Tag: Yosemite

Summer wrap-up

Summer CCDA conference at ECCO

The gorgeous environment at Yosemite’s ECCO Retreat Center made this conference even more special. Meeting friends, hearing music and sharing these beautiful surroundings together made it far more than just work!

Not my picture, but isn’t Yosemite gorgeous?

Conducting

On August 12, we performed The Sacred Choral Music of Coleridge-Taylor and Robles. I discovered that conducting my own compositions can be thrilling (not just scary!). I couldn’t have been more pleased with the evening. (Photo by Adon Alonzo)

Conducting “Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast” on Sunday August 14 with my Neighborhood Church summer choir and with Katie Eames at the piano was definitely a summer highlight for me. I loved having 3 teenagers in the group!; my own daughter and two Harvard-Westlake students sang with us. It was transformative to perform this work in the context of a church service intended to confront cultural appropriation and center the voices of Native American culture bearers. We look forward to bringing this kind of depth to our performance at Carnegie Hall in March 2023.  (Photo by Yolanda Mitchell West)


Composition

Now that this year’s Coleridge-Taylor Celebration has ended, I turn my attention to the four composition commissions I’ve been neglecting over the past two weeks! Thank goodness the deadlines are spread apart over the next six months. Of the four projects, the two multi-movement pieces on which I’m working right now are particularly challenging.

Y’all need to pray for me.


For Fun

A visit the the Broad Museum for the Murakami exhibit was well worth the time spent sitting in traffic on a Thursday night. Plus, I got to go to the sound bath performance that was part of the exhibit on the 2nd floor of the museum – so refreshing, so resonant, so cool! 


Ollie’s corner

Ollie’s official headshot for August, and Ollie diving into his new job, guarding the clean laundry: