I recently explained how Classical musicians understood harmony in terms of characteristic gestures. For my first demonstration of this gestural approach to harmony, I present the Latter-Day Saint hymn “Father in Heaven, We Do Believe.”
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Have You Heard?: Summer Has Ten Thousand Stars
My first performed orchestra piece was inspired in part by Walt Whitman poem “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer.” The piece captures some of the wonder of staring into the star-filled sky on a dark summer night.
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Learning Harmony as Gestures
Lately I’ve been studying how the Italian and French masters taught harmony and counterpoint. It’s fascinating. They didn’t analyze chords or study Byzantine diagrams. They learned to perform complete textures from a single musical line.
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James Horner on Film Music
I was sad to hear that James Horner died this week in an aviation accident. His music has been an inspiration to me. I was browsing YouTube listening to his old scores when I found this interview he gave a few years back. Several parts of it stood out to me.
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“Like Day and Night”: Solos for Oboe and Violin Now Available
I’m pleased to announce the recordings and publication of two very different solos for oboe and violin: one for the instrument alone, the other with piano accompaniment; one comprising a variety of moods, most fast, the other composed of a single, slow mood.
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On Debussy and how some contrasts have more than meet the ear
Last week we looked at “Brouillards” from Debussy’s second book of Preludes. In this performance by Krystian Zimerman, you can hear Debussy’s interesting use of juxtaposition, which is the subject of this post . . . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhdXnMHqsEU
Continue readingMovement is the soul of music
Of all my artistic influences, musical and otherwise, the most impactful has been Yoko Kanno’s soundtrack for the anime series “Cowboy Bebop.” At first listen, Kanno’s music is striking for its stylistic variety. Although jazz forms the core of the music, it branches out to blues, country, rock, heavy metal, and even late Romantic opera. […]
Continue reading“. . . Ring in the new”
2012 was a good year, but 2013 promises to be even more exciting. Certainties In 2012, blogging was my neglected step-child. This year, expect a steady and frequent stream of posts as I keep you in the loop about how my music is progressing, what I’m listening to, and what other thoughts and cool things […]
Continue reading“Ring out the old . . .”
It’s been a good year for composition. It hasn’t been such a good year for blogging, so it’s time to highlight the best of 2012 and the opportunities coming in 2013. I’ll start in this post with 2012. Second Performances My biggest milestone this year was finally having pieces enter performers’ regular repertoire. I wrote “Icarus […]
Continue readingMusic of our Time
Stumbled across the following in an article about teaching jazz within an historical context: A musician, even a great one, has far less control over the general course of his art than we might think. The broad outlines of a style, it seems clear, are shaped by ideas in society. Thus, a player like (Marion) […]
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