…is my middle name. Lucky I have a glacial attention span. After 15 years of working intermittently with the Relache ensemble, I finally got to hear the rest of my Planets last night, and I’m so happy with them. I’m posting mp3s for all the movements, at least until the recording comes out in the fall. There are a few patches from rehearsal takes due to note flubs and one violent stream of audience coughing:
The whole piece lasts 70 minutes and change. I recommend reading the program notes to understand how the process of each movement depicts the astrological force involved. The 35 MB score, if you’re that interested, is here.
I’m tremendously grateful to the Relache ensemble for keeping faith in the project for as long as I did. Four of them – oboist Lloyd Shorter, bassist Douglas Mapp, bassoonist Chuck Holdeman, and keyboardist John Dulik – were in the original ensemble I worked with in Seattle back in 1994, and it’s been fun every few years to pick up where we left off as though no time had passed. None of them seem to age, though I certainly have. The newer members are flutist Michele Kelly, violist Sarah Sutton, percussionist Chris Hanning, and saxist Bob Butryn, all dynamite players and a pleasure to work with. I must also say, though I shouldn’t, that I’m pleased and relieved at the consistency of quality and style of movements written from 1994 to 2008; from the beginning I had a pretty firm idea how each movement would go, and I never swerved from my original conception (see long attention span, above). Aside from the two completed chamber operas of my Hudson River Trilogy (one of which hasn’t yet been performed), it’s my longest work to date. It’s difficult to get a ten-movement work performed. I guess they don’t do Turangalila very often, either.