I had more performances than I was expecting last weekend – six in all. As well as He Calls and Three Short Stories, there were performances of Magnificat and The Dawn is Not Distant (by Ariose Women’s Choir) as well as two piano quartets (i.e. two pianos, eight hands), entitled Sunshine on Saturday and The Mountains of Gold, by students in Grande Prairie AB.

The fun never stops in Grande Prairie, actually. In that very same city on May 3rd and 5th, the short film Sophia (directed by Rory Mells) will be shown at the Reel Shorts Film Festival. A portion of my choral work Candles is included in the soundtrack.

In this neck of the woods, there is a recital of student compositions coming up at the Opus Academy in Orleans, at which I’m presenting adjudications and sharing some thoughts about composing. These events are always inspiring for me and I look forward to hearing all the new music!

UPDATE: In BC, the Lions Gate Sinfonia and the South Fraser Branch of the BCRMTA have joined forces to put on a “Concerto Stars” concert on May 12th in which piano students have the opportunity to perform with the orchestra. One of the pieces on the programme is my composition Dream Journey.

I’ve got two performances happening this month:

1)      In Ottawa, the St. Luke’s Recital Series will present a concert by Trillium on April 7th. They will be playing works from Bach to the present day, the most recent being my Trio for flute, cello and piano.

2)      In Edmonton, Ariose Women’s Choir will be premiering He Calls, a piece that I wrote in December and January, at their spring concert on April 27th. The piece was commissioned to honour the memory of a former choir member. It’s for unaccompanied SSAA and lasts about seven minutes.

UPDATE: I just learned of another performance: Thee Short Stories for two guitars and violin will be performed at Ottawa University on April 28th as part of a master’s recital programme. By the way, there’s now a video of the Tangere Trio’s recent performance of this on YouTube.

I forgot to mention last month that my Three Cummings Settings for high voice and piano were featured in an article in the January/February issue of the Journal of Singing (published by NATS). The article, entitled “Longing for the voice: song settings of E. E. Cummings”, was penned by soprano Eileen Strempel, who is currently preparing to record settings of Cummings’s poetry by several composers for a CD that will be released later this year. Several of the settings mentioned in the article, including mine, are available from Graphite Publishing.

A slowed-down recording of my composition Candles (for unaccompanied SSAATTBB chorus) turned out to be sufficiently creepy to warrant a place in the soundtrack of Sophia, a short film by Alberta-based director Rory Mells. The first screening of Sophia happened on February 28th; I’m hoping it will reach a theatre near me soon because (due to some sort of copyright restriction I assume) I’m not allowed to have a copy of it yet.

And it seems that RCM’s Violin Series 2013 will be available for purchase some time in the next few weeks. This series includes several of my compositions from Costume Party and Get Fiddlin’ (and possibly some arrangements as well – I never know until I actually see the books), as well as some pieces from my new intermediate violin collection called Fall Fair (published by Frederick Harris Music).

This one happens this very night at a concert put on by the Ottawa Guitar Society, featuring “classical, jazz, Brazilian music, and everything in between”. It’s the first complete performance of Three Short Stories for two guitars and violin (the performance in December included only the first two pieces). These pieces lack the emotional outpouring of some of the other pieces I’ve written recently – they’re closer to the “sitting in a café watching the world go by” kind of music. Is this a good thing? I have no idea.

Yep, one: one for the first month of this fine year, a month in which one performance will happen. It will happen here in Ottawa, at a private Musical Arts Club concert featuring (among others) Trillium, an ensemble consisting of flute, cello, and piano (a flute trio, I suppose). They will be premiering a four-movement work that they commissioned, just called Trio. I wrote it in August and it turned out quite well, considering that it was delivered from the musical unknown in miniscule, tedious, stubborn little pieces that needed to be, well, kneaded, sometimes for days, into some kind of palatable and functioning form.

And that’s the lot - a bit deflating after last month’s spate of far-flung activity, but that’s January for you. This is the time of year when I examine my life and wonder whether I’m still a composer. I think I am.

