orange crushed

Here's an iPhone video of my nephew, Gordon Hicken, premiering my When Your Time is Orange earlier this month. Gordon, who gives a very fine performance here, assures me that a higher quality video is on its way.

solo bang

Tomorrow evening, at 7:30 at the Recital Hall of the School of Music of the University of South Carolina (Columbia), my nephew, Gordon Hicken, will be giving the premiere performance of When Your Time is Orange, which I wrote for this occasion. The recital also includes music by JS Bach, Becker, Carter, Masson, Stevens, and Thomas.

If you're in the neighborhood, please drop in.

hear the bang

Phil Freeman has posted the recording of the first performance of my Percussion Concerto at Burning Ambulance. Thanks, also and again to Omar Carmenates (pictures), Leslie Hicken, and the Furman University Wind Ensemble for their fine performance.

southern expressive

Carlisle Floyd

Some thoughts on the Florida State Opera production of Carlisle Floyd's Cold Sassy Tree (2000) I attended this weekend:

• As is almost always the case, the production and performance were of as high a quality as one could hope for from a university opera company. These productions are mounted for academic credit and are given a fraction of the support given to many other activities that are, frankly speaking, not strictly related to a university's mission.
• The renovated Ruby Diamond Concert Hall continues to amaze me with its sound, its appearance (more on that in a bit), and its comfort. Well done.
• The warm colors of Lighting and Scenic Designer Peter Dean Beck's sets and lighting, along with Julia Bradley's costumes, fit so well with Diamond's wood trim and sky-painted walls it was as if the hall itself was an extension of the opera's setting.
• The Opera Orchestra (conducted by Director of Opera Activities Douglas Fisher) sounded great, as did the singers, soloists and choristers alike.
• Florida State Opera productions typically provide a visually dynamic theatrical experience. This is due, in large part, to Stage Director Matthew Lata's skill in handling movement on the stage, particularly the movements of groups of people--no "park and bark" here. Cold Sassy Tree did not provide opportunities for elaborate effects or stunning coups de theatre, but Lata's staging was compelling and eye-rewarding. Particularly expressive were a "declaration of love" scene at the end of Act Two and a robbery at the beginning of Act Three.
• Floyd's music is melodic and sumptuous, though he (wisely, to my ear) eschews big song-like tunes in favor of expressively shaped lines that serve the dramatic shapes of the libretto. The score never resorts to Southern Eccentric cliche, and is beautifully and imaginatively orchestrated.
• I was struck particularly, even awe-struck, if truth be told, by Floyd's storytelling mastery in this opera. I have not read Olive Ann Burns' 1984 novel, but I am given to understand that Floyd's scenario prunes away a good number of sub-plots and characters. What remains is a shapely story, which Floyd, setting his own libretto, paces with a sure hand. I recommend the study of this opera and libretto to anyone foolish enough who wishes to write an opera.
• Finally, it was very moving to see the composer come on stage to the rapturous applause that greeted the end of the performance. It was a fine cap to a great evening in the theater.

after bang

Omar Carmenates playing the first movement of my Percussion Concerto, 22 Feb 2013.

Some thoughts on the premiere:

• It was freakin' amazing!
• Omar Carmenates is a beast. He took a very difficult solo part and made it look and sound easy. 
• My brother, Furman Director of Bands Leslie Hicken, is a fine conductor and an even better teacher. He took a score that is way outside the Furman Wind Ensemble's normal stylistic milieu, and with a few simple words and by working over just the right passages, he got them to play with expression and power. I'm very proud of him.
• And now the work starts again: making some adjustments in the score and parts and arranging further  performances.

bang 3: on-site

"Grids and Motors", mm 25-37

It's funny how things work out sometimes. (Original observation, I know.)

After arriving in Greenville, I was discussing the progress of rehearsals with my brother Les, who is conducting the premiere of the Percussion Concerto on Friday evening. He said that they had to cut the second movement, "Time's Arrow" for several logistical reasons. This development made me realize something I think I had known but had not articulated, even to myself: that "Time's Arrow", which was originally the last section of the finale ("Grids and Motors") needed to be excised from the Concerto altogether and given a different place, which place I'll be working on later.

So the Concerto is back to a two-movement work, which was the original conception. I'm looking forward to hearing it for the first time this afternoon.

recording: intertwining geometries

Intertwining Geometries, m 115

Phil Freeman has posted (over at Burning Ambulance) a recording of the premiere performance of Intertwining Geometries (alto flute and bass clarinet, 2012), played last summer in London by Carla Rees (a fl) and Sarah Watts (b cl). My thanks to Phil for posting it and renewed thanks to Carla and Sarah for their committed and expressive performance of the piece.

bang

from "Fields and Waves",  m. 124-126

My Percussion Concerto is being premiered next Friday, 22 February by Omar Carmenates, with the Furman University Wind Ensemble, conducted by my brother, Leslie Hicken. The program also includes music by Michael Gandalfi, Roger Nixon, and H. Owen Reed.

I'll be blogging about this between now and then, including posts from Greenville next week. If there are any readers in the area I would love to see you there.

across the pond

My new piece for alto flute and bass clarinet, Intertwining Geometries, is getting its first performance this Friday evening, 20 July 2012. I wrote it for Carla Rees and Sarah Watts, who will be playing it on Friday, in London. Details here.

