Steven Bryant

On the way to Schladming, we stopped in Hallstatt, a tiny town on the edge of the Ebensee (Lake Eben). This is home to the world's oldest salt mine, dating back at least 7,000 years. It's an unbelievably scenic location. Also made a couple of trips to Salzburg. Pictures forthcoming. First, I'm about to go jump off a mountain...literally. Wish me luck!

I'm in Austria at the moment, preparing for MidEurope where I will be the guest composer for the week! The festival is held each summer in Schladming, Austria, nestled in an Alpine valley, about an hour's drive from Salzburg. It's as idyllic as it sounds. :)

The schedule includes performances of Stampede by the Südtiroler Jugendblasorchester, MetaMarch with the LA Winds (I'm conducting this...

The Bluecoats Drum and Bugle Corp has arranged my Hummingbrrd as part of their 2007 show! Unfortunately, I won't have a chance to see it since I'll be out of the country all summer, but if someone out there gets a chance to see their show, let me know how it sounds!

I've posted a score excerpt and recording for Suite Dreams. It opens and ends very quietly, so if you don't hear anything at first, turn up the volume.

Took a quick trip to Denton and Dallas this weekend. The Lone Star Wind Orchestra is recording their first CD this weekend, and I'm lucky enough to be on it! Last night, they spent a solid 2 hours on Radiant Joy, and I have to say the group is *very* good. They've been going all weekend, and this was at the end of a long day of recording, and they still managed to be radiantly joyful the...

Ok, so I'm way behind in blogging, AGAIN. As soon as I returned from Buffalo (via a last-minute flight to Chicago in order to drive from there to East Lansing with 2 Austrian parents in tow, but that's a whole other story), I had to pack up everything from my house in Bowling Green to drive it all to Arkansas for summer storage, before heading to Austria for the summer. Of course, none of...

...where the Clarence HS Symphonic Band, Chorus, and Orchestra are performing the original version of A Million Suns at Midnight on Thursday night at Kleinhans Music Hall. I hear the hall is beautiful, and I'm really excited to hear this piece again - I believe it was 2002 the last time someone performed it. Both versions require large forces (the original, SATB chorus, band, and string...

Just returned from several days in Jasper, Indiana, where James Goodhue and the rather extraordinary Jasper High School band premiered my new work, Suite Dreams, and followed that up with a performance of Monkey.

The premiere went very well, and I'm extremely excited by the new piece. It went through a major round of revisions in the process, including the addition of humming by most of the...

This past Saturday night, Bruce Moss and the Bowling Green Wind Symphony presented a concert featuring several of my works, including the parody pieces and their corresponding originals. I think I occupied over 50% of the concert, which is a bizarre (and wonderful) feeling. The only difficult thing in this situation is that, instead of just getting nervous once, it was a repeated...

I neglected to take any pictures while I was there, but the St. Charles East HS Wind Ensemble did a fine job with Bloom and Radiant Joy. I conducted Bloom, and even though I totally got lost for two or three bars (and did the round "I'm lost" pattern until I got back on the horse), they played right on through without the slightest hiccup. I really enjoyed conducting the group, but also...

Today, I made the drive to St. Charles, IL through the relentless rain (with some sludgy ice mixed in over the western portion of Indiana), and am happy to finally be firmly ensconced in the Holiday Inn Express. Looking forward to tomorrow's rehearsals and concert. Probably should run through Bloom again... you'd think I'd know my music in detail, but I actually prefer to forget many of those...

I'm off to St. Charles, IL, where Jim Kull and the STCE HS Wind Ensemble will perform Radiant Joy and Bloom. I get to conduct the latter (which reminds me, I need to pack my baton and score...).

Looks like a fun 5-hour drive through snow and rain to the Chicago area tomorrow. Looking forward to being there, but not the trip itself...