Hilarious Commercial Right Up My Alley

If you're a choir nerd and a sound geek, you'll love this. P.S. Don't adjust your volume.



P.P.S. Name that tune . . .

Radiohead at the Grammy's

I love Radiohead (my favorite album is Kid A) and I saw them perform on the Grammy's with the USC Marching Band. I'm not a huge fan of marching bands, but this was flippin' brilliant. Here's the video:



Congrats Radiohead on the two Grammys!

Winter Choirfest and "Leonardo Dreams"

I've been waiting for a while to talk about this concert for a little because it was really good. Well, actually, it's because I'm lazy, but let's not play the blame game. Basically this is a concert where all the choirs get together and sing in the Provo Tabernacle. Some of the highlights for me were:

- Concert Choir singing "I Will Lift Up Mine Eyes," and "The Battle of Jericho."

- Men's Chorus singing "El Yivneh Halgali."

- Woman's Chorus singing "We Are Pilgrims on a Journey" by Jared Oaks.

The were all spectacular.

BYU Singers sang three pieces: "Heartland" by Gary Fry and "Sure on this Shining Night" by Morten Lauridsen, but our masterpiece was "Leonardo Dreams of his Flying Machine" by Eric Whitacre. And it was breathtaking.

The idea behind this piece was to make a motion picture soundtrack to Leonardo da Vinci's dreams about flight. Eric Whitacre uses an amazing mix of old and new as he writes in his own style and quotes from Monteverdi's madrigals and imitative counterpoint. The poet, Charles Anthony Silvestri also takes Italian fragments from Leonardo's own notebooks about flight and sprinkles them throughout his own text. The second half of the piece is simply called "The Flight," where Leonardo "takes one last breath and leaps." The choir then starts to make sounds like a Renaissance engine with noisy motors, gears, propellors and wind. The song then ends with Leonardo flying away into the distance. It's an incredibly fun song to sing.

At first I didn't really get into this song that much, until our director, Dr. Staheli told us that he considers this piece to be sacred music. It's not really about Leonardo or a flying machine, it's about all of us and our dreams, visions and aspirations. It's about the dreams that we fear to actually live, but haunts us to the extent that we just can't live with out it. When you take that perspective, this song is no longer a gimmick, but a truly spiritual piece with a strong message that grabs the listener and doesn't let go. The feeling of the music and text is almost mercurial. We revel in the thoughts of flying, frightened by the fear of failure and then tortured to return again to our contemplations. We come to the point where Leonardo "steels himself" on the point of no return and jumps into the unknown, only to find that he grows wings on the way down. "The triumph of a human being ascending in the dreaming of a mortal man."

Because of these insights, this piece has taken on a completely new role in my life. It means so much to me now. And everytime I start to fear what I can do in my life, I'm reminded that what I need to do is "take one last breath and leap."

I'll post a recording for you all once I get my hands on one.

Rehearsing Galilee

So, tonight I rehearsed "Memories of Galilee" with my choir and it was amazing! They went all the way through the second verse and chorus, and it worked out so well. They just took it and ran with it. It's so exciting for me as a composer to hear people get excited about my work and to hear them really sing it with heart. I can't wait to hear the whole thing! I'll probably post a recording or two.

One of my pieces . . . Memories of Galilee

So . . . I've never actually posted any of my sheet music up here. Or even talked about it much. Here's a piece that I've been working on since 07/06. Yeah, it's been a long time.

This is basically an arrangement of a hymn by H.R. Palmer with words by Robert Morris. Mr. Morris wrote the words while on the banks of Galilee. It's gone by a few other titles such as "Each Cooing Dove," and "O Galilee," but I've learned that the original title was "Memories of Galilee."

I was learning a lot when I arranged this (still am), and I've spent nearly two years polishing it. I think It's finally ready, and I've started rehearsing this with the chamber choir I conduct. I'm really excited.

So here you are. This is page 4:

Research? Really?

I have this pet peeve, people throwing around the word "research" like it means nothing. I constantly hear people saying, "I did some research on this or on that," when really all they mean is "I googled it." When people tell me they've researched something, I'm so tempted to say back, "Really? Are you sure you didn't just glean that from Wikipedia?" (P.S. I love Wikipedia)

Now that I know what research actually is I don't throw that word around anymore. Spending hours pouring over a stack of books about whatever searching for answers. I've done this many times till my eyes and brain hurt. My sister also does research in a laboratory constantly doing experiment after experiment trying to find the results she wants. These are examples of research.

So the next time you're tempted to throw around the word "research," ask yourself, did you really research it, or did you just google it?

New Laptop!

I'm writing this entry on my brand new MacBook Pro! I got it yesterday, but only took it out of the box today. I wanted enough time to really set it up, plus I was totally intimidated by its ultra-hot looks. It's like rilly hot!

It's got some great features on it besides being super fast. This is my first step into the laptop world so I'm still getting used to having everything all in one place and all compact and stuff. I don't have all my files yet, but that'll all work itself out. I've already put Sibelius on here and it runs sooooooo much faster. I can't wait to see how this thing handles Pro Tools and Final Cut!