I just confirmed my travel itinerary for February. This is crazy…

February 15: Los Angeles to San Antonio for the TMEA convention (including Rick Clary’s performance of “Sasparilla” with the 5A All-State band and Fred Velez’s performance of “Redline Tango” with the Texas A&M Kingsville wind ensemble)

February 19: San Antonio to Lexington, Kentucky, to rehearse with the U. Kentucky wind ensemble for the premiere of “Turbine” and the “unofficial premiere” in Lexington

February 23 (my dad’s birthday): Lexington, Kentucky, to Nashville, Tennessee, for the CBDNA Southern Division “official” premiere of “Turbine“

February 26: Nashville to Waco, Texas, to rehearse with the Baylor Wind Ensemble for the premiere of “Strange Humors“

February 28: Waco to Dallas for the world premiere of “Strange Humors” at the ABA convention on March 1, then the Dallas Wind Symphony performance of “Redline Tango” (for the Ostwald award presentation) on March 3

March 4: Dallas to Los Angeles — home!

That’s 5 performances, 5 hotels, 2 world premieres, 4368 frequent-flyer miles, and 18 long days away from home.

And, presumably, many, many hotel lounge cocktails.

I’ve been working all week on my new piece, “Strange Humors.” It’s a transcription for wind ensemble of a piece that I originally wrote back in 1998 for string quartet and djembe.

I wrote the original as a project in the “Composers & Choreographers Workshop” class at Juilliard — the year after I graduated. I’ll never understand how this happened, but not enough composers signed up for the class that fall, so the teachers called me to come in and be the ringer. I had been temping full-time at some gawdawful Book of the Month Club company, and I was miserable. After graduating, I had it in my head that people would, you know, want me to write music for them. But nobody did, so I got a job, and got up every morning bright and early, took the subway to east Midtown Manhattan, and did this miserable, seemingly-useless job for 9 hours every day. So when I got the call from Liz Keen, the ChoreoComp teacher, in September, I was thrilled — to say the least.

It’s weird going back to school and taking a class after you’ve graduated. The biggest difference — to me — was that I truly appreciated the opportunity to be there. I had taken the class twice “officially” while I was in school, and enjoyed it both times, but this time — taken during a 3-hour lunch from my temp job every Thursday — it was like crack.

Rather than ramble on like I usually do (too late, I guess), I’ll make the story a bit shorter by saying that I wrote “Strange Humors,” gave the recording to Robert Battle (who would become my most frequent collaborative partner — we made “Juba,” “Rush Hour,” “Breakdown Tango” [which became “Redline Tango” when I orchestrated it], “Damn,” “Mass,” and a few other pieces together), Robert choreographed it, and it, thanks to Robert’s choreography, became our big “hit.” (Gotta put “hit” in quotes when you’re talking about modern dance choreography, because the term is a bit of a stretch. By “hit” I mean “the first piece I ever made any licensing money on” and by “any” I mean “basically none.”)

When I first attended Midwest back in 2003, I gave a CD of my music to Dick Floyd. Dick listened to it, liked “Strange Humors,” and when he saw me at CBDNA in New York last February, he asked me to considering re-working it for winds. My first instinct was that this probably couldn’t work, but then I realized that I’d thought the same thing about “Redline Tango,” decided I shouldn’t listen to myself, and accepted the commission from ABA.

So now I’m working on it, and it’s turning out to be rather spare. If you listen to the original, you’ll see that the energy and groove comes from the intimacy of it (it’s just 5 people, all closely-miked), and I wanted to maintain that. As a result, the scoring is light, loaded with solos over the djembe part, and the occasional choir section (with, say, the saxes playing over the djembe). I think it works well musically, but this is intended to be my first high school-level piece, and I’m worried that younger players are going to be annoyed at having to sit there and not play anything while the alto sax plays the tune.

I’m mainly concerned about the trumpets and the clarinets, who usually play continuously in band music (and, in my opinion, make music sound “bandy”), and I have them just sitting there for the first 100 measures. The bass clarinet gets two solos in that time (yes, I cued it), but having regular clarinets play too often made it sound mushy, and this piece is all about bite and groove.

If you’re curious, check out the original. I had only posted an excerpt in the past, but the entire piece is up there now, as well as the full score in PDF format. The wind version starts with an English horn solo, and when the tune repeats, the English horn is joined by an alto sax in unison. The djembe part will remain identical in the wind version.

The wind version — score and parts — is due at Baylor (who will premiere it at the ABA convention in March) in about 10 days, so I’d better get back to work!

As promised, here are photos from the New Year’s weekend. AEJ and I were really excited that Jonathan & Melissa came to visit us in LA for the holiday. When they arrived, we made cocktails…

The next day, it was so warm that we cooked out on the desk. Dinner: burgers & fries.

On New Year’s Eve, we went to a great party at Eric Whitacre’s place. After a few drinks, I decided to change my career to oil tycoon. (Seriously, I think this is my favorite picture of me ever. I want to wear cowboy hats with nice suits all the time.)

