August newsletter: goin' on vacation
Nissim Schaul
August was an ugly month, but it turned out successful. I spent an
awful lot of it staring at the keyboard unhappily (see photo below).
But 5 weeks of staring turned out enough actual material. My aim was
to finish revising Everybody's Going There (my recorder quartet), and
to finish the Wedge Miniatures (the oboe piece). All done! I also
wrote most of the background music for Sarah and Olivia's documentary
on political asylum in the US. Recording, and hopefully a finished
product: October. Plus I got a good start off on my next major
project, a choral piece that the Orfeo Duo and their Neighborhood
Composers Chorus will perform in NYC in late February or early March.
The little projects that didn't get done, well, oh well...
There was also some blogging to be done. I wrote a lot about my
struggles with the recorder quartet revision (so much, in fact, that
there's a whole category, http://nissimmusic.org/writings/?cat=17,
devoted to it). I wrote about Spiderpig!
http://nissimmusic.org/writings/?p=37 And latest, I dove into the
world of music theory nerdiness!!
http://nissimmusic.org/writings/?p=39
By the way, please bear with us here at nissimmusic while we figure
out how to fix the broken "return to writings" link in the sidebar.
If you get an error message, just click on "writings" again, and
you'll get there. We apologize for the inconvenience.
For the relatively distant future, some broad swaths during which I
should have performances coming up:
-this November or December, Sally Wall will premiere the entirety of
the Wedge Miniatures in Stony Brook.
-on February 10, Flying Forms, a Baroque ensemble, will play an
as-yet-undetermined piece - probably an arrangement of the in-progress
harpsichord preludes. Also out in Stony Brook.
-as above, the choral piece will be premiered on the Upper West Side
in late February or early March. The identity of the piece will
remain a mystery until I have final approval from the author of the
text's estate...
The looking ahead section of the newsletter is somewhat less oracular
this month, as I will be traveling through the Balkans for the rest of
September, far from any music-writing implements. If you want a
postcard, send your address! And look for the next newsletter, which
will be bursting with travel news...
-Nissim
