Since the release a few months ago, the project has received an amazing amount of support and enthusiasm here in Arizona and now writer/director Nathan Blackwell is plotting the misadventures of the crew for Season Two. Among one of the more exciting things to show up in the second season is the desire to build a spaceship “bridge.” You know, a bridge — it’s that cool room where all the action takes place, where the captain sits and gives space-orders, and where all the cool 1970’s computer-y junk is.

Well, that said, cool “bridges” don’t come cheap which is why the Voyage Trekkers team has launched their own online fundraiser aimed at making their bridge as cool as possible. One can make a donation for as little as $5, or for $20, you get a friggin’ cool DVD to the complete first season! There has already been tremendous support — as you can see by that big bold number on the right — but with hopes that this might spark interest in some kind of feature length project someday, every dollar helps to make Season Two dressed to impress. Filmmakers in Arizona are already masters of shoestring budgets so you can bet your contribution will go a long way… like, maybe even, like, a few light years… but don’t take my word for it:

For my own contribution to the second season, I’m hoping to collaborate with a university orchestra to record some live cues for the series, and hopefully, at the least, the Voyage Trekkers Main Theme. How cool would that be?? Bridge + Live Orchestra = Crazy Awesome Space Adventure Good Time Great Job.

I was happy to have finished the first draft to my latest piece As Midnight on a Moonless Night before I flew to California for a short visit and performance of Dreamland at California State University, Fullerton. While Dr. Marc Dickey (who recently penned a wonderfully interpretive and equally analytical article on Shine for this year’s MBM Times Magazine) has been on sabbatical, I was introduced to fantastic young conductor, Dustin Barr, who took the reigns as interim director in addition to his fulltime gig as director of bands at Mt. San Antonio College. As you can see and hear by the short YouTube clip above, he made amazing music with the Fullerton Symphonic Band. I can’t wait for us to collaborate like that again! Seriously. Amazing conductor. Amazing guy.

Then it was off to Chicago for what was my fifth Midwest Clinic.

In the photo above, John Darling, Kevin Jedele, Christopher Tucker, and Jeff Gershman all pose for a patented “Markowski” photo. 2 years later and it’s still fun to make fun of. I guess.

It’s always good to catch up with friends and colleagues that I haven’t seen all year, and even though I’m no longer published with Manhattan Beach Music, it’s still good to catchup with the Manhattan Beach family of composers, like Joni Greene and Frank Ticheli. 

This was a particularly fantastic Midwest experience because I had the honor of having two — TWO! — remarkable performances of my music. The first was Turkey in the Straw performed by the Douglas Anderson School of the Arts Wind Symphony under the direction of Mr. Shawn Barat. As you can hear by the short video that I was able to sneak during their dress rehearsal, they gave an incredibly tight and eccentric performance — and T.i.t.S. has got to be that flavored, otherwise all the details and fragments just sound like, well, as YouTube aficionado Randomnessocity858 stated in a comment directed towards the Hong Kong Tak Ming Philharmonic Winds’ performance:

“sounds REALLY broken up, it was like listening to 10 seconds of random playing, then 3 seconds of melody, and then more random playing. Maybe a simpler arrangement would make it sound more solid? I know what Turkey in the Straw should sound like and this was disappointing since I was expecting an orchestra to make it sound epic, but instead there was just too much amelodic filler crammed in.”

Haters gonna hate.

You would think the awesomeness would end there, but no way. The next night, the Springdale Har-Ber Wind Symphony, under the direction of Mr. Jeremy Ford, gave an incredibly moving performance of Shine to a packed Midwest Clinic ballroom. Seriously, there had to have been a good 1,500 people in there, but then again, my eyes are often bigger than my stomach. Again, as you’ll hear from the short clip I snuck on my iPhone during their dress rehearsal, this band made some mad beautiful music.

It was a perfect Midwest Clinic this year. AND it even snowed on the last day. Definitely a win.

The last two weeks have flown by, partly because I just turned 25, partly because the first draft of the new commissioned work, called As Midnight on a Moonless Night, was due this morning. I think I’m at the part of the process where I think everything both sucks and is awesome at the same time. Basically, I can’t trust myself anymore, and until I hear the piece with living, breathing musicians, those sucky/awesome feelings are going to linger over my shoulders, taunting me, for the next few weeks.

