The Easy Part

Writing the music is the easy part.

It's the copying, proofing, formatting, recopying, correcting, printing, proofing again and reprinting, xeroxing, and then comes the really hard part: no, it's not the rehearsing or performing - it's the promoting! Writing ABOUT the music seems way harder than writing the music. Getting the critic to listen and take note. The bio, the schedule, the background on the organization and the ensemble, the programing for the next season: all the PR that goes into the preparation and production. Production details, getting the audience.

I am making some progress. Singers have their music; the pianist has her music. (I mailed it all on Monday). I still don't have a venue for the Santa Fe concert, though I do have a fallback venue if the first choice fails. One of the board members wrote a great email to a friend asking about possible hotel venues in Santa Fe - but that being Fiesta weekend, and barely six weeks from now, I don't hold out much hope. Just keep on doing something every day... I spent all day working on PR - and that's ready to go. Juls helped with editing and proof-reading the PR. Without her, I fear I'd never get any of it done. And then another Board member's will have lunch with the local music critic tomorrow, and she'll give him the PR packet.

See? I'm not doing it all myself! I'm not doing alone.

A few years ago I composed an unaccompanied choral setting of Denise Levertov's poem "The Avowal" - I wrote it for the singers, as kind of a warm-up piece - to help them find a blend with each other and to kind of allow everybody, audience and performers alike, relax and float with the music. The text begins "as swimmers dare to lie, face to the sky and water bears them..." That's what I want: just to float. But the point of the poem is that lying in water, on your back can be a scary thing - we have to let the water bear us; "...as the hawk rests upon air and air sustains them" we have to let the wind carry us. (BTW, I love the idea of air sustaining the hawk, in contrast to the singer using air to sustain a sound. ) I tried to use that in the composition - until the singers and the listeners just can float or fly along effortlessly

"...so I would learn to attain
freefall, and float
into Creator Spirit's deep embrace,
knowing no effort earns
that all-surrounding grace."

And that's the easy part: The Avowal