Is this open to anybody?

How long will it last?

Nice! They have this sort of thing at school, and all the composition majors need to have pieces on it at the end of the semester. They call it Musica Nova. To do it with a Catholic sacred music focus is new to me. What sort of organization is it - you seem to have a fair number of composers - how did you manage that?

It's not an "organization" at all. We do have a pretty strong composers organization in town, the Cleveland Composers Guild, but this is just evolutionary. Many of the churches in town (St. John's Cathedral. the ECUSA cathedral Trinity, St. James Anglican Catholic, and others) have been very open to new music, so it gets written. There's also a newly-formed chamber choir, the Cleveland Chamber Singers, organized to do contemporary sacred music (Richard Rice, we're working on your Salve Regina, and it ROCKS!). Fred has had a volunteer schola at "the Mac" for years, and it's where you go if you want to sing polyphony. They do new things on occasion, and draw composers interested in the polyphonic art, folks like my esteemed colleague Lisa Rainsong (who isn't on this one, alas...she seems to have abandoned composition to be a naturalist.)...they were also essentially the birthplace of the lute-song duo Mignarda. So at some point Fred looked around at all the local choristers who compose, and said, "Let's do a concert." This is the third such outing...we do one every 3-4 years whether we need to or not. Not all the music is Roman...the Clouser piece is Orthodox, the Allen mass was written for St. James...but it's all for liturgical churches at the least. And not everyone is currently a Clevelander; Sam and Jana Schmitt were at the Mac but are now in David Hughes' part of the world, Ben Taylor is in CA I think. Styles are all over the map: Fred and Sam tend toward the neomedieval, Ben is pretty crunchy but tonal, Linda and I are more Romantic than anything. It will be about like Cleveland weather: if you don't like the music, wait 5 minutes.

Love this quote (my emphasis):

Like the Japanese aesthetic of having beautiful ceramic teacups that are actually used for drinking tea, this music is used for something

I don't know. CanticaNova is looking at my mass right now. If there's something you're really interested in, let me know, I'll make the connection with the composers, and chances are they'd be very happy to get you a copy.

I thought things went very well, especially considering that we were still dealing with note issues at the dress, and that there was never a rehearsal (not even the dress) when everyone was there. There were little flubs here and there...a bad organ chord in my mass, a bad page turn in my solo section that lead to about a measure of my part being missing, numerous issues in Linda Allen's Mass (at least one of which I was directly responsible for, mea culpa). We could have used more and lower basses... I had to hold down the part myself in Fred's last piece because Greg Heislman had to hightail it to the Cathedral to play a mass. It was "a blow", as we brass player say...the show ran 1:40. But the group sounded pretty darn good, they were all readers with vocal technique, and there was not a dud piece on the program. I'm developing a fondness for Ben Tayor's stuff...it's pretty crunchy, but also mostly diatonic, and in some ways easier to sing than my music. It's got the right spirit and classicality of form, IMHO-YMMV. Jennifer Scolnick's music was new to me too; that 5/8 Magnificat demanded some alertness. I'm thinking of revising the climax of the Beatitudes...it's effective, but it took a lot of work and nail-biting to bring off (those at the Colloquium reading session know what I'm talking about).

I wish I'd put the Tascam out...the recording engineer for Cleveland State did the recording, but it might be awhile. He used a different mic setup than I've ever seen there; the space is very flattering to voices, but it can be tricky to record in. Hopefully, I'll be able to share some of this online when i get the CD. Anyway, glad you were there, and glad you enjoyed it.

JQ

That's a very beautiful piece!