[IMAGE] right side up

[IMAGE] upside down

…click to listen:

…about the music

Things are going swimmingly.

I often say that composing is a faith-based activity. I can go for quite a while under deadline without managing to come up with anything. I don’t mean anything I like. I mean, anything at all. I am the Queen of the Procrasti Nation, and being pretty busy, there’s plenty to procrastinate with. But despite the impending, career-denting doom that could occur, I never fret (well, okay, I fret, but I don’t take it that seriously). Why? Because after 32 years of composing music under the stress of deadlines, I’ve never failed to meet my delivery date with something I’m not embarrassed by (hmm… it’s possible that my standards are far too low). Once you’ve done this sort of thing that many times, you just have faith that you can, and will, do it again (in other words, this is not a technique I recommend to someone with their very first pro gig). Now watch; having had the hubris to type this, something will screw up next week that will have me in a real bind.

So here I am, nearing my deadline, and just about done with a really fun electroacoustic wind band piece for the American Composers Forum’s BandQuest series that’s funded by the NEA, and I appear to have my ducks in a row. And like the guys in the photos above right outside my studio, sometimes that can be in some rather creative positions.

Download this article as an e-book