New Opera

This is my first post since the pandemic. Like many of us, I did not quite know what to do when it all came down. Over a hundred of my scheduled performances were canceled and I was left home wondering where it was all heading.

Thankfully, it was not long before colleagues started reaching out for some composing projects. I did a short film, an online theater experiment, a composition for four basses to be performed outside, and had an outside, socially-distanced visit with pianist friend Lars Potteiger, and Tammy Black, artistic director of Berks Opera Company. This meeting led to a commission which has kept me busy throughout the pandemic. The new opera “These Valleys and Mountains: Berks Legends” will be performed on Friday, June 17, 2022 at the Miller Center for the Arts in Reading, Pennsylvania.

These Valleys and Mountains

Mountain Mary left a legacy of loving spirituality and profound healing. Matthias Schaumbacher left the opposite: a legend of greed and violence. How have the seeds planted in the stories of these two people, who lived such different lives, grown in this place we call home?

2020 in Review

I will skip most of the obvious rehashing of this bizarre year and get to my personal highlights.

Touring

I started the year with my usual trip to Florida for some gigs and some comraderie with the Alex Meixner Band. One more short tour, then home for my favorite theater event of the year: Reading Theater Projects 5-minute Fringe Festival. After that, everything changed.

One-by-one, all my gigs disappeared. My calendar went from well over one hundred performances to single digits.

Engraving/Editing

Almost immediately, I received a call from a music publisher who needed thirty concert band arrangements edited in Sibelius (a task for which I am well-suited). It was over a month of work at a time when every phone call or email was a cancellation.

Commissions

Another commission which came in during a busy touring time for me was for Berks Sinfonietta, a wonderful professional orchestra whose imaginative programming compliments its great performances. They asked me to adapt a piece I had written for piano and voice (soprano) to an arrangement for choir and piano. The piece is set to a poem by Louise Bogan. My schedule now allowed me to finish this piece and now eagerly await a time when choirs may resume performing.

During that time, I was fortunate enough to receive another call to compose a jingle for Berks Arts, a local nonprofit which presents the world famous Berks Jazz Fest (which, of course was postponed for at least a year). I was flattered to be asked and grateful both for the work and that they hired locally. We really do have a rich arts community here.

Then, in late November, I received word that a grant proposal submitted by Berks Opera Company for my to compose several short operas on the subject of local historical figures was granted.