After the string quartet and concert project, I've found myself again fishing for a project to begin.  I say "a" (singular) project as I have a tendency to begin several things without finishing anything before I start the next.  That being said, I've compiled a list of projects on the imminent horizon, mostly large in scale.

For some reason, I began writing a few weeks ago with wind ensemble in mind.  Well, not for no reason.  I have some long-lost-recently-facebooked friends with bands at their direction willing to see new material.  I grew up playing in wind bands from my first saxophone lessons, all through high school and at college.  High school wind ensemble was the fertile soil of my first understandings of 20th century music.  My composition teacher was an avid writer for band and I was able to study orchestration with those sonorities in mind (more so than the orchestra, which still eludes me as how to write for one).

So I went back to school (high school, even!), in my listening jumping back into favorites from my upbringing, and some un-listened-to pieces by my band heroes - Hindemith (Symphony in Bb will rock yer socks; I also first heard - and played - his Symphonic Metamorphoses in a wind band transcription overseen by the man himself), Morton Gould, Peter Menin; William Schuman (go listen to George Washington Bridge...now...I'll wait...); Percy Grainger all day, all night. 

The absolute best, however, is Vincent Persichetti.  His tonalities were burned into my brain at 13.  If you know nothing of this man, educate yourself.  His melodies are not to write home about - lyrical, yes; shapely, for sure; meaningful, hard to say.  In the realms of harmony and orchestration, however, he is unparalleled (at least in the wind band idiom).  There isn't a clunker in his repertoire - Symphony no. 6, Masquarade, Pslam, Divertimento - all greats, and good models, too.  He also wrote a hell of a book on 20th century harmony which is required reading.

On another note, I'm currently listening to the CCM Wind Symphony (a group I idolized when I was there and had the opportunity to play with once in concert - solid!) play an arrangement of Zappa's Dog Breath Variations.  Naxos/Klavier KCD-11048.  Dig.