Came out of my shell a little today – we had a friend for lunch & Djelibeybi made roast turkey with some of the trimmings (turkey was excess from Christmas that we’d had to freeze because we ended up with such a vast amount of meat!) and for afters I made ebelskivers with homemade passionfruit curd – VERY fine, if I do say so myself.

In the evening we ventured out to St John’s Smith Square for a concert celebrating the 50th anniversary of Australian composer Percy Grainger’s death. And what a great programme – marvellous Grainger and some great Grainger-inspired works by other composers too. A really excellent programme and topped off with an encore of an all-out Sousa version of Country Gardens. The only version I’ve been able to find online is this one from YouTube where they all sound quite bored. Consider this, but with enthusiasm and then with the brakes totally taken off, everyone playing with gusto and vibrancy and you’ll get about half an idea of how good this was.

Anyway, came back after the concert and I needed to put up another sound file on SoundCloud because I applied for a composition job for a film score today too, so I pulled out the laptop, attached my audio disk and started Pro Tools. Everything was going well until Pro Tools froze, as it does. After that it started glitching a bit, so I closed it down and reopened it. At which point it started giving me errors and wouldn’t play the file. So I rebooted the computer, at which point the system decided my disk could not be read and telling me I needed to initialise it. Which of course would wipe all the data. This is a big deal because this particular disk contains all my scores. Everything I’ve done for the past ten years. And with the recent apparent failure of my grand plan to back everything up online (where 90% of the files just vanished out of the folders they were in for no apparent reason) this disk now contains my most complete backup. Which I now can’t get at at all. Going to attempt to sleep on this problem…

Tagged with: composition, concert, cooking, events, friends, music, social life, tools | Add a comment

Well, today was noteworthy. Today was the first time in all our 14 years together that Djelibeybi actually a) remembered Valentine’s Day (albeit it’s on a Monday this year) and b) did something about it. Normally he just doesn’t remember it’s happening until the day, when I give him a present or make him a special dinner and he says “sorry” if I’m lucky. Last year he went off to a film shoot at 7am and I didn’t see him till midnight, without so much as a “love you” as he left. That one did not go down so well. But this year he really did very well indeed – he thought up something to do (go to Crouch End, peruse the shops and have lunch at the fabulous Monkey Nuts), booked the restaurant (!!!!) AND actually (eventually) remembered that we had something planned (although there were a lot of “what are we doing on Sunday again?” moments). And it was nice. It didn’t really start out too well – a little minor squabbling and grumpiness on both sides of the fence, but lunch sorted us out (I had the chicken schnitzel BLT topless burger [no bun, but on a bed of little gem lettuce instead] – fantastic) and then we had a lovely walk to Turnpike Lane (lovely in the sense of enjoyable and companionable sauntering and chatting, not lovely in the sense of scenic beauty. Hornsey doesn’t really do scenic beauty, I think) where we ventured into Sainsbury’s and ventured out again with the DVDs of the new Star Trek movie & Iron Man plus snacks, before heading home to a lovely quiet evening on the couch. It may not be everyone’s idea of romance, but it was actually really nice. And it meant a lot to me that he even thought of it.

And of course, in spite of it being pre-Valentine’s Day, I still did some work – namely deciding on and uploading the last file to go on SoundCloud, which is to be my warbly rendition of the Satie Chanson arrangement. Not great singing, but I think it provides an interesting foil to the other pieces that are on there – catharsis would be too much like the beginning of Deconstruct, I don’t have time to sort out the string quartet version of Pieces of Eight (it needs a lot of work to get the pizzicati in and separation between the movements – might need to pull it into Pro Tools ultimately to get it all working right), likewise a lot of the piano pieces, which end up sounding a bit mechanical from Finale but can be made a bit more human in Pro Tools with the simple drawing of a wobbly line for the attack of each note, I don’t really want one from the vault yet even though Nightride is basically ready to go (might put that up later in the week), so with the Satie song all ready for uploading, it’s the logical choice. So I think everything’s in place now, although I won’t announce it now (when most people are sleeping) but will wait till the morning…

Tagged with: completion, conversation, events, friends, music, publishing, relaxing, self-promotion, social life, tools, walking, web | Add a comment

Today I did something a little different – I took myself off to the Royal Academy of Music for a free seminar/workshop/presentation thingy by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies. For those of you who don’t know of Max, he’s the Master of the Queen’s Music, which is the composer-version of Poet Laureate, and a very prolific and fabulously interesting composer.

