Steven Bryant

(posting from a fogged-in Duluth airport, where I await a bus to Minneapolis since my 7am flight (and all flights) in and out of Duluth are not happening...)

The remainder of the weekend here in Duluth was great. Saturday (Day 2) the two High School Honor bands rehearsed in the morning, and we gave the concerts in the afternoon. At the 1pm dress, Rich Mowers (director of the Maroon Band) and I...

Last night we had the first of three concerts this weekend here in Duluth, MN. I had the pleasure of conducting Chester Leaps In and Wings That Work with the Twin Ports Wind Orchestra on the first half of the concert, followed by Suite Dreams with the UMD Symphonic Band on the second half. I was particularly happy to do Wings That Work, since this is the first time I've heard the work since...

This afternoon I'll be on my way to WMEA in Madison, WI, where the Univ. MN Duluth Wind Ensemble under Mark Whitlock will perform Suite Dreams on Thursday morning at 11:30. Immediately after that, I hop on the bus with the UMD band and we drive six hours up to Duluth, where I'll spend Thurs. night through Monday morning in residence at the Twin Ports WInd Festival. I'll be conducting...

The Ecstatic Waters performance yesterday here at UT went really well. I'm still a bit stunned by it. We had one problem with feedback in the Bassoon mics (same thing that happened at Bowling Green - in the same place I think), which is weird in that it never happened in any rehearsals, but has now happened in both performances. Something to figure out for the future. Other than that,...

Ecstatic Waters will be webcast live from the University of Texas Austin Wind Ensemble concert on Sunday, Oct. 26th.

You can listen here (it's only a LIVE webcast - it will NOT be archived online):

http://winds.music.utexas.edu/eventDetails.aspx?id=9525

DATE AND TIME:
4:00 PM CST, Oct. 26th, 2008

Got back yesterday morning from Bowling Green, and headed straight from the airport to rehearsal at UT for this Sunday's concert. More about that shortly.

It was great to be back in BG - sort of a second home to me after spending a year in residence there, and this was my third time at their New Music Festival they hold every October. The premiere was a success, and John Harbison, even came up...

After rehearsal today at UT, I'm off to Bowling Green State Univ. for the premiere this Thursday night of Ecstatic Waters, and then back here immediately for the second performance on Sunday! Not sure I'll be taking many pictures - I have some button-pressing I have to do for the piece...

Announcing a new consortium by world-class cellist Caroline Stinson, for cello and orchestral winds. Caroline is an extremely versatile and truly fantastic performer - she's toured with Bang on a Can, is a member of the cello quartet CELLO, was personally invited by Pierre Boulez to work with him as part of an exchange between Lincoln Center and the Lucerne Festival on Elliott Carter's Triple...

Just got out of rehearsal for Ecstatic Waters - this is the first time we've done the whole piece...and it's going to work like gangbusters. This is also the first time we had the mics on the clarinet and bassoons, which is going to be quite cool. The clarinet sounds exactly like I'd hoped, and once we get the tempo locked in at exactly 60 bpm, the bassoons will work great.

I'll have real...

I have a fair amount of travel coming up this year, so thought I'd post it in case anyone reading this is in the area for any of these and wants to come to a concert and say 'howdy.'


10/21 - 10/24: Bowling Green, OH - premiere of Ecstatic Waters (10/23) - Bruce Moss, BGSU Wind Ensemble

10/26: Austin, TX - performance of Ecstatic Waters - Jerry Junkin, UT Wind Ensemble (not technically travel...

...sort of.

Just found out the VCU (Virginia Commonwealth Univ.) Sym. Wind Ensemble will do Radiant Joy tonight, and are also featuring guest artist (trumpeter) Allen Vizzutti on the program. Cool. Will probably be a worthwhile show - if you're in Richmond, VA, go!

Tonight at 8pm. Here's the info. Live web stream at 8:00PM EST at www.themusicpage.com.

Loki is over for a visit for a few days. Yesterday, he came face to face with a potential playmate (and by playmate, I mean "meal"):



Yes, I've devolved to cat-blogging. But he is cute.

Back to work on tweaking the electronics tracks for Ecstatic Waters. Maybe Loki can help...