Dancing to the original.

Minerva’s Dance was originally written for my wife and for our first dance as husband and wife in 2004. She loves tangos and the music of Astor Piazzolla, so I decide to write her a tango. I went into my studio and started laying down some tracks. My friend and band mate, Andrew Wilshusen laid down some percussion and a few days later I had it ready to go. Since this was a studio piece with long improvised sections only a small part of it was ever written down. In the summer of 2010 I decided to notate and expand the orchestration.  The flute and soprano sax are featured soloist. The flute solo is a transcription of the original solo I played but the sax solo for the 9/25/2010 SFCCO concert was improvised. My friend Erling Wold was originally going to play accordion on this concert but just be for the concert he got hit by a car and broke his leg.  Minverva is the  goddess of poetry, medicine, wisdom, commerce, weaving, crafts, magic, and the inventor of music.

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I cannot write poetically, for I am no poet.
I cannot artfully arrange my phrases so as to give light and shade.
Neither am I a painter;
Nor can I even express my thoughts by gesture and pantomime, for I am no dancer.
But I can do so in sounds.
I am a musician.

This quote inspired me to create a collection of pieces I call Love Letters. They are usually for piano, last about 3-5 minutes and are written for or about someone dear to me. Twenty years ago I decided I want to write one based on my father’s initials, GAC. But every time I sat down to write it I was unhappy with the results. After my parents visit this summer, I had a feeling time was running out and I sat down to try again. I finally heard something I was satisfied with and in a couple of weeks I completed the piece I have been wrestling with for twenty years. Not only did I use his initials but I used his full name by putting rests in place of letters not used by music notation. I also added in my own name at the end.

Notation of My Father's Name

Notation of My Name

My father is very interested in running and has run marathons all over the world so the A theme last 26.2 measures (26.2 miles is the length of a marathon) and the B theme is reminiscent of the music in the movie that inspired his desire to run “Chariots of Fire”. The finale is a culmination of all themes that runs on to the end.

As I was  finishing this composition I started to hear strings playing the B theme at finale so I decided to orchestrate it for chamber orchestra. On September 25th 2010 the SFCCO premièred this version.

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Open Ended

Do to unforeseen circumstances the composition I planed on having performed on the November 7th 2009 SFCCO concert had to be canceled. So I decided to pull out one of my guide improvisation compositions, Open Ended. I conducted/composed this performance as well as played tenor saxophone. It is a very versatile work that is composed live before your eyes and ears. Based on Rova‘s Radar techniques, Open Ended is less of a composition and more of a color or tool palette. It is an ever-growing collection of rules and games for the performers that are triggered by hand signals by the conductor/composer. The conductor/composer then composes the piece live using these hand signals to guide the performers. This work has no set instrumentation and can be played by any number of performers. It also has no set length; the piece could last 5 minutes or 24 hours. Open Ended has been performed several times, including a performance four years ago by the SFCCO, but every time it is a world première and unique performance that can never be repeated.

Chisos mountains of Big Bend National Park

On November 7th 2009 the SFCCO will be performing a composition I wrote back in 1993-94. It is a violin, bassoon and piano trio I call …with the Spirit of the Desert. This work is inspired by Big Bend National Park in Texas, a place I used to go camping every year in the early 90′s. The park can be thought of as having three natural divisions; the river, the desert and the mountains, thus why I chose a trio. Big Bend National Park lies in the northern third of the Chihuahuan Desert. The name Big Bend refers to the great U-turn the Rio Grande River makes there in Southwest Texas. Prehistoric Native Americans made their homes there at least 10,000 years ago and perhaps earlier. This area has been occupied many different Native Americans groups over the years. The La Junta, Chisos, Jumano, Mescalero Apaches and Comanche all made the homes in Big Bend. The Native Americans said that after making the Earth, the Great Spirit simply dumped all the leftover rocks on the Big Bend. Even though Big Bend is a desert it is full of wild life, you frequently see jackrabbits, roadrunners, golden eagle and coyotes. The composition is a seven-movement work, where the first three movements are played continuously as are the last four. Each member of the trio has it’s own solo movement, entitled “Alone”. The natural beauty of the area and its Native American past inspire other four moments. When camping in Big Bend where always awoken by spectacular sunrises,  the first movement “In the Sunrise with the Spirit of the Desert” represents that. The end of the first movement flows into the first of the solo movements which a this point is for violin. This solo second movement sets up the third movement, “Dancing the Dance of the Eagle…” This movement reminds the listener of a Native American dance and soaring golden eagles in the desert sky. The end of the third is the first break in the composition, the fourth movement is the bassoons solo movement which leads into the powerful fifth movement. “Two Braves Warring…” puts man vs. nature (and Spirits) as the desert is can be a difficult place to live. The rains and water finally come after this movement end on the last of the solo movements begin, this time for piano. After a long day in the sun the last movement takes place in the cool of the night as “Coyotes Howling at the Moon…”

