<p>On Friday, March 26th at 4:30PM in the Organ Recital Hall at the UCA, I had my senior recital. The recital is a for-credit class that is technically geared towards performance majors, but they’re required of composition, education, and bachelor of the arts majors as well. Usually, grading is pretty straight-forward. Your applied teacher sits in the audience and watches you along with everything else, grading your performance of music that you have learned under their tutelage over the last however many semesters. Grades are as you would expect them - technicality, stage presence, song interpretation, working with the accompanist, and so on.</p>
<p>Composition is a little different, however. With composition, your work on the pieces has already been graded by the applied professor, for the most part, you aren’t even performing the pieces. The point of the recital shifts away from proving you can sing or play to proving you can pull together music and get it performed somehow. Your job changes from learning music and reciting it on stage to writing music, finding performers, organizing rehearsals, then organizing the recital and possibly conducting or performing the pieces, though the focus on that latter part is minimal.</p>
<p>My own senior recital was in the works since about August 2009, when I started thinking about pulling music together. Soon after that, it was decided by all involved that I would share the recital slot with another composer, Joe Hills, who needed to do his junior recital, meaning that he should have about half the music that I would. This worked out for the best due to the fact that I had about 20 minutes of music ready to be handed to performers (ready as in completed and approved by my professor) and Joe had about 10 minutes. With applause and set-changes, this would easily fill our hour-long recital slot. My set of songs worked out as follows:</p>
<p>All of the times were pulled off of the MIDI renderings from Sibelius and I supposed that tempos would likely vary quite a bit more in the performance, particularly since Sibelius’ tempo changes (<em>rit.</em> and <em>accel.</em>) were a little mechanical sounding and the real chances would be more organic. <em>Mirrors</em>, <em>I often wondered</em>, and <em>Concerto for Saxophone Quartet</em> had all been completed earlier, but the <em>Duet</em> had just been commissioned in August of 2009 and I was continuously working with the performers, David Saccardi and John Gough, to finish their three movement piece. This was exciting early on as my first commission, but steadily turned into more and more drudgery as I tried out new ideas only to have them turned down by the performers, eventually coming up with a piece that neither they nor I was entirely happy with. <em>Daglarim</em> was a rearrangement of an earlier piece for a small mixed ensemble, and came together as a surprise in early 2010 when a violist approached me about performing on my recital. I had imagined that that would’ve been one of the harder instruments to find a performer for, but it all worked out for the best.</p>
<p>Up until this point, everything had been working out smoothly. I scheduled the recital date for March 26th with Dr. Moody, made sure that Joe knew how much of the time he had to fill, and pulled together (mostly) my list of pieces for the performance. By November of 2009, I had talked to Elvin Holderfield (later, The Elvin Holderfield) about playing in both the saxophone quartet and <em>Mirrors</em>, and he was working it out with his accompaniment professor so that he could get class credit for it. Joe and I took pictures and made posters to hang for the event. I talked the student sax quartet into playing the concerto with Elvin, and handed them music. Hearing this, Joe also chose to have a sax quartet piece on the recital so that we could use some of the same performers, and we even managed to have a run-through rehearsal with them in December before the semester ended. David Saccardi agreed to play bass on Mirrors, even. I figured that things would be fairly smooth from then on, and so it’s no surprise that that’s when things went downhill.</p>
<p>With winter break taking up an entire month, I let things slide on my end. I started practicing conducting <em>Mirrors</em>, but that was about the extent of work I put into the recital; perhaps I sent updated parts to John and David for <em>Duet</em>. When the semester started up again, I started contacting applied instrument teachers to get their opinions on the best students to ask about performing on the recital. There was a month and a half until my recital when I finally wound up with an instrument with each part. I was rehearsing with the choir after their class time, but that was about the only rehearsals I had for two weeks.. then three weeks. I started to worry about the fact that I had asked all these performers to volunteer and had yet to even meet several of them face-to-face. My emails to the performers got firmer and firmer as I struggled to pull things together.</p>
<p>A rehearsal for <em>Mirrors</em> which was supposed to involve everyone but the violin and cello wound up consisting of me, Elvin, and the flautist, Amy Coup. Three of the four members of the string quartet were in a chamber ensemble together and wound up practicing without the second violin on two occasions, but I had supposed that was about it. The saxophone quartet, also a class, practiced Joe’s and my piece on a few of their rehearsals, but with a concert two weeks before the recital, most of their attention was focused on that music. Two and a half weeks before my recital, I <em>finally</em> landed a percussionist for <em>Mirrors </em>and <em>Duet</em>, but never actually met him. The week before my recital was spring break, and I had almost no contact with any of my performers at all, not for lack of trying. The Sunday after break, six days before the recital, the percussionist quit, but thankfully found himself a replacement, the excellent Nick Rose, but David also informed me that he wouldn’t be able to make any<em> Mirrors</em> rehearsals at all. The first rehearsal was shaky, but my spirits were lifted when the entire string quartet met up for rehearsal of <em>Daglarim</em> as well, where I finally met the second violinist.</p>
<p>As it turned out, <em>Duet</em> wouldn’t rehearse until Thursday the 25th, when David and John met Nick, the percussion accompaniment, for the first time. Mirrors would have no more rehearsals and would run through the piece the whole way through for the first time with David on bass (having decided he would play after all) during the fifteen minutes before the recital started. The sax quartet would meet with Elvin for the first time during the hour before the rehearsal, and <em>Duet</em> would have its first complete rehearsal at the same time.</p>
<p>The troubles wouldn’t stop with the performers, though. The stage crew, figuring this would be a performance recital rather than the complicated mess it was destined to be, provided only one stage hand, whose job it was simply to hold the door open to backstage while performers, meaning that the performers and I had to perform all of the set changes by ourselves. Finally, due to scheduling conflicts, a few performers were in class until 4:30 or even 5:00 and so the program had to be changed last-minute.</p>
<p>I’ll admit, despite all of the troubles and all of my kvetching, that the performance did turn out okay. The only major glitches were the sax quartet leaving the stage right before their second piece, the last minute program reorganization, and Joe forgetting to come on stage to turn pages for Elvin on <em>Concerto</em>. A few of the pieces were received better than others, due simply to their being more tonal than others and thus more appealing to the audience that showed up. There were several rough spots in the songs, as was to be expected, but I still got two audio recordings and a video recording (to be posted in a future post) of real performers playing my music, which is always a thrill.</p>
<p>I guess that all told, all intended lessons were duly learned. I figured out how hard it was to get performers to play my music with no leverage to wield against their apathy, nothing to hold over their heads in order to get them to play well, practice plenty, and perform as desired. I saw how little new music means to so many people. I learned what it means to conduct those who don’t care or are too busy to care, and how it feels to have your hard work put through the mangler of public performance. I also learned how impressive a feat it is to actually create something new, and I learned how much my work means to me. I saw what its like when something hitherto existing only on paper becomes a reality. I figured out how big of a part of my life music really is. I can wish all I want to have had a better recital and a better experience, but I’m sure that in the end, I’ve come out better for it.</p>
