January 31, 2015.

We need each other:
Composers and performers
Working together

Haiku “motto” for Tufts Composers Project with STEP [Boston String Education Progam/Triple Helix piano trio].

January 22, 2015

Interesting instrumentations: cello and two turntables; ocarina and alto saxophone; quartet of Baroque flute (traverso), flute, alto flute, shakuhachi; trio of cimbalom, harp, piano/celesta; French horn and cimbalom; please add.

January 19, 2015

Cairns. I like to build cairns (rock-pile structures; “a pile of stones that is used as a boundary/trail marker, a memorial, or a burial site”) in my back garden and driveway. The wind [or roving animals, or wandering people, or something/somebody] regularly knock(s) them down, and I rebuild them a little differently each time. For this writing, I take this as a metaphor for composing. One attends to musical ideas regularly, but they often fall apart or unravel/get out of control, and one re-addresses them—often with increasingly clear, satisfying results. Re-work, re-shape, rejuvenate, learn.

January 7, 2015

Time pressures provide direction and help things get finished, but do not encourage deep relationships. Similarly, rushing through material because one can or must develops facility, yet bypasses the fluency and flexibility that comes from abiding investigation (day in, day out).

When one cannot wander or daydream, ideas don’t breathe. Guard against clotting the brain by overfilling it; leave room for getting lost a lot.

January 4, 2015

It is what it is when you know what it is.