There are lots of exciting events lined up this month: my birthday, my husband’s birthday, the end of the world, Christmas, and at least eleven performances – three in Ottawa and the rest in a variety of interesting places. I will be in attendance for three of them. I wish I could attend them all, but some are a bit far afield:

December 1^st and 11^th: Symphony Nova Scotia will be performing my Fantasia on Coventry Carol in Halifax NS;

December 2^nd and 8^th: the Northwest Chamber Chorus will perform the Magnificat in Seattle WA;

December 3^rd in the afternoon: three music students at the University of Ottawa will give the premiere performance of my Three Short Stories for two guitars and violin (I’ll attend this one);

December 3^rd in the evening: the Musica Viva Singers will sing the Magnificat in Ottawa (I’ll attend this one too);

December 9^th: Bytown Voices will sing the Magnificat in Ottawa (I wish I could attend this one, but I’ll be out of town – read on);

Also on December 9^th: Dulcisono Women’s Choir of Thunder Bay will premiere a piece that they commissioned entitled Phantoms, for SSAA chorus with pedal harp (I’m attending this one! I caught a very brief glimpse of Thunder Bay while moving to Ottawa from Alberta, so it will be nice to go back and find out more about what seemed to be a very beautiful part of the world);

December 14^th and 15^th: in what is probably my Northwest Territories debut, the Magnificat will be performed by Aurora Chorealis in Yellowknife;

December 15^th: a 20-minute musical theatre work entitled Wash of Purple (libretto by Royce Vavrek) will be premiered in New York City, starring soprano Amelia Watkins.

In contrast to last month and next month, there aren’t very many performances this month: three to be exact, and they all happen in as many days. The premiere of my Concerto for Piano Duet (on November 3rd) is sandwiched between two performances of In Flanders Fields (on the 2nd and 4th) by Cantus.

The concerto is being premiered here in Ottawa by pianists Catherine Donkin and Amélie Langlois with the Ottawa Chamber Orchestra, at Orleans United Church. I started writing this piece in 2009 and reworked about half of it in 2012 – it’s highly unusual for me to go back to something I’ve finished and rewrite large portions of it, but in this case it seemed necessary and I’m glad I did it.

We’re approaching Magnificat season, so I suspect that there will also be a few Mag performances this month. If you hear (or hear of) any, please let me know! I don’t have any reliable way of finding these things out for myself, so I do appreciate it when people take the time to tell me about performances.

UPDATE: Seattle Pro Musica has released a new CD entitled Horizons, which includes the Magnificat. It’s available at CDBaby.

UPDATE 2: The Mag has also made it on to San Francisco-based  WomenSing‘s latest CD entitled Songs from the Old and New World.

UPDATE 3: I’m also going to throw in the good news that Symphony Nova Scotia will present the Canadian premiere of my Fantasia on Coventry Carol in Halifax on November 30th. They’ll be performing this piece a couple of times in December as well.

But before that, let’s hear it for the BCRMTA! I just returned to Ottawa from a weekend in Abbotsford BC, where I was giving a presentation and some workshops at the fantastic and surprise-filled BCRMTA Convention. It was great to meet teachers over on that end of the country, and nice to see the place again (I hadn’t been to BC for close to a decade). I was also treated to a performance of my composition Nocturne, a little one-movement piano trio that I wrote for intermediate students a few years ago.

And now for my salute to the States: quite a lot goes on down there, or so I’m told, and occasionally my music is included in some way. Here’s what I know…

Performances: soprano Eileen Strempel and pianist Sylvie Beaudette will be performing the Three Cummings Settings in Elizabethtown NY on the 20th and 21st, and again in Florence SC on the 28th. Meanwhile, Cantus, a professional men’s choir based in Minneapolis MN, will be performing the TTBB version of In Flanders Fields at concerts in various locations in Minnesota on the 25th, 27th, and 28th (and a few in November too). And I just found out that the Texas-based marimba/piano duo Well-Tempered Keyboards will be performing Album of Old Photographs in Waco TX on the 14th and Nacogdoches TX on the 28th.

Recordings: I just found out about a recording of In Paradisum by the 2012 Oregon All-State Choir (directed by Dr. Eugene Rogers). It’s available on iTunes. Also, Well-Tempered Keyboards has put recordings of the Nocturnes that I composed for them on their myspace page (these are not related to the Nocturne mentioned earlier). And finally, I was delighted to find that the University of Iowa Piano Pedagogy Video Recording Project has recorded all the pieces in Legends and Lore. Head over to YouTube to see and hear Dr. Alan Huckleberry’s interpretations of them (I like them all, but I think Witches and Wizards is my favourite).

