January 31, 2018

Musical compositions as assertions—positive statements shaped in rarely positive conditions; resistances; positing possibilities otherwise unseen or unheard.

January 29, 2018

Go out on a limb and hang there for a time. Experience a little creative danger.

January 24-25, 2019

Questions:

1. What does/should a composer do when performers disappoint them?

2. How does a composer align intended expression with stylistic choices? What happened when intended expression and daily life are apparently incongruous?

January 22, 2018

Suddenly I hear Blake Stern (1917-1987) singing Wolf. A memory like a bolt or flash; the realization that something formative and fundamental happened to me in 1987 when Blake performed Hugo Wolf songs at his Yale retirement concert. All the more poignant when he died six months later. This was a voice that stuck to the bones, a fiber that continues to thread itself into my composing, only now with my full realization of its presence.

January 21, 2018

Freshness and originality most likely depend on how well you cook up leftovers.

January 19, 2019

If you take all of your irrational tendencies and harness them into forms of musical expression on a daily basis, do you end up more rational as a result?

January 7, 2018

Creative kiss of death: a formula that works.

January 6, 2018

Too technical. Too philosophical. Too dry. Too unbridled. Too broad. Too precise. Too repetitive. Too sweeping. Change too small; small change. Too ambitious. Too short. Too inward. Too testy… …Put too and too together, and you might have something. (Pore, Sri Lanka).