Henning's Headquarters

[Karl Henning]

The latest (last?) piece I wrote for The 9^th Ear — I half-wonder if the recent-ish attempt at a 9^th Ear event may prove the group's last gasp — is what I felt I wanted to submit (re-scored to suit their instrumentation) to Verdant Vibes, so I spent the morning adapting the second guitar part for marimba.

Unnecessarily elliptical, Karl ... the piece is Things Like Bliss (this is the original scoring):

http://www.youtube.com/v/V-KeuEdIL4U

[Karl Henning]

EmmaLee Holmes Hicks, the violinist for whom I wrote Plotting, is a member of Verdant Vibes in Providence. They have a call for scores [....]

THANK YOU!

This email is to confirm we have received your submission to the Verdant Vibes Call for Scores / Proposals, along with entries from over 400 artists from around the world. We look forward to listening and learning about your creative work. It will assuredly be a difficult task selecting only a small percentage of these submissions for our season ahead, so we want to thank each one of you for sharing your music and ideas with us.

We will announce the results September 1 online and via email. Until then, please stay in touch with us on social media and say hi if you find yourself in Providence.

Cheers!

Kirsten, Jacob, Emmy, Hannah, Megan, Chuck, Alex, and Piero

We see around 1 Sep, then.

[Cato]

We see around 1 Sep, then.

So, with Emma Lee rooting for you, the odds must be in your favor!

So, does Verdant Vibes have a green marimba/vibraphone?   0:)

[Karl Henning]

... So, does Verdant Vibes have a green marimba/vibraphone?   0:)

Sure ought to!

[Karl Henning]

A very nice message came in today, viz. White Nights.  No "hard news," so to speak;  but a very gratifying thing to read.

[Cato]

A very nice message came in today, viz. White Nights.  No "hard news," so to speak;  but a very gratifying thing to read.

We have read here on GMG about a call for operas: are there no calls for ballets?  But nice to know that you have support from someone for White Nights !!!

[Karl Henning]

Just a start ... the eventual end product is the wooden percussion and fixed media piece for Olivia, Mistaken for the Sacred.

[Karl Henning]

Just a start ... the eventual end product is the wooden percussion and fixed media piece for Olivia, Mistaken for the Sacred.

To be sure, we're still at the stage where I might modify considerably, or even throw it out and start over.

[Karl Henning]

(As I revisit it, though, I think I can work with this.)

[Karl Henning]

The future is nearing.

[Karl Henning]

More work this morning. The piece is assuming a definite character.

Peter confirms plans to première Oxygen Footprint in November. And advises me that his October is busy, so he's hoping for September rehearsal of my Footprint.

If, at this point in my musical life, I cannot finish a 7-minute piece for three instruments by month's end, I almost feel I should give up   

Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk

[Karl Henning]

The Young Lady is on for the 18 November Kammerwerke concert;  just got the rehearsal schedule, weekly rehearsals beginning mid-October through to the concert.

[Karl Henning]

The future is nearing.

Still working.  You see, I used to have a Tripod site (I guess it is still working).  Some time ago, my publisher reserved My Domain (above), so the plan has been to migrate.  As a result, I had not refreshed the old site since the early Opp. 100s.  The first task (as I saw it) was (1) to update the list of works (largely a matter of adding all the music composed since, but I've also needed to add, e.g.. performer info for first performances of some of the old stuff, and the Op.85 — the first of the "catch-all" opus numbers for minor works for ad hoc sacred use — has always needed a less flippant overall title); (2) bring the links to the Lux Nova webstore up to date;  and (3) add links to YouTube &c.

I have basically been all weekend refreshing the code for the sixteen pages listing my compositions;  but I think that is also the lion's share of the labor.  That done, I have spruced up the Home page . . . and I am morally prepared to leave the rest until tomorrow evening.

By Tuesday evening, I think, http://www.karlhenning.com/ will be readable!


That all done, we should be able to get some more of my pieces (presently in the Lux Nova pipeline) tricked out with live links to the Lux Nova webstore.

[Karl Henning]

By Tuesday evening, I think, http://www.karlhenning.com/ will be readable!

No, no, no.

It's been so long since I coded the pages on the old Tripod site, I should have guessed that HTML has not remained static in all that time.

So, here I am, embracing the learning curve.  Thank heavens for YouTube tutorials . . . .

[Karl Henning]

More work this morning. The piece is assuming a definite character.

Well, it's been five weeks, hasn't it?

[Karl Henning]

Well, this is good, clean fun.

Quite often, I don't hear back from people to whom I send scores.  Although the silence is of itself discouraging, the difficulties of interpreting the meaning of the silence are considerable.  When the silence is from a musician I have worked with before, and with whom I have no impression of having endured any sort of rift, it is good sense to chalk it up to the patchwork calendar of maintaining a schedule busy enough to keep revenue streaming in.

Thus . . . I had not heard anything from the MidTown Brass since the day when I sent them my arrangement of I Want Jesus to Walk With Me.  But the first trumpet, who posts fairly regularly on Facebook, today mentioned a rehearsal with the quintet – so I reached out, simply to ask if he thought the arrangement might be suitable.  He replied promptly, asking me to re-send – and he then copied me on a message to the other members of the quintet: "Possibly something we could use on our recitals coming up. Let's rehearse it!"

[Karl Henning]

Expanding the Footprint (can't say we didn't warn you).

[Karl Henning]

Expanding the Footprint (can't say we didn't warn you).

One thing which might elude the casual reader:  I was not completely happy with the move into [ B ] . . . thought it too abrupt.  Now that is repaired.

And, on the bus this morning, I wrote out the first 20 measures of [ E ]

[Cato]

One thing which might elude the casual reader:  I was not completely happy with the move into [ B ] . . . thought it too abrupt.  Now that is repaired.

So there is more of a hint that the Harp's boogie-woogie is on its way?   0:)

And 20 bars for the next section seems like excellent progress!

[Karl Henning]

The band was formed (of course) with the famous Debussy Sonate in mind;  so I was asked, in particular, to write music to show 'another side' of the timbral possibilities of the scoring. (They also want a piece which works readily with piano substituting for the harp, so I could not go wild with special harp techniques, e.g.)  Thus – without in any way consider the Debussy to be otherwise than a masterpiece, bien sûr – my musical thinking is "do otherwise."

Which (for all that some of what I have learnt compositionally is certainly drawn from Debussy) is a commission I can quite readily accommodate simply by pretty much being myself.