I’ve not been trying to do anything on the quintet the last few days – it was freaking me out a little and my brain was feeling fried with all the socialising I’ve had to do, so I just focused on enjoying my parents for a few days and the piece lie quietly. Yesterday, though, I sent the parental units off to the Isle of Wight for a few days, so today I really had no more excuses so I (eventually) made myself sit down and I seem to have come up with some notes – just a small figure, based on falling parallel 7ths, which I think must be in retaliation against all the counterpoint exercises I’ve done. Mr Fux would be aghast. It’s not much, but it feels like it could be a proper start. I do think I need to get away from the piano as soon as possible – it’s messing with my sound-world for this piece and the practicalities of working at the piano when there are people in the house (and a mother playing it every day) are… flawed, so I’m thinking I might take what I’ve got and go straight into Finale with it. We’ll see what happens tomorrow.

And some news today – the London New Wind Festival are thinking of playing my piece Deconstruct: Point, line, plane again! And they want me to be on a composer panel before the performance, which should be… interesting. Haven’t done one of those before. As a musicologist, yes, but not as a composer. Eek!

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We went to see Gounod’s Faust at the Coliseum tonight – ever so conveniently, ENO decided to schedule my Da’s favourite opera not just for while he’s here, but right around his birthday too. How very considerate of them It was my first experience of this particular opera and while there’s certainly some lovely music in it, it didn’t really grab me. I suspect quite a bit of it had to do with the rather repellent and somewhat heavy-handed 19th-century morality in the last act, where everyone’s blaming poor Margarita for all their misdoings. Certainly she’s not entirely free of guilt, but her brother blaming her for his death when he chose to fight a duel was a bit rich. Anyway, don’t think it’ll become a favourite. The performance was good though – some great voices and overall a reasonable translation into English – the arias did fare better than the choruses in general though.

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So about this premiere. To save you the suspense, the verdict was: not perfect, but overall very much a winful experience.

The detail: I’m always a little nervous at first performances, but the combination of the organiser’s doubts about earlier versions of the piece, and the whole flexible instrumentation thing (which I’d approached with a theory of sharing parts based on compatible registers, so was nervous that perhaps my theory was wonky) meant I pretty much turned up to this one as a stressy, quivering jelly, half-expecting the piece to turn out a total trainwreck.

And then I ran into the organiser just before the performance and she told me that my score is wonderful and that her doubts had been without reason. Which of course made everything better

And then she said that they were having some trouble keeping it together and might I be able to conduct them. Which was a bit of an Um Moment because I had to ‘fess up that I’ve never even attempted to conduct anything in my life and that possibly in front of a paying audience with no time to rehearse was not the time to do so, which she seemed to agree with.

The concert as a whole was excellent – really nicely balanced programme – short & long pieces, various styles, and solo vs ensemble works. And some great music in there too – I particularly liked Michiko Shimanuki’s Flos Ferri for solo violin, Yuko Ohara’s Rising Eels (which was played last year too) and Mark Wilderspin’s Underground Lines.

My piece was, indeed, a little … untogether, but overall I think they captured the feel of it well and the bits where it did come together were brilliant – just as I’d imagined it, and the ending (which I’d been concerned might be a little wet) was perfect. I think the main issue was just that it was a little fast, but it seems they may play it again later in the Festival, so it would be interesting to see how it goes in a second performance.

And the audience seemed to like it, which I guess is the most important thing of all – had a couple of total strangers come up to me and say how much they enjoyed it, and met a couple of new composers who also seemed to like it. My cheering squad (Djelibeybi and my parents) liked it, but one hopes that’s a given!

So the overall verdict is: WIN!

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… and that brings to a close the individual composition pages… or at least the ones currently in existence as it seems there’s a couple that haven’t even made it onto the current site. And one (which I’ve just fixed) which was in as one of its movement-titles instead of the work title as a whole. Whoops. And I even found a FONT tag. Ouch. That hurt but glad to see those done (barring the bits that need reviewing, but I’m sure I’ve elaborated those previously and you don’t need to read it again).

So what’s next? The WordPress template for the blog is something I really want to get sorted now, but it’s possibly a bit silly to look at this before I’ve sorted out the PHPing of the navigation and seen if I can reuse anything from the site proper. Which leaves a contact form (will need PHP but I can nick the code I’m using currently so shouldn’t need a book for that), works list page, CV (maybe – a little undecided on that one)… Um… I’m sure there should be something else in there but too sleepy to go and look it up.

Went to a fantastic concert of Hindemith and Dutilleux music for two pianos/one piano, four hands this evening at the Opera Bastille. Really gorgeous music and fantastic playing. But now I’m itching to get back to my harmony/counterpoint studies… except I can’t because I’m in Paris and it’s in London and I won’t be back till Tuesday night and unable to do anything before Wednesday. Really wanting to be writing some music again too now, but as I’m having to stay up to stupid o’clock just to get any alone-time at all and work on my Creative Pact, this is extremely unlikely to happen. Grr.

But the really exciting thing about today was that I completed a quest I’ve been on intermittently for about 10 years – to find and buy a bread tin with a lid – pain de mie in French, a pullman tin in English. Today I both found and bought that tin – gourmet homemade square bread, here I come! Can’t wait to try it out!!!!

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I thought I’d missed them all, but no! Superb performances all round, brilliant programming, wonderful music and I can’t wait to hear the new Muhly piece again. I also stayed for the after-gig, Nico, Pekka Kuustinen and friends – deeply, deeply awesome.

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This one even better than the first, and a great evening of music before it. The panel session on ‘Getting your music heard’ was great too! I particularly liked the pieces by Julia Usher, Effy Efthmiou, Rebecca Oswald, and Jane Serter. Go look them up!

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djelibeybi’s Uncle Charlie conducting Gilbert & Sullivan’s Patience. Lots of fun. Shame I wasn’t really awake enough at the beginning to fully appreciate it. It took a LOT of chocolate plus an interval strawberry Haagen-Daaz ice cream to really bring me to. It’s been a tough week!

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I heard back from one of the calls for scores I wrote off to yesterday and we had a little exchange of emails, with the result that – all going well – one of my pieces will be played here in September! I’ll leave the extra detail until everything’s 100% confirmed, but I’m pretty gosh-darned excited!

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with djelibeybi and pocketsteve to hear the awesome Ukelele Orchestra of Great Britain. Even better live than on YouTube, and just hilarious. Well worth it, even though we did get *rather* wet! Also picked up the pattern for the little hats innocent solicit from willing knitters for their charity campaign later in the year – thinking I might have a go at one or two.

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L’Infedelta delusa by Haydn – a private performance (!) for djelibeybi’s uncle & aunt’s 60th wedding anniversary in a tiny theatre at a National Trust property near Swindon. Very very fine. Most enjoyable

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