Tag: composing

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Well, it’s been a bit.

2021 was a tough year. My mother, Linda Flinn, died on June 17 after an 2-year battle with ovarian cancer. She was just a couple of months shy of 85. We’re all still heartbroken, of course, but Dad somehow soldiers on, though sometimes I get overwhelmed when I think about the fact that they grew up together and he probably has no memories that don’t involve her in some way.

Work was challenging with COVID, but we did the best we can. Owing to a concatenation of events, I had to be discipline coordinator this fall, when we had turnover in all three ensemble director positions and when the other two tenured faculty were on leave. It was harrowing and I’m pretty sure I aged several years. But the adjunct faculty, staff, and students all performed admirably, and I am pleased to say we did not have to postpone or cancel a single event for weather-related or COVID-related reasons. I am fortunate to work with people this good.

Now comes the fun part – I am taking a sabbatical of my own this spring to write an opera! The plan is to write this spring, orchestrate this summer, workshop and revise next year, then do a full staging in 2024. This will hopefully also launch a summer festival of new opera/musical theatre works here.

I will try to do weekly (or hopefully more regular, anyway) updates on my progress.

The opera will feature a libretto by my dear friend David C. Cole and will combine elements of American history, science fiction, and politics. The title is…

John Quincy Adams and the Subterraneans

Major roles:
John Quincy Adams, Sixth President of the United States of America (tenor, though a contralto could do the role as well)
John Cleves Symmes, Jr., explorer (Bass-Baritone)
Louisa Catherine Adams, First Lady of the United States (mezzo-soprano)
Monarch of the Subterraneans (dramatic soprano, possibly coloratura)
Andrew Jackson, General and later Seventh President of the United States of America (mezzo-soprano or countertenor)

I haven’t been excited about a composition project like this in a very long time.

In other news, I am pleased to announce that I finished several works in 2021. I wrote some miniatures for the Georgia Runoff Commissioning Project (Riff for solo piano; bent not broken for solo contrabass; Souvenir from a Canceled Trip for solo flugelhorn; Thibodeaux Breakdown for solo tuba; The First Amendment for SATB choir). A small consortium commissioned a three-movement trombone quartet, The True Saga of Charles Everett Mathews and His Search for a Perpetual Motion Machine (named for my maternal great-grandfather, who never found one). For my new-found interest in alto trombone, I wrote Everything About This Is Wrong, an exploration of a poem by my friend Emily Vieweg and scored for solo alto trombone with flute/piccolo, clarinet/bass clarinet, soprano sax, horn, trumpet/flugelhorn, timpani, vibraphone, and snare drum. I finished the orchestration of Concerto for Piano and Wind Band.

My article on techniques of developing variation in the music of Morton Gould was published in GAMUT, and it’s nice for that research to have found a home. Might mess around and start writing a theory textbook too.

My beloved wife and the cats are all in some reasonable facsimile of good health, and I am grateful for that. I lost a few pounds last year (10-15); the plan is to keep doing that, though the fact that I bake more might make it difficult.

I hope you’re all well. Let’s keep muddling through together.

WF

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I miss it.

I used to play, sing, conduct, compose just about every day.

I miss it.

I used to be really good at some of those things. At one point, I was a good enough player to be principal euphonium in the Kentucky All-Collegiate Band and back up acts like the Temptations, Melissa Manchester and Aaron Neville. In the past year I wrote about 50 minutes of new music, 35 of which got performed. I’ve conducted bands, choirs, orchestras and pit orchestras. I even got to conduct William Warfield once, though that was more along the lines of “You do what ever you want, Dr. Warfield, I’ll make sure we follow.” I tell you all this not to toot my own horn, but rather to give you some sense about what has been missing.

I miss it.

I’m going to say something bold here: It may have been a mistake on my part to pursue the PhD in theory. This is not to say that I shouldn’t have done it, but I shouldn’t have done it in the way that I did. I got away from music-making while working on it, and consequently, my analyses, while thorough and solid, were often amusical. The music that I studied deserves better. I stopped being a good musician during the process, and my work suffered because of it.

So…what does this mean?

There are some changes coming up in my life, and I hope for the better. I am going to take advantage of these changes (and I’m letting you all know this in the hopes that the hive mind will help me keep to them) and get good again. Get the horn on the face. Dig out the Hanon exercises and a metronome. Write something as often as I can. Learn the literature and take those lessons with a big-shot conductor. Write analytical and theoretical papers that resonate with actual music-making.

It won’t be easy, but it needs to be done. I need to get good again. I need to let music – this wonderful, wonderful discipline – work its magic on me again. Those musicians who got me to this point deserve no less. I deserve no less. MUSIC deserves no less.

Who’s with me?

WF