An Old Favorite: Cycle of Friends Turns 10

Today was the 10th anniversary of the premiere of my first commissioned work.

Cycle of Friends, for soprano, chorus and chamber orchestra, was premiered on May 3rd, 1996 by the Music Group of Philadelphia. Artistic Director Sean Deibler had been one of my undergraduate teachers, and has been a mentor and all-around guru ever since. I was very lucky to be one of three composers he chose for a three-year commissioning binge he was on at the time, thanks to a special grant. The commission came through as I was finishing my master’s degree at the S.F. Conservatory. (I was studying with Conrad Susa when I wrote this piece; it doesn’t get better than that for choral music.)

This was a dream come true at the time. I had sung in Sean’s choruses at the University of the Arts as well as his Choral Arts Society of Philadelphia, which was then the Philadelphia Orchestra’s chorus of choice. So, thanks to Sean, I was intimately familiar choral music from a cappella gems like the Ravel Trois Chansons, Hindemith’s Six Chansons and Barber’s Reincarnations to massive symphonic masterworks including The Damnation of Faust and John Adams’ Harmonium. (I should post a complete list, just for fun someday. It’s pretty amazing.) So, I was chomping at the bit to write a big choral piece myself.

Another Sentimental Commission

My alma mater, the Washington International School, is celebrating their 40th anniversary this year. How kind of them to ask me to write a short fanfare for the occasion. Like my last commission for Letter To Hungary, I’m very happy to do it for sentimental reasons.

There’s only one problem: What’s a fanfare?

Details on the Budapest concert

Since the beginning of August, I’ve been working on a new piece for the Hungarian Chamber Symphony Orchestra. It will be a fifteen-minute piece for strings, and the title is Letter to Hungary. With this concert, the HCSO is launching their “American Composers’ Podium”, a series of concerts and hopefully other events that will help promote the work of American composers among Hungarian audiences.

The concert will take place on November 18th at the Italian Institute in Budapest. Other composers featured will be Malcolm Hawkins and Sara Doncaster. You can read full details on the American Composers Podium on the HCSO’s stunning new web site .

New Chamber Orchestra Commission

Toward the beginning of August, I was invited by the Hungarian Chamber Symphony Orchestra to compose a new work for string orchestra to be performed in November 2005. This is for a special program of American repertoire called the “American Composers’ Podium”.