...and counting

I'm finally able to move on a bit here: the solo disc is done, and will be printed in the next few weeks. At Brandeis University next week, where Claire and I will give our first performances of Franco Donatoni's piece Fili (Threads) for flute and piano. Also, happy to be enjoying some borderline-spring weather in Brooklyn.

on the fast track

Excited about being in Pittsburgh this weekend with ICE. We're doing a concert at the Warhol Museum, and a residency at U of Pittsburgh with graduate student composers. It'll be nice to get a change of pace.

Which is to say that the holiday wasn't terribly relaxing. My solo disc is on the fast track towards completion in two weeks, with a lot of work still to be done on my end, and then I'll just have to wait for the product to be mastered and shipped. My final session at Smith, this past Monday, was a busy one, and I'm busy editing as I write this.

a silent audience

Yesterday, with my good friend John Pendergast, I gave a recital at the West Point Military Academy for an audience of about ninety cadets and some military officers. I played, among other things, my first Schumann Dichterliebe, and it really was a pleasure to play to such a silent group--they're trained to be that way, of course, but I liked to think that it was because they were completely engrossed.

I'm on schedule, though just barely, with my other responsibilities, including finishing my album. There's been much to do this fall.

Wishing a very happy 101st birthday to Elliott Carter tomorrow.

for the kids

Claire and I played a really fun concert today in Beacon, NY, upstate along the Hudson. Nominally a kids' concert, we had young people nine years old and under sitting all around the piano on rugs, listening intently. They seemed to get into the Bartok Hungarian Peasant Songs the most, though that might have been my imagination...

what in that world was real?

"Was war wirklich im All?" is the question at the center of the Rilke poem which I'm setting, wordlessly, in my solo piano piece. "You playmates from a long-ago childhood..."

Staying in tonight, a rainy weekend night in Brooklyn, and I'm choosing some edits for my solo disc. The work is progressing slowly; I have to remember that it will all pay off in the end.

a delicate balance

It's been a balancing act lately, as teaching hits full stride and my performance projects also gain steam. It's a joy to practice repertoire for Claire Chase, for our upcoming recital tour: Donatoni, Bach, Boulez, Schumann, and others. And as soon as I get another Close Range show behind me--that pesky Ives Concord Sonata--I can narrow my focus a bit.

getting there

Much editing on my disc in the last few weeks--I'd love to say I'm halfway done, but I'm not quite yet. The amazing engineer (and no less amazing composer) Ryan Streber has been a godsend: accommodating to a fault, and always having great creative suggestions. In other CD news, the disc for Tzadik of music by Mario Diaz de Leon, on which I play with ICE, is having a release party at Roulette on Friday, September 25 at 8:30.

ICETank kicks off on September 30 at The Tank, with a program of pieces for solo instruments and electronics by Kaija Saariaho, with whom ICE will be working a lot this year. I'm not playing, but my talented colleagues are. Check it out here.