sen_no_ongaku | Some firsts

For the first time, I am being paid to write a piece of music, for The Arlington-Belmont Chamber Chorus, thanks to Barry Singer, whom I met while engraving and arranging for crap pay. The parameters I've been given: the piece should be between 9-20 minutes long, and finished by the end of 2007. All the rest is up to me: the text, additional instrumental accompaniment (though practically speaking, 8 is probably the limit), harmonic language, etc., is my call.

They're used to performing modern music -- they premiere a piece every year -- so I can range a bit further afield in my demands...though I still have to be careful, of course.

As for a text, I had first considered realizing a project I've been thinking about for years: setting a deCSS algorithm to music, or something related -- and I still may -- but what's currently more compelling is the text of Executive Order 9066, probably interspersed with a related loyalty questionnaire. I'll need to make up my mind soon.
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Also, a fellow I met in Oregon last summer wants to include the third movement of Honey Glazed on a CD of saxophone quartet music he's releasing.

I agreed.

It's sufficiently rare that someone else is professionally interested in what I'm doing that even though this is the first step in a long process, I'm pretty excited. If I'm lucky, the quartet making the recording will become interested in performing the entire piece on their concerts.
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In other news, my engineer is currently in London for a few weeks, so I'll have to wait on finishing up our splicing job on Three Sketches until he's back. Someday this frustration will end, and another will arrive to take its place.