I’m in the fourth week of living in Minnesota and I wish I could say I had started to settle into a routine but alas I’m in the midst of a job hunt after my hours were reduced by 75% on Tuesday at my now previous job. Keep your fingers crossed for me that I’m able to make something happen quickly.
But prior to this unexpected catastrophe I’ve engaged in some fantastic music here in the twin cities. The first weekend we got here we went to the Minnesota Orchestra for a concert that included Mendelssohn’s The HebridesOverture, James MacMillan’s Trombone Concerto, and Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5 in D minor. If you have never moved from living somewhere with an incredible orchestra (Baltimore Symphony) to being stuck in a place for years with a passable at best orchestra (Austin Symphony Orchestra followed by the North Carolina Symphony) then you’re a lucky individual indeed. To go to an orchestra concert where every ensemble member was playing at an incredibly high level after seven years of not having regular access to that kind of concert was an absolute revelation. The Minnesota Orchestra is top tier and even when playing a piece of music that is absolute garbage, looking at that trombone concert by James MacMillan, they still committed to every single note and played the absolute crap out of it. Also the Shostakovich is an absolute bop. I was literally bobbing my head along to the music and chuckling at some of the quite sarcastic military inspired references in the piece.
The next day we visited the Minnesota Zoo which was delightful. I have been to a lot of zoos over the years but not many in more northern climates. Rather than write about all the animals it feels like it makes more sense to just share some pictures. So enjoy!
The rest of week 2 went by reasonably uneventfully. We visited the University of Minnesota Arboretum which I may write more about another time. I reconnected with a few friends and went for walks on a few trails around the city. But the highlight was the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra concert we went to that weekend. Anthony McGill was in town to be the soloist with the orchestra and play two clarinet concertos including the Mozart which I had never gotten to hear live before. His playing was so gorgeous and it truly was everything you could ask for in a performance.
One of the most exciting things for me, especially considering my current state of unemployment, is how affordable and accessible the SPCO makes their concerts. They have multiple programs for discounted tickets and it’s really refreshing to be able to go to classical concerts at the highest professional level and not break the bank to get tickets. We’re actually going back to the Ordway Center in downtown St. Paul tonight to see the SPCO perform a program of Mozart, Wagner, and Haydn.
Well that’s that for my first couple of weeks in the twin cities. Moving forward you can expect posts about what I’m listening to, what I’m working on, and anything else I feel like writing about!
I’m officially living in the twin cities now! My partner and I moved into our apartment about two weeks ago and things are mostly set up at this point except for the fact that a piece of our bed was missing so we haven’t been able to set up the bed yet. That problem should be fixed tomorrow though!
The Journey
It was a long drive that we broke up over three days. We stopped for the first night in Ohio which I have to say was truly one of the saddest places I have ever driven through. As soon as we crossed into Ohio the roads were terrible and it started raining, just bad vibes all around. But the second day we stopped in Illinois with a friend who we were meeting in person for the first time. It was absolutely fantastic and we got to meet some new friends as well!
The final day was a relatively easy drive from Illinois to St. Paul where we signed our lease and started moving into the new place! I’ll be sharing pictures of the apartment at a future date once we’re a little bit more setup but I think it’s going to be a lovely place to be for at least the next couple of years.
First Week In The Twin Cities
Settling into life in the twin cities has been a pretty smooth process so far. I wanted to make sure we hit the ground running so in that first week we went to IKEA on Tuesday to pick up some basic furnishings that we needed to make the apartment a functional space. I had never eaten at the cafe at IKEA before so it was an absolute necessity that I try as much food as possible!
Then on Wednesday we went to the Como Park Zoo and Conservatory which was absolutely fantastic. It’s a smaller local zoo that is in St. Paul and is free, but the highlight of that trip was the conservatory and Japanese garden. The conservatory was primarily full of stunning arrangements of ferns and flowers and it’s hard to really capture its beauty in photos.
The Japanese garden is the real crown jewel of this space though. It was born out of the relationship between St. Paul and it’s sister city, Nagasaki. It was designed by Masami Matsuda, a renowned landscape designer. If the beauty of the conservatory is hard to capture the Japanese Garden’s is almost impossible. There is also an amazing collection of Bonsai trees that I didn’t take pictures of and will have to save for a later time.
The first concert
On Thursday we headed to the Landmark Center in downtown St. Paul for a Courtroom Concert presented by the Schubert Club. The Courtroom Concerts are an amazing series of free concerts and I just so happened to know one of the performers for this concert. Clara Osowski and Ahmed Anzaldúa performed an absolutely glorious program of art songs that included two world premieres by local composers. The program was performed with incredible precision and clarity but not at the expense of the humanity and warmth required of the music. The opening piece was “Duérmete, niño lindo” by Mari Ésabel Valverde which was a gorgeous arrangement of a folksong from the San Luis Valley. The second piece was the first of two world premieres, “Flight” by Catherine Dalton. It was short set of three songs that portrayed a journey from a state of brokenness to renewal and recovery using imagery of a tattered feather and the flight of a bird. Despite at a few times being a little trite in its harmonic content and structure it was incredibly impactful for me and brought me to tears. The message of growing and overcoming hardship touched me in a way that was quite powerful. This was followed by two songs by Frederic Mompou which were both delicate and absolutely beautiful. The piano playing on these two songs was particularly bright and clean without sacrificing the warmth that the instrument was capable of. Next up was the second world premiere, “Rabbits Among Us” by Janika Vandervelde. This piece for me was a little less successful due to some redundancies of the form that was presented. The nature of the text setting had a two steps forward one step backwards quality that became incredibly predictable by the end of the song. That being said there were moments of it that were at times beautiful and interesting in their quirkiness. I just always want an art song to add up to more than the sum of its parts and this one didn’t quite get there. Nevertheless it was a perfectly good piece and a worthy contribution to the repertoire. The program was rounded out with a set of three songs by Brahms and a quick little piece by Gerald Finzi. Normally I’m not particularly keen on Brahms which I know is sacrilege but I just frequently find his music to be far too serious. However these songs were surprisingly delightful especially with the intensity of interpretation that Clara brought to the performance. The Finzi was a bit of a throwaway for me but it brought the program to light and pleasant close which felt completely appropriate for a concert at noon on a Thursday.
