I just received an e-mail from Marin Alsop, confirming that she’ll perform my piece, “Redline Tango,” at the Cabrillo Music Festival next summer! I am insanely excited about this. Marin is a not only a true champion of living American composers, but she’s also one of the best American conductors. My former teacher, John Corigliano, said that her performances of his music are consistently among the best. I am psyched.

AJ and I went suitcase shopping tonight. I’m heading to Seattle on Monday for my first of many trips this season. (1 week in Seattle next week, a week in Arizona and several days in Chicago in December, Texas in February, Seattle again in March, Kansas and elsewhere in April, and then two more weeks in Seattle in May! Whew!)

The suitcase is nice, but the evening’s highlight – other than finally seeing Stacy voted off of “The Apprentice” – was homemade shredded pork burritos for dinner. Holy delicious. (Somehow this blog is becoming my diary of music, shopping, and eating. Weird.)

I attended my first rehearsal of “Mass” last night. My first relief came when I realized that the group was actually nice. You never know what you’ll encounter in a first rehearsal. Slackers? Divas? Attitude?

Fortunately, all six of these people were friendly. That made a huge difference in setting me at ease. They were agreeable to everything I asked — although I didn’t need to say much. They can totally play the piece.

The only snag is some ensemble issues that stem from having certain players too far away from each other to hear each other well. That’s largely my fault — I intended some cool “stereo” effects, with parts going back and forth across the stage, so I spaced people far apart — but it’s also an issue with the space constraints on stage. The stage is only so big, and we have to fit not just the percussion ensemble, which includes 2 huge marimbas and a set of timpani, but also 18 dancers! So, although it would be much easier for the ensemble to stay together if they were physically close together, that would mean they’d be all clumped together in a big, fat circle, which would take up too much stage depth.

The grouping needs to be both physically attractive, since they’re on stage, but more importantly, they also need to be able to hear each other — while not taking up too much floor space. The solution? We’re not sure yet. They’ll figure something out.

Good or bad, I’ll be out of town next week while they’re solving this issue. I’m sort of freaked-out about that, too, as I’m a bit of a control freak, and I hate that I can’t be there for the first rehearsals with the musicians and dancers together. (FYI, I’ll be in Seattle, for my first residency week with the Seattle Youth Symphony Orchestra.)

I saw “Laugh Whore” last night. My friend Damien Bassman is the drummer in the new 1-man Broadway show, starring Mario Cantone from “Sex & The City.” The show was very funny. The songs should have been funnier, I thought, but there’s some truly hilarious material outside of the music. Damien sounded great, but I wished he’d had more to do. He’s one of the best drummers around, and he didn’t get much of a chance to show that off.

He needs “Bassman: The Musical. A Drumming Extravaganza.” I should get to work on that.

Tomorrow afternoon, I’ll attend my first rehearsal of the new percussion piece. They’ve been rehearsing for a few weeks, but this will be the first time I’ll hear it. I should probably be more excited than I am. In fact, I’m really nervous. What if they don’t like it? Or worse, what if it’s too awkward to play?

I already heard that there were ensemble problems that resulted from my staging request. I wanted to space the six players around the back of the stage — four across the back, and two on the sides of the stage but towards the back. It would look cool, and would theoretically sound good (I wrote the parts to be “in stereo,” with some fun back-and-forth from left-to-right) — but as I feared, they can’t hear each other well enough from that distance to stay together. I spoke with the production coordinator at Juilliard about it, looking for a possible solution. Could I mike them and give the players monitors? No. Should I put the musicians in the pit? Well, I could, but half of the fun of having live musicians is actually seeing them — and having them physically on stage, surrounding the dancers, is just too cool of an image.

My current plan is to keep them as far upstage as possible, but squeeze them closer together, so instead of taking up the entire width of the stage, they’ll take up, say, half, or 3/4 of it. They’ll still have to arc a little on the ends so they can all see each other. I worry that maybe the stage isn’t deep enough for this, that the musicians will take up too much stage space that the dancers need to perform, but I’m going to figure it out for sure tomorrow. If everybody can fit on stage and the ensemble can stay together, this will be pretty sweet.

And it’ll help if the musicians can simply play the parts.

I’ve become very used to the synth recording, and it’s always surprising to hear real players for the first time. If it goes as it normally goes, it will be slightly less precise, but have a lot more UMPH. I’ll certainly keep you posted…

AJ and I had a great weekend. On Saturday, we went shopping for paint supplies, and she spent the evening making me a painting to place above my fireplace mantel. My ceilings are very high, and the wall above the mantel has always felt empty. I wanted something large. Some people suggested a mirror, but that seemed too obvious. AJ said she would try to make me a painting, and I was excited to see what she’d do.

We talked about colors, then went to Pearl Paints in Chinatown for materials. We picked out a huge 48″x48″ canvas and a few good colors. The end result is exactly what I wanted. First off, it looks huge. It also makes the entire apartment feel — I don’t know — grown up. I kind of have this whole 1950s thing happening in my living room (or, 1950s meets 2004 technology), and although I don’t know anything about art history (as opposed to AJ, who was an art history major), the painting feels very circa-1950 to me.

We ended the weekend with “Olive Garden At Home” for dinner last night: frozen Stouffer’s lasagna, Pillsbury bread sticks, iceberg lettuce with Wish Bone Italian dressing, and a glass of milk. What’s cozier than that?!