Things have been relatively quiet here with the site in recent months, in part because life’s been a bit hectic in other quarters. The marathon Ph.D program is done, and since then, I’ve been keeping busy with my teaching duties, trying to find something full-time, and working on getting my modal theory (or at least part of it) into an initial publishable form. With a few new recordings rolling in, including the reading session of my periodic table-inspired dissertation with the UO Symphony, I started tweaking some things on the site, and will continue tinkering with it in the coming weeks, all the while adding more content, and trying to make this a more interesting place to visit.
Speaking of ye olde dissertation, the readings of Lithium and Beryllium are now up here, and on my recently revived SoundCloud (which, until a few days ago, only had my recording experiments with a cello I tuned down a full fifth). I got decent takes of Nitrogen and Neon as well, which I hope to have up in the coming days. My thanks to Maestro David Jacobs at the University of Oregon, and all the UO Symphony musicians for spending quite a bit of time on the piece, and to my former teacher David Crumb for taking on the rather active celesta part. The next step there will be finding an opportunity for an official “premiere” of all 10 elements pieces I’ve done thus far (Hydrogen through Neon). I’ll be posting more about the process of writing that project in the near term.
Other projects I have going on right now include a violin sonata I’m very close to finishing for Wyatt True, and I’ve also been working sporadically on a thirteenth string quartet and a third volume of Modal Preludes.
I’ve also gotten an official “contact” page up here now, in case anyone might have interest in collaborating or acquiring my freelance services, which include composing for concert idioms and media, arranging, orchestration, engraving, and private composition study.
-AEL