Next week I’m helping to put together the first iter­a­tion of the Cincin­nati Sympho­ny’s Proof series, which is happen­ing Friday, November 22^nd.

The idea behind Proof is to use careful musical curation, along with some tools borrowed from theater, to design a very inten­tional kind of concert. My favorite concerts, and the ones I’ve found most memo­rable, are ones where I’m not just enter­tained or even moved, but ones that have uncov­er­ered some­thing new for me, drawn connec­tions between things I hadn’t seeen as related, helped me see the artist or work from a differ­ent perspective.

In the Proof show I’ve curated, which is called “American Perspec­tive,” that means a couple differ­ent things. Most obvi­ously, the audience will see the hall, concert stage, and orches­tra from a liter­ally new perspective—they’ll be right up there on the stage, all together. I’ve worked with the chore­o­g­ra­pher John Hegin­botham and his company to find ways not only to express some of the music through dance, but to create a kind of seamless flow of movement across the entire program, involv­ing musi­cians, singers, stage­hands, lighting, and video projections—the whole machin­ery of a concert.

The show’s program­ming grapples with the idea of an American concert music tradi­tion and sound, trying to unearth and high­light some of the threads that connect differ­ent kinds of music to each other. We’ll hear some 19^th-century hymnody from the Cincin­nati Sacred Harp singers, how Charles Ives fused that with (at the time) brand-new ragtime music, invent­ing a specific kind of American modernism. Tania León and Robin Holcomb take up that mantle and stack even more on top of it; León’s Indígena frac­tures and then recon­structs a Cuban street band, and Holcom­b’s solo piano piece Wherein Lies The Good makes a beau­ti­ful quilt out of refer­ences to country music and American parlor songs. We’ll also hear my own Upstate Obscura, played by Inbal Segev, which imagines a 19^th-century American artist strug­gling to sound American under the burden of European hegemony.

I’m incred­i­bly happy to see the CSO really throwing their weight behind this series, and this show. It makes me opti­mistic to see a vener­a­ble orches­tra pushing against the bound­aries of what a concert can and should be.

A record­ing of Every­thing Happens So Much, the piece I wrote for the Boston Symphony, is out today. You can listen to it on the stream­ing service of your choice and also buy a CD if you enjoy that sort of thing. Also on the album: BSO commis­sions by friends & colleagues Eric Nathan, Sean Shepherd, and George Tsontakis.

True to its cryptic title, Every­thing Happens So Much pivots between two differ­ent kinds of simul­tane­ity. The opening is an orches­tral sequencer grad­u­ally gath­er­ing complex­ity and momentum, perfectly aligned to a 32^nd-note grid. Its mirror image (counter-coun­ter­point?) is suspended, floating, a little woozy; instru­ments circle each other, never quite agreeing, each with its own sense of time. I wanted to maintain the illusion of multiple inde­pen­dent instances of rubato which somehow “magi­cally” align to create a distinct harmonic direc­tion. The result is a piece which feels a bit like one of those taffy-pulling machines: alter­nately stretch­ing and slack­en­ing, but always churning.

I’m grateful for the virtu­os­ity and dedi­ca­tion of the Boston Symphony musi­cians and their conduc­tor, Andris Nelsons, in bringing this dense score to life, as well as to Nick Squire for his wizardry and patience in the editing and mixing process.

I’m pleased to join the chorus of announce­ments for Sufjan Steven­s’s The Deca­logue. Written as a ballet score for Justin Peck, The Deca­logue is an austere solo-piano coun­ter­part to the elab­o­rate orches­tra­tions for Prin­cipia I worked on last year. Struc­tured in ten move­ments, each a takeoff on one of the ten command­ments, the music is by turns pithy and medi­ta­tive, never grandiose. I had a great deal of fun inter­pret­ing it.

I recorded the album at Oktaven Audio with the wonder­ful Ryan Streber at the controls and Sufjan produc­ing. Perhaps most excit­ingly, you can preorder the deluxe vinyl edition which includes sheet music (which I engraved in Dorico, naturally).

Contin­u­ing the summer’s flurry of albums, Chris Thomp­son’s new LP Every­thing Imag­in­able Comes True is out. I was happy to design the incred­i­bly fancy and labor-inten­sive pack­ag­ing for it. The entire sleeve is letter­press-printed and suitable for framing (you can also order a stand­alone print of the cover art). Not to mention that it’s an excel­lent and surpris­ing album featur­ing many of your favorite new music eminences. If you only know Chris as the virtu­osic yet self-effacing percus­sion­ist in Alarm Will Sound—then you need to hear his music.

Art & design by me; printed by Middle Press in Brooklyn

Chris Cerrone has a fantas­tic new album of vocal music out today called The Pieces That Fall To Earth. I was very happy to write the liner notes for it, which you can read at Chris’s website. I’ll also be playing with Theo Bleck­mann and Rachel Lee Priday at the NYC album release party on August 2.

And speaking of new albums: ASH is coming out Septem­ber 27^th. This is a collab­o­ra­tive work by Sleeping Giant for cellist Ashley Bathgate, includ­ing my own piece Small Wonder. In the meantime, you can watch the video for Jacob Cooper’s hypnotic Ley Line.

I was surprised by the extent to which the arrival of the Work Songs CDs this week made the album feel “real” to me. I don’t often listen to CDs anymore, but I like having a physical repre­sen­ta­tion of some­thing that I’ve worked hard on, but has only ever existed “in the aether.” It also feels much more generous and cele­bra­tory to send a CD to people (don’t worry, it comes with a download code). Head on over to the Albums page to get your own copy.

Cover drawing by Harley Jessup; design by me

I frequently talk with compo­si­tion students about the diffi­culty and neces­sity of gaining multiple perspec­tives on one’s own music. When immersed in the minutiae of writing the thing, it’s nearly impos­si­ble to under­stand how a piece will feel to an actual audience. What’s more, you’re unlikely to ever be surprised by hearing yourself, to have your own expec­ta­tions either foiled or confirmed, when you know what’s around every bend. 

I’ve been thinking quite seri­ously that the best way around this quandary would be for a composer to write so much music that remem­ber­ing all of it would grad­u­ally become impos­si­ble. The details of each piece would blur together, such that after enough time had elapsed—say 15 or 20 years—the composer could then listen to a perfor­mance of their own work with true objec­tiv­ity and without preconceptions. 

There have been occa­sions when I’ve felt vertig­i­nous hints of this unlearn­ing process, not yet for entire pieces, but in short bursts. Listen­ing recently to a live record­ing of It takes a long time to become a good composer, I remem­bered the major facts of the piece, but found myself surprised by the way certain tran­si­tions unfolded, or how many times a figure repeated. It struck me as being one of my strangest pieces, not disagree­ably so, but in the tenuous ways the chunks of music related to each other, like floating objects in a surre­al­ist painting. It takes a long time is nearly a decade old, but it’s not a piece I’ve heard performed frequently or recorded, which is perhaps why it makes a good case study. I’m excited to neglect it for another decade, writing another 50-some­thing pieces in the meantime, and revisit this exper­i­ment in 2029.