Composers in Community

This past weekend die Frau and I made the long, long (looooooong) trek to Orange City, Iowa. For those of you that don't know where this is, it's a half hour east of South Dakota and a half hour south of Minnesota. For those of you that do know where this is...why?!?! Why did we go to such a place, you ask? I'll tell you.

I had a piece programmed on a new music festival that was a joint effort of the Iowa Composers Forum and the Christian Fellowship of Art Music Composers and hosted by Northwestern College in Orange City. It was my first festival selection which made it all the more exciting. Well that's not entirely true. I've been programmed on 4 conferences/festivals, but they were all at Truman State so I think those kind of tipped the scales in my favour in those instances.

Anyway, the piece was my Two Movements for Flute which is an unaccompanied solo which also has the distinction of being my first 12-tone work. It's also a quite difficult work, full of complex rhythmic ideas and wide intervallic leaps. And if that's not enough there are little surface features that really function as background features that unify the piece on a long-range scale. Ugh, can you tell I had been studying Schenker at the time I wrote this piece, too? The soloist, whom I met the morning of the performance, performed the piece very well. She managed to bring out some of the aforementioned "long-range" elements of the piece rather than focus primarily on its gestural nature. I was pleased. Everyone seemed very complimentary especially with the knowledge that this was indeed my first 12-tone work.

The whole conference was pretty amazing. 1 day, 4 concerts (long concerts), 2 paper sessions and seemingly endless variety. It was incredible to hear all this music by so many composers and so much of it was different from everything else that was heard. In addition everyone seemed genuinely supportive of each other's work. Many and constant congratulations abounded throughout the day in the halls, during concerts and during meals. Another nice aspect of the conference was getting to see Dr. Gooch again. It was, afterall, his suggestion that I join the Forum. His Monodies for cello and piano were performed right before my piece.

One of the most difficult aspects of being a composer in a situation such as this is trying to find the balance between enjoying what you're listening to and listening on a more analytical level. I found myself trying to find this at many points throughout each of the concerts and would say that, in my own opinion at least, was fairly successful. If you do nothing but listen analytically you might miss the point. If you do nothing but listen for enjoyment (though there's nothing wrong with this from time to time) you might also miss a larger point. Balance is key, Daniel-san.

Overall the experience was really great. One I look forward to again soon.