Today was my first full day at Arizona State. It started with a brief meeting with Gary Hill, the head of bands at ASU. Then it was an uber-tasty lunch at Fatburger (why doesn’t Manhattan have Fatburger?!), followed by a composition seminar.

I haven’t heard any of their music yet, but the group of composition majors seemed like a good bunch. I played “Redline Tango” for them and took questions, and before I knew it, the 50-minute class was over. Seeing that I had no way to entertain myself after the forum, one of the student composers invited me out for coffee with him, his wife, a friend of theirs, and another composer. It was a really nice time. It’s fun talking with other composers who are my age, whether it be about pieces they’ve written, or things I’ve written, or whether the new Photo iPod is worth $600.

Tonight: dinner with the band TA’s.

Tomorrow: my first rehearsal with the wind symphony! I’ve heard talk that they’re going to try to play the piece with the entire ensemble standing. Should be fun! More tomorrow…

Not much to report yet, but I’ve just arrived here in Tempe, Arizona. (For those of you not familiar with Tempe, it’s right next to Phoenix.)

Perhaps not the best planning to travel on the last day of the Thanksgiving weekend. Although only one flight was delayed, my total travel time — door to door — was 12 hours. Yes, 12 hours from the time I hailed a cab in NY until I reached the hotel in Tempe.

Needless to say, I’m beat. Fortunately, AEJ made me a delicious turkey sandwich to eat on the plane, and that made the whole day a lot more pleasant. She even sent along a great big slice of pecan pie. All that was missing was cream corn.

Now it’s time to quickly unpack and get to bed. Tomorrow, I’ll meet with the composition students at ASU. I’m really excited about that.

More soon…

Oh — one more thing. If you’re in the Tempe area, the ASU performance of “Redline Tango” with Gary Hill conducting is on Thursday evening. If you’re in the New York City area on Thursday, though, you can catch a performance of “Juba,” performed by the Alvin Ailey Dance Company at City Center!

I just got a call from Robert Battle. Turns out we got a grant from the American Music Center to have live music for his upcoming New York season, and there’s even enough left over for the company to commission a score from me. So, keep an eye on this space for updates on that!

Robert also told me about this new review of “Mass.”

In other news… After much thought and writer’s block, I’ve sort of abandoned The Alamo Polka. I couldn’t come up with an intelligent way to mix cowboy music and polka without the piece becoming excessively jokey. (A friend also pointed out that he, not even being Texan, was somewhat offended by the title.)

So, with AEJ’s help, we have a new idea.

I still want to write a polka, but rather than mixing it with cowboy music, I’m going to mix polka with Middle Eastern music.

What’s the result?

“Lawrence Welk of Arabia”

We’ll see where this takes us…