Photos: WYWOP/Mid Europe 2009

WYWOP 2009 / Mid Europe 2009 photos

WYWOP 2009

Had yet another great week in Schladming, Austria, at Mid Europe 2009. The World Youth Wind Orchestra Project, or WYWOP, gave a great concert this past Saturday night to close the festival. The concert was shared among four conductors: Gary Green from the Univ. of Miami, Joseph Horovitz from Great Britain, Johann Moesenbichler, president of Mid Europe, and for the first time, Verena Moesenbichler, Executive Director of the WYWOP and Director of Bands at Duke University (and my soon to be wife!). Gary did several tunes, including a new piece by Austin-based composer Ryan George, which is a really solid, fun piece, and I expect it will get a lot of performances. Ryan and his wife Sara(h?) came out to Austria just for this performance, and turned out to be truly delightful people to hang out with.

Gary also did my Radiant Joy with the group, which was a little scary in rehearsals, but all-but-flawless in performance (special shout-out to John Di Egidio and Nicola Martini for the Sop. and Bari. sax solos, and the percussion section for laying down a completely solid groove the entire time). Green closed the concert with the second movement of Mackey's Kingfishers Catch Fire, which, as always, brought the house down. This year's band had a particularly strong and large trumpet section, which was a perfect fit for John's piece.

Verena did a masterful job with the piece she was tasked with conducting (which was itself NOT a masterfully transcribed work from the original brass band version, but that's another story). The sheer energy and presence she has on the podium is breathtaking. I can't wait to hear her conduct Alchemy in Silent Spaces someday. :)



Now we're spending the remainder of our time in Austria, where she's preparing for her first year as Director of Bands at Duke University, and I'm finishing the new piece for the Nebraska consortium. I had finished it before I left for WASBE a few weeks ago, but have decided it needs a better climax section and ending, so I'm back to being unfinished. Then we fly back to the US, where we load up all of our stuff in a big truck, and drive 14 hours to our new home in Durham, NC!

Dusk at Disney Hall

Apparently Westlake HS is playing Dusk sometime around now at Disney Hall tonight. I had no idea, but ... COOL. Props to John Mackey for the heads-up.

Much more catching up to do : New York was great. MAYWE played their hearts out in Carnegie, and it was great to work with them and their fearless leaders, Robert Ambrose and Laura Moates Stanley. I sincerely hope I can come down to Atlanta and work with all of you again!



The rest of the trip consisted of seeing old friends, including finally meeting the dangerously charming and brilliant Newman/Schlactmeyer offspring, popping in on the Bang on a Can marathon with Jonathan, and checking out all the changes at Juilliard. I took some pictures, but wasn't able to capture it in a satisfying way, so just look at John's pix from his visit a few weeks ago.

I'm flying mostly under the radar while I compose this new piece for the Nebraska consortium. It's not due until August, but I need to finish it by the end of the month. On July 3rd, I head down to Denton to rehearse Ecstatic Waters with the UNT Wind Ensemble before we all pile in the bus and take the show to WASBE in Cincinnati. Concert is Thursday night, July 9th - I have no doubt it will bring the house down!

After that, it's straight from Cincinnati to Austria (well, not really straight - have to go through Atlanta, Munich, and then cab&train to Schladming) for the MidEurope Festival. The word is that Gary Green's doing Radiant Joy with the WYWOP, and Verena finally makes her conducting debut with the group, after running the entire show behind-the-scenes for the past several years!

And then it's to Durham, NC in August! Verena is the new director of bands at Duke University, which kicks total ass. So proud of this girl - came to the US and did both MM and DMA in a total of 4 years, and not even in her native language. That's just one of the many reasons I asked her to marry me. :)

Midwest 2008!

I'm in Chicago this week for the Midwest Band and Orchestra Clinic. On Wednesday, at 1:00pm, the Penn High School Symphonic Band will be performing Radiant Joy. And on Thursday at 11:30am, the Lockport Township High School Wind Symphony will premiere Eric's Libertas Imperio for symphonic winds and electronics. I'm particularly eager to hear this in light of all my recent work on Ecstatic Waters. Lastly, the USAF Band of Flight will play a portion of my First Light on their reading session Thursday evening at 5:30.

So, if you're at the convention, please say 'hello' and I look forward to seeing you there. Also, I strongly encourage you to go by the MidEurope booth and speak with Johann, Sieglinde, or Verena Moesenbichler about their festival. Imagine Midwest, but instead of Chicago in the winter, it's in the Austrian Alps in summer...

Interview in Clarino PRINT

Zwei Komponisten - ein Ziel
"Two Composers - One Goal"

Interview with Otto M. Schwarz and myself after our workshop at MidEurope last summer. It's in German, btw. Unfortunately, you have to register to access it, but for your entertainment, here's the beginning of the interview run through Google translation.

WYWOP 2008

The World Youth Wind Orchestra Project gave their concert last Saturday night to a packed house and a well-deserved standing ovation. They rocked Stampede and brought the house down by closing with Maslanka's Give Us This Day.

To everyone in the WYWOP - I really enjoyed working with you and thank you for working so hard on Stampede - it was a blast to hang with all of you. Here are the photos from the week, as promised!

WYWOP 2008 photos

If you weren't in the band, these will mostly be meaningless and boring. If you want to see more pictures from my time in Europe, go here. I will be adding more as the summer continues. For now, I'm 'underground' composing, so no updates for a little while.

