Cucumbers and Gin met its goal.

You may have seen my post on Twitter late last night, but this big news of the day is that Cucumbers and Gin met its fundraising goal of $750. Right now we have $820 pledged and every dollar we raise between now and the deadline on December 24th means we can make an even better …

Front Page of Kickstarter!

There we are! Right on the front! Cucumbers and Gin made the front page. When a project makes the front page of Kickstarter it's a huge help to the fundraising effort. The boost comes partly from just the extra traffic that you get on the front page, and partly from the fact that it's a …

Testing Sound Cloud

I've had an ongoing question about how to present large audio files on this site. Right now I've got small ones hosted myself that play as simple streaming files. For larger files, easier sharing, and on the general principle that you should embed media, not host it, I'm trying out SoundCloud today. They seem pretty …

Emerging Voices Project

Zachary Herchen and Elisabeth Halliday are launching a commissioning and recording project called Emerging Voices. Both No Signal alumni, they're commissioning a couple new pieces for soprano and saxophone, including from Adam Knauss - another No Signal alum. George Lam of Rhymes With Opera and Kathleen Bader are also writing pieces for Zach and Elisabeth. …

Cucumbers and Gin: Kickstarter Project is a go!

Cucumbers & Gin just kicked off its fundraising period - we're finishing on Christmas Eve, and with your help we'll be able to make a great recording and performance film. I've just joined my family for Thanksgiving, but wherever you are, please check out our project and our great rewards:

Starting Sound Check

I'm here at 92YTribeca and we're starting sound check for tonight's launch of the Meet The Composer Studio. It's going to be great. Also, mtcstudio.org is now live! Check it out, tell me what you think, watch the videos of our composers, and support their work and get cool stuff at the same time! I've …

Summer’s Twilight video libretto

Earlier this month Rose Ginsberg and I got together a group of actors to workshop some mime sections of Summer's Twilight. We spent the afternoon trying out different things, working scenes till they gelled, and filming the process to create a kind of video libretto. The filming was as low-key as you can get, just …

November 15th is the day

November 15th is the day we launch the Meet The Composer Studio at 92YTribeca. It's been a long year of hard work. I've been learning a ton of new skills, from web marketing to commissioning contracts to nuts-and-bolts web analysis and UI design. I'm really proud of the work everyone has done on this project, …

Summer’s Twilight mime experiment

Next Saturday Rose Ginsberg and I are running what we think is a really cool experiment to help with Summer's Twilight (my current big project and an adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream). I'm writing a mime section at the opening of the piece, kind of like the dumbshows that we see before Shakespeare productions …

Seafarer Old English recording

I'm still on a quest for an Old English reading of the Seafarer to post to this site to help give people some context for my piece. But there's progress! Heather Thompson, of Caedmon Tutorials found this page from WW Norton. As part of their Norton Anthology of English Literature they've posted a ton of …

Finishing Seafarer: color correction, titles, fiddly bits of clever polishing

Labor Day is usually about picnics and things. I had a two hour meeting with Mike Feldman and Victoria Nece about Seafarer. Victoria does a whole host of things, from web design, motion graphics and print design, to color correction, animation and a spot of wordpress development, though she'd of course be more modest. For …