So I’ve recently started work on a violin concerto for my friend Jared Starr. I grew up playing violin, and though I never progressed passed an intermediate level, writing a concerto for the instrument feels like a kind of homecoming to me. Here’s a video of David Oistrakh playing Prokofiev’s First Violin Concerto, my favorite […]
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Two Conflicting Views on Influence
“After all,” says Harrison Birtwistle, “we all come from somewhere: we don’t invent it for ourselves; we don’t come from the moon.”
Continue readingPatting Your Head . . .
Today I wrote music . . . while listening to other music. Though a first for me, this isn’t too unusual. One of my friends routinely writes music at concerts; my teacher admitted to writing one of his best pieces will at a friend’s recital; and I’ve even heard rumors that Luciano Berio wrote his […]
Continue readingPre-composition and Football
Whenever people find out I’m a composer, they first ask, “What kind of music do you write?” for which I have yet to come up with a good answer. “Instrumental” and “classical-ish” are my usual responses. The next comment they make is often “I could never write music.” From what I can tell, many people […]
Continue readingBook of Imaginary Beings
I received word just yesterday that my proposal to write a piece for Eric Hansen, Skyler Murray, and Scott Holden—all fabulous musicians—was accepted by the Barlow Endowment, who awarded me a grant to write a 15–20 minute piece for bass, saxophone, and piano. Seeing how the endowment has given grants to a couple dozen Pulitzer […]
Continue readingDiscovery: My Title Had *Two* Beginnings
How I came up with a title for “Summer Has Ten Thousand Stars.”
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