Anniversaries

Today is Laura’s and my 26th Wedding Anniversary…what a great decision I made to pursue and ultimately marry Laura, and how lucky I am that she agreed to the whole thing and has stayed with me—she’s been a great partner and friend, and we’ve had many adventures together. One such adventure was to move to London in August 1999, 25 years ago, so I could pursue a Certificate in Advanced Musical Studies (C.A.M.S.) at King’s College London. It was a one-year course, gave me the opportunity of studying privately with Sir Harrison Birtwistle, and gave us the excuse and infrastructure we needed to live in London for a time, so we went for it and have been forever grateful for the experience we had.

I completed two pieces during that year—the first was a draft of what eventually became my dissertation piece, Leave Song; and my first Barlow-commissioned piece ever, Dividing Time (the solo version) for percussionist Dominic Donato (I’ve linked to the quartet version, which I finished later and which I prefer). What’s hard to quantify is the impact that year had on me as a composer, and on us as a couple. It was great for us to be there essentially on our own during our second year of marriage so we could connect and learn to rely on each other more fully. And for me, artistically, it was a year to learn and soak up all the influences I could, from my comp lessons, to pre-concert chats by Berio, Stockhausen, and Boulez, to gallery visits, to my first ever travels to many places I’ve grown to love including Paris and Amsterdam, etc. etc. etc. Each week started with a survey of all the concerts happening and the inevitable discussion about how many I could convince Laura we (or I) needed to attend. Some of the more memorable concerts I attended that year were Kagel’s The Compass Rose by the London Sinfonietta; a portrait concert organized by George Benjamin in which he conducted his pieces At First Light and Viola Viola, and then paired them with other works by Ravel and Copland; the first concert I attended by the Ixion Ensemble and sponsored by the British Music Information Centre at “The Warehouse;” the portrait concerts of the composers mentioned above (Berio, Stockhausen, and Boulez), with Daniel Barenboim in the audience for the Stockhausen portrait where we all switched places for the second run through of Gruppen; the list goes on. I attended the premiere of Birtwistle’s opera Last Supper in Berlin, conducted by Barenboim, with a classmate. What a year!