Oh, hello September. Aren’t you here a little…early? Well, never mind – there’s lots to do so we may as well get started now. What’s going on this month, you ask? Teaching starts up again tomorrow, of course, and Tonic Tutor is having its annual promotion – anyone with a free account has access to all the games and features for all of this month. If you’re curious, why not take a look? We’re adding four new games and a mixed bag of exciting new features and improvements, all of which will keep both of us very busy. I’ve also been invited as a clinician to the BCRMTA Convention in Abbotsford, B.C. on the 29th: I’ll be giving a chamber workshop, a couple of intermediate piano masterclasses, and a session entitled Vitalizing Craftsmanship through Creativity, which is all about making it possible for students to learn by creating (which I think is the only way that I ever learn anything).

I don’t know of any performances this month, so in the absence of anything on that front I present to you my Rhyming Riddles, which I made last summer for a piano camp but never got a chance to use. You replace the boldfaced and italicized words with rhyming words so that the sentences make musical sense, as in the example:

EXAMPLE: The full-sized piano has 88 fleas: 52 bright ones and 36 slack ones.

The full-sized piano has 88 keys: 52 white ones and 36 black ones.

In 4/4, the shorter goat gets the treat.

2/2 is also known as gut slime.

Transposing means swaying in a different tree.

A triplet is me in the place of you.

Robert Schumann and his wife Clara were both well known in their lifetimes: he for biting music, and she for slaying it.

Forte means meowed. Piano means coughed.

A rondo is a musical storm with a recurring dream.

Music marked andante should be sprayed at a gawking face.

Alto means pie. Altissimo means cherry pie.

The key of B major has live harps. The key of C minor has free cats.

Volti subito means burn the stage at once.

Prima volta means the worst crime.

When you see the instruction da capo al fine, pray from the heart. When you get to the fine, send the geese.

Attacca means that the music must keep flowing without bopping.

There is no speeding zone in a natural minor scale.

Loco means weigh the smitten witch.

Fuoco means higher. Brio means bigger.

Pieces marked scherzo are trite and numerous.

An ostinato is a blaze that must be defeated many times.

If there is a rebel chef on the staff, the oats will generally be dry.

Trumpets, clarinets, and saxophones are finned instruments. Violins, harps, and guitars are winged instruments.

In a choir, the bass parts are sung by men who have no choices.

In a perfect cadence, the harmony progresses from prominent to chronic.

Triads consist of tree goats that can be tracked in herds.

A dot adds extra grime to a coat or vest.

It’s been a very long time since my last update, but now that my site has just been given a facelift (thanks to William Ratke) I thought it might be an appropriate time to get things going again. A few things have happened in the last six months (see below) and there are some exciting things brewing for the future. In the meantime, enjoy the new site, and don’t forget to report any performances of my music.

Performances:

January: The Bay of Rainbows and The Sea of Tranquility (1 piano 4 hands) in Ottawa; In Paradisum in Charlotte, NC

February: In Paradisum in Raleigh, NC

April: In Paradisum in Fort Worth, TX

May: Two Isaiah Settings (soprano, mezzo-soprano with piano) in Ottawa; Rainstorm (three-part children’s chorus with piano and optional percussion) in Cincinnati (this was the winning composition in the Cincinnati Children’s Choir competition); In Paradisum somewhere in the UK; Magnificat here in Ottawa and again in Seattle, WA; three piano quartets (Just 4 Fun, The Chromatic Factory, How beautiful is the rain) in Grande Prairie, AB

June: Three Cummings Settings (voice and piano), Quebec City; Realm of Endless Joy (SATB with piano and marimba) in Ottawa

Adjudicating: Junior piano at the Chatham Kiwanis Festival in April; Alberta Piano Teachers’ Association composition competition in June – congratulations to all the students!

Other news: Several pieces from Bass-Time Beginners are now included in exam syllabuses: AMEB (Australian Music Examination Board) syllabus and Great Britain’s Trinity College London syllabus.

The Royal Conservatory of Music  and The Achievement Program have created a new Voice Syllabus and accompanying books (Resonance – A Comprehensive Voice Series), complete with an accompaniment CD for each book. Included are eleven of my folk tune arrangements.

Three Cummings Settings will soon be available from Graphite Publishing.

A tiny little piece called Gentle Wind is included in the Northen Lights Primer II (Canadian National Conservatory of Music).

The Elektra Women’s Choir included the Magnificat on their latest CD, Pure Elektra.

In July I was one of several Composer Hosts at the annual Summer Sizzle Keyboard Kamp in Mount Forest, ON. I worked with eight young music students to create a group composition entitled Sunshine Sizzle which they then performed at the final concert of the three-day event.