Composer FAIL #6 (with recording!)

Earlier this year, Joan Tower took me to lunch, and, probably due to my lack of inventing interesting conversation, I admitted to her that I was electronically scrapbooking my rejection letters online and writing about them.

She looked at me with a half-scowl and slowly repeated what I just told her.

"You post your rejection letters ONLINE?"

Yep. I'm starting to question the logic in my thinking when I started this project six months ago, because, frankly, I'm really starting to get tired of this. If you do the math, my average is almost a rejection letter a month.

Well, as the title of this post suggests, I DID promise a composer fail AND a recording, so here is the composer fail:

I suppose this is what I deserve if I send a MIDI recording of this piece (Flight 710 to Cabo San Lucas), and my MIDI sounds can only go so far. MIDI sounds probably made my piece sound relentless. Angry, even. But I assure you, this isn't an angry piece.

In fact, I LIKE this piece; I really do. It's not angry or relentless; it's more "deconstructed funk," as Nicholas Phontinos described it during rehearsal. I think the best indirect compliment I received was watching Jeremy Malvin rock out to the piece during its performance at Music10. (Thanks, dude.)

To understand what I'm talking about, here is the recording, with Pethrus Gardborn, flute; Nicholas Phontinos, cello; and Johanna Ballou, piano.



I wish you could have seen them perform live; they were absolutely fierce. Also, I feel the acoustics in this recording are a little dry. Anyway, as soon as I have the video, it's going online.