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. John’s Chamber Orchestra festival in Stockton, CA next January.  I’m also plowing headlong into the coda of Jacob Harrison’s work *Some Assembly Required… which I will deliver in sloppy, illegible, handwritten form when I see him in less than two weeks.  So I’m at the weird place between ending one work and starting another (or rather where two pieces overlap).  The exhiliration and relief that accompanies the double bar is tempered (or possibly obliterated altogether) by the terrifying prospect of beginning the whole stupid process over again; staring down the blank score paper, sharpening pencils and resigning yourself to the fact that despite all your previous training, the modicum of success and approbation of peers and mentors, you still don’t know what the f^@k you’re doing.  I’ve heard both John Adams and Jennifer Higdon say they often feel the same way, so that provides some comfort.

The two redeeming qualities of the Laramie Variations project are a) the work is guaranteed a performance, and b) the main bulk of the materials I’ll be using already exist, albeit in a drastically different form.  This second point, however, is an interesting one; apart from the orchestral settings of the Lorca Songs, I’ve never arranged my own music for another medium.  One of the issues that’s already perplexing me is how much work must one do in order for the piece to feel like as if it has been created anew.  Is it enough to simply copy and paste material into a new score?  Or must the composer endlessly rework, refine, vary, develop in order to prove his or her mettle?  In other words is arranging “cheating?”  I don’t have an answer yet, nor am I sure that I’ll find one during this process.  Now you’re bummed that you read all that and didn’t get an answer.  Sorry.

Only five more days until the movers, only six until we leave for Hartford, CT via Denver, Ames, and Kent!