On Wednesday I’m off to
Michigan for a festival of my music.
Eastern Michigan University is mounting quite an impressive show, with three days of events. Students, faculty and guest artists will be performing six pieces of mine:
Façade (1983),
Dunigan Variations (1991),
Furies and Muses (1997),
Amadeus ex machina (2001),
Big Brothers (2004) and
Blown Away (2005). You can read all about the festival
here.
I’m looking forward to meeting
Anthony Iannacone, who organized this event. Every other year, he has one of these festivals, which they call MUSIC NOW. Students have been studying my scores, writing papers about my work, even contacting me with questions in advance of my visit. Again, it’s all very impressive.
The challenge for me will be the 45-minute convocation speech I’m supposed to give about my music. I work very hard on a daily basis to keep my enormous ego in check; the prospect of talking about myself for 45 minutes is a bit frightening. I’m not sure how I’ll ever stuff that cat back into the bag when it’s all over.
But for now, I have lots of links. Drew Traxler, about whom I wrote in my last post, has more silly
Wright Flight cartoons on his page
here. And Beau Roberts, one of the other actors in last weekend’s performance, has an interesting post mortem
here. And there's a nice review of the piece in the
Mansfield News Journal.And the amazing
Piotr Szewczyk, whose
Violin Futura project I’ve chronicled before, premiered my
Mister Blister last Monday along with several other works on a New World Symphony Forum Concert. The following day, he had them all posted on YouTube
here. Congrats and thanks, Piotr – I’ll be giving you some feedback when I get back from Michigan and have a chance to give a close listen.
Meanwhile, I’ve got to get back to work on this convocation speech.