"Midnight Clear" Premieres TONIGHT!

Hey everyone! Tonight is the night! BYU Singers will premiere me piece, "It Came upon the Midnight Clear," to THREE SOLD OUT SHOWS! In addition to three packed concert halls worth of people, the show will be broadcast live Saturday Night (Dec. 5th) on Classical 89. You can listen to it streaming online here. If you can't tell, I'm super excited. I just really hope that my head doesn't explode during the performance.

In this last week of rehearsals it's really started to come together really well. It's sounding amazing. I could not have asked for a better ensemble or a better conductor. This is, literally, a dream come true.

I'll post a recording as soon as I get one. Wish us luck!

I Can't Stop Watching These!

There's nothing quite as exciting as a performance of "Glitter and Be Gay," by Leonard Bernstein from his opera Candide. I found these two performance which are both really quite stunning in their own right and yet so very different from one another. The first one is Natalie Dessay (whose English is surprisingly accurate) and the second one is Kristin Chenoweth which is absolutely hilarious. It's amazing what the human voice can do.

Rehearsing "Midnight Clear"

I thought I'd give an update on how we're doing on "It Came upon the Midnight Clear."

Rehearsing my piece with BYU Singers has been a most interesting, and unusual experience. I am so glad Dr. Staheli is at the helm for this piece. He's put in a lot of time preparing to give the best interpretation he can. He is doing exactly what I want him to do with it. It's almost creepy how he'll say something about the piece or my intention as a composer without any sort of previous conversation, and he'll be spot on.

It's so exciting to see the way he's rehearsing it so carefully the same way he would any other piece of music. He's really paying close attention to the smallest details. I'm really flattered and almost a little embarrassed that we're taking so much time to rehearse it. It certainly has its challenges, but Dr. Staheli is relentless in making sure that we learn and perform it correctly.

One of the most rewarding moments for me as a composer has been to take this piece to Dr. Staheli and Prof. Hall and receiving feedback. When they started talking about all the images they had in their mind while listening to the piece I smiled because it's the same images I had in my mind when I composed it. Another rewarding moment is to catch people singing or whistling the piece randomly. Definitely a rewarding moment.

I'm so excited to have people here this in our concert! I'll post a recording as soon as I get one.

Two Recent Concerts (Full of British Sp'rit)

First, BYU Singers with the King's Singers.

We've had the singular priviledge of performing with such an outstanding ensemble. They are world class and yet so friendly. We had the opportunity to sing three songs with them: "High Flight," and "A Thanksgiving," by Bob Chilcott and "The Stolen Child," by Eric Whitacre. All of them were written for the King's Singers plus an accompanying choir and are exquisitely written pieces. If I had to pick a favorite, it would probably have to be "High Flight." These words are coupled with brilliant aleatoric passages contrasted with robust phrasing. There's a moment at the beginning when we've opened with these indeterminate constructs and then the tenor and two countertenors come in with this smooth legato line. Wow! It was thrilling from beginning to end.

The most difficult part about was how little rehearsal time we got. We had a half hour before the concert at best and then we sang with them. They are super busy. It's so refreshing to be so well prepared to tackle anything. It was really cool to talk with them after about how they do what they do. I talked for a bit with Philip Lawson about how they audition new members into the group. I learned they ask about Football (soccer) teams they support (Lawson is a Chealsea fan! Yeah!). Talked with Stephen Connolly for a bit about singing bass. Later, I was in the Apple Store up in Salt Lake and bumped into David Hurley. Got to tell him how singing with them exceeded all our expectations and that it was a dream come true for many of us. I highly recommend singing with them.

Second, BYU Singers and Concert Choir.

We just had our concert last night. We have a format for this concert that I just really love. Because we love listening to each other, when one choir is singing, the other choir sits on stage listening to them. It's great, because we get to listen and support each other in a very present sort of way. I really enjoy it! This concert was an all British program. Singers got to do a set of three Renaissance motets and four Purcell pieces from his operas as follows:

"Dum Transisset Sabbatum" by John Taverner
"O Lord, Give thy Holy Sp'rit" by Thomas Tallis
"Alleluia! Congnoverunt Discipuli" by William Byrd

"Around We Pace," from The Tempest
"Hush, No More, Be Silent," from The Fairy Queen
"See, We Assemble," from King Arthur
"With Drooping Wings," from Dido and Aenus

All were so much fun to sing, and Dr. Staheli did a really good job of making each piece really accessible to the audience. Some people told me that the Taverner was their favorite (kinda surprising!).

Concert Choir sang three pieces by Edward Elgar and the "Magnificat" by Finzi. The Magnificat was really stunning and a joy to listen to. I'm sure they've been working so hard on it, and what a pay off. It was a really moving performance.

Together we sang "Jerusalem," "Lux Aeterna" by Edward Elgar (an arrangement of the Nimrod theme from the Enigma Variations), "I Sat Down Under His Shadow," and an arrangement of the Tallis Cannon. Overall, it was a remarkable night we lots of great music and great singing. I love singing with these ensembles. It's such a joy in my life. When school starts to become a burden, and life in general seems like it's spinning down the crapper, singing with these groups keeps me going. It becomes a buoying force in my life.

Big Announcement: BYU Singers Premieres My Composition for Christmas

That's right! I composed a piece that the Brigham Young University Singers will be premiering at our Christmas Concert this December.

It's the piece I composed called, "It Came upon the Midnight Clear." Yes, it's the same text that we're all familiar with but with completely different music. Different melodies, different harmonies, different rhythms (although one is the same).

