I’ve been too busy to blog this residency, but here’s a quick summary. We are down here to arrange the music from a book of African-American spirituals compiled by Sam Rivers’ grandfather. It’s incredibly inspiring to work with Sam Rivers. His intellect and musical curiosity are daunting. At 82, he continues to write and play every day. He has been very accessible to us and it’s been a joy spending time with him and his daughter, Monique. Monique takes care of the business. She is amazing. Every artist should have a Monique!
Here’s a picture of Sam Rivers and me in the theatre at the ACA after Sam’s outreach lecture/demonstration for the local community in New Smyrna Beach where ACA is located. At the end of his talk, Sam and all seven of the associate artists read some pages of music he wrote years ago and apparently just found. We each picked a page from a stack of them. All the pages consisted of very angular, possibly serialist (I didn’t have time to examine it too closely before playing) lines. There was not a clef on any of the pages. Then he counted it off and we all played our pages simultaneously. It was an interesting experiment to say the least. Actually I thought it sounded pretty good!
I am working on an arrangement of a hymn called “Come Down Angels” for jazz orchestra which I will not get to hear while I’m down here. It’s going to be fairly large scale. I’m working on sketches now. I have the outline of the sections and how they’ll fit together. Now I’m filling in with motifs and harmonies. It’s going well.
We are also writing arrangements of various verses of the hymn, My Friends and Neighbors. This one is for our ensemble and we will perform it at the In and Out which is the performance at the end of the residency where the community is invited to see what we are doing.
One of the other things I’m working on for myself while I’m down here is memorizing some of my compositions. So if you’re planning to see the trio on tour on the West coast next month, I hope you’ll notice me working without a “net”.
I’m enjoying the space to create music and practice without the distractions of the city and everyday life. If only real life could be like this.