Wintergreen Summer Music Festival, continued

Day four of the Wintergreen Summer Music Festival. Every day is as wonderful as the day before. The festival and location are great. Our house is nestled along a mountain road that loops out for about a mile, with amazing overlooks perfect for morning jogs.

Today we had the honor of meeting the Austrian Ambassador. This year's festival is centered on the theme of Vienna and the Embassy has helped support the emphasis on Austrian culture. His speech on the relevancy of cultural exchange was quite appropriate. The Viennese desserts at lunch were a nice touch too!

The talks and classes continue, on topics ranging from compositional practices to the New Music scenes of New York and Chicago. And the concerts have started too. Last night was the opening concert of the festival, filled with an eclectic mix of Austrian music of all ages (Mozart to Webern). The festival musicians play with such enthusiasm and energy. There really is an aura of excitement here.

Wintergreen Summer Music Festival

Wow. Apparently focusing on the first year of my Masters program meant abandoning this blog. There is so much to mention, but I'm diving in with my current whereabouts - the Wintergreem Summer Music Festival.

Nestled in the Blue Ridge mountains of Virginia, Wintergreen is an all-year resort town that hosts a month-long music festival during the summer. (The Blue Ridge mountains are beautiful. I hope to post a few of the various views we have just in walking distance.)

The festival includes an academy for music students. Those of us composers here have the pleasure of experiencing a month of concerts, masterclasses, interaction with musicians, and numerous opportunities to present ourselves through our music. Most importantly, we will have some of our music performed by the academy musicians later this month - July 20th. It promises to be a great concert and worthwhile for anyone in the Charlottesville area.

We've only been here two days but the opportunities have been priceless, notably a masterclass with Judith Shatin and a talk given by Michael White, two amazing composers.

Wintergreen is such an idyllic place to compose, learn, and find inspiration. I hope to share more of this as the days go by. And maybe when I get back I can summarize the first year of grad school too...

We Apologize for the Interruption...

Too busy packing... regular activities will resume shortly (once I've moved all my worldly possessions to an unknown town and re-enter academia).

How Cliché

Cliché is such a part of modern music. Listen to any radio jingle or TV commercial and it becomes grossly apparent. But it's not just the mass media that has co-opted a widespread use of cliché. I personally enjoy seeking out cliché in all its forms. People say music is a language, and if musical cliché can quickly communicate ideas I think it demonstrates just how sophisticated that language is. Just for a quick example, tonight I popped in Clue and heard the same suspenseful strings used in Psycho (and just about every suspense film since). Nice, concise, and immediate sets the tone.

In other news, the recording session went very well today. I look forward to listening to it tomorrow and it will soon be available to share!

Activities Calendar - Week 1

Hoorah! Tomorrow is a studio day, and more importantly it'll be an open recording in front of friends! We'll be recording a run-through of my wind quintet Four Caricatures. The recording session will be at 5pm at

Calliope Music Studios
2600 S Parker Rd # 170
Aurora, CO 80014

The final cut from tomorrow will, of course, be posted to Deemo Melody Labs.

Monday will be a rehearsal with a great singer - John Wollan. He's agreed to look at my new song cycle for Bass-Baritone, The Day's Passing. His feedback is more worthwhile than any of my own observances (probably because he is a better singer).

There won't be time for many musical activites after next week, with the impending move, but once in Hartford there is a great concert being sponsored by Hartford New Music to benefit the South Park Inn homeless shelter. Definitely looking forward to the concert as a way to finish up the month and learn about the music scene in Hartford!

A Little Music with that Reality

Reality TV shows can be a hoot to watch at times, especially the overly dramatic series. I'm not overly fond of most TV, but quite a few reality shows do an amazing job of heightening emotions with their music. Some of the background arrangements have more raw power than a full staging of Orff's Carmina Burana (with the dancing and fireworks).

There isn't much original to these reality TV scores (mostly the main themes recycled again and again) but I wonder how often people pay attention to the swelling strings during emotional upheavals or massive percussion during bouts of tension. Somehow, I think reality TV would become a little to mundane without a live symphonic score. Too bad we can't have our own orchestral accompaniment in real life.

Concerts in Allenspark

Attended a wonderful concert in Allenspark, CO, last night. It was an evening of flute and piano music in the most unassuming of concert locations - a semi-remote cabin not too far from Rocky Mountain National Park. The hosts (Margie and Glenn Patterson) built their cabin with performance in mind. The view from the main hall certainly trumps any concert hall I've seen yet! And to top it off, the concert was for a great cause - benefitting the area's community center.

The Hannigans were in full force last night, giving a great concert. Barry and Mary Hannigan are an amazing duo. Their combined aptitude for grace and nuance is just as great as their respective technical capacities. The evening started with Johann Sebastian Bach's Sonata for Flute in B minor (BWV 1030), the most striking part of which were the Hannigan's skillful trade-offs in melody as it moved from flute to piano and back. Neither overpowered each other, and yet each made their presence known. It was a technical marvel and, considering the altitude, Mary appeared to perform with great ease (and enjoyment!).

The program followed with William Bolcom's Ghost Rag. It was an apt choice, adding levity and lightening the mood before another major work - Ludwig van Beethoven's Sonata in A Major, Op. 101 (the first of Beethoven's late piano sonatas). The entire sonata is incredibly dense, harmonically, and brilliant in its treatment of melodies. Particularly in the case of the March and final fugue, Barry demonstrated great care and technique in highlighting the incredible melodic movement.

Mary returned and the two of them played Paul Taffanel's Grande Fantasie (Mignon), a delightfully virtuosic piece that (according to Mary) doesn't do justice to the myriad contributions Taffanel made to advance flute playing in the 19th century. After the Grand Fantasie, the Hannigans ended the concert with one of Edward Elgar's Chansons (I believe Chanson d'amour). It was light and the Hannigans again displayed their capacity for nuance. It was very apparent in both the Elgar and Taffenel pieces that they have played together for so long. I appreciated hearing how easily they balanced each other.

In all, it was a great evening, and proves again (to me, at least) that music can be found in the most unsuspecting of places. The Hannigans have played concert halls everywhere from Russia to New Zealand, but they also play to enthusiastic audiences in Allenspark, CO, in a hillside cabin just off Highway 7.