Well, I have to say, that was certainly 3 hours VERY well spent. The talk had been billed as him talking about creating opera, with specific reference to the new opera he’s just finished writing, so I’d thought it could be useful as preparation for the Richard III opera, but it turned out to not really be about that at all. He did talk about a couple of his operas and some music theatre stuff, but mostly it was about the way he uses drama and theatricality as a structural force in all his music, even the concert music that has no obvious connection with the theatre at all. Really fascinating. I took a ton of notes.

He talked a bit about his very first opera, Taverner, on the life of the 16th-century composer John Taverner (as opposed to the composer John Tavener who’s around today), and specifically about how he wrote it simply because he wanted to. He never expected anyone to ever perform it (although they eventually did), and so he just basically let rip and did the whole thing the way he wanted to do it, with no reference to what anyone else might think. This led to what I think was the most inspiring quote of the morning:

If you’re going to do anything, go for it – for God’s sake, go for it! – you’ll get there… if you’re any good. And if you believe you’re any good, you probably are.

Amazing stuff. Really confidence-building. As anyone who’s followed my journey online over the past few years knows, I’ve had (possibly more than) my fair share of self-doubt, but the one thing I’ve never doubted is that I’m good at what I do. So let’s hope Max is right and that that means I probably am!

Tagged with: artist date, composition, events, ideas, learning, listening, mentalhealth, music, study | Add a comment

This morning I was in Edinburgh. Then I sat on a train for several hours and then I was in London in the afternoon. Then I sat on another couple of trains and went to Surrey.

For tonight was the first of the London Composers Forum percussion workshops – every year they do a set of workshops for composers to learn about an instrument or some aspect of composing (last year’s, which I missed, was on the organ) which they then follow up with a project to write for that instrument. Anyway, this year’s is percussion, so three of us went along to our tame percussionist’s house where we were regaled with tea and chocolate biscuits and taught the basics of how to play the djembe and a little bit of African drumming. And there was some score-reading too: Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, which is always a hoot. It was a little random, but all in all, a good first session – very much looking forward to next week’s. Oh, and some sleep.

Got a fair bit of work done on the train back from Edinburgh at least – all the notes for the string quartet Pieces of Eight are now in Finale, so I just need to finish the layout, and I did a bunch more work on the orchestral arrangement too, although that’s not really feeling like it’s coming together yet.

Tagged with: composition, events, learning, music, study, travel | Add a comment

So I finally got to the Gaugin exhibition at Tate Modern. A little underwhelmed actually. I don’t know whether my whelm levels were overcome by the overwhelming exhaustion I’ve been suffering from since getting back from Durham but it just didn’t do it for me. I quite liked his Breton paintings and there was certainly a good range both from his European and Tahitian work, but nothing I really wanted to revisit or take home with me by the time I got to the end. So hey ho, but it was good to see and good to get out of the house (even though it took all the energy I had to actually get there) and I know I’d have been seriously kicking myself if I’d missed it, so all in all a Good Thing.

Tagged with: art, events, exhibition | Add a comment

And wow! What a day it’s been. No sleep, on the go since 5.30am, but I managed to catch my train, which seemed like a bit of a miracle and got to Durham well in time. We’ve had an improvisatory composition lesson, workshops on some of the orchestral and chamber pieces and I’m really looking forward to tomorrow – all so awesome! And e composer ensemble includes a flugelhorn and a mandolin! VERY excited!

