Steven Bryant

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!

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...