Works in Glass

Nothing is more inspiring than having the opportunity to have your work premiered by a professional ensemble and being received warmly and with open mind.  Such inspiration came to me last night (as I have been leading up to in my recent posts) at the "reading" and premiere of my work "Blaschka" by our visiting artists, Eighth Blackbird.  The evening began with a rehearsal which dedicated 30 minutes to each of the composers who had been selected to represent their University (there were four of us).  The compositions were all excellent and in their extreme variety proved a brilliant cross section of the possibility of style and sonority, from jazz inspired swing to abstraction through a microscope (I'll take credit for that one).  

Following the rehearsal (after delicately moving CMU's only harpsichord from the rehearsal space to the performance space and lifting it onto the stage... yes, at the end we had to move it back) was the concert which to my initial horror was partially attended by about 100 highschoolers from Cleveland who arrived on a tour bus.  After my announcement concerning cell phones and so forth the audience ended up being as quiet as church mice, quieter even than a typical concert going audience!  It provided for an excellent recording, which is posted below.

In reflection, while having a work performed by such a wonderful and well recognized ensemble flashes fantasies of possible commissions and sudden worldwide exposure for one's music, the most important part of the experience to me was having a group of people take your music seriously and show up prepared and ready to play, accommodating your wishes and visions.  Of course, this has not been my first premiere bordering outside the realm of academia, indeed I spent the last four years working full time in the so-called "real world" (avoid it if you can) but this has certainly been a deeply significant marker on my journey back to creativity, and I predict only great things will develop out of it!

As for the work, it is sadly incomplete, represented here are the first two of what I hope will develop into four or five movements.  As explained in a previous blog or two, the work is inspired by the incredible glass sculpture of Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka who created magnificent models of sea life (both microscopic creatures blown up and life-sized) for natural history museums around the world toward the end of the 19th century.  So now in size order are my impressions of their representations of two wonderfully strange creatures, Actinophrys Sol, and Argonauta Argo or the "paper nautilus".  The preceding links are to images of the actual creatures, below you will find images of the Blaschka models.  Have a listen and let me know what you think!