Circus Maximus and more

The UT Wind Ensemble arrives today for their concert at MidEurope. They'll be performing Corigliano's "Circus Maximus" - can't wait to hear it again! After that, the WYWOP will give their concert, which includes my piece, Stampede. The band is sounding fantastic this year, and it should be a great concert.

Also, I've added more pictures from the past week.

Hohenwerfen und Dachstein

The last few days we've visited Hohenwerfen Castle (outside of Salzburg) and the top of the Dachstein mountain (well, almost the top - you have to have ropes and gear to go the last 300 meters). Saw a fantastic falconry and bird demonstration at Hohenwerfen (they were flying right over our heads at insane speeds - none of the pictures I took are cropped - there were *that* close). Then we drove up to a traditional restaurant for lunch - the sign at the bottom of the hill said 4km, but they neglected to explain that they meant *straight UP*.

On Saturday, Michael Hancock (conductor, clarinetist, and all-around great guy) and I headed up to the Dachstein, which is one of the large mountains in the area (being in the Alps, it's not alone). The bus ride was nearly an hour up the mountain, and *then* we took the cable car the rest of the way - up to 2700 meters (that's 8850 ft). There's a glacier up there, with year-round skiing and snowboarding. It was also slightly chilly and windy (i.e. freezing). And spectacular.

Pictures are here.

Summer workshop(s) information

As I mentioned in the last post, I'm giving two masterclasses in composition this summer, the first (with Otto M. Schwarz) at MidEurope in Schladming Austria (July 8th-10th), and the second at the Bayerischen Musickakademie (Bavarian Music Academy) in Marktoberdorf, Germany (August 2nd-10th). If you're in Europe this summer, and feel the urge to study composition with me, by all means sign up! :)

Austria again!

Tomorrow I leave for Austria, which of course I always eagerly look forward to (the 'being there' part, not the 'getting there' part). At Mid-Europe this summer I'll be giving a 3 day masterclass on composing, as well as a workshop for beginning composers, and then during the first week of August, I'll be guest composer in residence at the Bavarian Summer Music Academy (I can't find the link at the moment). All the while working madly on the Winds+Electronics piece, which is now scheduled for an October 23rd premiere by Bruce Moss and the Bowling Green Wind Ensemble (part of their annual New Music and Art Festival), followed mere days later on October 26th by Jerry Junkin and the UT Wind Ensemble. So...busy summer!

Now I must figure out how to fit all these hard drives in my backpack...

Malcesine Dawn, BCM MidEurope booth

Malcesine, Italy was just as wonderful as last year, and twice I witnessed a lovely sunrise moment over the mountains. The sky begins to lighten very early somewhere in the 5am range, but because of the tall mountains surrounding the lake (Lago di Garda), you don't actually see the sun until right at 8am, when it very abrupty pops over the mountain and sends intense rays of light down the mountain slopes into the water. The increase in heat in that moment is also palpable. Because of the time (I suppose), church bells somewhere nearby also begin to chime right at that moment...

Here are some pictures (though no pictures can capture this sort of thing - at least not my consumer-grade point-and-shoot camera):

Just as the sun is cresting the mountain:


A few moments later - intense beams of light (close-up):


The town itself, before being bathed in light:


For comparison, here's Malcesine in the afternoon:


And a rough panoramic shot I made of dawn:
External link because it's a really wide picture

And for good measure, here's a shot of the BCM booth at MidEurope. A little more spartan than at Midwest, but as you can see, Jim, Newm, and Eric got all dolled up to make up for it. I think this is our best group shot ever...

(Special thanks to Irene, Tina, and Andrea for standing in, and for playing so wonderfully in the WYWOP this year!)

Now, off to the southern coast of Spain for a week. Ok, that probably sounded pretentious, just like Italy did. I *really* don't mean to... :)

PS No internet access until August 2nd, in case you're trying to reach me...

A few quick pics

Busy week here in Schladming - had two performance on Wednesday (SüdTiroler Jugendblasorchester performed Stampede under the amazing direction of Karl Geroldinger, and the LA Symphonic Winds played MetaMarch with gusto despite my flailing arms). Both were great concerts and great performances. This Saturday night, I have two more pieces with the World Youth Wind Orchestra Project (Suite Dreams, Dusk). Here's the group from there group picture this afternoon:



They're sounding truly wonderful - Ray Cramer is conducting it, and bringing it to life with the kind of sensitivity and passion a composer is always hoping to find. Suite Dreams, as well, is sounding extremely powerful and moving, again under a passionate conductor, Johann Moesenbichler (who also runs the entire show here!).

A few random pictures from the trip here - here's the funicular up to the world's oldest salt mine in Hallstatt:



It goes WAY up - as you can see from this picture at the top:



And here's a panorama shot from up high in the Hohensalzburg (castle in the heart of the Altstadt) - it's a link, since it's far too wide to fit on this page:

blogpix/Von_Hohensalzburg_Panaroma.jpg

Here's another shot from up on the Hohensalzburg - this is looking down on the Altstadt (Old City):



Ok, gotta go - will try more soon. Internet access next week will be extremely limited (as in none whatsoever), while I'm in northern Italy on vacation. I know that sounds pretentious. Sorry... :)