Christmas Eve Dinner

My brother, Ben (seen in Santa regalia, below), cooked a fantastic dinner this evening.


Ben Bryant, December, 2005


The meal consisted of chicken breast stuffed with red pepper pesto, mushrooms, tomato, feta, and parmesan, encrusted with bread crumb parmesan mixture. The side dishes were sauteed mushrooms and grilled asparagus, pasta salad, and broccoli salad. It was DELICIOUS. My brother is seriously getting his cooking on...this man should go to culinary school.

I'm no John Mackey, but I attempted to document the meal with a suitable image:



Unspeakble "THANK YOU" to my brother for such a fine Christmas Eve dinner. I wish all of you a happy holiday of your choosing, and a safe, exciting, hope-filled New Year!

Winchester Model 12

Today we made a trip down to Murfreesboro to exchange gifts with the extended family. Had a pleasant visit and dinner with everyone, and met a new friend, Will, who specializes in building sheltered homes that handle most of their heating and cooling from ground heat and water - I find this fascinating - I hope to build such a house at some point, and rely on the 'grid' as little as possible. Oil isn't an infinite resource, just in case you had forgotten...

A high point of the evening was when my brother and I received a wonderful surprise from Uncle Jerry: our grandfather's Winchester Model 1912 20-gauge shotgun. I didn't know he had even owned one. This appears to date back toward the beginning the serial number is extremely low, and they started manufacturing this gun in 1912 (per the Model #). I'll try to find out the exact year. The gun looks to be in great condition - just need to oil it and make sure the barrel is clean, and then we'll take it out for a test spin:


Ben, Jerry, Steve, and the Gun

It was great to see all of you today - hope you have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Saxomaphone

In a former life, I played Alto Sax. My past came back to haunt me as my old high school friend, Kathy, and her husband, Eddie, roped me into playing 30 minutes of Christmas Carol intermission music between showings of a play at a local church. With great trepidation, I agreed, and dug out my old Selmer Mark VI this afternoon to see if I could make a sound on it. After all, it's been more than 11 years since I made any serious attempt to play the thing...



All the pieces are there! I even have some reeds. They're well-aged by now...


I get to the gig and we read through a few of the 'charts.' I learn that several are only for Bb trumpet, so not only do I get to perform on an instrument I haven't touched in over a decade with chops built to last about 90 seconds, I have to transpose at sight while doing it. Might as well embrace the madness:



Eddie had actually practiced a little bit, so Kathy and I decided he'd have to carry us - we insisted he play lead part on everything. No pressure like playing the melody on tunes everyone has carved into their DNA.

On the first tune, "O Come All Ye Faithful," I think I hit about 75% of the notes. Hey, I was playing 3rd Trumpet on an Alto Sax - if this was baseball, I'd be a legend.



We manage to hold it together. Eddie and Kathy do a spectacular job until I start laughing because I've forgotten that there's such a thing as a key signature. When I compose, I don't use key signatures. At all. It's been so long since I've thought about them, much less read music with them that I, uh, missed a few notes. I call it aleatoric reharmonization, with basically indeterminate results, the scope of which were bounded only by the amount of adrenaline coursing through my brain at a given moment.

You might call it screwing up.

Eh, whatever. It was great fun - big thanks to Eddie and Kathy for inviting me along! Maybe I'll get my sax out more often and start tormenting the cats and neighbors...

Interview

Just wrapped up my portion of the interview for AETN's "Men and Women of Distinction" series, in which they're doing a segment on my mentor and old teacher, Francis McBeth. The series features Chuck Dovish as the producer/host, which should air sometime in June, 2006. It was an interesting experience being interviewed - only done this a few times, such as when Frank Oteri interviewed BCM for New Music Box in 2004, so it's still a bit nerve-wracking.

Here's Chuck and Michael Middleton, the cameraman/techie/everything else guy. They wanted to shoot in my bedroom/studio, so we squeezed in as best we could:



Here I am with Chuck just after the interview a few minutes ago:



I had fun doing this - hopefully they got something useful out of the interview! Chuck and Michael, it was a pleasure meeting you - best of luck with the series!

Francis McBeth documentary interview

Chuck Dovish, local television and radio legend, is coming out to the house to interview me for a documentary on Francis McBeth. I don't know more than that - will fill in details this evening...

Most important question: what should I wear?!?

