Wrapping up January, and Abnegation for bass clarinet and harp

February is already upon us! In spite of increasing demands at work, I managed to write music for 27 of 31 days in January. I'd love to say I had 31 for 31, but alas, no. Still, I am honoring the idea of GREATER THAN ZERO (thanks, Kate!) so 27 of 31 isn't bad at all. On average, I spent 43.4 minutes per day writing music. Cool! I hit one roadblock--I am so very close to finishing this song cycle, Chansons Innocentes, but I need to finish writing a piano accompaniment for one of the songs, and it isn't going particularly well at all. On the other hand, when I was frustrated with that project, I had been reading some poetry and ended up writing a sketch for a brand new choral piece, and I like it a bunch! Awesome! It's over half written, so I'll probably be wrapping that up in February. In the meantime, I need to write to the copyright holder of the poetry and hope I am able to get permission to use the text!

Since I don't have any recordings of my newest music to share at this time, here is a recording of a live performance of Abnegation from a few years ago. I originally wrote the piece for contrabassoon and harp in 2000, and later arranged it for bass clarinet and harp. Jeanné Inc. published it in 2009. This performance took place at Kenyon College in 2010 (Bob Milnikel, bass clarinet, and Holly Bacon, harp). Enjoy!