This dream of composing…

I have been casting about for what to write next as far as updates and I finally came up with this: I should explain what I’m hoping to have happen and why. It really comes down to a desire to get music played in a setting where people will give it their best listen. With this goal in mind, going back (some of the time at least) to the classical world begins to seem like a good idea! Funded concert infrastructure, amazing ensembles of musicians, the expectation that you’ll hear meaningful music…sign me up…somehow!

I wonder if all creative people dream of breaking into some context where people will give us their full consideration. We want to find some kind of place in the culture, a little niche at least, a place of, if not respect then as I said, consideration (because you don’t have to like what I’m doing either). And maybe it’s all about relationships…my relationship to my art, and yours to mine and ours to each other. I thought of this over and over during the first years of pandemic when I wasn’t doing much connecting to anyone through music— that art is not completely meaningless when you don’t find a way to share it but maybe it finds its full meaning when you do. As I tell my students, music is for sharing.

I’ve come to composing because I realized I like creating (mostly) planned music the best. It took a long time to realize this but now I want to find ways to write music, and not just as a hobby. I hope the piece (assuming it happens) will be like one toe hold toward an actual composing career. I’m not quite sure how that career would work, but perhaps with a combination of various different grants and maybe a Patreon following, maybe some self-funded recordings it just might get off the ground. What do YOU think? I’ve left comments open if you have them.

Meanwhile, I continue to sketch out ideas while thinking of my grandparents— pondering who they were and what the biggest themes in their lives might have been. More on all of that to come.