Gangqin Zhao, 古箏 (gŭzhēng) &
Michael Cooke, 笙 (shēng)

I had written a bunch of different variations and in March 2009 after the premièred of my composition String Theory, I started to put all the pieces together into a composition. I ended up throwing out several variations as they were to complex and made the piece lose it’s lullaby quality. When the dust settled I had four variations (plus the theme) that I liked: Variation I: Fragments, Variation II: Canon, Variation III: Block Chords & Variation IV: Reduction. I wanted the piece to flow better then just switching from variation to variation so I wrote some “connective tissue” to put it all together in a seamless way. The piece became more of a dream sequence then a traditional Theme & Variations. Now I prefer to view the composition in that way, where the first theme is when the baby is going to sleep listening to the lullaby and at Variation I she is asleep and starts to dream. The variation send her on dream adventures, maybe swimming in the ocean or floating in the sky. At the reprise of the theme at the end of the composition, the baby is back from her dream adventures and is dreaming about being in her parents arms.

A reviews of this concert can be found on Sequenza 21 and Memory Select’s Blog

In May 1945 during WWII, the allies bombarded Taiwan heavily to fight against Japan.  Master Lu evacuated his wife and 3 months old infant to the countryside of Feng Yuan, his hometown.  He stayed in Taipei and worked in Taipei Broadcast Bureau.  As the night fell, Master Lu’s longing for his wife and new born son inspired the song. The song has a wonderful simplicity that expresses the traditional attitude all Chinese parents have toward their children. It extols the hardships and high expectations experienced during child rearing.

My wife translated the lyrics which where written by Master Lu father-in-law as:	The version of this melody I’m using for my composition is a little different as it is a transcription of the way my wife sings it to my daughter, but I have found this copy online of the original after I completed my piece.
A baby Sleeps Growing one inch a night Sweet baby growing one foot a night Rock the baby until sunset staring at the baby in my arm you are my sweetheart worry you’ll get cold cherish the baby like gold It’s a great responsibility to bring up a baby If only you get married, my duty will be relieved.	Sheet music to "the lullaby"

Master Lu Chuan-sheng passed away in the United States March 17, 2008 but generations long after will be still learning his songs to perform in concerts. I hope he would have enjoyed my composition inspired from his.

Michael playing sheng.

        I’m currently working on a new orchestra composition that adds two Chinese instruments to the orchestra, the shēng and gǔzhēng. The sheng is a 3000 year old Chinese free-reed bamboo mouth organ. It reached Europe around 1777 with Pere Amiot, and its influence was so strong that it resulted in the invention of the reed organ, concertina, harmonica and accordion. I have been learning how to play the sheng since the summer of 2008, when I finally bought one in Taipei, Taiwan.  I have been interested in the instrument for 20 years, though I first learned about the Japanese version called a shō. I bought a modern 38 key chromatic jiàn sheng, which is a very versatile instrument. Being chromatic means it can play in any key and works well in western music as well as traditional Chinese. One of the things that I like about this instruments is it play chords like a piano. As a life long woodwind player I rarely get to play chords on my instruments so it is great to be able to. Another thing that is cool about this instrument is it makes sound when you breath out or in. So you can keep it making sound for a long time.  

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String Theory p.13

Rehearsing my guided improvisation compositions is always a bit of a challenge at the first rehearsal. Most of the confusion stems from the unfamiliarity of the orchestral musician to improvisation, so the first question is always what am I supposed to do? Now the other bit of confusion come from the notation style which is also rather unique. I always write a ledger to explain the notation but many time the musician fail to read it before the first rehearsal and I waste time reading to them. I also noticed that old musicians seem more confused by none standard notation, they don’t seem to be a flexible in excepting new concepts. It is to be expected that the first rehearsal of a guide improvisation piece does not go to well as the musician need some time to figure out and to explore ideas that what will work. It one of the reasons why it is important to rehearse a piece like this, though it is equally important to make sure you don’t over rehearse so it does not be come stale. If the musicians are getting the concepts quickly I tend to cut short rehearsals, so ideas stay fresh. On the first rehearsal of String Theory, musicians where really just getting there feet wet trying to figure out what they can do, that included the conductor. I’m going to  have the conductor, Dr. Mark Alburger (who is a veteran conductor of my music) to conduct more, more clues and encouragement to the musicians then just the marking the sections like I asked him to do the first time. Hopefully at tonight’s rehearsal people will be more comfortable playing this work and better performance results. I think I’m not going to play this time and just listen to better evaluate what is going on.

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