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My soul is overflowing with radiant joy, tingling excitement, and sheer awe in gratitude for life. This past academic calendar year is numbered as one of the most fulfilling and redeeming of my 30 years here on earth; and for that, my soul is teeming with the kind of delight that words only cheapen when attempting a description.

These sentiments have made their way into my most recent composition, most appropriately entitled, Can’t Sit Still. I wrote this piece for the Oregon Bach Festival Composers Symposium, a summer festival that I will soon be attending. I was instructed to write a piece for a chamber ensemble consisting of these instruments: flute, clarinet, bassoon, horn, trumpet, percussion, piano, 2 violins, viola, cello, and contrabass. One might consider this configuration to be a chamber orchestra, but the intention behind my writing supports an ensemble of soloists. Can’t Sit Still will be premiered by the American Creators Ensemble on 5 July 2009 (more info. at the foot of this post).

On Monday, June 15, I realized that my June 22 deadline was only a week away. “What to write about? What to…write…about…?” Nothing came to mind. Tuesday arrived, and I still had nothing on paper. With only six days to write, orchestrate, engrave, and submit a clean score and set of parts, time was of the essence. So I just wrote with no specific parameters in mind, except that I wanted it to be fun and spirited.

Without the preoccupation of a story or a concept, the resulting composition still managed to sum up the sentiments mentioned in the beginning of this post. It seems my subconscious is more involved in the creative process than I am aware.

I just feel so incredibly fortunate. I am able to live my life as a composer, write music for ensembles with guaranteed performances, travel around and meet new people. How can I not feel ecstatic?

And so, without further ado, I present to you my latest composition, Can’t Sit Still, as performed by Sibelius 5.2 music notation software (i.e. MIDI).

Here’s info. about the world premiere performance:

Sunday, 5 July 2009 @ 8pm
Composers Symposium ACE Concert 3
American Creators Ensemble
Beall Concert Hall, Univ. of Oregon

For further information: [click]

Today begins the final countdown to the finish line, as my days as a teacher at SHCP are numbered. After today, I have only four days left, and I feel a great deal of conflicting emotions, since I am sad to leave, but looking forward to turn a new leaf. When this week is over, and after a few moments of reflection, I will write about my four-year experience at the school here in my blog. For now, I’d like to share a touching article with you, written by students to send me off and wish me well. Click on the image above to read a PDF scan of the article.