I really should blog more often.

So I thought of something at least noteworthy, though maybe not remarkable, from my séjour in Nova Scotia. This is an interest in new music, particularly music composed for either me specifically, or for an ensemble in which I end up taking part.

One element of the Scotia Festival was a program for young composers. The composers ended up being all still in school - one just starting his undergrad, another at the end of hers, and one doctoral student. Fiona, the doctoral student, was the one for whom I ended up playing. Having been a clarinet performance major for a little while during her undergrad, a good deal of her composition is birthed out of her fiddling around on her clarinet.

Now, this piece was written for a rather unusual instrumentation: soprano, clarinet, and cello. In fact, circumstances at the festival (all the cellists were too busy) brought about an even odder instrumentation: soprano, clarinet, and double bass. Travis, the bassist at the festival, was looking for things to do, so Fiona adapted the cello part for double bass, and it worked remarkably well, especially with the different tone color that the bass has - a bit less warm than the cello. What also worked well was that with this new member of the ensemble, our trio of personalities meshed very nicely. Suré (pronounced soo-RAY) is a dear of a soprano, originally from Cape Town, South Africa, but now living in North Texas with her husband, and Travis is a nice young man from Toronto who attends university in Montréal.

It was a great experience working on a brand-new piece with people who were great colleagues and new friends, and also being able to be a part of the composer's refining of the work. Called "The Crooked Child," Fiona wrote it in response to learning about stories of anorexic ten year-olds. The text is a poem that she wrote, and she decided to set it to music for this festival. It was a great setting, and the audience response was great - it was a powerful work. I'll see if I can get her to send me the text soon so I can post it here.

Yesterday, I was on the phone with Suré, and we were talking about how we should get together and perform something since we will be living just over an hour and a half's drive from each other in less than a month. While we were discoursing, she mentioned that she had talked to Fiona, and that she mentioned the possibility to Fiona about writing a song cycle for our trio. How wonderful would that be -- having a song cycle written for your ensemble that was assembled at a music festival, and then performing it in a doctoral recital in Toronto! In any case, this is why new music is exciting to me. Eventually, as you learn music, you will work your way through all the styles, genres, and periods up through your era. Don't get me wrong -- you can rework those pieces, finding something new and wonderful in them each time -- but there's still something even more exciting about performing the music of our time, especially when it's written for you.

So, friends, this is something that excites me as much as the prospect of trying to learn as much as I can of the music already written for my instrument, in the recent or distant past. Indeed, it is what keeps music alive.