That’s why I’m here, blogging about it, proudly, as new parents often do, cutting the umbilical cord and bringing this new piece into the world. I don’t expect you to unconditionally praise it as “cute” and “adorable” because deep down, I imagine you probably think it’s kinda gross and hard to look at/listen to (like I probably would). I mean, I don’t really even have an accurate MIDI mockup since I’ve recently re-orchestrated a bunch of stuff (though this one should do for now), but I do have the most recent (as of yesterday) sample score for you to see. And like any newborn baby score, it’s a little ugly and needs some cleaning up, but with a little tender love and care and a fancy black and white cover, in a few weeks, this baby will be prime for selling! I ain’t givin’ this one up to the orphanage, though.

By the way, Shadow Rituals just turned 6 years old! Wow; time flies.

Ryan, Elizabeth, Gary Wilson, Me

Just a day after I received the recording to Walden, I received an amazing recording of Dreamland as performed by the San Jose State University Wind Ensemble, conducted by Dr. Edward Harris. I’ve already wrote about my trip at length, so I’ll keep this short and sweet, but if you haven’t listened to any of Gary Wilson’s music (which I proudly quote in the first 12 bars of my piece), I hope the picture above will arouse your curiosity. Unfortunately, I can’t find the track that I quote (”A Very Small Town” from Mary Had Brown Hair, Stones Throw Records, 2003) on YouTube, but here’s a little taste of one of his juicier instrumental tracks:

And here is the latest performance of Dreamland:

DREAMLAND (DOWNLOAD MP3)
San Jose State University Wind Ensemble
Dr. Edward Harris, conductor
October 17, 2011

As I mentioned recently, Lawrence Stoffel at California State University, Northridge just conducted the world premiere of my newest, most lyrical piece called Walden. I just received the recording from their concert earlier today and am very excited to share it! So, here it is!

WALDEN (Download MP3)
California State University, Northridge Wind Ensemble
Lawrence Stoffel, conductor
October 13, 2011

This week was an amazing week of traveling. The first stop was North Mesquite High School where their director, Jeff Jones, and the North Mesquite marching band has been preparing an “all Markowski” show called “Out There - Music from Beyond the Mark.” Like I mentioned in my last post, their show included music from Out There, Shine, Sitting, and Shadow Rituals, all fantastically arranged by composer/arranger Ryan Janus.

Over the last few years, I’ve gotten a lot better at knowing what to say about my own music in front of different ensembles, but when “points” and “moving your feet” and these things called “sets” are involved, I have to retrain myself a little bit. Marching bands are great (though I skipped out on this in high school), but I think it’s really easy to forget how musical they can actually be (which, I’m sure is no easy feat when 100+ pages of drill is involved).

In Texas, there are lots of marching band experts who know the game well, so my approach was to coach the students exactly as if they were performing their show indoors in a more concert-like setting. That is, I wanted to concentrate on more subtle aspects of the music that were not necessarily on the page, such as bigger phrasing ideas, blending, and knowing exactly what melody or idea to listen for. The group was incredibly receptive to my ideas, and I’m really anxious to see (and hear) how these ideas affect their next marching competition.

With less than 12 hours to sleep and repack in Arizona, I flew next to San José State University where Dr. Edward Harris and the San José State University Wind Ensemble were preparing to perform one of my newest compositions, Dreamland. Dr. Harris has programmed much of my music with his ensembles over the last few years, including performing Turkey in the Straw with the San José Wind Symphony, Tidal Forces with a San José Summer Music Camp, and has made a fantastic recording of Instinctive Travels which you can listen to here on my website. And now, he has done me a big favor to help produce a great new recording of Dreamland which I will post here soon!

The piece calls for a Fender Rhodes electric piano, as a timbre to pay homage to artist Gary Wilson, and while almost all synthesizers these days have a Rhodes patch, I totally dorked out at the sight of an actual Mark II Rhodes Stage Piano! Here’s to you, Gary!

It’s definitely been a big week. Walden even premiered the same night as the Dreamland performance so I will post that recording, too, as soon as Lawrence Stoffel at CSU Northridge sends it to me. It’s going to be hard for this next week to top the last.

On Monday, I have my first adventure in Mesquite, Texas where I’ll be spending two short, but jam-packed days working with the North Mesquite High School marching band on their show called “Out There — Music from beyond the Mark.” That’s right; I believe this is the first “all Markowski” marching show ever, complete with music from Shine, Shadow Rituals, and (the coolest part, I think) two short film score I wrote years ago, Out There and Sitting. I’m looking forward to hearing the Voyage Trekkers theme on the field someday…

I fly home late Tuesday night and fly to San Jose early Wednesday morning for what promises to be a fantastic adventure and performance of Dreamland by the San Jose State University wind ensemble, conducted by Ed Harris. Ed was one of the first directors to send me a recording of Instinctive Travels a year or two ago and his group can be heard on my Instinctive Travels page.

