I’m chugging away at the orchestration of “Turbine.” If you’re curious how it starts, here are the first two pages in PDF format. (In Safari, it looks a little weird when it first loads the page, but the fonts are all fine on the redraw.)

Since there’s no percussion key yet, here’s what’s happening at the very beginning:
Percussion 1: Choked China cymbal, followed by splash and suspended crash cymbal
Percussion 2: Two brake drums of different sizes
Percussion 3: Two more brake drums, of still different sizes
Percussion 4: Tam-tam, then marimba
Percussion 5: A second tam-tam, as well as a suspended crash cymbal
Percussion 6: Bass drum
Percussion 7: Bass drum 2

So, that’s two tam-tams, 2 bass drums, and 4 brake drums in the first bar, all played as loud as possible.

I love loud. And fast.

Don’t worry; it all quiets down by the middle of page 3. But only for a moment… 🙂

To be continued!

Last night, AEJ and I went to a party at RB’s house. RB is a friend from NY — we know her through Robert Battle — and she, like us, just moved here at the end of the summer. This was her housewarming party, and she was nice enough to invite us.
RB lives in Los Feliz, which is the next neighborhood over, so it wasn’t a long drive. This was the first time we’d socialized with a big group since we moved here (we know almost nobody in LA, and without “day jobs,” it’s hard to meet people), and it was a lot of fun.

A highlight for me was meeting Chris. Chris manages a Toyota dealership in the LA-area, and he recently (very recently, like, over the past week) bought a new car — and not a Toyota. When it came out that he hadn’t bought just any car, but bought a $200,000 car — a Bentley Continental GT — I asked him, “is it here?” It was, of course, and I asked a question that I was reluctant to ask, but that I’m so glad now that I did: “Can I see it? I’ve never really seen a Bentley up close before.”

I figured this was a safe thing to ask, because if you just bought a Bentley this week, and you’re at a party, and somebody seems impressed and asks to see it, chances are you don’t mind showing it off. Hell, when AEJ and I bought our Volkswagen, we wanted to show that off! So, Chris was like, “sure — come on.” He grabbed the keys from his jacket pocket and we headed outside.

I expected to just get in the car for a minute, gawk at the leather and wood and gauges, and go back inside. I opened the door to the car and was immediately struck by how heavy it was. I was also extremely careful, rather scared that I was going to open the door into the curb or something disastrous like that. Fortunately, all was well, and I sat down and pulled the massive door closed. “Put on your seat belt,” Chris directed. Oooo… I guess we’re goin’ for a ride.

Chris started the car, and for the first time, I got to hear what a twin-turbo-charged V12 sounds like from the cockpit. Loud and kind of primeval. Chris pulled out of our little parking spot, and off we went, slow and easy. We reached the stop sign at the corner when I asked, “so, how did you choose the Bentley?” With this question, Chris turns the corner and floors it — on a fancy, narrow, residential street in LA — and I was literally thrown back in my seat, with my stomach feeling as though it was now somewhere in the trunk. I think I cackled in disbelief and glee while yelling “holy shiiiiiit” as we reached who-knows-what-speed in less than a handful of seconds with the engine thundering around us.

“That,” Chris answered, “is why I picked the Bentley.” Chris applied the brakes and we slowed almost as quickly (but much less dramatically) to the speed limit.

We repeated this little routine several times on those twisty narrow streets in the hills, each time causing me to literally be thrown back in my seat and feel like I was on the fastest roller coaster I’ve ever experienced. (This was not like a jet takeoff. The acceleration here was much, much faster, and I wondered if we might actually leave the ground.) For one of these crazy accelerations, Chris opened the windows so I could really hear the engine roar. Oooo. I want one.

We were only out for about 5 minutes, but like any exhilarating and somewhat terrifying roller coaster ride, I was exhausted when it ended. When we walked back into the house, I must have had a crazy look on my face, because everybody turned and laughed at my apparent look of absolute glee. I couldn’t stop shaking for several minutes, and just wanted to go ride in the crazy car again. Totally, completely awesome.

Oh, and the Bentley’s computer inexplicably tells you your fuel “economy.” For our little spin around the neighborhood, we averaged 5 miles per gallon. As Chris pointed out, it’s not as bad as it seems; his wife drives a Prius, so as a household, they average 20 mpg.

I think I may have finally written the ending for “Turbine.” Part of me wonders if, in its current state, the ending is too long, but the entire piece is essentially a huge arch, so the ending needs to be pretty damn big. (The idea was AEJ’s, of course. When I told her that I didn’t know how to approach this 10-minute piece, but that I could probably write a flashy ending, she had the idea to think of the entire 10-minute piece as the last 10 minutes of a 60-minute piece. It’s ideas like that that consistently show her brilliance.)

So, the piece has an ending. At the moment, “Turbine” is a little shy of 9 minutes. The commission was for 10 minutes, but this piece is so intense and so loud and so fast (300+ measures at a constant m.m. 184) that I can’t think of any way to make it any longer without making it a lot longer. As it is, the low brass players are going to be bleeding (as are the ears of the players sitting directly in front of them).

And although it sounds absolutely nothing like it, the cell of an idea for the last bar came from recently hearing “Slonimsky’s Earbox” by John Adams. Whereas my “loud” pieces usually end with a great big tutti for the last several bars, the Adams piece spends a few bars spinning in the upper range, saving the low-register “bam” until the last beat. I wish I could have stolen some of the Adams colors from the piece (which, in his program note, he credits back to Stravinsky’s “Song of the Nightengale”), but baby steps (or, in this case, misdemeanor theft) are better than nothing.

There still may be one-too-many repetitions of the “flying tune” in the last half of the piece, so I need to look at that tomorrow, and spice up some of the tonality (Corigliano would be very disappointed by the amount of time it spends in the same key once it gets there), but by the end of the day tomorrow, I expect to be ready to start orchestrating! And doesn’t that sound like a fun & crazy Friday night?