Steven Bryant

Thanksgiving was a day of learning: my mother and brother and I visited relatives down in Murfreesboro, AR, where my father grew up. This is waaaay out there on a farm in the backwoods of Arkansas. I learned how to mix feed for the cattle (2:1 ratio of corn meal to hay), checked out the chicken coop (ca. 9000 hens and 4000 roosters all in one long building is quite a sight), picked black...

(I'd been undecided as to whether to do this. I'm a rather private person, and I don't tend to post about my personal life here. This is too fundamentally important to go unmarked.)

"Press on: Nothing in the world can take the place of perseverance. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessul men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will...

A week overdue, but at long last (and I know you've all* awaited this moment, barely able to function in the interim), here's the skinny on my trip to the Bowling Green New Music and Art Festival.

* All = the 2 or 3 people patient enough to check this blog even though it changes at a glacial pace

I arrived Friday afternoon, just in time for a run-through of "Loose Id for Orchestra" with the...

Eric convinced me. So, go check it out if you wish. I posted Hummingbrrd and Veo Hex, which are also on this site, but there's the added bonus of my piece Dusk available over there. You can only hear it there (or on the BCM: Men of Industry CD, which you already own, right?!?)

Go take a listen, and say 'howdy' if you have a moment!

October 2005 marks 10 years since I first put up a website. It wasn't stevenbryant.com back then, it was my student webspace on the UNT webserver, of course, but I'm still going to count it.

Back then, there were no mp3s, and I posted low-quality, mono, 8-bit, 15-second clips of Loose Id for Brass Quintet and the original Chester Leaps In, since that was about all I had. The website was also...

I'll be a guest composer at the New Music and Art Festival at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio at the end of October. The Wind Ensemble, under Bruce Moss, will be performing all of Alchemy in Silent Spaces, and the orchestra, under Emily Freeman Brown, will be performing Loose Id for Orchestra on Saturday, October 29th. I'm particularly excited to hear Loose Id again -...

It's official, The Juilliard Orchestra, under the amazing James DePreist, will give the world premiere of the orchestra version of Alchemy in Silent Spaces in May, 2006!

I'm working on the arrangement this Fall. The first and third movements will be very similar to the wind version, but I'm considering rewriting the second movement from scratch, and using only string orchestra, solo flute, and...

Spent the weekend painting the core of the house. Almost finished. We're going with "Mexican Feather Grass" for the living and dining rooms, which you'll see below. It's a muted "Pottery Barn" green - very classy. The molding and trim is all some sort of slightly eggshell off-white. Granary white or something. It works. House already looks ten million times better.

Here are the test...

This past weekend, Scott Stewart (commissioner of Rise for band) and the Atlanta Youth Wind Symphony visited New York to perform at Carnegie Hall. On Friday, they came by Juilliard and gave an extra concert on the Lincoln Center Plaza, and I was around to hang out with the group for a little while. I have to say the band had great presence and intonation, especially for playing outside in the...

Went out walking this morning with the camera, and headed down to the nearby "Old Mill" which is mildly famous for appearing in the opening credits of "Gone With the Wind". It was built in 1933 to capture the feeling of an abandoned mill from the 1800s. It's a beautiful spot in the midst of North Little Rock (the whole area here (Lakewood) is atypical of the endless sprawl of American...

Today, my father, brother, and I drove down to Murfreesboro, Arkansas (where my dad grew up, and home to the only diamond mine in North America) to take some pictures and see some relatives. We had lunch at the "Squat and Gobble" BBQ restaurant. I ordered ribs, not realizing just how freaking BIG they would be. I was too busy wrestling them to the ground to get a picture (I'm no match for...

Last night, I had the pleasure of conducting "Dusk" with the Livingston High School Wind Symphony. We finally had the entire band there (having a trombone section definitely helps!), and they did a great job with the piece. I think we woke some people up with that climax section!

A big "thank you" to Mike Jedwabnik, the LHS Band Boosters, and the Wind Symphony for inviting me out and letting...