Steven Bryant

I've been back in New York the past few weeks sorting things out. The big news: after almost a decade, first as a student, then as an employee, I'm leaving Juilliard! I'm leaving to spend more time composing, conducting, etc. Tuesday, Feb. 7th will be my final full day...pictures from the party that day will be forthcoming, if they're appropriate for public viewing... ;)

This week, I discovered sketches for all my old pieces (and I mean ALL). I keep everything, apparently, including old, crappy pop songs I tried to write in ninth grade. Those should be shredded. Anyway, I found some sketches for Monkey. Prompted by a recent thread on the BCM forum, I decided to scan some of these in and post them here. Note: these images average around 500k, and will...

It's currently 74 degrees. This is a beautiful day.

Happy New Year to everyone!

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...

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. ...

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...

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...

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?!?

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...

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...

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...

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!