Category

A lot of Rare Metals was written during my residency at the Aaron Copland House. In particular Safeway, which was written as a response to the political violence in Tucson, Arizona which occurred the day I began my residency. Copland himself was constantly speaking to contemporary events and public engagement in his music, and I felt that influence, as well as some of his musical mannerisms, strongly as I composed.

I just finished reading Duke Ellington's America by Harvey G. Cohen and aside from simply enjoying the story and the context of Ellington's life, it enriched my love of the music and deepened my awareness of some periods of his work I did not know as well...

A couple weeks ago I was raving here about the late Ellington Suites. Still kind of mad about Such Sweet Thunder, The New Orleans Suite, The Latin American Suite, The Far East Suite. Others pointed me to their favorites from this period and from the period just before in the mid to late sixties.

In Stanford this past summer one of their friendly drivers had Duke Ellington's Latin American Suite in his disc player. I started to really look forward to those rides... The late sixties/early seventies suites like The Queen's Suite, the UWIS Suite, The Goutelas Suite were always among my favorites.