At dinner the other night, two of our good friends whom we are visiting in London, Daniel and I asked “who is more British?” The two Brits listed their relatives–neither had a heritage that was mostly British. Daniel, who is Eurasian, listed Humphreys and Davies in his family tree–Welsh names. My father looked into our [...]
Cantilena was commissioned for the first season of the award-winning Los Angeles chamber music ensemble, Pacific Serenades. The premiere was in the home of Leland Burns. This work was originally written for flutist, composer, and director of PacSer, Mark Carlson. Alden Ashforth had advised me to compose long lines for Mark as “…he plays as [...]
Death of Narcissus was composed for one of the Composers in Red Sneakers concerts. In that we were all students, we had composition assignments for our classes and had to keep producing for the Sneakers series, we had to compose all the time to keep up. This one was composed very quickly. It was one [...]
AMERICAN BAROQUE was commissioned by Mark Carlson and Pacific Serenades for their 1991-92 season. Like many of the music I was writing at that time, the form of the word is roughly palindrdomic, for instance ABCDEDC’B’A’. The sewing machine quality of the melody is something you will hear in this piece that vaguely evokes Baroque [...]
I spent a total of three days this week going through old musical instruments in three different rooms at school. We were dumbfounded to find the most amazing instruments: viols, sackbuts, shawms, recorders, and many other well-known early music instruments, but the most amazing discovery was a Cecilium. The most lovable, if not slightly homely [...]
One of my great joys as a boy was visiting my grandparents in Kentucky and looking through all the amazing stuff they had in their attic. The smells, the colors, things from very long ago resonate still in my memory.
As Chair of the UCLA music department, I have, over the past few years, been able [...]
Despite having the same composer duo as seasons 1-3, someone’s wings got clipped in season 4.
As I study the credits on IMDB.com, the music figure gone after season three seems to be the music supervisor, Gary Calamar. Was it actually Calamar’s vision that made seasons 2 and 3 so terrific? I don’t know the [...]
I have become “hooked” on the TV series, WEEDS from Showtime. (I have enjoyed the extended viewing afforded by renting the DVDs.) All of us old folkies grinned hearing the show’s adapted theme song, “Little Boxes” sung, not by Pete Seeger, from whom we heard it first,
but from [...]
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