Music vs. Theater

If you’ve been following my tweets, you may have noticed that it’s #operaplot season!

What? You haven’t heard about #operaplot, the brainspurt of that blogging genius over at The Omniscient Mussel? Well, it’s high time you learned.

The rules are simple. Summarize an entire opera in one tweet (ie 140 characters, including the hashtag #operaplot). You have until Friday at midnight to submit up to 25 summaries. Then the whole lot of them will be shipped off to celebrity judge, tenor Jonas Kaufmann. Hopefully he has a good sense of humor.

The winners will be able to choose from a bounty of prizes donated by opera companies around the world, the biggest includes a trip to Ireland!

The entries are coming in fast and furious now, it’s kinda fun to watch them show up on the feed.  There’s a big trend towards writing limericks or couplets. Not really my style, but some of them are cute.

Here are my entries so far:

The Rake’s Progress

Peter Grimes

The Consul

Porgy and Bess

And my personal favorite (hoping to get to Ireland with this one!):

Nixon in China

See! It’s fun! Go ahead and write some of your own! (Although if you’re starting a twitter account just for this, it may take a few days for your entries to show up in the feed…)

The string quartet is DONE! Actually, it was done a year ago, but now it’s been premiered, recorded, annotated, and released to the public.

The third movement Off the Rails is finally available for listening and downloading and reading about and whatnot.

So what happens now? Hmm. Good question. I’ve already submitted it to several competitions to little effect, but those are pretty much crapshoots (and the only recording at the time was a sub-optimal midi realization).

Well, what do composers really want? To create music and to have people hear the music they’ve created. So, in no particular order, here are things I can actively do to try to further these goals:

• Network to get the piece introduced into an established quartet’s repertoire.
• Keep entering competitions and festivals.
• Give away the audio tracks to whoever wants to hear them.
• Make some youtube video with potential for virality.
• Advertise the piece using Google AdWords. (Paying to give something away for free!)

So, dear reader, if you have any other ideas to suggest, or a desire to help with any of the above mentioned action items, PLEASE feel free.

Hilary Hahn!

Well… Kinda.

Actually it was Jennifer Higdon who won the Pulitzer for a violin concerto written for Hilary Hahn. Most folks have never heard of this composer, but if you followed the links from my earlier post about Hilary, you may have stumbled upon her interviews with this now Pulitzer Prize winning composer.  It’s almost like I broke a story!  Kinda.

Maybe this video will get more than 3000 views now that she’s won a Pulitzer. Or maybe the piece will sit in limbo for ten years…

OK.  Now I gotta stop writing about Hilary Hahn.  I’m starting to sound like some sort of fan boy or something. I mean, it’s not like I’m writing a bunch of violin music, secretly hoping that she’ll champion it or anything. Nope. Not like that at all.

The second movement of my string quartet has been mixed and edited and the program notes have been written up.

https://musicvstheater.com/wordpress/works/string-quartet-no-1/tango-a-la-peachy/

And if you haven’t yet listened to the first movement, check it out here:

https://musicvstheater.com/wordpress/works/string-quartet-no-1/on-the-rails/

The third movement is mostly finished and will be released very soon.

I’m happy to announce that the first movement of my string quartet is now available for free download. I’ve also written up extensive notes for that movement if you’d like to know more about the composition and where it came from. (Of course you’d like to know more. Why else would you be reading this blog?)

I hope you’ll take the time to listen and follow along with the program notes. I spend hundreds of hours composing this piece (not including the time writing up the essays for each movement) and I’m very proud of it. It’s all time wasted if no one gets to hear it. So I’m counting on you here.

The other two movements will be released in the weeks to follow (I’m editing as fast as I can), so be sure to check back.

Cypress String Quartet celebrates the 11th year of  their Call and Response program tonight at the Herbst theater.  They’re one of a handful of San Francisco performing arts organizations that actually commissions new work. For this unique program they commission a composer to write a piece in response to their “call” (i.e. an existing piece in their repertoire.)  This is particularly fitting for a quartet that spends equal amounts of time with new music and established classics, possessing an ear for both.

This time around they break a bit from their established m.o. and add a level of indirection. They’ve commissioned a piece inspired by literature, similar to the way two pieces in their repertoire have been inspired by the written word.  Elena Ruehr‘s Bel Canto is a response to Ann Patchett’s best selling novel of the same name, and will share the program with Schubert’s Death and the Maiden (inspired by the lyrics to a song that Schubert wrote himself) and  (which apparently was inspired by the written word, but I haven’t yet figured out how).

The Cypress String Quartet’s latest album “How She Danced” consists of three of Elena Ruehr’s other works for string quartet and has been in heavy rotation since I purchased it last month.  (I was kinda hoping to have a more in depth review/analysis of it to post in time for the concert, but I’ve got a solo opera to prepare for this Sunday and my time has managed to slip away from me.)

Tickets are available at the City Box Office and are cheaper if you buy them in advance.

I’ll be performing a 25 minute excerpt from Failing That as part of the Stage Werx Solo Sunday festival on February 28th.  This excerpt will follow the arc of Steven Scafidi as he finds himself completely unprepared for a final exam.

These workshops are a great way to see a work as it develops, and also a great way for me to see what works and what doesn’t work.

I’ll be presenting my piece in the first half of the evening (note the early start time, 7pm).  My good friend, the lovely and talented Katie Rubin will be presenting a section of her solo show in the second half.   I hope to see you there after the show.

Read more about Failing That (including audio samples)  here.

You can purchase tickets here.