I’ve made it as far as the accordion part. Fortunately, I’m going in score order, not alphabetical order, meaning I’ll only have percussion parts left to do.
This is the first piece I’ve done with performance directions like “sleazy,” “saloon/honkey-tonk,” “Like a Kick Line,” “horse whinny,” and “really bang it out.” I suspect this will not be my Pulitzer winner.
I’ve gotten several e-mails over the past few days about the title — “Sasparilla.” All have essentially said, “good title, but I think it’s spelled ‘sarsparilla’ ” or “I think it’s spelled ‘sarsaparilla’.” It appears that there are, in fact, several accepted spellings. The “real” spelling, I believe, is “sarsaparilla,” but that looks weird. The other two spellings, “sarsparilla” and “sasparilla” are slangified spellings.
Really, I wish I could just put “saloon” or a true liquor in the title, but I worry that no high school bands would ever do the piece if it had a direct mention of alcohol. Thus, we’re left with sasparilla, which was a liquor in the old west, but now is basically root beer. Michael Daugherty suggested I call it “Sasparilla Spurs,” because he thought “sasparilla” alone needed more edge, but it was generally agreed that “Sasparilla Spurs” sounds like a fictional basketball team in an alternative league.

Looks like I’ll be upgrading the studio in a few weeks. Karl, one of my composer-friends from ASU, has offered to give me a deal on a new, larger monitor. I’m tired of not even being able to fit an 8.5×11 page at full-size on my screen. Plus — let’s be honest — I like electronics, and this seems like an awfully fun purchase…

I’m working on the parts for “Sasparilla.” I prepared 9 of them today, leaving 32 more to do. 32! 32 MORE!
How can a single ensemble have so many parts?! 3 Bb clarinets, 1 Eb clarinet, 1 bass clarinet, and a contrabass clarinet. 6 parts for clarinets alone. Sheesh. Part of this is my own fault. 6 percussion parts, plus timpani, plus an accordion.
Yes, an accordion. And according to Finale, the piece has 27,481 notes.
This piece may be a little indulgent.

Rick Clary is conducting “Redline Tango” at the ABA convention in Gainesville, Florida, this week. I wish I could be there. He’ll be conducting the Univerisity of Florida wind ensemble. Rick’s performance with his own group in November at FSU was pretty spectacular, as I’ve said…

I finished orchestrating “Sasparilla” yesterday, and spent much of this morning on the long process of making it look presentable. Curious about the materials? Here’s a PDF of two pages. That excerpt looks pretty awful, with lots of collisions and poor spacing, but that will all be fixed over the next few days.

The CBDNA convention last week was a big success. Redline Tango seemed to be well received, and Steve Peterson and the Ithaca College Wind Ensemble did a great job in a not-so-great hall. I got a chance to hear the two best college wind bands I’ve ever heard — Michican and USC. Both will be doing Redline Tango soon — Michigan this fall, and USC in early April — and I’ll be at both performances. They’re going to be pretty spectacular. I’ve never heard brass players like I heard at the USC concert.

The NY premiere of Circus Maximus was, as expected, earth-shattering. Literally. If you weren’t there to feel Carnegie Hall’s structure shake, you missed out. AEJ told Corigliano that it was the best piece of art in any medium that she’s experienced in the past 5 years. Both of us sort of broke down when we finally got to talk to him backstage after the performance. It was amazing to feel like we were in the presence of true greatness, but feel that way about somebody with whom we’re actually friends. It made me regress to the way I felt when I first met Corligliano, before we ever got to know each other. I felt strangely unworthy to be talking to him — and on Sunday, it was after knowing him for 10 years.

I suppose I should get back to work on the score. I want to send the parts to Scott Weiss at Lamar within the next week if possible, and then I’m off to Seattle for a week. March, April, and May will be crazy with travel — LA (for the USC concert), Kansas (for the University of Kansas performance and recording session), Texas (for the premiere of Sasparilla), and Seattle again, all in successive weekends in April, followed by two more weeks in Seattle in May. I can’t wait for June; jury duty will feel like quite a vacation after this spring!