Steven Bryant

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...

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.

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...

As promised, a few shots from yesterday's Gerburtstag Feier for Opa's 80th birthday:

Siegi und Verena:



Wolfgang on Zither, Siegi on Steirische, Steve on Hackbrett:



Fred und Hans, performing wild clarinet tricks:




Opa, Oma, and a subsection of the Eberschwanger Bauernkapelle (one of the two community bands in Eberscwhang). They provided music and fun for the party as well, in between beers. :)

On Friday I started learning a couple of tunes on Hackbrett (Hammered Dulcimer) so we can play some traditional songs for Opa's 80th birthday party today. The main tune is an "Innviertler Landler" (the Innviertel is the local region of Austria we're in). Lots of I and V7, which is good for me, because that's about the limit of my playing abilities at this point. Wolfgang will be playing...

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!...

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...

Last night's concert by the Jerry Junkin and the UT Wind Ensemble was intense. This was the final concert of John Adams' residency at UT, and the group opened with his Short Ride in a Fast Machine (which I know well, but had never heard live), and followed up with his Grand Pianola music, both of which were really, really good. Junkin maintained an unbelievably intense pace and conducting...

Bob Reynolds and the Baylor Wind Ensemble gave a really fine performance of the piece last night. There were a few odd moments in the opening of the piece (there usually are - the vast silent spaces and exposed single notes seem to make the players nervous, unfortunately), and the elderly audience member's mechanized breathing machine added an interesting element to the work (it wasn't really...

Verena and the UT Symphony Band gave a truly stellar performance of Bloom yesterday. In fact, the entire concert was superb - Damon Talley, the director of that group, has done a fantastic job with them this year.

Tonight, V and I head up to Baylor to hear Bob Reynolds guest conduct Alchemy in Silent Spaces: I the logic of all my dreams.. He's already done it with USC, and has it programmed...

I arrived in Fort Wayne, IN yesterday for my residency at IUPFW (late, courtesy of American Airlines), and was welcomed early this morning by an earthquake. I've been to LA several times, San Francisco, Seattle, even Japan, but have never felt an earthquake until I come to Indiana. It was a bizarre, gentle, rocking - of EVERYTHING. I woke up enough to just watch in amazement as the bed...

Just got word that two CDs will be released shortly:

American Tapestry (Naxos). This is the debut release of the Lone Star Wind Orchestra under the direction of Eugene Corporon, performing my work Radiant Joy. Release date April 29th, 2008.

New Music from Bowling Green, Vol. 5 (Albany Records), featuring the Bowling Green Philharmonia, Emily Freeman Brown, conductor. World premiere recording...