From the monthly archives:
Composer, flutist, professor, and close friend Mark Carlson is celebrating 20 years of presenting chamber music concerts in the Los Angeles area. The group is called Pacific Serenades and they pride themselves, and have been awarded two ASCAP grants for adventuresome programming, in commissioning a new composiition for every concert. Mark was the first in [...]
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I’m going to take a few days off to concentrate on composing. Debussy allegedly said that music is a jealous mistress. Well, so is blogging.
My brother introduced me to one the most useful (to me) and brilliant blogs I’ve ever read: Creating Passionate Users. Bookmark it, read it, see what I mean. I wish I [...]
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My publishing company, Yelton Rhodes Music, publishes several choral works that use the folowing poem, a poem we all had thought was written by someone called Mary Frye. We knew nothing of her, what her dates were or anything else.
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Do not stand at my grave and weep
For I am not there I do not sleep
I [...]
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A new device called the Monome features an 8 X 8 matrix of buttons. It reminds me of the analog sequencer modules from the early days of Moog where one can get a maximum of eight notes on one grid. It would repeat over and over (remember Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love”?) like a loop. [...]
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I am a somewhat regular member of the Rufus Wainwright Message Board, hosted by Dreamworks. This group has been a tremendous help to me in researching my book. I’d like to share a few recents posts.
One of the strings I posted was “Does Rufus read music?” I asked because of the thousands of pictures I’ve [...]
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Here is an 80s group from Finland called Armi and Danny. Living in a multi-national city like LA, one rarely hears criticisms like “too white” but this number is too damned white, even for my white ass tastes.
Armi and Danny
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My father, ready to buy a stationary bicycle, wrote me to ask Teresina’s advice on what kind of bicycle to buy. Here is her response (I’ve kept her e e cummings punctuation and poetic lineation).
Dear Roger’s Dad,
I prefer a good sturdy upright bike.
however, you have to work harder to support
the upper body.
the recumbent bike makes [...]
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Daniel and I love to celebrate. We celebrate our first meeting, our first date, our first conjugal embrace, and the date we moved in together. Not having a marriage option we don’t have a wedding anniversary and we don’t celebrate the day we signed our domestic partner papers. I celebrate getting a commission to write [...]
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I spent much of today digitizing old cassette tapes of improvisations I made between 1974 and 1976. I’m not exactly sure why, I don’t want them released commerciallly as they have no commercial interest. I guess I’ll leave them with my musical sketches.
I am amazed at the energy of a 30 year younger version of [...]
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Page 8 from the sketches for “Hebzibah” by Roger Bourland
People often ask composers: “What comes first? The melody or the words?” For me, the words always come first. Many lyricists enjoy writing to an existing tune, many hate it. For this teeny “opera” or maybe I’ll call it a chamber opera (3 voices, violin, cello, [...]
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