Midwest 2005 Recap

I'm home and recovering from my ninth Midwest (and the fifth year in a row BCM has had a booth). Had a great time, as always. On Wednesday, I ran into my old mentor and first composition teacher, Francis McBeth, at the Southern Music booth:



Always great to see he and his wife Mary - they're two of the most fantastic people on this planet.

The next night was the Atlanta Youth Wind Symphony's concert, under the direction of Scott Stewart. They opened the program with Icarus by Richard Prior which was a pretty smokin' piece - they put some hair on the climactic chords toward the end of the piece, and I though it came off really well. The end of the program saw my own Dusk, and John Mackey's Sasparilla. They did a pretty bang up job on my piece - the only thing I would've changed was the tempo - it's an easy piece to rush, and I think the adrenaline pushed the tempo up a bit too much, but otherwise a solid performance. The climax could've also been louder, but I think that's the venue's fault - hotel ballrooms are about the worst space for this sort of thing. Instead of ranting, I'll point you Jim Bonney's sublime achievement in this category. Mackey pegged the style meter to the opposite extreme, and closed the night out with some raucous Old West Saloon atmosphere - even without the accordion, I thought the piece was over-the-top-hilarious.

You can watch Dusk and Icarus on the Midwest Clinic website - check it out.

Kudos to Scott Stewart and the band for a successful concert and trip to Chicago - I hope you all had a great time!

Here I am with Scott after the concert:



And of course, the band:



Friday brought the final day of the exhibit booth action, and I finally got to meet the man crazy enough to premiere RedLine for Wind Ensemble, John Pastin:



Their premiere on December 1st was essentially a dry run for the CBDNA Eastern Division Conference performance at Montclair State University in New Jersey next March. I haven't heard the piece yet - hope to have a copy of the recording soon...

There was much, much more going on at this week, some of it will show up on the BCM blog in the near future. Hopefully the rest will never show up anywhere... :)

Midwest Clinic, 2005

This morning I head to Chicago for the annual band and orchestra bacchanale / geekfest known as The Midwest Clinic. This is the fifth year for the BCM booth (#325 - come see us!), and we're going to mix it up a little bit this time with some spiffy new iPods in addition to the CD players of yore. We'll see how it works out. I can picture a shuffle-play accident which leads to a dangerous medley of Ghost Train: mvt. II, Mr. Bungle's "Stubb a Dub", and Avenue X...

Don't miss Newman's Metropolitan which opens the Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra's concert on Tuesday night, at 7:45. My own Dusk will be performed by the Atlanta Youth Wind Symphony on Thursday night at 7:30, and Eric and the Duncanville High School Wind Ensemble finish out the convention on Friday night with his new "Lux Aurumque."

I'll try to post stuff throughout the week over on the BCM blog, but we say we'll do that each year and fail miserably. We need a full-time photographer/blogger to follow us around. On second thought, that's a bad idea.

So, to everyone who'll be at Midwest this year, come by and say 'howdy.' I fear I've suggested "let's go for a drink" to an inordinately large number of people, so I'm bringing an extra liver this year...

Bowling Green...never ending

Last week I paid a repeat visit to Bowling Green, OH - that place is apparently fertile ground for me. A number of things in the works up there, including a possible performance of RedLine by Bruce Moss and the Wind Ensemble at the North Central Division CBDNA Conference March 10th, the Emily Freeman Brown and the BGSU Philharmonia's forthcoming "New Music from Bowling Green" CD that contains "Loose Id for Orchestra," and a much bigger, completely-nebulous-at-this-stage, but quite exciting possibility which I will talk about much later, if it comes to fruition.

The highlight of the trip, though, was my induction into the social scene by local hostess extraordinaire, principal cellist of the Philharmonia, and all around swell gal, Beth. She makes a mean pomegranate margarita, as seen here in her capable hands:



Many thanks to you, Ernie, Maggie, and your posse for a fun week. Best Journey sing-a-long EVER.

A special shout-out to my man Triple-C, whose palindromic lyrical genius cannot be repeated here: keep speakin' truth to power, brutha. Grumpy Dave's will have your picture on the wall someday, I'm sure of it.

Good times...

RedLine for Wind Ensemle PREMIERE!

RedLine for Wind Ensemble was premiered last evening, December 1st, 2005, by the Rowan State University Wind Ensemble under the direction of John Pastin! I'll post more about it soon, including their big performance of it at the CBDNA Eastern Div. Conference in March, and several other possible performances coming up in the Spring!