Once again, sorry for taking so very long away from the blog. I’m having a bit of a difficult time making progress on my work. My relationship of four years ended recently, and it’s rocked me back a bit in terms of my producivity. But enough of that.
I’m still trying to get a good balance of work (by day, at Meet the Composer) and social life and writing, and it’s not quite right yet. However, having a day job has significantly slowed the cycle of getting pieces ready for performance. When I was in school I’d have a new piece performed every couple of months, and planning for than 6 or so months ahead was ridiculous. Now I’m working on putting together performances and pieces that will certainly not come to fruition for over a year, or maybe even longer. It’s a strange feeling. In part I think it comes from having less time to work, and being therefore unable to promise completion of projects as quickly as I could before. But it also comes from working on larger projects that are more collaborative, and a greate emphasis on the planning process.
I’m working with an opera company in the early stages of doing another production of the score I did for Mary Zimmerman’s Arabian Nights adaptation last summer. But where in the past my approach was to pick a date on the calendar when I thought it would be ready, and then do as well as I could in the time allotted, now I’m doing a lot more work in the planning phase, working more on making sure what we’re up to is really what we want to be doing.
I think this way of working on a production is pretty analogous to the way my writing has changed recently. Instead of banging out as much as quickly as I could, now I spend most of my writing time planning what it is I want to do, and less and less time actually choosing notes.
In the long term it’s better, and it’s definitely influenced by working at a non-profit, and seeing how Meet The Composer treats long term planning and execution. Nevertheless, it’s difficult to get used to. Where I used to have some pretty good validation through performance every few months, now I have long term projects (2 films, 2 plays, 1 opera, 1 acting percussion piece for Greg Jukes) in various stages of long term work. It takes a deal more patience, commitment, and faith in what I’m doing than the old way did.
Now it’s time to restate my hope of posting more frequently, and obviuosly of writing more music about which to post. And now it’s time to close.