Tagged with: composition, creativity, events, learning, music | Add a comment

I have to say, having been without feedback of pretty much any sort on my music for about a decade, it’s just fantastic to finally be getting some constructive criticism – it makes such a HUGE difference. Tonight I steeled myself to go forth and actively seek criticism. As you may recall, I joined the London Composers Forum about a month ago and had a marvellous, inspirational time at the first meeting I attended. Tonight they held a ‘WiP/WiT’ (work in progress/work in transition) session. The idea is that you toddle along, bringing with you something you’re working on that you’d like some comments on, or you just come along, listen and join in the conversation. So I recorded a version of the quintet out of Finale (which, most unco-operatively has decided to ignore all dynamics in the score and just play everything forte, with occasional random blasts of fortissimo for no reason) and printed out a small clutch of scores to accompany it and toddled off to the meeting.

Well, it was just grand. There weren’t too many of us – just 7 – but in the course of the evening we heard and discussed a piece for bass clarinet and piano, an orchestral work, a solo cello piece and of course my quintet. The good news is that everyone was really very enthusiastic about it. Nobody thought it needed major changes (I cannot say how much of a PHEW moment that was) but some excellent ideas were contributed for small tweaks and the part I’m really having some trouble with, which is integrating the fast dancelike figures with the slow descending motif from the opening while not bringing the whole thing screeching to a halt or just continuing on blandly and being dull. Some great suggestions and I’ve already started putting some of them in place (started this on the train – I was so fired up to get back to it!).

The Forum are really a brilliant group – so friendly yet giving serious critique, all of it constructive – everyone got some great advice about their piece, whether technical about instruments or in terms of general composition techniques that might help. Words cannot express how delighted I am to have found them. If you’re a composer in London or nearby (one of our composers last night came from Brighton), you really should get in touch with them and come along to something! Their website is: http://www.forumcomposers.org.uk/

Tagged with: composition, conversation, events, ideas, learning, listening, music | Add a comment

In spite of feeling like death, I staggered out with parents and Djelibeybi to see Ute Lemper at the Queen Elizabeth Hall. And gosh, was it worth it – she is AMAZING. Yes, her recordings are fabulous, but live she is a wonder to behold. Her Mack the Knife and Surabaya Johnny were a revelation. Still in a bit of a daze…

Tagged with: concert, events, music | Add a comment

Tonight was the second performance of my piece Deconstruct: Point, line, plane and how exciting it was! In spite of a few early wrong notes and the beginning and ending still a little fast, overall the ensemble did a great job – finally it came together! Woohoo!

The morning was pretty exciting too because I finally sent my new site, caitlinrowley.com, live. It’s rather later than the 30 September launch date I’d originally planned, and it’s not really 100% perfect, especially for rarer browsers, but with these sorts of projects sooner or later you get to a point where you just need to send it off into the world and tweak afterwards. So this is that point

Tagged with: completion, composition, concert, events, music, web | Add a comment

Today I took a step forward in my quest to get my music heard and create more opportunities for creating new work which will be heard. Today I went along to the London Composers Forum Open House meetup. I have to say, I kept my expectations low. I was half expecting to find half a dozen amateur anoraks, but what I found was what I hadn’t dared even hope to find – a group of welcoming, friendly non-anorak people, all of them interested in learning and creating and giving the group’s compositions the best chance in life they can get. Wow. It was awesome.

This particular meeting had three presentations – the first was on how one composer has drawn inspiration from historico-cultural sources (if that’s actually a term) and the methods he’s used to incorporate these ideas in his music; the second was on concerto grosso form in preparation for a Forum opportunity, which I found very interesting as an orchestration analysis and which lead to some rather heated debate on the difference between concerto grosso and concerto for orchestra.; and finally a session based on one of the members’ PhD thesis on “The Drummer as Composer”, which was a very interesting introduction and I hope he’ll continue with the second part of it at the next Open House. And in between there was various discussion about projects that are on the boil and upcoming and concerts being organised. Apparently they’re thinking of getting all members to send in a list of the pieces they have languishing in drawers awaiting performance and getting those poor dusty pieces out into the world – what a fantastic plan!

So I’m VERY glad I went along at last. Kicking myself I didn’t do so earlier, when I knew they were having a workshop on writing for the organ coming up (now sadly passed – and I can’t believe that was nearly a year ago!) but revelling in the fact that I’ll now have the chance to attend the (hands-on!) percussion workshop which is coming up.

Tagged with: artist date, composition, conversation, events, mentalhealth, music, self-promotion, social life | Add a comment