I love the opening swirl of violins in “Jupiter” from Gustav Holst’s The Planets. Who doesn’t? Take a moment and listen to it: It’s thrilling! But what really gets me going as a composer are the details of its composition. This passage is extraordinarily elegant. Here’s the excerpt from the score: What makes this passage so […]
Continue readingMore TagTag: Orchestral Music
“Summer Has” a Semi-Finalist in National Competition
A newsletter arrived in my inbox a few days ago from a competition I’d entered. I thought it was nothing. But I was wrong.
Continue readingMore Tag
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.
Continue readingMore TagDiscovery: My Title Had *Two* Beginnings
How I came up with a title for “Summer Has Ten Thousand Stars.”
Continue readingMore Tag