Welcome

WELCOME to my first blog-style writing, although I wrote long and hard as a music critic at the Village Voice and occasionally for The New York Times back in the day.  I am pleased to be writing again about MUSIC, my gift and my passion, in this section. 

These 2017 days as a composer I seem to be experiencing some wonderful experiences again, such as I had as a young guy.  In FEBRUARY the amazing musicians of the Da Capo Players performed my BERENICE variations on a theme of G.F. Handel.  The Handel opera BERENICE, QUEEN OF EGYPT has been described as a flop, which upset Handel greatly, but a most luscious theme in 3 quarter time--the one I set---has persisted in popularity down through the ages.  THEN in early April I was off to Copenhagen to join my partner the marvelous vocalist Lotte Arnsbjerg in making our Symposium on Transformation happen.  It proved a big success and set up the main Transformation Festival which will occur in Copenhagen on 4 days this September 14-17th.  We performed our anti-child abuse song cycle GIRL OF DIAMOND MOUNTAIN there to big audience applause. THEN I flew back to the Kennedy Center in D.C. to help prepare and attend the April 19, 20, and 21st performances of my symphonic creation MADIBA in its extended form for ballet as part of the Misty Copeland and Justin Peck-curated Dance Across America Festival.  It was danced beautifully by Jeremy McQueen's Black Iris Ballet company and played excellently by the Kennedy Center Opera orchestra led by Nathan Fifield.  The audience went quite nuts over it.  THEN on May 21st I conducted the Skymusic Ensemble for The Look and Listen Festival at The Studio Museum in Harlem on a beautiful sunny Sunday afternoon.  Joining us were gospelvocalist Helen White and a sensational choir of 10 to powerfully sing my "THINK IN A NEW WAY."  Also on the program was the premiere performance by the Ensemble of my MORNINGSIDE MYSTIQUE, honoring the slip of land where Harlem begins on its west side, with special musical moments for the Native Americans of Manahata, the 17th Century Dutch, and the African-Americans come North to claim Harlem and invest it with jazz and other major American musical styles.  We then closed with our Special Anthem RIGHTEOUS HEROES, featuring great playing by percussionist Eli Fountain, saxophonist Premik Tubbs, flutist Linda Wetherill, pianist Marianna Rosett, keyboardist Alva Nelson, bassist Brian Lee, and (my special surprise) Senegalese griot singer MorDior Bamba.  The audience loved it.  SO... rest I must, although in my non-existent spare time I am presently writing 3 libretti concerning Bre-r Rabbit and his bre'rs and sisters of the forest for fellow composer Nkeiru Okoye, a gifted new opera composer.       

So there, I've started blogging---apologies for making myself and my own story central to it all, but it's now public knowledge and I can move on to philosophizing and praising the gods and goddesses of MUSIC......... MORE COMING....