Lots of Big News!
Quarterly Composition Compilation
December 2023
Hello everyone, and Merry Christmas! My apologies for getting this out later than usual, but my excuse (lame as it may be) is that I was overbooked for the Christmas season. 9 concerts in 2 weeks is rough all by itself, but adding in premieres, conducting, professional responsibilities, and normal work made things extra challenging this year. To say that I’m burned out from performing would be an understatement, but since I can’t find an adequately accurate adjective I will let you draw your own conclusions on how busy I was this month.
However, I do have a lot of exciting news and updates, so let’s hop right into it!
Masters Programs
I decided to apply for some masters programs! I’ve been thinking a lot about my career as a composer, and how I can most effectively give my career the jumpstart it needs, and after some extensive research realized that returning to college might be a great way to get connections and potentially some more sustainable commission opportunities. I also looked into a career as a college professor (in composition, of course), and realized that a career in academia could be ideal for my temperament and career goals. So I started getting my portfolio and application materials together, and had all my applications submitted before December 1 to California State University Long Beach (CSULB), Brigham Young University (BYU), and Boston University (BU), to begin studies in Fall of 2024. And then had to resubmit a bunch of materials because of technical issues and some unnecessary formatting preferences.
I still don’t know which school I will be attending, as each one has its benefits and drawbacks, but once I get word on which schools I was accepted into (and the amount of tuition they’re willing to cover) I will have some hard decisions to make. Maybe I’ll do a separate post detailing the pros and cons of each university, but most likely I’ll just lump that into the next update.
I’m mildly terrified of what returning to school will entail for my current lifestyle, but also excited to be returning to a place where I can learn from some of the best in the industry and hopefully figure out where I want my career to go.
Conducting Gig
This one has a story to go with it! Last month, I got asked to lead a rehearsal for the local symphony since the director was going to be out of town. I accepted, and was pleased with how the rehearsal went – it was so much easier than teaching junior high children, and I felt good about the improvements we made to our pieces. As I was cleaning up my stuff after rehearsal, the symphony board members came up to me and asked if I would be interested in being the conductor/director for our next concert, which was extraordinarily flattering; we had to work out some details, but I accepted on the condition that we could premiere another piece I wrote in the concert. At the end of the conversation, one of the board members told me that the rehearsal I had just directed was in fact my audition for the gig, and that apparently it went so well that they decided to offer me the gig right there and then.
I’m excited to make my debut as a symphony conductor, but also mildly terrified. We spent the last month or so finalizing the program, and we have several challenging pieces – Rhapsody in Blue, the original arrangement of Star Trek: Into Darkness, The Magnificent Seven, and a few other pieces to top things off. I feel very inadequate for the gig but have been working diligently to prepare myself to deliver a product that the board is pleased with.
For those that are interested, the concert will be Monday, March 4 at 7:00pm MST in the New Auditorium at American Fork Junior High. I will need all the support I can get, plus we’ll be premiering a piece I wrote (more on that in a minute)!
Alright, now for the actual composition updates!
Lost Star Princess
We just started up rehearsals with the brass band, and I haven’t had a chance to push recording this piece yet. Hopefully will have a chance in January.
Summary: Nothing changed, will push for an indoor performance/recording
Creation Symphony
Unfortunately not much here either due to the premieres I had this Fall. However, the American Fork Symphony will be premiering In That Day (the piece based on Hebrew scale modes) at the concert on March 4 that I’ll be conducting. I just sat down yesterday to start orchestrating the choral parts into the orchestra (since we won’t have a choir with us unfortunately) and will be putting this one into active development once the Christmas holidays are over.
Summary: In That Day going into active development, will be premiered March 4
We premiered this piece at the Halloween Concert in October, and it went rather well! A special thanks to those of you that came to support me – it was great to see so many familiar faces in the audience. 😊 I was pleased with how the performance turned out, if you’d like to give it a listen you can check it out here:
Summary: Premiered and recorded
This is a new one! A few months back I got an email requesting entries for a concert band composition competition, and got the crazy idea that I should enter one of my pieces into it. I originally chose to revise Symphony C (my Christmas symphony) since the band I perform with was preparing for their Christmas concert, but soon realized that they probably wouldn’t be able to program/record all 20 minutes of music. But then I got another crazy idea: what if I took each “micro movement” of the symphony, arranged a stand-alone piece out of each one, and premiered them one by one? And then I could create a “collect all 5” campaign where performing them in the right order would be the symphony! So I started on the Roman Legion movement, and didn’t do any of the other ones. But hey, it’s a good long-term project (because I don’t have enough of those already).
After finishing Legio Romana (The Roman Legion), I was able to spend about 30 minutes with the band recording the piece in multiple takes, and got a high-quality recording that I sent off to the competition hosts. We then premiered it a month later (last week) with me conducting, and it went splendidly; hopefully I’ll get a copy of that recording and post it on the website as well.
I did just find out yesterday that my piece didn’t win the competition, but it was still a good experience – I feel like I’m developing as a composer and becoming more aware of acoustic and practical considerations (something that I didn’t account for 2 years ago when I wrote the original draft).
Summary: Recording session, premiered and recorded
10 Chorales for Symphony Orchestra
As a part of my preparation to conduct AF Symphony on this next concert, I decided that I wanted to have a few chorales and tuning exercises to help the musicians learn to listen to each other. I also wanted to have a good excuse to sit down with some of the string players and ask them how bowing works. For those that don’t know, one of the most controversial aspects of a string orchestra is deciding when to do up-bows and when to do down-bows (moving the bow up or down across the strings). As a brass player who composes, when I ask string players what the rules are I sometimes feel like a child asking his parents why the sky is blue and getting answers that are either a) far too simple and far-fetched to be accurate, or b) way too complicated for me to understand. So far, this has been super helpful – I had the section leaders write in bowings on rough versions of their parts, and based on those have started extrapolating how I can apply those to my compositions.
The second-most controversial aspect of a string orchestra is how many bowing marks need to be written in. Every string player I’ve asked has a different answer – this piece has too many, that one has too few; this one is too prescriptive, that one leaves too much up to interpretation. So far, I’ve gotten both extremes on bowing marks from the section leaders, but my feeling is that I’ll try to find the middle ground. And likely still have some string players upset over there being too many or too few. 😉
We likely won’t record any of these, but it was a fun little project to orchestrate out some chorales with different purposes on each – one of them is designed to help the strings and winds read divisi, another gives the bass voices the melody, and another utilizes the upper register of all the instruments. Hopefully they fulfill their purpose in the group!
Summary: Working on bowing marks, copyediting to follow. Likely won’t record.
Final Musing
I was hoping to do include a “2023 in Review” section in this update, but with it being so long already I think I’ll make that its own separate post. But what a year it’s been! I find myself full of gratitude for all the performers and directors that have been willing to give me a chance – looking back, I realize that not all my pieces have been easy or necessarily fulfilling to play, but each premiere helped me hear how I could become a better composer. I’m sure in 5 years I’ll look back on many of these premieres and cringe inside from all the things I should have done better, but I think that’s an integral part of the process. And isn’t that how life goes? We learn and grow and get better and more sensitive and more kind, but then we look back 5, 10, 20 years and start judging our past selves by the things we now know. But I think it’s important that we give our past selves grace, because as we do we free ourselves in the present to continue growing bit by bit; as we allow ourselves to make mistakes, we allow ourselves to live and to take chances on things that might not work out. And at the end of the day, beauty and light can be found in both refined and unrefined pieces.
Until next time,
Jacob Whitchurch
12-23-23
