Last Sunday was the five-year anniversary of my mother’s death. I think of her every day but especially at this time of year.  I wish I could call her, tell her all the things that are happening to me, talk about the weather, talk about anything.

And I wish I could do some of the things that I promised her I’d do, like write a piece for her.  She never really understood the contemporary classical music field but nonetheless she always wanted me to write her a piece and call it Song For My Mother. She bugged me about this for years but it was an impossible task.

First of all we had wildly different taste in music. Every time she came to a concert on which I had a piece she would say “why can’t you write something nice and tonal?”  I would get furious and start sputtering like Napoleon Dynamite.  It is tonal music mother!!  My music is tonal!  God!  Then I would pull a tater tot out of my pocket and chew it petulantly. (more…)

Almost every time someone says the word technology to me I think of Betty Scott.  Dr. Scott was a trumpet professor at Mizzou when I was an undergraduate and I took a semester of lessons with her partly because Mizzou had the sensible policy of making composers take at least a semester of several different instruments to get some hands-on experience but partly because she was in many ways a legend.

For example my roommate even knew who she was and he wasn’t a music major or even musical. In fact, now that I think of it, he was perhaps the living embodiment of the opposite of music. Although he did pay his rent on time which makes up for a lot.

At any rate, it seemed like everyone on campus knew of Betty Scott because, in addition to being a great trumpeter who frequently left the concert hall to play in street bands, she was also preternaturally wise, absurdly well-learned and, it was said by many, even possessed of special powers. (more…)

I’ve been interested in architecture for a long time, in terms of design and aesthetic but also in how the buildings that we make and live and work in affect our lives.  I’m also interested in the intersection of music and architecture, how music sounds in a given space, how the design of the building affects the listener perception of the music and how the history of a building can inspire a composer’s piece.

It’s been a huge blessing then that for many years I’ve had the great fortune to add a musical component to projects celebrating architecture in Chicago, Milwaukee and Barcelona.  Next weekend I’ll head to Milwaukee for Doors Open, a long-running annual event celebrating the city’s architectural and design legacy. (more…)

ACM’s first Chicago concert of the season is the musical culmination of a lifelong fascination with comparative religion, spirituality, and altered states of consciousness and I’m so excited about it.

We’ll perform music inspired by Tibetan Buddhism, sacred spaces in Australia, the Christian mystical tradition, a hallucinogenic mushroom trip and my piece The Numinous inspired by C.G. Jung’s concept of mythical archetypes.

I first got into Jung when I was still in high school. I was obsessively reading Joseph Campbell and he seemed to be obsessed with Jung and I thought, the obsession of my obsession must be worth obsessing about.  And it was!  I almost never think of anything now in less than mythic terms which, while it makes life interesting,  does have a downside or two.

At any rate, this concert is happening in our new venue, the recently restored Davis Theater in Lincoln Square, a gorgeous movie theater with adjoining bar and restaurant.  And, as if that weren’t enough, this concert also includes the first installment of our new Composer Alive collaboration with David Smooke.

David is writing a short piece in installments called Mechanical Birds and I’m very excited to hear the first couple minutes of it.

After I finished my piano concerto at the beginning of this year and it was performed in March I felt empty inside. It was one of the greatest creative events of my life and yet when it was done I just went into a kind of depression and didn’t want to write any more music.

I wish I could say that I felt that the concerto was the supreme expression of my art or some nonsense like that but it was more just like this incredible ennui like, I finished a great challenge and was pleased with it and all but really, did the challenge or the completing of the challenge really matter after all?

That’s a terrible frame of mind for a creative person to be in and it unfortunately lasted for several months, until just last week actually. I struggle a lot with finding meaning in the world.  It seems to me that you can focus on the really big things, like the eventual death of the universe, or you can focus on really small things like what kind of salsa to buy for your blue corn chips.

I let myself get lost in the idea that it really doesn’t matter what kind of salsa you buy for your corn chips, or even if the chips are made of blue corn at all, considering that the entire universe will eventually implode. Nothing mundane matters in the face of this and everything is mundane.  But it occurred to me last week that I’ve had this exactly backwards.

The truth is that if you find the right salsa for your corn chips then it really doesn’t matter that the universe will one day implode. A simple epiphany but it got me writing music again and I’m thankful for that.  I’m writing small ensemble works but I think I know what my next big project will be too.

And I did find the right salsa for my blue corn chips and it’s so good.

For all of the magic of holding a classical music festival on the street, every year I think the most special part of it for me is Sunday night after we’ve torn down the tents and stage, moved everything back inside, after the vendors have left, after every chair is taken off the street and there’s this incredible moment when we remove the blockades and traffic starts up again and it’s as if the fest never happened.

