About the Composer

My friend Tom Laughlin (now “Will” for some reason) wrote this incredibly funny poem years ago. It’s a send-up of Edgar Allen Poe’s The Raven, full of dizzying Sondheim-like internal rhymes. (Sibyl/Shibboleth, anyone?) I’d post the whole poem here, but my content column is too narrow to do it properly. So, take a look at the version on Tom’s web site, (which is primarily dedicated to his obsession with bad horror movies).

While you’re there, take a look at his Rhymes and Dances, a series of very short, very funny poems. (Follow the “Things That Rhyme” link on the home page). About 15 years ago, I did a choral setting of one of them, Ducks in the Garden.

By the way, for all these years, I thought that a grackle was something Tom made up. Turns out it’s an actual, real type of bird. Eh, what do you want from a city kid.

My old friend Chris Mandra appeared out of nowhere this weekend, announcing that he was in San Francisco and on the way to Burning Man. When I say “old”… he was among my first friends when I arrived at the University of the Arts as a freshman, so we’re talking exactly twenty years now. Holy moly.

So, Chris is an interesting guy. He has gone from affable, endearingly pretentious, bearded composition student to shaved-headed Executive Producer of NPR Online to red-streaked, wild-haired electro-acoustic performance, uh, wizardy guy. (OK, not quite sure what’s up with my obsession with Chris’ hairstyle.)

Chris now goes by the name of “kataStatik” (and I relentlessly taunted him by calling him “katatastic”), and he performs on an instrument he invented called the “manDrum”. If I understand correctly, the manDrum consists of sensors he wears under his clothing that interact with software he wrote to control a synthesizer when struck. (Sorry, I’m not hip to all the real terminology.) So, basically, he beats himself silly, and music comes out.

There’s more to it than that. More details and video of the manDrum in action can be found on Chris’ web site. This is all quite removed from the musical world I live in, but it sure is interesting. Plus, I have to say: “manDrum” is a great name.

Over the weekend we were visiting my in-laws in Carmel Valley. We took Philo to the “neighborhood” playground, which was about a 15-minute drive away. Adjacent to the playground there is a community swimming pool where some folks were rehearsing a synchronized swimming act. What an unlikely thing to see.

So, we had to hear the same music over and over again. The music, which was too loud (so the swimmers could hear it), was in a very cliché “American Indian” style, opening with lots of do-so-do-so timpani stuff, and building up to a full orchestral tutti. I have no idea what it was, but had to reconcile rolling my eyes over the tackiness of it, while admiring the orchestration. My wife had to elbow me a few times, because I kept saying things like, “Me heap think woodwind filigree rather overdone.”

Last year I composed the score for an independent film adaptation of The Merchant of Venice. Shakespeare’s Merchant finally premiered at the Philadelphia International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival in July.

The film hasn’t been widely reviewed, but here are two that I’ve found; one terrible, and one not too bad. Neither mentions the music. So, what else is new.

• The terrible one. Actually, this is a “user comment” on the film’s IMDB page. It’s not very thorough, but he/she has some valid points, particularly about the sound quality. We’re hoping for another round of audio cleanup.
• The not-too-bad one From FilmThreat.com. At least it recognizes Bruce Cornwall’s performance as Shylock, and director/screenwriter Paul Wagar’s adaptation of the text.

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”.

Composer web sites tend to basically follow the same formula: my bio, my pieces, my news, my quotes, my audio clips, etc. They don’t often reveal too much about the composer as a person. Until now, the various iterations of my web site have pretty much followed this formula.

By incorporating a blog, it occurs to me, there’s an opportunity to give the curious reader a somewhat more thorough view of who I am, and what kind of composer I am. It’s also a handy way to keeping the site current, and hopefully to make readers want to come back in the future.

Items here cover a variety of topics including my work, my friends’ work, music in general, reminiscences, parenting, Yiddish curses… whatever’s on my mind, I suppose. Please comment if you find anything interesting or irritating. Or both.

New to blogs?
A great many visitors to this site will not be familiar with the conventions that most blogs follow. I’m also new to it, and I’m just imitating what I’ve seen on other blogs.

There isn’t much to it really. Typically, items appear in reverse chronological order. If you click on the item’s title or the link that says “Permalink”, you’ll see the item on its own page with a form at the bottom where you can post a comment if you wish. If there are other reader comments, this is where they appear.

My blog items are assigned to categories. The list of categories that contain entries is in the sidebar to the left. You can view all items for a given category by following those links.

Blog items are stored on the site indefinitely and can be found using the search box in the sidebar at the left, or the “Archives” links, also in that sidebar.

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