I’m in Mount Pleasant, Michigan, which the locals freely admit is smack in the middle of one of the flattest expanses of real estate in North America. Were it not for fences and the occasional bridge over a highway, I think I could roll a golf ball from here to Detroit. Here, the music department of Central Michigan University is kindly presenting a concert of my music for this Tuesday evening, and I’ll be meeting with composition students until then. I was invited by Director of Music Events John Jacobson, but my host has been composer Jay Batzner, whose name I hear all over the country, but whom I’d never met. In fact, he seems to be one of a group of former UMKC/University of Louisville grad students, including also Brent Miller, Rebecca Doran Eaton, David McIntire, and Brian Herrington, whose names I encounter so ubiquitously in my travels that I’ve concluded that they’re a cabal intent on taking over all new-music activity across much of the United States, in which venture I wish them every success. CMU is a farflung campus of large buildings, with a huge, stone, yet dashingly designed music center. The concert is Tuesday night, March 29, at 8 in the Staples Family Concert Hall in said music building. Students and faculty are playing my Snake Dance No. 2, New World Coming, Olana, Minute Symphony, and Kierkegaard, Walking, and I’ll play Charing Cross and Solitaire. If the only way you can get here is by bicycle, at least it’s a straight shot.