Well, after about 8 months, I finally completed the 3 song cycle, Dahlhouse, after some poems by Roald Dahl. The 3 songs include:

I. No Knowing
II. Hot and Cold
III. The Little Nut-Tree

While Roald Dahl is a weird person himself,
my adaptations of the poems go a little further. They’re anything but children’s poems. No Knowing is the safest setting, heightened only by a chilling tonality that haunts each of the three pieces. Hot and Cold is turned into a song about a daughter who takes off her clothes for men and how oblivious her mother is. And, The Little Nut-Tree, is about a nutty young man who decides to castrate a nut tree when the tree doesn’t give him what he wants (get it? nuts?). I’ve always sucked at interpreting poetry. But this just seemed like more fun!

With a little bit of luck, the series will be performed at the ASU Student Composition Recital on September 19th at 7:30 in Katzin Concert Hall.

So I met with some of the guys on the Malediction project today at the Art Institute of Phoenix. We met there while the audio guys were doing some voice over work with one of the actresses.
It’s all post production from here on out which means I have to kick butt getting the score finished. I have until the beginning on October to do about 30 more minutes of music! Talk about a headache. Not to mention I have a deadline around the same time for the two band pieces I’m working on. In short, I need to get crackin’.

After a long and painful first week of college, I can finally relax. Well, not really. Of course there’s homework to be done and articles to be read, but that sort of real work is why God invented Sunday’s.

Anyway, I’d like to invite you all to attend our weekly forum Tuesday’s and Thursday’s in the ASU music library at 10:40AM. The meeting is open topic but we encourage everyone to attend. Last session included a variety of topics from pithy comments on Jody Rockmaker to why won’t Tom Peterson talk to me. The debate is expected to get more controversial in the coming weeks so, if you’re on campus, stop on by. Current members include myself, Ryan Springler, and Ryan Downey, among others.

Oh! Today was LMN’s birthday. She finally turned 18! We had a great day at school, and had pizza, salad, and calzones for dinner with her sister followed by the Wedding Crashers. We had a great time!

Lots of work this weekend! Hope something good comes out of it~

Today was the first day of classes at ASU. I suppose it wasn’t all bad. Dr. Shinn is a nice guy for music theory, I like my Western Civilization teacher, Dr. Lynass, a lot. I’ve always liked history. Calc II is gonna be fun, I like my teacher there too. He’s like a nicer, shorter, buffer version of Mr. Swigart. Then I had my composition seminar class. Dr. Rockmaker is a hoot. What a character; I can’t wait to get to know him better.

The composition studio has some cool things planned for the year. For instance, we’re teaming up with the ASU dance studio to do some collaborative works for a concert sometime around Halloween. That should be fun. I’m considering bring back an old piece I started over a year ago for two saxophones and piano, revamping it, adding drum set, and write it with choreography in mind.

We also have the chance to have our works (for string quartet) read by this really well known string quartet who will be ASU’s string quartet in residence for a while. I forget who they are but I’ll find out! They used to be at Stanford University, though.

And, perhaps the most awaited of all, Professor John Corigliano will be in town November 10-12th (just days before my 19th birthday!). He will be visiting campus mostly because the ASU Wind Ensemble will be performing the Arizona premiere of his latest masterpiece, Circus Maximus (which, as I’ve learned, has nothing to do with the circus I was thinking about). Should be a good time! Maybe he’ll invite me to Juilliard…

Well, ASU starts tomorrow. My schedule still isn’t set in stone but hopefully something will work out by the end of the week. If not, that’s alright. I’m not that thrilled to be going to school anyway. I have a few interesting classes though; I’m taking a couple night courses at Mesa Community College. I’ll be studying Studio Recording and Music Law/Business. Those should be some nice mind candy.

Other than that, I’ve been helping out Dan Malone do a recording session of a few Symphonies Wednesday and Thursday nights for a few hours. It’s a fun project and we have a good time.

Mike Decamp and I are busy getting the draft to our new movie musical done so we can shoot later this fall. It’s just a little slow right now with a few other project deadlines I have coming up.

Speaking of deadlines, I’m looking into writing a piece or two for Manhattan Beach Music’s Frank Ticheli Composition Competition. I’m tossing around a few ideas right now and will get around to actually writing them in September.

The long talked about Malediction project is finally almost coming. I know I’ve said that for the past year but I really mean it this time! We’ve scheduled a premiere date for sometime in October and submitted it for consideration in the Phoenix Sci-Fi and Horror Film Festival. And I still have all that music to do…