Category: Composition
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Remembering “Night Fall”
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I had leveraged a bad gig for the opportunity to solo–and compose the piece I soloed on–with the Washington Metropolitan Philharmonic. That opportunity finally arrived in 2014. I had worked feverishly the months before. It was to feature the flugelhorn, trumpet and piccolo trumpet, and because of the…
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Midwest Presentation on Transcribing
In 2014, the U.S. Navy Band Brass Quartet was invited to the Midwest Clinic in Chicago to make a presentation about transcribing. We all talked about various aspects of the art of transcribing, and we played examples of transcriptions to illustrate our talking points. I prepared a slide show for that presentation–about how to prepare…
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Arranging attempts
In 2011, I did an audition for an arranging position. Over a couple of months, I furiously wrote some charts according to some interesting guidelines. I did not get this position, because I think this project was perhaps a little beyond my capabilities. But I grew quite a bit. Here are some of recordings of…
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In 2012, I did a few projects with Tia Wortham, a bassoonist in the U.S. Navy Band, a soprano and a dear friend. One of those projects was an early version of one my own compositions with text by T.S. Eliot. I later had to change that text–which was adapted from his poem “Little Gidding.”…
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Turning bad gigs into good
In 2012, I volunteered to play Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 for a charitable event at the Kennedy Center. The Beethoven Found organization was sponsoring a concert to benefit wounded warriors. I felt great about the music, the venue and the reasons for doing this concert. Ulysses (“Ul”) James was the conductor. He was also…
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Trying on composing with the Navy Band Brass Quartet
I had taken a couple of compositions courses in my earlier student days, but I had not really written anything since those courses in the 1980s. In 2003, I decided to seriously try out composing. Not small. I went big. With a fully-orchestrated concerto for brass quartet and band. Because I thought it would be…