All Change

 The eagle eyed amongst you will have noticed a new head line, while I was rather fond of my old boast of being "The World's Leading Bass Trombone and Tuba playing Transgender Christian Gardener", it felt like time to make a change. While it did reflect my opinion that being trans is quite possibly the least interesting thing about me, it is no longer quite accurate. Now I am retired I felt I needed something that more closely reflects how I now think of myself. The last six months I have been pretty much totally immersed in music (and cars of course). 

Leroy Anderson,
the doyen of light music composition

The other week I had one of my latest compositions performed, a solo work for tuba and concert band ~ as a first performance I was very pleased, it is a very special moment when I hear something I have written performed by real people on real instruments! The solo line is exactly as I intended and I am very happy with it ~ I might make a couple of small modifications following suggestions from our soloist, but nothing major. The band accompaniment on the other hand did have a couple of moments that just didn't work, I think I need to simplify them! 

The late great Leroy Anderson was renowned for the care he took in score preparation prior to publication. During rehearsal each of pieces would have small adjustments made before being performed or recorded, only after this process would all the changes and markings incorporated into the score and parts before publication. If that's good enough for Leroy Anderson than it's good enough for me!

At the weekend I am conducting a band weekend away with the marvellous Phoenix Concert Band, at some point during the weekend we will be trying another new work I have composed, this is a much simpler, and shorter piece, which I hope that I will then be in a position to publish next week. It will be nice to start getting some more original work "out there" so far of the fifteen pieces I have published only three are original works and two of those are for quartets!