the horizon? Enquiring minds want to know!

My own just-finished piece is "Dark Water", the recording of which is up on my member page here. It's part of a group of pieces and fragments I'm doing for my Italian friend Marco Lucchi (he's here on NNM, too; drop by & say hi); his big project this year is the "Orchestra Eclettica e Sincretista". He supplied the "bed" piano track, and I filled in the rest.

But that's old news to me... I want to hear about what y'all (hey, I'm a pseudo-Texan now, that's how we have to say it) are up to.

[William Joel]

Right now I'm focusing on my painting and writing, but a short while ago I wrapped up a minimalist piece for small orchestra called "Nervous". Lately, though, I've toying with the idea of creating a few more piano sketches.
(see http://www.acmusic.org/joelaudio.html for earlier sketches)

[Mell Csicsila]

I recently finished learning Daniel Dorff's "Allegro Volante" for xylophone and band (for a performance that was sadly rained out.) Since it's actually the third movement of his percussion concerto, I'm looking at the other two movements and seeing if I can arrange a few performances. I'm also starting to get work with some Klezmer and Eastern European bands, so I'm working on being able to have some authenticity in those styles.

[Andrew Violette]

I'm writing music to a festival play/opera (Paradise Lost, yes the text is Milton) that's currently about 6 hours long and (so far) in three big parts. I've been writing this dumb thing for the last four or maybe five years. Will it ever get performed? Who knows? If I can I'll put it on CD. Otherwise it will collect lovely dust in my dust bin.

[Elliot Cole]

What does stamina feel like? And how does it work?

Andrew Violette said:

I'm writing music to a festival play/opera (Paradise Lost, yes the text is Milton) that's currently about 6 hours long and (so far) in three big parts. I've been writing this dumb thing for the last four or maybe five years. Will it ever get performed? Who knows? If I can I'll put it on CD. Otherwise it will collect lovely dust in my dust bin.

[Samuel Vriezen]

Well I'll have to join Iván here... I've started working on a piece that was commissioned for a string quartet, but in the course of conceptualizing the piece, the group split. But the commission is still standing, which is a slightly perverse situation, I find. But I've just decided to see this as an opportunity to ignore the time limit that was originally set for the piece and to make the piece as big as it wants to be.

Oh, and it's all natural harmonics in a weird JI tuning of the strings.

So if any of you know a quartet out there that is desperate to play a humungous piece in an oddball tuning, drop me a line.

Iván Sparrow said:

I'm about to finish a string quartet. It's the second in a long series of two. Its notation is a bit unorthodox, and the players need to learn a new way to play their instruments for some parts. It's not hard, but
it's different, at least to the eye, which is probably the reason that
several ensembles have been intrigued but haven't plunged into it. So
now the question begs to be asked, do any of you know of a brave and
inquisitive string quartet that might take a look at it?

[Karl Henning]

Latest project completed was about 30 minutes of music for organ, brass quintet, clarinet & string quartet commissioned for a wedding earlier this month.

[Steve Hicken]

I just finished a short (four minutes) piece for solo trombone called American Song, and am closing in on the end of a percussion concerto, scheduled for performance in the spring of 2009.

[Edward Lawes]

I think I have been trying to get a piece to write itself, using formal grammar and/or geometry, but really I don`t want anything that automatic, I think I am trying to see if I can get something close to that then I can take some steps back and put 'myself' into the process (perhaps, possibly, etc).

Xenakis` book Formalised Music was quite influential in this regard, more in rhetorical terms than anything specific (the maths is beyond me for one thing), his approach gives one the confidence to design the music freely, not relying on traditional means (harmony and counterpoint and form and so on). Since I read that I have been looking around for metaphors and systems, geometry seems a good one and I suppose grammar is quite obvious in its connection to music (simple L-Systems are my main reference in grammatical terms).

I`ll be putting this all together in some woodwind pieces at some point over the next year or so, will be trying to play and record them myself and will publish the scores, also just found a place to set up my drum kit (first time in a couple of years) so I am writing a piece including that (not connected to the woodwind music, that will be a different project) something with electric bass and guitar probably, adding to the woodwind instruments (so far I have a half written PC-Set thing with additive time signatures, a bit like 'Hat and Beard' by Dolphy but more odd and less 'jazz').

[Mauro Graziani]

I just finished a work for piano and live electroncs. It will be performed first on August 29 in Mantova, Italy.
I plan to record the performance and upload it on my site.
The piece has been written to celebrate the centenary of Olivier Messiaen birth, so there are a little of Messiaen-like materials processed live by the electronics.
Processing software is written by me using Max/MSP.

[Graeme Lees]

Iván Sparrow said:

Thanks Carolyn. I not only agree with you, but lament this situation, and not just for personal reasons.

Your answer made me think of a break-up lover's quarrel where a string quartet ensemble finally says to a composer: "I'm sorry. It's not you, it's me."

Carolyn Bremer said:

I find this especially true among students playing in quartets. Our student composers have a terrible time getting quartets read or played, so much so that they've opted to try to hire professional musicians to play at least a few of their pieces this ear.

Not the answer you were hoping for, I know, but at least a validation that it isn't you and your music causing the difficulties.

i completed three pieces for quartet. Hoping the smaller ensemble of dedicated players would yield some sort of performance...even with the incentive of payment but....The local university here ,University of the Free State, has a resident quartet. The players were excited at first and then just lost interest. Same for two other South African quartets.
It seems it's a global problem. Not the music , the musician!

[Iván Sparrow]

lol... maybe we should start a forum discussion on the frustrations of working with the string quartet medium.

I must now bring to an end this years-long dedication to that ensemble. I hear those percussion people are willing to hit anything in any way possible.

Graeme Lees said:

i completed three pieces for quartet. Hoping the smaller ensemble of dedicated players would yield some sort of performance...even with the incentive of payment but....The local university here ,University of the Free State, has a resident quartet. The players were excited at first and then just lost interest. Same for two other South African quartets.
It seems it's a global problem. Not the music , the musician!

[Hucbald]

After working up to Sonata One for solo guitar for twenty-seven years (!) - I wanted to complete it before I turned fifty, and made it with over a month to spare LOL! - I'm taking a break from composition for a while.

I'm becoming more well known as a performer these days, which is cool since my sets consist of over 2/3 my own music, and the performing and constant practicing is actually getting in the way of some of my musical philosophy writing.

By the winter, though, I'll be writing my third and final foray into the overtone series called, "Nature's Harmonic Series: Generator of Musical Context and the Laws of Musical Motion."

In the beginning of this addiction, I just looked at how the overtone series generated the harmonic systems that traditional music uses as a contextual reference point, then the second pass I got all five of the elements of pure music involved - harmony, counterpoint, melody, rhythm and form. Finally, I had the breakthrough that demonstrates how all possible contextual systems are generated by the series: The Alpha system (Traditional major or Ionian mode, and its sub-contextual modes), The Beta system (What is usually thought of as the ascending form of melodic minor, and its sub-contextual modes), the Gamma system (The ascending form of melodic minor with a Phrygian second degree, and all of its sub-contextual modes), &c. through the more exotic contextual systems such as harmonic major, harmonic minor, Phrygian harmonic, and the double harmonic systems.

Like I say, it's an addiction.

George