Exchanging gifts with strangers

I express my congratulations and best wishes to ALL the contestants I heard and saw last night in the preliminary round of the Maryland Hispanic Youth Symposium Talent Competition!

It was a real pleasure to hear and see the performances. The symposium is hosted by Towson University, and that's how I learned of it. About 135 students were present, chosen from about 650 applicants. I am grateful that I could serve as a judge in the preliminary round of the talent competition, which is a competition for scholarship money. I appreciate the wide-ranging gifts and the work that I saw in poetry, dance, instrumental performance and song.

Even more, I appreciate the character that was on display. Everyone was generous and encouraging -not to mention patient - during the long evening.

I have been thinking about the idea of gifts as it relates to the performing arts. Judging this contest really brought these ideas to the front of my mind. It is a commonplace for people to single out performers and say that they have a gift, as if entertaining were on a par with Peter raising Tabitha from the dead. I'm of two minds about that. Yes, I believe in a Creator who is the Father of Lights, the Giver of all good gifts. But that boundlessness is also the problem, because our tendency is to ignore other less showy gifts that are deeply valuable. Something good in your life? Gift.

But there's another sense of the word I really want to think about. I don't want to take anything away from the beautiful simplicity of artists as thankful recipients, freed from the burden of thinking we grew ourselves. But there is another giving that happens in the arts: from the artist to the audience.

It is interesting to think about when something is a gift, and when it is just a transaction. Seth Godin says (here) that "a gift costs the giver something real. It might be cash (enough that we feel the pinch) but more likely it involves a sacrifice or a risk or an emotional exposure. A true gift is a heartfelt connection, something that changes both the giver and the recipient."

A sacrifice. A risk. An emotional exposure. A heartfelt connection that changes both giver and recipient. That's a tall order! And yet I think artists work toward that all the time. (Maybe it's true of all people of faith, too - but I'll stop sermonizing.)

So I want to thank the young people at the Maryland Hispanic Youth Symposium for taking that risk, and for really giving. Thank you.

Keep your mind set on excellence, on truth, and on the things that are really worth it. I wish you all the very best.

Nothing motivates quite like a deadline!

The summer is off to a very productive start.

Last week I tweeted/ buzzed/ fb'd the announcement that the Sinfonietta for Strings is completed, but I want to write a little more about the undertaking and why I am excited.

In the summer of 2009 I taught at McDaniel Orchestra Camp for the first time, and met camp founder Margaret Motter "Peggy" Ward - professional violist, dynamo of central Maryland's cultural life, torchbearer of music education for young people.... She asked me if I had written any string music for young people and I replied, "not yet." I am always interested in new opportunities to compose, especially when they are tied to possible performances.

What Peggy Ward had in mind was a new work for the Carroll County String Project, a new non-profit community music school (which she also founded). She was interested in something for the students to play in the ensemble program, which may range from a chamber group of one-on-a-part to a small chamber orchestra, depending on the normal fluctuations of enrollment.

It was an opportunity to learn something about the world of young string players and how the pedagogical literature is graded for difficulty. I am spoiled, having enjoyed the privilege of writing for professional and conservatory musicians on a regular basis, knowing that I could put practically anything on paper and they would be up for it. Writing for "students in Suzuki Book II and above" would be a new challenge to me as a composer. It would affect the techniques I could ask for, the melodic leaps that would be manageable, and even the specific notes and rhythms I could write.

But I find that unusual parameters can be a great motivator. Infinite creative choices can be paralyzing!

Adding just a little more pressure, Peggy Ward wanted something in the range of 20 minutes. There's the pressure I put on myself, too; I wanted to write something that would be interesting for 20 minutes - interesting to the students and to me - and something that would stretch them and introduce them to some new ideas and new sounds, without writing something they or their folks would think was just weird. After all, I could certainly write something that was interesting to me, but to non-specialists it might sound like it was from another planet. Or, I could write something very playable but vapid. I hope I have avoided both extremes.

The new 20-minute work for string orchestra (minimum seven players: 2,2,1,1,1) is now a reality. A 30-page, 383-measure reality! In the two weeks after spring semester ended I am thankful to say I was able to compose the piece, prepare the parts, have everything printed, and deliver the big box of scores and parts, ready for rehearsal.

The Sinfonietta for Strings is programmed for the outdoor concert on Saturday, August 14 at 3:00 p.m. in the Carroll Community College Amphitheater, and the formal concert on Sunday, August 15, also at 3:00 p.m., at St. Paul's United Methodist Church in New Windsor, MD.

More good news: these young players will be privileged to have violinist I.G. Bagus Wiswakarma (co-founder and Music Director of the Jakarta Philharmonia) coaching them in rehearsals. Also, my friend and colleague Eli Wirth (Music Director of the Frederick Regional Youth Orchestra, Director of Music at Carroll Community College in Westminster, MD, and fresh from a visit to study Venezuela's very successful El Sistema youth orchestra program) will be the guest conductor.