New Year

After having spent the last 13 months or so thinking and writing orchestral music, I’m just now wrapping my head around it all, and moving on to the new chamber opera that I’ve been waiting to work on for most of my tenure at graduate school.

In the mean time, I’ve been reflecting on my relationship with the orchestra. It’s certainly an exhilarating experience to have that many people at your disposal, and the collective noise that they make is seductive and powerful. On the flip side, I like to plan things and make things happen, and I had to constantly get over the fact that yes I’m writing a piece, and no I can’t find 60+ of my friends to play it again, and maybe second performances (as I’ve come to find out post-BU) aren’t really all that I had thought them to be. I have come to savor the first performance for all the electricity, the neuroses, the now-or-never air that hangs over my head – everything that only happens just that once.

So in conclusion, as a persistent relic of my fling with the orchestra, I am continuing to think orchestrally even in this small chamber accompaniment that I’m putting together for the new opera. There’s an excitement to finding new ways of combining old horns (and fiddles) that makes composing fun again.

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