So yeah, October. It's always been a busy month for me. When I was at CWU, it was the month of football games with the band, the Halloween Orchestra concert, and just a lot of homework. At UWM, we had a band concert by October.
This October is turning out to probably the most challenging yet, but man, I'm super excited for it. The Saratoga Orchestra begins rehearsing on the 24th, which is when we start rehearsing my concerto. So getting prepared for that is a HUGE project. Did I mention that my concerto is pretty challenging? Yeah, I'm sure I did. I wrote it to be that way so I can overcome it and prove to myself that I can overcome it. The technical challenge of some of the passages, as well as the array of high register notes, is what I really need to prepare for. And, building up the strength to endure the whole concerto is essential, so I just need to make sure I warm-up good every day and try to practice a good amount. I really feel the effects of not warming well consistently, so that's what I have to avoid. But anyways, yeah, working up this concerto to a performable level: a lot of work.
And I've been working on several different arrangements for my two brass ensembles. Thankfully, they're all finished and the parts are handed out to the kids. But I'm gonna get recordings made of them this weekend for study, and I need to make they sound good. I'm tired of having to do so much editing on my recordings (like I've had to with some of my recordings before) because I just wasn't sounding good enough. So I'm making an extra effort to make just a good product. I take a lot of pride in recording myself because I share it with the public, and as I preach good, clean and in-tune playing, I should just as well model it.
And then there's all these arrangements I've made over the last couple years for my ensembles that I haven't even published yet. Some of them are marketable, particularly the work I've done recently. So you're going to start seeing a number of works added to this website soon. They're all just arrangements or transcriptions, nothing original. But I tell ya, they're pretty good.
I also intend on adding sample pages of stuff I have on my "Store". That way, you can see a couple pages of the music before you buy it.
In other news, I just got the October 2017 issue of the IHS journal The Horn Call. Two more of my pieces we reviewed in this one: my Serenade for Winds (which got a lot of great attention from the students and faculty of the Summerwinds Camp in Bellingham), and my Fanfare for Heroes, which hasn't been played yet. Both pieces got very positive reviews! I'm so thrilled to get that publicity! It's just an honor to get favorable reviews from those professionals. I hope to get a good review for my Horn Concerto when I send it in soon. I'm going to do that after I premiere it, because I hope to have a good recording of it.
Take care and value music.