monday morning heifetz

I'm still working on the violin duo, and there is nothing that encourages me to write virtuosic violin music more than the words "paganini" and "videos" inputed in the Google search engine box.

Is the YouTube cache of amazing instrumental videos too tempting for today's composer?

Nah…unless they stream the score in real-time.

more scenes from the opera

Here is Ryan C. Connelly singing "The Electronic Buzz of Vending Machines," another aria from my upcoming opera Building a Better Joshua.

Here, in the opening scene of the second act, Joshua rejects the reflection of what he could be, the new Joshua clone that came home to him and Chloe, as too far distant from the shell of the man that he has become with her. The ensuing identity crisis combined with the complicated stirrings of lust he felt for his own clone lead him to take a darker path. He goes to a less scrupulous cloning doctor, Dr. X (Name Redacted), to undergo a procedure to transform his own body into a duplicate of his wife, Chloe, and make another Joshua clone to complete the coupling...

video from the double concerto

As I've mentioned earlier on this blog, I've been asked to write a violin duo for Nick Naegele and Joshua Ulrich, and I've actually found time to work on it! (Probably because I decided not to grade any assignments last week…)

And, I had a violin duo read through the sketch of the piece, now titled "Double Concerto for Violin and Fiddle." (NOTE: This was a reading.)

first glimpse into new opera

I know what you're thinking—whatever happened to the event at the Contemporary Arts Center? Well, it did happen, and now I have videos to prove it! I'm slowly posting them up because I haven't had much down time between my teaching gigs and composing, but here they are. And to start us off, I'm showing you the world-premiere performance of one of my arias I've written for my opera.

Are you excited? I certainly am. Here is Kelly Ballou singing "A Woman of Stature," an aria from my opera Building a Better Joshua. Based on a short story by librettist Kendall A, this opera is a comedic near future science fiction retelling in two acts of the Narcissus myth, in which a woman decides to clone her husband for an upgrade, only to suffer the consequences when the old version falls in love with the new.

Enjoy!