Placement exams are done at the Hartt School.  I won’t bore you with details, except to say that I think I did alright.  I do advising tomorrow afternoon, and I’ll find out more about my schedule.  Syllabi for the fall courses are also done.  I don’t mind doing syllabi…but it’s always interesting to me to [...]

Rico and I have arrived safely at our new place in Hartford, CT.  We drove 2800 miles, visited 11 states, several friends, two universities, and a bunch of restaurants we would never have even considered had we not been traversing the country in the trusty Scion.
Joey is also in one piece, although we probably shaved [...]

I’ve been nominated for an AriZoni award for my work on PVCC’s production of The Laramie Project.  I didn’t even know I’d been nominated.  Rico found out last night via Facebook, but I was already asleep and being nominated for the Valley’s most prestigious theatre award doesn’t make his “reasons to wake you up” list.  [...]

I spent the bulk of today sitting at the only table left in the house working on the Laramie Variations (our desks are disassembled and stacked in the corner of the dining room).  It’s been surprisingly smooth; the original music lends itself pretty well to both solo flute and the string orchestra accompaniment and [...]

I am just starting to look over the original cues for The Laramie Project, which I composed nearly a year ago, with an eye to pulling, pushing, prodding and slapping them into a work I’ve tentatively titled Laramie Variations for solo flute and string orchestra.  The work will have its first performance at the St. [...]

So I’m hard at work on Some Assembly Required, a new work for the Iowa State University Symphony Orchestra.  They’ve just posted their 2010-2011 season as part of a new website, and Some Assembly gets top billing.  So I’m returing the favor by linking the site here.
Some Assembly Required is turning into quite a piece.  [...]

Searching for a link to the Three Blake Choruses on Youtube last night, I stumbled upon not one, but two different performances of Roadtrip Sunrise, one from the performance at the University of Oregon, and the other from a performance I attended at West Orient Middle School in Gresham, OR.  They may be found here:
University [...]

Right after the end of the Spring semester I spent nearly two weeks on the road, visiting Oregon (where Roadtrip Sunrise received a couple of performances) and spending time with family in California.  As soon as I got home I was reviewing sketches that I made last fall for  Some Assembly Required, a new work [...]

Rose French performed selections from the Modular Suite last weekend at the Hornswoggle in Jemez Springs, NM.  The performance was a big success, and the work was well-recieved by the other horn players at the hootenanny.  For my part, I think I’m finally done with the last two movements of the work!  I spent the [...]

George Buckbee recently informed me that he’ll be conducting a concert during the St. John’s Chamber Orchestra Festival in Stockton, Ca, in January, 2011.  George is now resident in Finland, but has maintained ties with the festival ever since serving as the founding conductor about ten years ago.
I automatically assumed that his email was meant [...]