It composed it back in July. Don't ask my why I was writing Christmas music back in July, but I was. I composed it in a single afternoon (which doesn't usually happen . . . ever) and have spent some time polishing it up and making sure that it is represented in the best possible way. I used some impressionist and post-impressionist techniques in this piece, which is not all that new of a thing for me. Quartal harmonies, secundal harmonies, bi-chordalism (to some extent), pandiatonicism (to some extent), planing, ninth chords and the pentatonic scale. This piece is kind of a different direction than I've had in the past. Less function, more color and thicker textures. I'm not sure if this is the direction I'll take my compositions in, but it's a possibility. I know I talked about counterpoint versus stacked chords in a previous blog, but I just couldn't help myself.

In one of my previous posts I said, "Not sure when I'll actually hear this, but it's still fun to write. Maybe someday." Well, that day is soon coming! When I took it to Dr. Staheli, he really liked it and asked if I would promise it to the BYU Singers. I just about died. This is a dream come true: to write music for this incredible ensemble and have their incredible director interpret it. I'm over the flippin' moon. Dr. Staheli has been studying it and we're going to start rehearsing after our November Concert. I am beyond excited! Writing music is fun (sometimes painful), but hearing it is unbelievably rewarding.

Tickets for the Christmas concert go on sale tomorrow (November 2nd), and typically sell out very fast. Please come if you can. Here's page one from the piece that I posted a while back, it's actually different now, but my computer is in the shop so I don't have the true updated version. This'll do for now. Once I get a recording, I'll post it here.

Update: I finally got my laptop back! Here's the real page one with changes:

Big Announcement Coming Soon . . .

Hey everybody,

Watch this space in the next couple of days because I'm making a HUGE announcement soon. At least, I think it's huge. It's a big deal for me. I've kept it under wraps since August.

So yeah, get ready, and such.

Bryce Canyon and Zion National Park

A few weekends ago, my sister invited me to spend the weekend in Brian Head with her husband and in-laws. Our weekend itinerary included Bryce Canyon and Zion National Park, which are both in fairly close driving distance. I had been to Arches National Park earlier this year and absolutely loved it. It was an incredible journey for me, almost a pilgrimage (if that's a safe word to use). On this trip, I was, again, pretty amazed by what I saw.

In Bryce Canyon we hiked down from Bryce point into the base of the canyon and all around and through the hoodoos (yes, that's their proper name) through the forests and back up to Sunrise point. It was a long hike but very much worth it. My sister and her husband were great company walking through all these amazing places. The major dilemma the entire time was "I can't take my eyes off this gorgeous landscape . . . but I'm on a rocky trail next to a sheer drop." This was typical most of the way up and down. Bryce was much more mild to hike here in October then say Arches in July, but I'm really glad we brought a lot of water because I got thirsty pretty fast.

I was reminded very much about Oliver Messiaen when he visited Bryce Canyon. He was so taken by the landscape that he used some local birdsong he dictated and wrote a piece called "Des canyons aux étoiles… (From the Canyons to the stars...)" Messiaen's music was driven by color a great deal. Seeing Bryce Canyon for the first time, I can understand why he, specifically, was moved enough to visit and dictate. The orange and red hoodoos against the green forest against the blue sky. It's much better in person than in these photos. I need to listen to that piece. I haven't found Messiaen's music to be very accessible, but after visiting, I had a great desire to buy a recording.

(Here's a hint for anyway who wants to hike in Bryce Canyon. Bring two cars (with two drivers) park one car at Sunrise point and another car at Bryce point and hike from one spot to the other. Then when you're done, just drive back to the other car and go home. I think there are shuttle services, but it's way more convenient if you do it yourself.)

The next day, after Bryce, we went down to Zion National Park. We got off I-15 and travelled along the Virgin River till we got to the mouth of the canyon. Now, Arches is amazing, Bryce is incredible, but Zion . . . there's something truly breathtaking about Zion. Most of the trip in I was speechless. I've never been so taken by a gorgeous landscape before. They do everything by shuttle now, which is kinda of a shame, but it's a good service so I don't mind that much. We drove past the different "temples" and "courts" up the canyon that got their names from their geological formations.

Our goal for this trip was to hike Angel's Landing. I've heard about this hike before, but only that it exists and that it's a good one. My sister and her husband told me that the first part is probably the hardest. The whole thing was pretty hard I think, except for "refrigerator canyon." We joke that the reason it's called "refrigerator canyon" is because it's been littered with refrigerators formally owned by greenie/treehugger/granola-munching/leaf-licking hippies.

When we got to "the saddle," I thought, "well that wasn't too bad, I could do that any day!" In fact, when we got to the saddle and saw how high were were I made the comment, "you know, it's moments like these when you say to yourself, 'dang, I'm so awesome.'" Then they showed me how far we had to go still. My heart sank with terror. It wasn't how far we had to go, or how high we had to climb. No, it was the sheer drops on either side of the trail. I turned to my sister and said, "so I have I mentioned that I'm kinda/sorta/a little/maybe/VERY AFRAID OF HEIGHTS!" I guess not. They provide a chain for you to hold on to (for dear life) at certain points. Even if I didn't need the chain, I held on like my life was on the line. I wouldn't say I overcame my fear, but definitely looked it strait in the eye and told it it's ugly.

Believe it or not, I made it to the very top and was greatly rewarded. I've never seen a view like that in my life. Yes, many people do a good job of taking pictures, but they don't do it any justice. Angel's Landing is a name very well suited. To me, hiking Angel's Landing and seeing that view was a very sacred experience for me. It wasn't the most sacred experience, but definitely one to be remembered. The whole place felt like a "temple" of nature. It some moments, I didn't want to speak for fear of disturbing the reverence of the place. Absolutely majestic. I highly recommend it.