"Pleased to meet you. Hope you guessed my name."

I've never kept a journal before, but I always felt that I would have liked to. I think I was secretly waiting for the day when my student life would end and my professional life begins, although I realize that the two have overlapped for quite some time now. I am also blessed and cursed with the knowledge that despite my tremendous strength of will, the likelihood of my ever keeping a journal, no matter how simple or ephemeral, is very slim. So why keep one now when I have a minimal amount of free time and nothing original to say? In short, as a simultaneous sounding board for my musings, frustrations, and most importantly, to practice my writing skills--in particular, analytical writing. It is my hope that I can provide insightful commentary on my daily interactions as well as submit critical reviews of books, music, film, etc., with the understanding that the organization will be somewhat stream-of-consciousness--therefore sometimes discursive--and my writing will not be proofread to the 'nth degree as is expected of true scholarly writing. I have decided to post these entries in the form of a web log, or "blog," with the hopes that a small audience will encourage me to write as frequently as possible. I hope that I can be candid and entertaining, while still conveying my ideas through the principles necessary for critical writing and analysis. Although I do not claim one-hundred percent objectivity, I am committed to using a writing style that will assist me in my own scholarly writing, and thus I will try to leave emotional, extremely creative, and avant-garde writing aside for the purposes of isolating the tone, grammar, and constructions associated with academia. I do realize that there is a paradox at play here, since personal journals are not typically associated with scholarly writing, but for now let us consider this an exercise for my own benefit, and you--dear reader--get to reap the rewards of my process.

You are welcome.

Let me conclude this introduction by saying that I am doing this partially for fun and partially to improve my writing. Obviously, I have discovered some holes in my writing abilities and so I openly and honestly welcome any and all readers to submit corrections, both in grammar and in style, to my blog. Please try to give the reason or rationale for your correction and also please attempt to refrain from attacking me. It is tough to put oneself up on the firing post, but I am doing it for my own improvement. Periodically, I will be asking people to look at my writing and I will try to post major corrections when ready. If you are only interested in reading my entries as a light, entertaining diversion from your own daily life, then please do not feel obligated to participate in the grammar rodeo, but if you do contribute, you will be helping me improve my own writing and my command of the English language. Also, please try your best to disregard blatant typographical errors.

News

I am very proud and happy to announce that in the fall I will begin my year-long internship with the Cleveland Youth Wind Symphonies. The organization provides a musical support for high-school-aged and middle-school-aged children in the greater Cleveland metropolitan area by providing them with a superior ensemble in which to participate and by promoting habits and ideals necessary to make them top-shelf musicians. I will be the first official staff member that the now-almost-twenty-years-old organization has ever had besides the music directors. I am looking forward to learning more about the group, getting to know the students, and tackling many new tasks. Plus, I am getting paid through the Arts Leadership Program of the Eastman School of Music, which means that I won't have to work any other part-time jobs on the side. I resisted using pejorative language to describe my current part-time job because, you see, I am a mature adult (supposedly.)

I have recently completed revisions on a composition for solo flute written for my girlfriend, Mary Elizabeth. The piece is a set of three short palindromes that are all based on tonal, major-minor harmonic constructions and feature many turn-of-the-twentieth-century harmonic tendencies such as resolutions with chromatic mediant relationships, very basic stuff. In fact, the entire work was inspired by my completing exercises in the back of the first few chapters of Stefan Kostka's MATERIALS AND TECHNIQUES OF TWENTIETH CENTURY MUSIC. The simplicity makes the work fairly easy to digest and absorb, and endows it with a cohesion and form lacking in some of my earlier, more free-form compositions. It was a good experience for me to write this work, even though I don't necessarily plan on being so structured and simple in future compositions. A few fine flutist friends of mine (please excuse the rampant alliteration) were kind enough to play through the work, offer some suggestions, and provide very generous encouragement. This makes me reflect on how lucky I am to have such a strong network composed of so many truly amazing individuals. My friend and peer, Mike, also granted me an hour of his time for a sort of composition lesson on the piece, an experience that I value highly since he is a very skilled and well-trained composer. Many others gave advice and encouragement, and now that I have gone through about four revisions, I'm happy to announce that I think the current revision will stand as the definitive version of the piece. Though not a masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination, I hope that it will be an entertaining, escapist piece of repertoire that may be best suited for educational use, since that repertoire in particular, separate from the canon of solo instrumental literature, is sorely in need of inspiring new music that young people can use to foster their own musicality. Of course, I hope that Mary Elizabeth enjoys it as well, but really it's a means to an end as one day I would love to compose a significant piece for her, or at least if I can't, then I'll commission one from someone who can. If anyone is interested in seeing or passing along PALINDROMES FOR SOLO FLUTE (2007), then feel free to contact me and I'll send you the files.

Mary Elizabeth and I are moving in to our new, spacious two-bedroom apartment this week. The projected move-in day looks like it will be Wednesday, as that is the day that the movers will transport Mary E.'s furniture over to the apartment. As I only own one piece of furniture (a wood-frame futon,) the current set-up in my apartment is much more portable, and I will be moving myself on Tuesday. I'm excitedly anxious to unpack and set up our new home for the year. Mary E. and I are both in agreement that we want to use the second bedroom as a study space, designed for serious practicing and reading/writing. It will also serve as a guest bedroom, and I really hope that we will have the good fortune of receiving visitors from time-to-time. I also hope we can entertain during the year, and a secret fantasy of mine is to have friends over and watch funky, cult films or listen to music.

Well, I better go visit the wood-shed (i.e. practice) before I have to get to work (my part-time job.) I welcome anyones feedback of any sort. Hopefully more entries will follow soon, until then, warm wishes to everyone.

jm