On this same night, in the same state, probably at the same time, a few hundred miles south of San Jose, Lawrence Stoffel will be giving the world premiere of Walden at California State University, Northridge. Larry has been kind enough to send me rehearsal recordings and I can’t wait to share his premiere performance!

It’s a big week this week and the adventures keep building momentum. Here we go!

I just received the first printed edition of Walden yesterday. The premiere is coming up, too, on October 13 at California State University, Northridge so I’m looking forward to sharing a real-life, living and breathing recording of the piece soon. But if you haven’t heard it yet, here is the beautifully lifeless MIDI mockup. Also, check out the Walden page for other information and a sample score.

This season of Voyage Trekkers is nearing its end, and episode seven — The Clutches of General Kang — is the most musical yet! (Download an mp3 of the score here!) I know I’ve blogged about this web series a lot lately, mostly because it’s been a lot of fun having a weekly composition assignment to fulfill. I’ve written in the past about how I’ve been able to turnaround these short scores, often overnight, but Nathan made sure I had a couple of extra days with how involved this particular homage to Flash Gordon was supposed to be. So in that respect, it took about three days.

I really respect Nathan as a director because he is able to communicate how he wants the music to feel without using musical terms. It seems that many film directors don’t know much about music and are lost when it comes to words like crescendo or stab, but I’m not convinced that directors would necessarily benefit from picking up a music dictionary. On the contrary, I think this could open up an opportunity for directors to try and write through a composer rather than simply letting the composer write.

This is why I love Nathan. Instead of giving me specific music-related notes, he gives me fun, metaphorical emotion-full notes, my favorite so far which has been, “25% more adventure!” For some reason, I can better relate to this type of feedback than I can to something like “Can I have more trumpets?” “25% more adventure” implies, perhaps, the idea of more brass, but by saying “adventure” versus “brass,” he has given me the creative freedom to figure out the best compositional/orchestral solution to fit his direction.

I guess this post is kind of a rant and kind of my two cents to film directors who are collaborating with composers, perhaps for the first time, and to other composers (who, perhaps, are also collaborating with film directors for the first time).

Directors: while the film is ultimately your vision, try not to write through your composer. It can undermine your faith in their craft.
Composers: music can change tone so easily. Make sure the one you choose matches your director’s vision! (And don’t be afraid to rewrite to make things better)

Remember that this is a joint effort. Don’t forget to work together, to [professionally] argue for what’s best for the project, and find a best solution that both parties are proud to own.

Kiwanis Park Pond at dawn; Tempe, Arizona

I’m excited to be on the verge of finishing a new piece for concert band called Walden. And of course, I want to share my first draft here on my blog. To begin, here are my program notes so far:

Much of the music I have written over the last several years has been a fast, frenetic dreamcatcher of rhythm and texture. While I love this fast-paced electrifying style, it was my friend, Robert Stumpf, who first preached simplicity and, over the years, has continued to urge me to write more lyrically. With Robert’s words still echoing in the back of my head, the idea only recently seemed exciting to explore.

I suddenly had the urge to chill out and write something more pastoral — something “simple.” In an effort to uphold this simplicity, I eventually found myself thinking of Henry David Thoreau’s writings. I even found myself wandering to a neighborhood lake in the late night/early mornings, before sunrise, perhaps in a feeble attempt to relate, even if for a moment, to the life Thoreau wrote so poetically about over 150 years ago. It seemed only appropriate, therefore, to name this piece after Thoreau’s own liquid sanctuary, Walden.

My ideal of Walden, however, isn’t necessarily only calm and tranquil, but is one that is full of life — one that moves with great harmonic and rhythmic motion. There have been other musical arrangements of the same name that are all very transparent and lightly orchestrated that perhaps romanticize the lake’s magical stillness. I hope my interpretation captures a contrasting lushness, vibrance, and animation, complex in the details, but not without a few nods to tranquility. This is how I picture my own Walden to be.

Here is a MIDI mockup and a sample score. As always, if you give it a listen, please email me and let me know what you think! I’m really stoked to hear this piece live.