Performance
I’m playing sousaphone in a piece by Neely Bruce called Convergence, which is a large, Ivesian, multi-marching band piece. It will involve several bands, two large choruses, a fife and drum corps, a carilon, a pipe organ and even more stuff. This piece is huge and not performed often. The special occasion is Wesleyan’s homecoming football game. We’re making a big deal out of football, despite being division 3 or 4 or hell, 5, I dunno, we can’t give sport scholarships. The alums love it though and give too much money, so yay jocks. And maybe thru football or extortion or just really great fundraising, the school just raised several million dollars in a capital campaign. So they want to have a very snappy half time show. And proving that they really are a worthwhile cause and a venerable institution, they decided to do Neely’s piece. This piece will be so awesome, I can’t believe it. And it was the administration’s idea. They came to Neely and asked him to do it instead of vice versa.
Even better, the insane, huge, fantastic, fine arts half time show will be broadcast on national TV. Some sports network that covers college sports will be broadcasting the Wesleyan homecoming and the half time show, says Neely. You will have to check your local listings. Kickoff is at noon. The halftime show will be around 1:30. All of this EDT, of course. Somebody must TIVO this.
Composition
I’ve been invited to submit a tape of my Ann Coulter piece to a festival next weekend in Toronto. The Red Festival will be having a “sound bar” where folks can listen to stuff via headphones, so if you happen to be in Toronto next weekend (or maybe if you have an email buddy up north, you can tell ’em), you can hear me at the sound bar. Hopefully. They haven’t heard the piece yet.
it took about a half hour to get this thing to post, so i forgot what i was going to say. probably something about how cool seeing that piece performed would be and something about George Ives marching two bands through each other in the 1880’s.
Yeah, the two bands march through each other. it’s very much inspired by Charles Ives. But Neely Bruce is using music from the first book of Negro Spirituals published in the United States, putting him at direct odds with the politics of Ives.