first glimpse

Last night I had a chance to rehearse with the violinist of my "eclectic" string trio (violin, classical guitar, and electric guitar). The violinist is none other than my good friend Jenn Sheridan, and in writing these pieces, I was thinking about her sound and her playing. She has a HUGE tone, very full and warm, and there is a great boldness and presence to her playing style -- almost like a gypsy violinist without the overblown, goofy vibrato. To compliment her style (and the ranges of the ensemble), I focused on keeping her in the warmer, rounder parts of her register, and her lines are very lyrical, savoring every note, rather than running about mindlessly.

I've been working on these scores in a very compromised situation -- since I'm moving again in another month or two, and I only moved into the apartment I have now a few months ago, I never really took the time to set up a proper studio. So I've been writing on guitar (something I desperately try to avoid), and transferring the written pieces into Sibelius on my laptop via computer keyboard (a task that could only be made more tedious if I were entering them into Finale). I have no sound system, so in order to actually hear the layers, I have to either play multiple parts on one guitar (oy!), or listen to the dinky speakers on the laptop, with the built-in audio creating the instruments -- that's really only helpful for finding wrong notes I may've entered.

So last night was the first time I got to hear the piece played with a real violin AND one of the guitar parts, and I think these pieces are going to be really beautiful. They're very "no-brow" -- they are definitely classical-chamber pieces, but there is alot of folk influence in there as well. The result is a kind of refined, home-grown sound that I'm really excited about.

I have a few bars left to finish on the last piece, and then I'm completely finished. I've sent the classical guitar parts to the classical guitarist in New York, Craig Hillelson; and I hope to get together with the electric guitarist, Vince Pontarelli, very soon...