Leaderboard

... that you've done on stage or has happened to you on stage? Here is something I did many years ago that still haunts me. I was in my college orchestra as a percussionist. As you know, percussionists are expected to play a variety of percussion instruments. Actually, all of them. People think it's easy, that we just sit around until we're needed. Then we get up and whack something with a mallet. But you try counting rests for seventy-five bars with a conductor that's all over the place. It's not easy. One evening - a very special evening - we played Scheherazade by Rimsky-Korsakov. The violinist was superb. Everyone was dressed to kill. In this piece, at the peak of tension, there is a wicked duet between the trumpets and a snare drum that consists of a fast, relentless sextuplet figure that goes on bar after bar ... The trumpet double tongues it (good luck!) and the snare drum marks the rhythm. It's a very difficult thing to pull off, keeping both instruments together for the duration. So what happened? Did we screw up? Embarrass the school with sloppy playing? No, my friends. We played it flawlessly. But what I can never forgive myself for doing is this. I played these marvelous sextuplets in a three piece brown suit. Courduroy, nonetheless. Everyone else looked dignified in black while I stuck out like a pretentious used car salesman. Oh, the shame. The humiliation! I remember going shopping with my mother to pick out the suit. Did I actually say, "I'll take this one, it's only $60?" Oh, the shame. Please share your embarrassment - if you dare.

This composition has two stylistic faces: the opening reminds of Wagner or Mahler with frequent chromatic motion and then firmly establishes free diationic C major for most of the time ever since the choir entered. Throughout the music I began to miss more chromaticism. Since most of the piece is in relatively slow tempo, it is a bit too long for what it offers. It is nice music though. You must have something against tenors though, you really use very high register most of the time. BTW, glad to hear live performance. Congratulations!

Congratulations! I think this is amazing. Not only for the composition itself, which is quite beautiful, but also for the live performance (with video). The middle section in 10/8 is very intresting with the obstinato in the upper voices. I also love the dissonances here and there. You're a great composer, I find this kind of works difficult.

Re-uploading this from the archives if it's alright. I have a real recording, and a Sibelius Essentials recording of the piece. The real recording was recorded at my senior recital and there are some technical flaws, but it is still a performance I will never forget. This piece is for Choir and String Orchestra... I put that in the title because, it is more than simply a choir piece with string accompaniment, the choir and the strings are equally important and complement each other. The piece is a religious work, but stylistically it takes a lot of film music influences. The piece is set to text from Psalm 139, my favorite chapter of Scripture, and this is probably the most personal piece I've written so far. Here's a little bit more about the background of this piece (copy/pasted from the comment archives): I wrote the essentials of this piece during the summer of 2011. I'd been tweaking it since then up until April 2013 when I had my senior recital. During the summer of 2011 I was going through a lot of anxiety, and one of the reasons was, I had finished my third year of college as a composition major, and I had basically completed nothing as far as compositions. I was almost booted out of the composition department at the end of the school year because of it, but, after a day my composition professor changed his mind and decided we would give it another try. He had me going back to the basics and was sending me some exercises over the summer, cause I didn't really feel like I knew what I was doing... While all this was going on... I thought to myself that I had always wanted to try to write something set to the text of Psalm 139, my favorite chapter in all of the Bible. So I sat down, and, I thought... I wanted it to start off sounding a bit uncertain... but then when the words come in I want it to sound like coming to peace. And, well I just can't explain it, I started writing the intro and I shocked myself. It was better than anything I had attempted for string ensemble in the past by a lot... and then the "O Lord' ostinato just came to me after the intro closed, and I wrote the music up to "You perceive my thoughts from afar". So I had that much of it done, and I sent it to my composition professor along with the first exercise. He said "forget about the exercises, keep working on this." Enjoy, and please let me know what you think! Choral Fantasy For Choir And String Orchestra - A Meditation On Psalm 139 (c) 2013 Jair W. Crawford

My freshman year of college I was a sadly mediocre third clarinet player in my school's marching band, which honestly is pretty mediocre in itself. Anyhow, we we performing an arrangement of Taps and Eternal Father and during the beautifully orchestrated tutti chord at the end I had one of those wonderful reed malfunctions that mediocre clarinet players are prone to have...it was not a good day. I've since moved on to be playing glockenspiel or being drum major.

Such a pleasant, quirky piece. Kudos to the amazing performers though!

Revisited this one as well. Indeed, a very pleasant work to listen (especially for people who, like me, are pretty fond of tango). If one could find a characteristic of contemporary music in general, it would be this willingness to compose pieces for odd chamber ensembles - but not everyone is able to make it actually work. You seem to be fully in control of your creative powers, and it shows. Thanks for reposting!