I just wanted to let you know, I really enjoyed the performance of your new piece yesterday in the Royal Concerthall in Amsterdam!

I’m definitely going to check out some of your other work. Especially your collaborations with Bedroom Community seem to be promising! As I’ve always really enjoyed the work of Valgeir Sigurðsson.

Cheers,

Jogchem

Writing for theater provided quite the wake-up call for me on all three fronts. Suddenly, I was working with people who had opinions different from mine about how things should work. Sometimes I agreed, sometimes I had to defend, sometimes I had to have a hissy fit, sometimes I had to get over it. It was horrible and wonderful, frustrating and enlightening. As roller-coaster-esque as it may be (not a fan thereof), I wish I were challenged (gently!) more often.

Jeremy,
I had the exact same experience in my undergrad. I think Composer’s Forums can certainly be useful, but I haven’t had a particularly useful experience.

Re: verbally defending your own music–

I will be presenting a piece of mine in a Composers Forum-esque class at the School I currently attend and of which you are an alumnus. During said class, such presentations generally go thusly:

1. Composer introduces piece–sort of a pre-concert talk for experts.
2. Composer hits “play” on the CD player; we all listen reverently, some glued to scores, some gazing into the æther.
3. One composer offers a usually-intelligent critique of the piece.
4. Another composer offers a considerably-less-intelligent critique.
5. The composer of Da Piece gets defensive.
6. We all furiously debate the meaning of the word “sonata” in 21st Century America for 20 minutes.

In my undergrad Creative Writing classes, the rule was that, whenever you finished reading your piece, the other students could constructively critique your piece, and you were Not Allowed to speak until everyone was finished; then and only then could you respond to said critiques. This always seemed to foster both intelligent critiques (since the other writers weren’t trying to get your goat) and better revisions by the writers (since they weren’t focused on rebutting bad critiques that were trying to get their goat).

I am going to run my own Forum presentation this way; I will make note of the results and report back.

Speaking of criticism, I heard you liked our rendition of Clear Music.

I wasn’t sure how you’d react to the use of vibraphone in place of celeste, but the volume and timbre control that I can have with vibes allows for greater variety and contrast in the part. The celeste has such a unique sound, though, so it’s kind of a trade-off…not sure which version I like better.

We’ve played it a few times and it is always very well received. If you have some more specific thoughts, be sure to send them my way. Thank you again for the kind tweets!

-Corey