There are so many more adventures to unpack but for now that’s where I’m going to leave off. Stay tuned for my first trips to the Minnesota Orchestra, the Minnesota Zoo, and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra! It’s been a busy two weeks, but I’m back and ready to be inspired by my new surroundings.
After spending many more years in graduate school than I ever intended to and then spending a year recovering from all of it I am finally moving into the post-student phase of my life. I’m incredibly nervous about what the future holds for me, but I’m simultaneously excited for the possibility of what is out there.
In just over a week I will be moving to St. Paul, Minnesota with my partner Ryan to get a fresh start in a part of the country where there is support for local artists and musicians in a way that hasn’t existed anywhere else that I’ve lived. So as I get ready to move and hunt for a job in the twin cities here are some updates on my upcoming composition projects.
Fall 2023 Projects
Let Him Kiss Me
First up is a piece for Baritone, Violin, Cello, and Piano titled Let Him Kiss Me. This piece is the final work that I had started during my time in grad school. I have a sketch of the piece and am working on getting that turned into a functional score. It was intended to be the first movement of my dissertation before I left my PhD and finishing it will be a really cathartic moment for me. The text is a new English translation of the Song of Songs that has been slightly modified. While I have no intention of finishing the full piece I planned for my dissertation this movement is still very special to me.
First page of the sketch for Let Him Kiss Me - (2021)
Clarinet Quartet - Title TBD
My next project is a piece for clarinet quartet that I am writing for the Miami Clarinet Quartet. I’m incredibly excited to collaborate with these players as they are a wonderful bunch of people who include my clarinet professor from my undergraduate. I don’t have a lot to say about this piece yet but I was working on it last night and it is shaping up to me a lot more optimistic in its sound world than I was expecting it to be. I decided against sketching out this piece’s structure and instead to let it develop organically based on my own sense of pacing and personal taste. I can’t wait to share it once it’s further along.
Concert Band Arrangement - One Against The Other
One Against the Other is a piece for solo piano that I wrote a few years ago that has never been performed. I always intended to turn expand it and turn it into a piece for concert band but just hadn’t had the energy or motivation to do so until recently. This one is purely a passion project as I have no ensemble or performers lined up yet. Despite that fact I’m very excited about the piece and think it’s going to be an absolute banger. I’m anticipating that it will be a brisk 6 minutes and it has a really in your face vibe to it that I’m loving. I think the biggest struggle that I’m going to have with getting an ensemble to program it is that the key signature is one that people frequently find tricky and might make the piece look more intimidating than it actually is. Once I finish the piece I’ll be shopping it around to conductors that I know as well as local ensembles in the twin cities and surrounding areas with the hope of a premiere sometime during the 2024-25 concert season. Keep your fingers crossed for me because there is absolutely no guarantee that I will be able to get this piece picked up.
First page of the original piano score to One Against the Other - (2018)
The work of being a composer
Beyond my upcoming projects there is a lot of foundation building that I am working on. I’m in the early stages of reworking this website to set the stage for my renewed efforts on my career as a composer. I’ll be updating the music section of the website to actually have a page for every piece that I am choosing to list and make scores easily available for purchase. It is really important to me that I am continuing to build my online presence and increase the ease with which people can find and access my music.
I’m in the early stages of making score videos for all of my pieces. This is a fairly laborious process because I no longer have access to the Dorico files for some of my pieces and for my older pieces I’m re-engraving them in Dorico in order to have a unified aesthetic for my scores. If you want to support that work you can go subscribe to my YouTube channel. I’m also in the early stages of working on a few different video projects to explore my process. Additionally I am workshopping a possible educational series of videos about composing, what it entails, where to begin, how somebody might start composing even if they don’t have much of a music background. Work on that series will begin in earnest after I’ve moved but it may or may not ever see the light of day.
Beyond those things I am regularly checking for various opportunities related to composing from Calls for Scores and Competitions to Grants and Residencies. While I absolutely despise the culture of competitions that exists in music I know that if I don’t participate in the system I’ve already lost that game. That being said I will not be sending pieces to just any competition. I will not pay entry fees for competitions or calls for scores except in rare situations as I am unwilling to engage in the more exploitative elements of the competition culture.
I’m going to try to do at least a weekly blog post but I make absolutely no promises. Keep doing your best out there. Remember you are enough and nobody should ever be able to tell you otherwise.
