# First blog of 2018



## Vasks (Dec 9, 2013)

Well, on my last blog I stated that there would be no more performance of my pieces in 2017. Well, I was wrong. When you have works published there is always a chance that someone/ some group will play it. And so that was the case for a song cycle of mine that's been steadily in print since around 1975. The song cycle is for soprano and percussion ensemble and it was played in December by a university ensemble in the northeast USA.

I also commented on my last blog of 2017 that during December I would be hearing from places where I applied for spring performances . And not so ironically, most were not accepted. I say not so ironically because I seem to get a goodly number of performances one year, with the following one to be much fewer. And while I do have two lined up over the next few months I'll hold off mentioning any more until a future blog.

The only other news was on the publishing end. The set of piano pieces I have discussed a good bit in last year's blogs was accepted by a small company and was just released. I contacted the three pianists who played the set last year and encouraged them to tell their colleagues about its publication. One of them wrote back saying that she played three of six pieces at a conference in Portugal recently. An international presentation of my work! It's far from the first, but they don't happen too often.

One of the other pianists had asked me in a prior email exchange if I was going to write anything else for piano. I said that "if" I ever did it would be a set of variations by a well-known composer (public domain, of course  ). To which she just replied that she's expecting to see those variations...Hey!! I just said "if"....LOL!!


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