Presentation

My presentation yesterday went very well. I mostly just played pieces and then talked about them. I played the first movement of my orchestra piece, Ancestral Landscapes, the first two of the four Love Songs for soprano and piano, the Fantasie for Two Saxophones, and the entire Autumn Quintet. I got some very nice feedback from my fellow composers. Apparently I really do have a knack for orchestration, because I got a couple of comments on that. And I was surprised and pleased with the reception of the Autumn Quintet - it's a very difficult piece and thus the recording is rather shaky, but I think everyone could nonetheless see what I was doing there, and they liked it. I do like the things I write, and there are several pieces of mine that I am quite proud of, but it's nice to get confirmation that my music is indeed good.

One of the best things about this experience is getting to have real, meaningful conversations with a wide variety of other composers. I can be very nerdy about music in some ways, and it's been wonderful to talk to other people who think about the same sorts of musical issues and have pondered the same questions. And I think that some aspects of the symposium have been set up to generate these kinds of things, too. Luckily, with the miracles of technology, I should be able to keep in touch with a lot of these people.

food note

Damn, they really know how to cook tofu out here. Seriously, it's even good in the dining hall. But it's even better at this place just outside campus, where they make the best tofu sandwich ever.