Visit to Wampatuck Elementary School, Scituate, Massachusetts.  November 12, 2008.

On Wednesday, I spent some time with the students in the band at Wampatuck Elementary School in Scituate, Massachusetts.  My host was Kathleen Wooten, who has commissioned me to compose some music for the town's honor band.  Kathleen led the Wamptuck Band in performances of two of my pieces - The Little Factory and March of the Nightcrawlers.  The students played very well, and were very responsive to the suggestions that I made when I jumped up and ran them through The Little Factory.  

So, as I often do, I asked both groups to talk to me about what excites them in music, and were there any things in their town that might be the perfect subject materials for a "musical" profile (a program or story that the music could tell).  They had many ideas: the famous Bates lighthouse in town, the Lawson tower, the mysterious sea monster that washed up on their shores, the Italian freighter that ran aground on their beach, the ancient history of the town and its revolutionary roots, the general ideas of water and beach and wind, a student revolution (students take over!), the idea of time passing in school and clocks, a sequel to my other piece, Snakes! and much more.

I am going to think about this for two more days and then next week sit down and write the piece.  I am not sure exactly which ideas I will incorporate into the final composition, but I certainly received lots of enthusiastic input from these fun students.

Fanfare (2008). Four Horns and four trumpets.  Thomas C. Duffy, November 8, 2008.

I was asked to write a short fanfare for the dedication of the renovated Rudolph Building/ Loria Center- Yale University's Art and Architecture Buildings.  The fanfare for the dedication of the opening of the Rudolph Building in 1963 was composed by Yale faculty/composer Quincy Porter.  His fanfare was for four horns, and is about one minute long.

I wrote Fanfare, a short 1:15 piece for four horns and four trumpets.  I tried to make my fanafare reflect the aesthetic that an architect must wrestle with here at Yale - that is, a contemporary structure in a traditional setting.  My fanfare begins with the sounds of machines and building, with pieces of "shiny metal" here and there, and then a little simple melody, fugued in Baroque style, complete with tonal answers to the little six-note theme.  

You can see the whole ceremony at http://opa.yale.edu/news/article.aspx?id=6201 (click on Video: Rededication of Paul Rudolph's "art and Architecture Building."

We premiered Fanfare on Saturday, November 8, 2008.

It is October, 2008, and I am working on several commmissions. The first is a piece for the Bloomfield Public School system in Bloomfield, CT, commissioned by Dr. Joseph Olzacki. It will be for wind band, chorus, and will be a self-authored text. The topic will be "Karma," the theme of the year for the arts programs in Bloomfield. The performance will be in the Bushnell Auditorium, Hartford, CT on March 31, 2009.

The second is a piece for the fifth grade honor band in Scituate, Massachusetts, commissioned by Catherine Wooten. I meet with the band in November to discuss the piece, but it could be that this next piece will be the sequel to my best -selling Snakes! Anything could happen!

The third is a fanfare for dedication of the Rudolf Buiding at Yale University. The fanfare is for 4 horn and 4 trumpets and will be premiered on Nov. 8, 2008.

Now it is April, 2008 and I have several interesting premieres in the last few months.

April 10. Premiere of my piece, Who Am I?, commissioned by Joseph Olzacki for the Bloomfield Connecticut School system. The premiere was presented in Hartford's Bushnell Auditorium. it was a superb event. I hope to post more info about this piece for chorus and band soon.


To the Horizon was premiered in February by Wayne State College in Wayne, Nebraska, David Bohnert, music director. They did a great job with a difficult piece. I will post a MP3 soon.