Festival Days

Most new music festivals hosted by colleges and universities follow (roughly) this format. A call for scores is issued, usually listing an "honored guest composer" and/or a featured guest ensemble. A committee sorts through the scores sent in by composers and builds a program. The styles represented will most likely reflect the biases of the committee members (this can be avoided, but that's for another post), and composers will self-deselect if those biases are well-known.

The pieces chosen by the selection committe are then parceled out to faculty and student performers for preparation. At a festival at a major school, there can be as many as eight concerts in as few as three days. In situations like this, the performers feel harried and put-upon, and it shows in their performances. The audience can't pay attention the way they normally would; it's just too much in too little time. The composers are not well-served, either, because they may not get quite the performance they thought they would, and they find it difficult to make connections with like-minded composers because the music is so hard to hear, because of the forced-march schedule.

The organizers of this year's New Music Festival at Western Illinois University, located in Macomb, took a different approach to festival programming. In the past (this was WIU's 24th annual Festival), the Festival was programmed with a Call and a guest composer. One crucial difference is that it was much smaller, with three concerts in two days, so fatigue was not an issue. This year, however, each WIU faculty composer (James Caldwell, Paul Paccione, and James Romig) invited a colleague (Benjamin Broening, Jeff Herriott, and myself) to attend.

In addition to having at least one piece performed on each of two evening concerts, each visiting composer gave a talk on his music to expnaded classes. Finally, an afternoon concert of student compositions was followed by a discussion of these pieces amongst all of the composers. I found the format of the Festival to be extremely interesting, as I got to hear two works by composers whose music was new to me or whose music I had not heard in concert before. Two pieces instead of one was definitely multiplication instead of addition.

I must also comment on the very high level of performances, by both faculty and WIU students. My pieces (premieres of The River Flowing Through Me [Istvan Szabό, viola], American Song [John Mindeman, trombone], and Night Music [Michael Ericson, oboe]) were given fiercely committed, sympathetic, and expressive performances. I really don't know how they could have been better.

This was a very valuable experience for me, and I urge festival organizers around the musical world to consider the WIU model for their events.

Workshop (X)

I noticed recently that it's been a pretty good while since I wrote a blog post. I've been composing a lot lately (in addition to taking a couple of trips) and I realized that composing seriously interferes with my word-writing because of the time it takes (of course) but even more because the mental space composing takes up pushes other music out of my ears/head. (That's the main reason I've gotten behind on CD reviews. Sorry, Jerry.)

I'm beginning to see a light at the end of the tunnel of my percussion concerto, and I'm reasonably sure that light isn't an oncoming train. As of now I'm looking at a spring 2009 premiere. I'll have more details, including titles, specific instrumentation, and the premiere date later.

I wrote a short piece for solo trombone called American Song during a trip to visit family. It's four minutes long and has lyrical and "technical" sections. I'm having some difficulty with converting it from Finale 2009 to pdf, but a score will be available when that is resolved.

Finally, I want to thank Karl Henning (clarinet) and Peter Cama-Lekx (viola) for their perceptive and expressive performance of The Rings of Saturn (2006), the recording of which I received this past weekend. They are artists and gentlemen, and I deeply appreciate their efforts.

Tomorrow in Boston

Obsession & Digression Duologue & Monologue
[ Listening to the Early 21st Century ]

Steve Hicken, The Rings of Saturn (cl/va duet; premiere)
Joshua Sellers, Dithyramb (cl solo; premiere)
Karl Henning, Irreplaceable Doodles (cl solo)
Henning, Blue Shamrock (cl solo)
Henning, The Mousetrap (cl/va duet; premiere)

Karl Henning, clarinet
Peter Cama-Lekx, viola

Wednesday, 18 June 2008
12:15pm
The Cathedral Church of St Paul
138 Tremont Street, Boston

Jerry Gerber

CD review, Sequenza21.

Interpretation and Recording

On my morning commute today I heard a recording of Johannes Brahms' Variations on a Theme by Joseph Haydn (Op. 56a, 1873) by an orchestra whose name I didn't catch, conducted by Pierre Monteux. The orchestra sounded French, because of the oboes. Maybe somebody more knowledgeable about such things could comment.

The Haydn Variations is (to my knowledge) the first stand-alone set of orchestral variations ever written, and it set a very high standard for those that followed. The Theme's DNA is very clear in all of the variations, regardless how distant the surface of the music may sound in a given variation. Because of this, Brahms' compositional processes are directly audible, and the work achieves a virtually complete identity between technique and expression.

Monteux' performance emphasized the rhythmic content of the Haydn Variations in a way I had never heard before. The Theme (probably not by Haydn, by the way) obsesses over the number five. It is replete with fives, in phrase length, repeated notes, etc. This performance was built around brigning the fives (as well as the usual 3:2 hemiolas of which Brahms was so fond) to the foreground through accents and balance. These fives are an importan component of the thematic DNA that informs each of the variations, especially the Finale, which is a passacaglia (variations over a repeating figure) whose ostinato (the repeating figure itself) is five measures long. In addition, these rhythmic quirks were highlighted through the generally quicker than usual tempos Monteux took throughout the performance.

It was an electric and illuminating reading. But I noticed that I fought it for a while because I was used to hearing it a different way. That's what listening to recorded performances does. It places an image in your ears that's hard to dislodge when you are presented with performances that are this different. If the score is in your head, this is not as big a problem, but it's still there.

I arrived at work safely, with a new way of hearing one of my favorite pieces, and without spilling so much as a drop of coffee.