Writing music is difficult. Writing about writing music is much worse. I found that out first hand in music school, where writing papers is a gauntlet every undergrad must survive. Writing about your own music is the toughest assignment, and to see someone do it well is a treat. That’s one reason I really enjoyed this autobiography of American composer John Adams.

Hallelujah Junction (Amazon)

Adams has become a superstar in the classical world, known for a powerfully driving Minimalist-inspired sound. He uses the book to describe his musical life, parts of his creative process, and the context his music was performed in. He writes about his reaction against the dogma of some contemporary composers that any valid new music must push the boundaries of style and taste, eventually breaking them. He instead sees artistic innovation as creating “variations” of what music and society is capable of. Somewhat ironically, he received the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2003, an award typically bestowed upon the most cutting-edge and conservatory-bred musicians.

Adams has written plenty for piano, choir, and orchestra, three of my favorite musical mediums. I’ve never been a big opera buff but after reading this book I’m interested in seeing one of his. Doctor Atomic, premiered in 2005, tells the story of Robert Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project, culminating in the first nuclear bomb tested in the New Mexico desert. The work explores the moral tension felt as scientists and world leaders made the terrifying decision to unleash the bomb on live targets. Adams’ other stage works Nixon in China and The Death of Klinghoffer have also gained notoriety due to their reflections on modern politics. The descriptions of the creation of these works was captivating.

The book is worthy of a read if you’re a composer. Adams provides a relatively down-to-earth perspective on the often obtuse contemporary classical music world. As a composer I empathized with the internal struggles he described as he gradually discovered the music he needed to write. His passion for affecting people’s lives for the better through music really shows through. Adams also provides an interesting exploration of the creative process, a topic I really dig!

Recommended listening
China Gates (piano)
Short Ride on a Fast Machine (orchestra)
The Death of Klinghoffer (opera)

Over the past 6 months or so, worship music leaders from around Victoria have been conspiring… no, collaborating to create something really neat. They’ve written a bunch of original songs and made a compilation album for a great cause!

Well, a few causes. The album is a recognition that we Christians may have many churches, but we are united in following and worshiping Christ. And hopefully united in doing the things asked of us, like caring for our neighbours.

This is good news for the city of Victoria. The proceeds from CD sales will go to the Sanctuary youth program at Church of Our Lord. The program helps at-risk youth in the downtown core.

Here’s a promo video for the album:

Event Details:
7 PM on Saturday, April 21, 2012
Saanich Baptist Church
Free admission!
I’m unsure of how much the CDs are selling for but an offering will also be taken for Sanctuary over and above the music sales.

I get to play piano in the show!
Hope to see you there.

The Lambrick Park Church Choir, Simon Prittie and I performed Laudate Dominum again this past Sunday! We sang and played during two services and it was a tremendous experience once again. Best of all, I’ve finally got a recording to share:

Here are a few salient facts about this performance:

1. The choir performed this piece from memory.
Unlike our March performances, all the singers had memorized the music. Keeping in mind that many of them had never sung in Latin before this was no small feat! We felt that though minor mistakes may be made, the choir as a whole would be more expressive and responsive to Simon’s leading without paper in front of them. (Notice how everyone is looking straight ahead… because there is nothing else to look at.)

2. Simon did a great job conducting.
You can’t see him in the video but it’s a joy to make music together. At first this style of music was outside of the choir’s comfort zone, and certainly more technically challenging. I’m thankful that Simon offered to lead our singers through it. Everyone rose to the challenge!

3. The audio and video shown here were recorded separately.
This video was taken on an iPhone from a slightly awkward angle. (Thanks Sjoerd for holding your guitar so stoically all the way through…) But I combined the video with sound from my portable microphone and recording device, the H2n Zoom. Then I synced it together with iMovie. Heidi also deserves a round of applause for capturing the video while holding a baby.

All that said, I’d definitely like to do this again.

As a composer, it’s really gratifying when your ideas become reality. On March 5 I was privileged to perform as pianist with the Lambrick Park Church choir in a première of my own work, Laudate Dominum. I originally wrote the piece for SSA choir and later arranged it for Lambrick’s SATB choir and piano. The original SSA version was entered in a competition which I did not win, but fortunately the work found new life at Lambrick! The choir did an amazing job considering the Latin text and pronunciation which proved to be the biggest challenge. It’s good to have your skills stretched once in a while, right?

The saying goes that the best compliment is when you’re asked to return for a repeat performance… and we will be singing Laudate Dominum again on April 1 (Palm Sunday) at both The Gathering (10AM) and The Place (6:45PM) services. I can’t wait!

I’m also looking forward to getting my hands on some recordings for upload soon.

Sometimes I feel like I could stand on the street corner with a sign marked “I’m a Tenor” until a desperate choir director tosses me in the back of a van. At Christmas time, I’d probably only wait 8-10 minutes.

