The Minstrel Boy

The Minstrel Boy, a piece I wrote nearly 25 years ago during graduate work in Computer Science at Cornell (with a minor in Music Composition), received its first public performance yesterday at the Unitarian-Universalist Congregation at Shelter Rock. I had shown the score to the music director there, Stephen Michael Smith, who has a track record of fostering new works and composers, and to my surprise and pleasure, he very quickly arranged for a group of singers—Leslie Craigie, Farah Chandu, Leslie Pirchinello, Chee Shun Tan, and Brace Negron—to perform it as part of the regular Sunday service. (Pianists Evan Solomon and Akira Eguchi assisted during rehearsals.)

The piece is a setting for SSATB (with solo sections) of Thomas Moore's poem of the same name. It's normally sung to the tune of "The Moreen", and I used that melody heavily in my setting. The composition teacher under whose supervision I wrote it, Steven Stucky, was not, I think, entirely on board with my wholesale appropriation of these existing materials—he might reasonably have felt that I should be producing my own music instead of rehashing others', at least on his watch—but I persisted anyway.

This was the second world premiere of my work in as many months: In April, TracyLynn Conner performed a song I wrote for her, as part of a American Cancer Society benefit concert.

Both of these events were big thrills for me. If you don't count my music for theater, arrangements, orchestrations, or works for personal occasions, the last time I had a world premiere was in ... 1984.

The Emperor's New Clothes

I posted Ray Mason's video of The Emperor's New Clothes, a Theatre Three Children's Theatre production of a show that Jeff Sanzel and I wrote together, on my Facebook profile and my YouTube channel, broken up into scene length segments.

See the links section in the right-hand column -- you'll want to look at the YouTube version unless you're my Facebook friend, and even then you might prefer to watch the YouTube playlist, something for which there is no analogue in Facebook ... is there?

I haven't bothered to post to MySpace this time around.

Joshua Rosenblum's site

Josh Rosenblum has a website worth checking out:

http://rosenblummusic.com

The site was designed and implemented by Josh's 13-year-old son, Julian.

And don't be afraid to go ahead and buy those albums! :-)

Musical numbers from my shows

After years of vague promises to cast members to provide a record of the shows that Jeff Sanzel and I have written together for Theatre Three children's theatre productions, I finally got up my courage to edit together the tapes I'd made into more or less coherent individual musical numbers. I've been posting them to YouTube, Facebook, and MySpace as I finish them.

The tapes were made by setting up a camera (or two) before each performance, pointing it towards the stage, turning it on, and leaving it there unattended. In some cases I also recorded a separate audio track with a decent stereo mic. There are several problems with this approach:

• The camera is stationary, so any zooming or panning has to be applied after the fact. This makes for blurry closeups.


• The autofocus is often confused by stage lighting changes.


• Each performance is slightly different, so synching lip movements can be tricky. I got it wrong in several instances.


• The mic in the camera is not as good as the separate stereo mic, and the sound quality varies depending on where the camera is placed. So only The Fairy Princess has good sound.

But I hope the end results are entertaining, if only for the performers who took part in the productions.

Eventually I'd like to create a video or sequence of videos covering an entire show, for watching in a YouTube playlist, for example. I made studio recordings of Hansel and Gretel and The Fairy Princess (and I hope to do so for The Elves and the Shoemaker), so it is possible that I could use that material for the soundtrack.

New CD: "Colloquy"

I am once more proud to announce the release of a CD that I produced: Colloquy, an album of music by Gary William Friedman. And once more, I am several weeks late in my announcement. Maybe I planned it that way. Yeah, that's it.

I wrote the liner notes for this album, and I won't repeat them here, so go get a copy and read them. Or don't read them, just listen to the music -- I don't mind.

Update:

There's also a video about the making of one of the pieces on the album.

New CD: "Before Love Has Gone"

I'm proud to announce the release, one month ago, of a new album from Stevie Holland, Before Love Has Gone, that I co-produced with Todd Barkan and Gary William Friedman. (The actual release date was June 24, but I kept forgetting to blog about it and decided to wait out the full month.)

