The Start of the Process

Last week I received and accepted a commission from my colleague Alicia Diaz to compose music for her new piece Grain of Sand, which she's choreographing with her husband Matthew Thornton.  Even though the concert is coming up fast (the first weekend in April, with Jane Eyre, the Student Dance Festival, and spring break intervening between now and then), here's why I'm excited and optimistic about this opportunity:

1) Alicia gave me a ton of very useful info right at the outset.  Basic info like the duration of the piece, info about structure/sections, basic adjectives about the movement, the music she and Matthew have been using in rehearsal...in about 15 minutes I had a pretty clear picture of the work, enough to generate sparks.

2) Alicia has also been very receptive to my early-stage mode of working, which is to think quietly until questions burst out at times that make sense inside my head, but which probably appear to other people to be pretty random and sudden.  (Joan Meggitt experienced this last Wednesday evening when I was doing some writing, and was equally gracious...)  Tomorrow I'll be giving her some samples of stuff to see if she's receptive to what I've got going on in my head. (Observation: the beginning of the process is more about throwing out what doesn't work than sculpting what does.  I need to find my materials and get to beta as fast as I can because this thing has to work for Alicia, Matthew, and me, and it has to work soon enough so that the dancers and musicians all get comfortable with something resembling a finished product before we tech.)

3) Hopefully, I'll get to work with violist, fellow Bang-On-A-Can-Summer-Institute-alum, and current-northeastern-Ohio-dweller Laura Sinclair.  Laura is currently wrapping up her master's in viola at CIM, and is heading for other places come summer.  We had some fun vibes/viola improv moments and some great conversations at BoaC, and this could generate some more good work and talk.

4) The other two members of the quartet would hopefully be dance students, playing some easy percussion parts.  They'll get a chance to see the music-dance relationship from the other side, and pending faculty approval, they'll get production hour credit for it.

5) Ring modulators, granular synthesis, Wii remotes on stage...mwahahaha...

There are also some things I need to watch out for:

1) How many mics?  How much live processing?  Feedback from monitors?  How much of an increased tech headache?  It's got to be solid enough that I'll have time to actually play the piece without worrying about tech stuff.  (Specific concern: sounds from the stage-- dancers' feet, etc.-- getting into the mics and being processed along with the music...)

2) What's going to replace stuff that gets thrown out?  Right now, I have an entire piece in my head, but very little new material ready to go as a backup.  I really hope Alicia doesn't hate gamelan...I'll find out tomorrow.

All in all, much more on the upside than the downside.  Can't wait for the next step.

UPDATE: And sometimes, you start composing and an hour later you see an entire new direction or two open up in front of you.  I meant to start writing one piece this evening; I think I accidentally ended up starting three.