This summer, two of my new bébés shall be ushered into the world:
Monday, June 13, 7:30 pm
The Dwarf Planets: Band Edition (premiere)
Baldwin High School Wind Symphony
Adelphi University, Garden City, NY
Really looking forward to this one. The concert features new works by SIX composers, including Paul Moravec, whom I consider to be something of a celebrity. Major props to by boy Scott Dunn for his efforts in commissioning and promoting new music. I’ve worked with his students before and I’m really looking forward to doing it again. I’ll be on hand to conduct.
Sunday, July 17, 5:00 pm
Acadia Fanfare, world premiere
The Pierre Monteux School, Hancock, ME
The Monteux School is really home for me, the place where I learned so much of what I use in my music-making every single day, and I feel privileged to give back with a new piece for orchestra that celebrates the school and the natural beauty of Acadia National Park. I’ll be there the whole week leading up to this, and Monday, July 11, we’ll also do “The Itsy Bitsy Spider“.
IN BETWEEN: I go to China for 11 days with Metropolitan Youth Symphony to cap off my season as their Interim Music Director. I’ve never been to China before, but I’ve been taking Chinese lessons for the past 10 months and I’m boldly going to attempt giving my concert speeches there in Chinese (ä½ é—¨å¥½ï¼Œ 我å«ç™½å¨å»‰ï¼ï¼‰ which I think will come off as charming if not intelligible.
ALSO: I will, at some point, recommence making “Ask A Maestro” videos. I have sooo many great topics: How does a composer know when a piece is finished? What jobs can a musician do? How do you know what key a piece is in?
I also want to do a lightning round video at some point where I just answer a bunch of short questions about classical music, so if you have any little ones or big ones or anything in between, you can always submit them on the Ask A Maestro tab above.