For dinner the next night, we went to Roscoe’s House of Chicken & Waffles. Holy tasty. (You may recall my earlier blog entry about my first visit there back in April — the dinner that convinced me to move to LA.) Here’s before…

And here’s after. I have slain the waffles.

Back home, Newman relaxes by the window with Loki as the rain comes down outside.

The next morning, we all got up at 4am. Yeah, 4am. I’ve gone to bed at 4am before, but I don’t recall ever getting up so early. 4am should not exist. Why were we up so early? To drive to Pasadena for the Parade of Roses! They start closing the streets at 6am, so we had to be parked well before then, so to be safe, we left at 4:30am — and arrived right around 5am. After paying $1 to use the bathroom at a gas station near the parade route (does the opportunity to make a buck know no ends at all?!), we trudged through the very light rain to our seats. Through Chris (the guy who took me for a joyride in his Bentley, detailed in a recent blog entry), I got hooked up with “TV Circle” seats for the parade — sitting directly in front of the NBC television cameras. Prime, prime seats, purchased through the Pasadena Elks.

Here are AEJ, Melissa, and Newman, waiting (during an actual break from any rain) for the parade to start. We were pretty excited.

It started raining about 5 minutes before the parade started. It was coming down pretty good — but nothing like it would by the end. This guy, sitting a few rows in front of us, was given a plastic bag to cover his head. He had it on for a few minutes before he realized he should probably poke an air hole in it.

And they’re off! Several marching bands went by before we got to see this school — supposedly the inspiration behind the movie “Drumline.” Aren’t those girls freezing?!

Here’s the Magical Music Machine! I think all conductors should dress like that guy. And the first person who writes a piece called “The Magical Music Machine” — and writes a piece that doesn’t suck — wins my instant admiration and kudos. And then I’ll probably steal your title.

This float is messed up. As far as I can tell, these gnomes are about to sacrifice those baby elves and feed them to those crazy birds.

Hey, are those pirates on that float?! I love pirates!

Here’s the Medieval Times contingent. I don’t get this whole obsession with dressing up like a knight. It’s much cooler to dress up like a cowboy or a pirate.

This float was called something like “The Magic of Good Health,” but really, I never thought of rabbit as being a particular healthy meat. It’s not like it’s pork — the Other White Meat. (Have you clicked that link? The title of the page is actually — I kid you not — “The Daily Pork.” Wow.)

This is the Allen High School Marching Band, the biggest band in the parade (if not in the country) with over 600 members. They go on longer than the eye can see.

Here’s just their trombone section. Now that’s what I’m talking about. You can’t have too many trombones, I always say.

Look, kids! It’s Toni Braxton! Wow! How on earth did they book Toni Braxton?!! Talk about star power! I hope she sings “Unbreak My Heart,” ’cause that song never gets old.

Yes, Generations of Good, Clean Fun: The Ivory Soap float. But where’s her other hand? And why are her eyes closed?

And more trombones! SWEET!!!

Oh no! Disaster! This T-rex is attacking… with… a giant wooden spoon?

It’s impossible to see her through the rain, but inside that car is the parade’s Grand Marshal — Sandra Day O’Connor.

And on this float, from my old home town, is Jungle Jack Hanna of the Columbus Zoo!

Here’s the University of Texas band. It was awesome — right after I took this picture, Jerry Junkin busted out of that big drum and started conducting Circus Maximus.

Disney had — of course — the biggest float of them all. I liked all of the costumed characters walking next to the float, but can you imagine how heavy those costumes must have been, completely saturated with rain water?

This was my favorite float — and not just because it celebrates the glory of High Definition. But it didn’t hurt.

Too… many… jokes…

This all-girl band traveled all the way from Japan. They sounded quite good, especially considering their instruments were all waterlogged by this time.

This carriage went by, and the guy sitting in front of me said, “see what the rain did? When the parade started, those were all Clydesdales.”

This float, from the city of Glendale (where AEJ and I often go for In-N-Out Burger) was very cheery.

The storm was really going by this time — torrential downpour.

And then everybody’s favorite “float” — the one that causes audible declarations from most of the crowd of “it’s time to go” — the big closer, the Zealots. Way to finish on an up note! Hey kids, who wants to go to hell?

These pictures, taken on the walk back to the car, show how much rain really came down that morning. (Approximately 5 inches, we were told.)

A chair, abandoned like a tangled umbrella.

How many people can fit under a standard umbrella? I count five. What you can’t see from this picture is how quickly the water was rushing down the street…

… which this person learned the hard way.

So, that’s it. Holy bandwidth, that’s a lot of pictures. The rain actually made it a lot of fun. As one person said, this is the Rose Parade that people will remember, not all of the others when it was 74 degrees and sunny. High winds and downpours, though, that’s something unusual for LA. It really was a blast — especially for me and AEJ being there with Jonathan & Melissa — and we can’t wait to go back next year. Next year, though, I vote for sun and 74 degrees. One memorable parade is enough.