I finished high school today.
My commencement ceremony (and graduation recital), are tentatively scheduled for June 21st. I am practicing like crazy (well, OK, not so crazy) and trying to come up with a piano solo for me to premier.
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After this week, there will only be three weeks left until the end of the 2013-14 school year for me. High school is almost over. I am finishing up my subjects (all three of them) and getting ready for a graduation recital and our band's Spring Concert.
As a composer, this means I am running out of time to write pieces "while still in high school". I'd better get to work. Well, UM (University of Miami) gave me a full-ride financial aid package (not counting loans), so I am going to UM. Also, I am in a fellowship that allows me to skip all general education classes and replace them with music classes. So, UM is paying me to go to college and study whatever I want. Sounds nice, huh?
Just went to their Wind Ensemble season closing concert last night. What a concert! If that group reads one of my compositions, I will be a happy man indeed! I just composed a work for orchestra this weekend (Fri-Sat). I was inspired, and sat down to notate one theme, and it evolved into the whole piece, called Outbursts of Joy.
I have written a fanfare for brass that our school's brass section can't quite play, and an arrangement of Crown Him With Many Crowns for Easter. That's about all for the past several months. I need to do more composing. Lately, I have been doing a bit of "research" on Steve Bryant and John Mackey. ("Research" means hours on hours of listening to several pieces over and over again.) I am very impressed with their work.
Bryant brings to the table his incredible electronics, great emotional variety, and a great command of orchestration. Mackey brings an "outside-the-box" mentality, with great unusual colors, stunningly inventive orchestration, and melodies and harmonies of intense appeal. How I can get any better without sounding like Bryant or Mackey, or Reed or McBeth or Persichetti, for that matter, is a mystery to me. So I made it into UM. Which is great, but I can't pay for UM. So, if they give me scholarships, I'll go.
Sure would be amazing to study at the same school where Henry Fillmore, Alfred Reed, Gary Green, Robert Longfield, and so many others have been. (Or are!) Mahler strikes again! Symphony no. 2 has devoured my listening time for the past months. The first movement strikes me as having the same effect as Beethoven 7.2, the unstoppable march of time and death. The minuet is another example of Mahler's (often unsung) grace and elegance, and the scherzo is a whirlwind of emotions. From this emerges an absolute gem: the fourth movement with soprano (mezzo soprano, whatever) solo. This piece is hear-wrenchingly beautiful. He succeeds in embodying absolutely sublime joy in the final movement, near the middle. The symphony should end like this, I thought when I listened to it the first time. It got better. Though not quite how I would orchestrate it, Mahler's touch is apparent to the very end.
Congratulations to the Broward Symphonic Band and Neil Jenkins for a superb performance of In Flight on Sat. Feb. 22. Very musically played.
This is my first-ever blog post. I just finished reviewing my college audition for Moody Bible Institute. This morning, I did my audition for University of Miami. I talked to Dr. Keck (Associate Director of Bands), Dr. Mason (Theory and Composition Chair), and Sam Pilafian (Tuba/Euphonium Chair). I am looking forward to some great performance opportunities in college. And, of course, in high school.
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