Go get it and listen to it. The whole album is great, but if you're really stingy and can only spring for one tune, I recommend "Lazy Afternoon". It's phenomenal.

Update:

There's also an EPK for the album.

Concert at Kosciuszko Hall

I attended a lovely concert at Kosciuszko Hall in Manhattan on Monday night. Cellist Mairi Dorman-Phaneuf and composer-pianist Joshua Rosenblum performed works by Schumann, Brahms, de Falla, Prokofieff, Rosenblum, Bolling, and others, assisted by soprano Joanne Lessner, bassist Bill Ellison, drummer Bruce Doctor, and special guest Julia Murney.

Mairi's particular interest (she referred to it as an obsession) is in performing songs with the cello taking the voice part, and she made a compelling case for her obsession in the songs of Schumann, Brahms, and de Falla. I particularly liked Brahms' Wie Melodien.

The concert included the world premiere of Josh Rosenblum's setting for soprano, cello, piano, and contrabass of T. S. Eliot's poem, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. I liked it a lot, and I hope to make a recording of it soon so it can be shared with others.

I was very pleased to see that the three CDs on sale in the lobby were all produced (or co-produced) by me! Not surprising, of course, because they all feature Josh Rosenblum's music:

• Sundry Notes
• Bush is Bad
• Fermat's Last Tango

There is another Peierls-produced Rosenblum album, Impetuosities, but it wasn't on sale at the concert.

Another world premiere of Josh's music can be heard at the upcoming performance of the dance company, The Chase Brock Experience. Chase Brock commissioned a ballet from Josh, and I produced a recording of the piece for use during the performance. It's called ... are you ready? ... Cut to the Chase.

Babel

Jeffrey Sanzel writes (referring to this posting):

Here are the words I understood on your blog:

blog
Tim
Peierls (to an extent)
A (in context)
of (in context)
There
All

Children's show opening

The Fairy Princess, a children's show that Jeffrey E. Sanzel and I wrote, opened today at Theatre Three in Port Jefferson. It runs Fridays and Saturdays at 11am throughout July.

Fifth of July

It would have been more appropriate to post this yesterday, I suppose:

Michele Oliver blogged about the song "This is America", on which Ilene and I can be heard as part of the backing chorus near the end of the song. It was recorded in 2001, partly in response to the 9/11 attacks.

Blurb in Yale Alumni Magazine

The class notes section of the current issue of the Yale Alumni Magazine includes some notes I submitted in the fall.

Tim Peierls (JE) (tim@peierls.net) writes that 2006 was exceptionally busy, with his hand in a wide range of diverse ventures: "I helped produce fellow JEer Josh Rosenblum's musical show, Bush is Bad; the title says it all. I co-wrote a book, Java Concurrency in Practice (Addison-Wesley). If the title makes sense to you, then you need the book; if not, then ... not. I co-produced (with Gary William Friedman) an album by jazz vocalist Stevie Holland, More Than Words Can Say. And I developed an online ticket sales application that went into production in November. See www.SeatYourself.biz for details."

Grinch opening

I posted about opening night at the new Grinch musical on the BoxPop site.

[update 2007-Sep-15]

That link might be down for good, so here's what I posted:

The new Broadway production of How the Grinch Stole Christmas opened on November 8, my birthday. My friend Josh Rosenblum is the musical director for the show. As a birthday present he got my family in on opening night, including passes to the opening night party across the street at Madame Tussaud’s wax museum.

The show runs about 75 minutes, with no intermission. It was mostly not my cup of tea, but both of my kids were riveted and said they would like to see it again. In addition to providing music direction, Josh wrote some of the incidental music and did the vocal arrangements; there were several lovely moments of multipart singing, which is what I go for. There was also one very funny line that I’m told was an ad lib during rehearsals; I won’t give it away, but I’ll mention that it happens just before Cindy Lou Who’s big number.

The party at Madame Tussaud’s was huge. I had never been to a wax museum before, so I had what I gather is the usual reaction of mistaking wax figures for real people and vice versa. I would have liked to stay longer, but we discovered that Tessa, our oldest, is afraid of wax figures, so we had to hustle through quickly and miss a lot.