2007

I have completed the composition, Visions. It was premiered on March 29, 2007, in Hartford's Bushnell Auditorium by the combined forces of the Bloomfield Public Schools music programs. I was not there, but I heard that the premiere was quite well received. I finished the composition for the Hillsboro, New Hampshire school system, Entitled "Sally's Gallery," the piece is four movements. Movement 1 is for the 5th grade band, "The Little Factory." The music is a rhythmic set of machine sounds and motor rhythms, complete with "factory whistles" and percussive sounds from stomping and clapping. The second movement, "Presidential Playground," is for the middle school band and is a muscial depiction of what the playground noise might have sounded like if there were playgrounds in Hillsboro in 1804, when Hillsboro native and US 14th president, Franklin Pierce, would have been a boy and played outside. The third movement is for the high school. "Stone Ghosts" reflects the images of the cemeteries in Hillsboro, and the kinds of sounds that one might hear or imagine in and around them. The final movement is for all three bands combined. "Sunday, July 4th" is a piece that presents a Sunday chior practice on Sunday, July 4th, interrupted by the sounds of the 4th of July marching band parading past. The piece will be premiered in Hillsboro, New Hampshire, on May 19th. Commissions: I have accepted commissions from a school system in Hillsboro, New Hampshire, to write a four-movement piece for the whole music program in the town! First movement - youngest ensembles, second movement middle school groups, third movement- high school groups - fourth movement - tutti! This should be great fun. It will be premiered in May of 2007. I am finishing a commission for band and chorus for Bloomfield High School (CT). Entitled "Visions",It will be premiered in the Bushnell Auditorium on March 30,f 2007. Part of the mystical aspect of the music is reflected through the use of a crystal glass choir (my first glasses piece was Crystals - Ludwig Music Publishing Company, 1987). I have written the words as well.

Fingal's Cave

I premiered my chamber piece, Fingal's Cave: the Space between Sacred and Secular, on Satuday, Sept. 30, in the Yale Center for British Art. The ensemble was comprised of a woodwind quintet and a string quartet. The program notes follow: Dedicated to Amy Meyers, in celebration of the collaboration of our "arts." Fingal's Cave - A Space Between Sacred and Secular This piece is based on the 1832 painting by J.M.W. Turner Staffa - Fingal's Cave. This painting depicts the ethereal basalt promontory that houses Fingal's Cave, as seen from the sea during rather windy or stormy weather, with a steam boat close to the cave. Poised just off the coast of the island of Staffa is a steamboat - a paddleboat - indistinct in its presence from the background water. Its engine fire appears as a point of red. This painting presents the dialectic between the sacred, and perhaps ancient, presence that embodies or radiates from the cave, and the empirical forces of the humans and their boat that approach the cave from the sea. Sea and boat, sacred and secular, light and darkness, mystical rapture and the unsettling storminess of the water, Apollonian and Dionysian all reflect the symbiosis of spiritual and concrete matters. This music is constructed to reflect that dialectic, which conforms roughly to the attributes of the hemispheres of the brain - affective versus cognitive. One can hear the people here and there sometimes reveling in Scottish or English folk music, sometimes singing, sometimes invoking (hymns, ancient shofar calls). One can hear the Cave timeless, ethereal, romantically unfocused, pure, crystalline. Each element has its own meter and where the spaces between the sacred and secular are held in common, the meters are presented simultaneously. (The conductor presents a different meter in each hand sharing common downbeats As humans are contra-laterally designed, the affective properties of the right hemisphere of the brain are reflected in the meters of the left hand, and the classical cognitive properties of the left hemisphere of the brain appear in the music directed by the right hand.) Lines blur, just as in the painting. This painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1832 and was cited as "one of the most perfect expressions of the romanticism style of art." It was Turner's first painting to go to the United States but remained unsold for 13 years. James Lennox, who bought the painting through a broker, expressed his disappointment with this purchase by saying the painting was "indistinct" in its execution. When Turner heard this his reply was "You should tell him that indistinctness is my forte."

Norfolk Centenary Band

My professional band, this time appearing as the Norfolk Centenary Band, played an outstanding concert on Saturday, July 29, at the Music Shed on the grounds of the Ellen Battell Stoeckel Estate for the Yale Summer Festival. After an adequate rehearsal, they played one of the better concerts of the 13 years that we have been around. We all agreed that perhaps the secret is playing inside as opposed to outside... The Band received a standing ovation after the overture! On impulse, I promised to return in the fall with the undergraduate Yale Concert Band for a short concert. We played: Jack Stamp: Star-Spangled Banner, A Love Song for Our Country; Rossini: Overture: William Tell Overture ; Grainger: Irish Tune ­ Danny Boy/ Shepherd's Hey; Gershwin: American In Paris; Duffy: A Parisian In America; Sullivan: Pineapple Poll Ballet; Copland: Stomp Your Foot/ The Promise of Living ; Wagner: Elsa's Procession; Sousa: The National Game JP Sousa; Dragon: America The Beautiful; Fillmore: American's We