Thursday night, I had the opportunity to record and film the Dobson band concert. The application for the Midwest clinic is coming up and Jon Gomez and the band are putting the final touches on their performances. I will record and film in a week (with Dan this time!) just like we did Thursday night and we’ll take the better of the two performances. Finally, I get to practice on my 8-foot jib!
For their audition, they have selected:

1. National Emblem March
2. Sketches on a Tudor Psalm

I hope they make it! That means I get to go to Midwest! Well… I was planning/hoping on going anyway. But still!

I’ve also started up a website for Dobson (www.dobsonband.org). There’s only recordings of Thursday’s concert right now but eventually, we hope to design a more interactive site for the 2006-2007 band year. You can also download the video (mpg) of National Emblem March there.

Thanks to Clarke Rigsby & Tempest Recording, Matthew Luttrell, and Martin Province, I have two recordings of the Wind Symphony concert from last week. If you missed the performance, check out the mp3 under the works page. Just click the music note!
In other news, I hope you dig the new layout (I do). I wasn’t sure what to put on the home page and I kinda felt weird seeing my face every time the page would load with the old layout. So, in my journey to find out who I am, I’ve decided to post quotes once a week (or if I’m excited, maybe two or three times) from various composers/music professionals. The Composers on Composing for Band is a fantastic series and it was awesome that I got a lot of responses to my question from them and others.

But most of those guys are souly band.

I found a book at Barnes and Noble called Composers on Music by Josiah Fisk that has a HUGE collection of quotes and short passages from papers of a ton of the greatest composers from Bach to Babbitt. I’m not saying that I necessarily agree with all the quotes I’ll be posting nor am I saying that Milton Babbitt is a great composer but I certainly do find them highly enlightening. They range from composers talking about other composers, to inspiration, advice to young composers, to mathematics in music, to thinking about music in color–very specific topics. It was way worth me paying Liszt price for it.

The new layout is almost complete. I accidentally deleted all the uploaded pictures in the blog so I’ll be slooooowly uploading them back up. Enjoy the cleaner look! Let me know if there are any broken links.

In other news, PUPPIES!We haven’t named them yet, but I’ll let you know when we do.

As you can tell, I’m cleaning up the site (something I’ve been meaning to do for a while) so check back in a day or two and hopefully things will be running normally again.

Thanks,
Mike

The concert was awesome! I still can’t believe that Wind Symphony (of all bands) performed one of my pieces! It was an outstanding performance of a mediocre work. Matthew and the band really did it justice (and made it better).

It’s always fascinating to hear a piece performed live. You learn so much just by listening that you would NEVER get out of MIDI. Simple orchestrational rules like don’t have the brass sustaining a loud chord if you want to hear the woodwinds at all. You’d think that’d be common sense. And yet, I still did it.

I’m anxious to get a recording of the performance. I’ll be sure to post it as soon as I get it so check back here in a few days.