Well, I was supposed to be adding more content to my website this week. I haven’t yet found an easy way to port over my old pages, since I decided to organize things a little differently:
- Where my old website focused on my church compositions, I’m adding in a fairly extensive set of secular works
- I’m also setting the site up to be more menu-driven, hoping it will be easier to navigate
- I want to add more examples of scores and audio clips
- I’m hoping in all this to update scores of some older works that are still worth doing
- And all this will lead to adding on a shopping cart, as well as sending some works out to other publishers
So, instead, I wrote some music. I know this is rather on the level of saying I decided to breathe, but there it is! I finished three introits that my choir at St. Stephen’s Orinda will sing on June 26, July 3, and July 31 (the reason for the gap: the handbell choir is playing, and I wanted them to accompany the choir; they’ll need some rehearsal time). The introits are each about a minute and a half long and, along with a full-length anthem, must be able to be learned in the 45-minute rehearsal before the service. A fun challenge, indeed. (This will be my third year of summer introits, giving me the thee-year liturgical cycle.)
But wait, there’s more. Phil Sullivan, an outstanding trumpet player, will be in residence at St. Stephen’s this summer. Whenever he comes around I like to write something for us to do. The last three days have seen the development of a 4-movement suite for trumpet and organ, where two movements will serve as preludes and two as postludes. Unlike much of the stuff I’ve written for him, this piece is not hymn-based. It was FUN getting back to a more abstract approach, where I didn’t have a melody and/or chord progression suggesting the form.
I’d love to talk about the suite a bit more, but will do so at another time. Now that I’ve written the pieces, I’m in re-write mode. Notes that sounded great in my head, and all right in MIDI playback, didn’t sound as great on the organ. So after several hours, I have my next generation of the suite. I’ll print it out in the morning and give it a try. I hope at that point to have something to share here. I excited and encouraged. Each movement stands alone, but the four together make a nice set!