I don’t know what it is about that that gets me but it’s an incredible feeling. I stand there muscles aching from my arduous labors over the weekend and look at the cars going by with drivers totally oblivious to the fact that just hours ago the street was full of people and music was ringing out.  It’s like building your castle in the sand and taking great pride in it but also taking joy in watching the ocean wash it away.

That said I have many favorite moments of the actual festival itself including hearing Shostakovich’s e-minor trio performed while the sun was setting behind me, overhearing people rave about the music, watching the kids enjoying the WTTW Big Ideas Van performance and, not least, seeing this event that had existed in my head for so long come to life.

The smartest thing I did was hire Elliot Mandel to take photos.   Looking at these is now my favorite part of the fest and reminds me that it did indeed happen and it was indeed awesome.

Newcity’s Music 45 celebrates the musicians behind the scenes whose unseen sweat, blood and tears make the show happen.

It’s a thoughtful list and I was excited to make the cut again this year and to move up from #44 to #34.  Cue the Jefferson’s Theme  No, wait, don’t.

Not because it’s a bad song but because it’s an ear worm and I don’t want to walk around the rest of the day with it stuck in my head.

At any rate, check out the Newcity Music 45 Who Keep Chicago In Tune!

I was fascinated by this character the first time I saw this woodcut, the Galactic Drifter by Sanya Glisic. I was tasked with setting several of Sanya’s works to music by Amos Gillespie for a project called Paintings Composed and they’ll be playing this one at the Thirsty Ears Festival in a couple of days.

As I stared at the woodcut I pictured him dancing around space, teleporting to different worlds using the chronometer on his wrist and generally getting into mischief wherever he goes. Based on his footwear he may also have a passion for dancing.

I wanted to bring this idea across with a bluesy pizzicato part in the cello but I’m not really a fan of traditional blues and I have this compulsion to make everything more complex than perhaps it needs to be so it’s a bluesy cello pizz part that incorporates multiple pitch sets. But don’t worry, it’s still fun.

Then there’s a section where the flute, clarinet and cello play syncopated rhythms together and the saxophone comes in out of sync with them.  It’s my favorite part of the piece, although I like the lonely sax solo too.  Because of the sax solo and his aloofness in the syncopated part, the musicians thought that Amos was the Galactic Drifter but I promise I was thinking of no such thing.

Here’s the great recording from the original project some years back.  Best to listen to it while staring intently at the woodcut.

The highlight of summer for me is the Thirsty Ears Festival, Chicago’s only classical music street festival, now expanded to two days.

From Beethoven to Shostakovich to George Flynn, there’s something for everyone!

Or if you don’t like music you can just stand around drinking beer like most people at street festivals do.  We’ll have two great beer options for you from Chicago’s own Empirical Brewing.

Plus food trucks, vendor booths and family friendly activities all on a friendly, tree-lined street in idyllic Ravenswood.

I’m so very pleased that we have sponsors this year too.  We’ve received very generous support from PianoForte Chicago, Connect Hearing, Shure, WFMT and Hazel Chicago.

My first summer out of high school I decided that I should get some life experience before starting college and so I decided to move to the Lake of the Ozarks and go to work at a resort called the Lodge of the Four Seasons.

It was 1989 and I had some vague idea that it would be like Dirty Dancing and I’d meet some hot older ladies, spend a lot of time around a pool drinking exotic cocktails, I don’t know what else, maybe learn to dance?

Unfortunately it wasn’t like that at all.  They put me to work as a linen runner restocking cabinets with sheets and pillow cases and things and getting yelled at all day by scary chain smoking maids who kept asking me if I was an idiot or something.

Worse, a linen runner had no status, none whatsoever.  I wasn’t even allowed to enter the pool area, much less lounge by it whilst savoring a tropical cocktail.  All around me I saw people enjoying themselves and having a great time while I was stuck with a guy who, upon opening a linen cabinet and finding it empty would play air guitar and sing the words Bare to the Bone, apparently a reference to that idiotic George Thorogood song.

He would literally do this with every empty cabinet and, as our job was to fill the cabinets, they were all empty.  It was intolerable. I can’t remember his name now but the scariest day of all came as he was taking me around the Lodge in the little cart they let us drive and he told me that I would “make it” as a linen runner.  This was apparently a compliment.

I quit the next day and went to work at a tie dye shop and spent the rest of the summer tie dying socks while talking to my co-worker Leann about her obsession, Led Zeppelin.  She had just read Hammer of the Gods, a sensationalized, mostly fictional account of the band’s exploits on tour.

We would line up long rows of pristine, rubber-banded white socks and gently pour colored dyes on them, watching them soak in and blend while she talked about the crazy thing that the band did with a dead shark.  Summer ran out before she ran out of Led Zeppelin stories.

People will tell you that summer is running out now but don’t believe them!  We still have until September 21 dammit.