Last night I got a last-minute email invite to join Vox Humana and others to sing Handel’s Messiah with the Victoria Symphony and I couldn’t say no! It’s been a few years since I’ve performed anything with a choir as a singer (I’m usually at the piano) so this will be a treat. We are 40 voices strong (although still looking for a couple more tenors) which should give the concert a more chamber choir sort of feel versus the massive Messiah choirs that are often three times as large. We had our first rehearsal today and are already sounding great. If you’re interested, concert info is here:

Victoria Symphony Concerts

I’m also involved with the Lambrick Park Church choir this season; we have two performances at the church on December 11. I’ll be playing piano for those.

Here’s a quick update on what’s happening at Soundstone Music. It’s been a quiet few months on this blog but music is still being made here! This fall I have decided to move on from most of my accompanying gigs (notably Viva Youth Choirs and the studio of Marnie Setka-Mooney) in order to become more focused on writing music and playing solo piano events. It was tough to leave those two places in particular after three years with each of them but I’m looking forward to this year.

Currently, I am playing piano every Saturday at the Magnolia Hotel & Spa in Victoria, BC. It’s a really relaxed environment and a gorgeous hotel, so check it out if you’re downtown. I usually play from 9-10:30 AM during breakfast. Feel free to stop in for a coffee.

Next week I’ll also be playing some jazz music at the Penny Farthing Pub in Oak Bay! September 8, 9, and 10 starting at 8PM. No cover charge. Invite your friends!

Until next time.

You could listen to music every second of the day for your whole life and still never hear it all.

I discovered this piece by American composer John Adams recently. I’m always looking for music to add to my running playlist and this one fits right in. I love the overlapping rhythms in the orchestra. This particular video is a bit weird, but it’s a decent recording.

Short Ride In A Fast Machine

Today marked a big event. My piece Prayer Without Words was read and recorded by the Victoria Symphony! As I said before, having my work played by a pro orchestra has been a long-lasting dream of mine. It was amazing to see the hours of preparation turn into something real (or surreal, which is how it felt being up on stage…). The players did an amazing job, despite only having 30 minutes total to rehearse and then record a 6 minute work. What a rush!

Prayer Without Words is a musical prayer for courage. I often find myself incapable of expressing what I truly feel in words when praying, so I wrote this work in response to that. To me it reflects inner turmoil in tough times. Sometimes this is an angst felt about disasters and wars abroad, and sometimes it’s about broken relationships. My faith in God helps me get through those times and prayer is an important part. But I often find it hard to pray!

A woman approached me after the performance. She said that her sister had recently passed away, and that she found my piece uplifting in the midst of her grief. Music is a powerful tool to help express what we cannot say, and I evidently wasn’t the only one who felt that today.

A big thank-you to Giuseppe Pietraroia and the Victoria Symphony for making this possible!

A pianist friend of mine once told me that she couldn’t imagine being a composer. She pictured herself spending long hours working alone writing and thinking in a dark room…with candle wax spilling over parchment amid stone busts of dead people. Well I made up that last part.

But composers do work alone, most of the time. We spend time thinking, working out ideas and exercising our imaginations. So it’s a good thing when we music writers can meet up to talk and share our knowledge and experience with colleagues. The Internet is making this easier all the time.

Not too long ago I had the chance to take part in a global event on Twitter called #askacomposer. Using that hashtag, musicians from around the world were able to chat, ask questions, and give answers. The conversation featured some established composers such as John Estacio, who I briefly met a few years ago, and some who are just starting out and wondering what people are up to. Even better, the event reconnected me with a composer friend of mine I haven’t seen in a while. We just happened to be hanging out in the same place on Twitter.

The event was hosted by #askthemusicians, who plan on hosting another music event soon. Sounds good to me! It’s nice to get out of the dreary basement every once in a while…

Follow me on Twitter.

The other day my friend Peter asked how I go about composing a score for an orchestra when I can’t play any of the instruments involved. (My latest piece doesn’t include piano or ukulele.) He wanted to know how I can tell what it will sound like.

The truth is, I don’t know. Every new piece of music is an experiment.

Finale, my music notation software, will play back what I tell it to, but isn’t a reliable measure of how good something will sound live. Orchestration requires balance between parts, taking into account ranges, dynamics, timbres, and human interaction. Until it is performed, most of this music lives only in my imagination.

Sometimes it takes up a lot of space there.

Sometimes it looks like this:

This image represents my imagination going “splat” onto the page for the first time. It’s one of the first sketches I did for Prayer Without Words, crudely drawn using the Adobe Ideas iPhone app while I was flying home for Christmas. Often my musical ideas start with a melodic theme or another small idea that I can quickly write down on manuscript paper. Then I’ll improvise a bit at the piano and try to think of where that fragment will go. Sometimes I’ll hear ideas that take too long to work out on paper right away. The sketch above was useful to capture moods and form until I could write down more of the bits of music I was hearing. It provided a structure for the scraps to stick to.

Sketching an idea also forces you to commit to it, either to accept or reject it. And it frees up space between your ears for more music.

If you’re in the business of creating things, whether in music, art, or business, how do you record your ideas? I’d love to hear your comments.