The view outside my window has shifted from a condo parking lot to a stand of redwoods. I’ve changed locations 5 times over the last seven days as my business trip has shifted over to some more personal vacation time. From this point on, this Diary is going to go on hold, to be replaced…
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10:55 a.m. I’m listening to the recording of Tuesday night’s rehearsal and taking more notes as I go. Here’s the complete list: Movement I bars 7 & 74 trombone solos need to be played with more projection bar 14 horn I solo ditto winds need to back off a bit at the intro fine-tune bars…
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There’s no other way to write this entry other than narratively. So here goes. Forgive the human drama, and rest assured that there’ll be orchestration in there eventually. About 100 years ago, in a little town in Arkansas, there was a rich but infertile housewife, and a 15-year-old, secretly pregnant teenage girl. The mother of…
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6:52 p.m. I’m typing this at an internet cafe just a few blocks down from the rehearsal site, where I’ll shove off to in a few minutes. But first, I thought I’d write down a few words about the conductor/soloist meeting I just attended. It was over in Century City, a couple miles down the…
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9:25 p.m. Currently uploading photographic files to the macProVideo server. mPV got me a license with a royalty-free image company, granting me the ability to download up to 25 shots per day for my orchestration course. It’s not a bad source for certain images – good closeups of orchestral instruments and their players are in…
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10:30 p.m. Very little in the way of work today. I tried out the new camera, shining a light against the wall in a dark room, then checking the corners of the image for noise. There’s still some, but not so pronounced as with my cheap little pocket camera. Hopefully, this will resolve the resolution…
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11:55 p.m. Been a very long day, filled with intense personal commitments. Still, there was time for my career, which never stops. Even at my most distracted, it’s always humming along, like that train that I can hear passing by about a mile from window, rippling the soundwaves with its churning as it bites off…
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6:00 p.m. Today’s meeting with the conductor and soloist is canceled, mainly because I’m apprehensive about driving to a West L.A. address by 5 p.m. in an expensive borrowed car. Especially after driving on the other side for over a decade. I still feel the instinct to left turn into the oncoming lane, and I…
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3:38 p.m. One thing a composer or writer should never be without is a notepad or sketchbook, or in the 21st century, a laptop. Thus my time sitting in the San Bernardino County Recorder’s Office isn’t wasted. The drive out here was uneventful. My borrowed car, a very up-to-date BMW with a nav system, is…
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8:38 p.m. I’m sitting in the rehearsal room, typing this as unobtrusively as possible as the LA Doctor’s Symphony Orchestra works out on the Elgar Enigma Variations. The rehearsal for my piece is well finished by now, but I’m just waiting for the break so that a few players can talk to me about bits…
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