Every Saturday, The Creative will feature a brief post about my current creative efforts and how they are progressing. If this doesn't interest you, read no further -- not only will I not be offended, I'll never know. The usual creativity-centric posts will return on Sunday.
Merry Christmas! After playing dozens of holiday-themed songs with countless soloists, duetists, small ensembles, choirs, instrumentalists, congregations, or just by myself, it's hard to believe the day has finally arrived. Somehow through all the busy-ness of the season, it snuck up on me.
Despite being Christmas, it's still Saturday, so here's a very brief round-up of what I've done this week.
Music -- I composed again! It's been almost a month since I've written a note, but this week I did four arrangements of Christmas tunes. To be fair, they were 12-bell handbell trios, and were written out of necessity (my wife booked our trio for a gig playing at a local coffeehouse, something she's wanted to do for a couple of years now). The smaller and more limited the ensemble, the greater the challenge of writing the piece in terms of not losing the melody, making the whole thing original, and making it musical. I think I did fairly well on these four, though after playing them, they need to be tweaked a bit before being sent off to publishers.
Writing -- While cleaning my office, I did come across the rough draft of my second Sadonian Chronicles book, which I had been in the middle of editing. I shoved it aside to make room for some handbell proofs, so does that count as writing? No? Darn.
Publishing -- I received a rejection on my Antiphonal Fanfare from Hope this week (I can't say I'm overly surprised -- the piece is neat but I'm not sure how marketable). I also received a note from Alan Lohr at SoundForth wanting me to take another look at one of my submissions to him. I hope to get to that between Christmas and New Year's and get it back to him -- it's a nice little 2/3 octave arrangement of O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing.
That's it. Now I'm going off to have some more cookies and pie and coffee, and I suggest you do the same. I wish you all the very merriest of Christmases, and we'll see you back here tomorrow.
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