# It's been somewhat quiet, but here's what's been going on



## Vasks (Dec 9, 2013)

I last blogged here at TC in early June. I did orchestrate the piano part of the clarinet & piano piece that I mentioned in that blog and posted the audio mockup in the TC Composers forum shortly after its completion. I entered the orchestrated form in a orchestra composition contest that allows for works that have a soloist (many orchestra contests do not accept pieces that have a soloist). Last week after weeding through over 300 entries the organization announced 30 semi-finalists and I'm one of them.

As far as composing new stuff, I just finished the rough draft of a single movement, 8 minute piece for a mixed septet (Flute, Clarinet, Marimba, Violin, Viola, Cello and Piano). Every year there's an California ensemble that calls for scores to consider for performance. I have submitted twice in the past for a subset of their instrumentation and both times they said I just missed the cut. Well, even though their call is many months away I decided I would write something for their entire group (i.e. the instrumentation I listed above). It's a fast paced piece that never lets up and starts off with an explosion of semi-chaos as all instruments are for the first minute tossing out their own personal material unrelated to each other. The rest of the piece is about featuring some of those motivic ideas in different combinations and alterations before trying (intentionally & unsuccessfully) to put it all back together at the end (it's unsuccessful because the material had morphed too much during the piece's course)

I said in my title that things have been quiet. I have submitted many piece for many potential future performances but have yet to hear anything concerning most. I do have two performances coming up in late October and I'll probably blog about them afterwards.


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