No idea how they heard about it, but I just found out that one of the biggest drum & bugle corps the the country — The Blue Devils — is going to use Redline Tango in their show this year! This is pretty amazing. I don’t have the details yet, but assuming the piece is part of their main show, they’ll perform it not just in San Francisco, but also on a three-week tour of Europe, including Belgium, Paris, Milan, Venice, Modena, and Lecco. More details as soon as I know them.

Also, a few more performances of the “non-marching” version of Redline Tango have been scheduled within the past few days. Northwestern plans to do the piece in June, and Anthony Bailey will do the piece with the William S. Hart High School Band at Carnegie Hall on March 25.

I wrote the transition from “polka” to “slow cowboy” music today. It seems to work fine. (An old composer friend of mine from undergrad, Peter Cressy, once told me that you can tell a good composer by the transitions he/she writes. I think he was right. Sadly, my transitions usually suck.)

I have to work at The Day Job tomorrow. I haven’t been there since — what, early December? — and I wonder how it’ll feel to be back. They need me to do a little specialized data entry that I’m supposed to do once a month, but haven’t done since November.

My relationship with The Day Job is complicated. They’ve always been amazing with my schedule, allowing me to take off whenever I need to, whether it’s to write, or travel to performances, or even — when the weather is especially nice — to just go cycling.

I’ve had the job for 6 years this month, I think. What I’m trying to decide is if this will be the last month I’ll keep it. After the current project, I have three more commissions, and I’m talking with a dance company about a fourth. I could get by financially without The Day Job for at least the next year, and I wonder – is that finally enough buffer to walk away? One couldn’t ask for a better Day Job, or a better boss, than the one I have now. And if people finally figure out my secret — that I’m really just rewriting old Perry Como songs in retrograde — and stop commissioning me in a year, what will I do then?

What should I do?