Saturday Summary, April 28, 2012

It's a beautiful rainy day here this morning.  I have a son who won't stop making a lot of noise, a cat who won't eat unless it's pretty much totally silent, and I didn't get enough sleep last night.  Welcome to my world.

Music -- In terms of composing, nothing really happened this week.  I've had ideas for pieces rolling around in my head -- as well as the potential for another commission or two (more on that in coming weeks) -- but I haven't taken any time to actually put anything down on paper (or computer screen, as the case may be).

Writing -- I've pushed through quite a bit of Fealty and Fire with my edits.  A lot of it is minor rewording, fixing missed spelling errors, that sort of thing.  I'm down to the really simple-albeit-stupid spelling mistakes, the ones spell check (and several readers) won't catch, things like had instead of hat.  It's slow going, but another week or two like this, and I think the thing might just be ready.

Publishing -- There's been quite a lot going on here this week, surprisingly.  I've reviewed the latest proof of my arrangement of Jingle Bells, which will be coming out from From the Top publishing soon.  I've also received the proofs of Hosanna!, which I believe will be coming out from Lorenz in the fall. 

Then, really exciting for me -- J.W. Pepper looks through all the new releases and selects several to be their "Editor's Choice" pieces (one would assume because they like them, think they're well done, or think they're sell well -- I've never quite found where they say what exactly "Editor's Choice" means).  They do this every year, and I've been fortunate enough to have some of my previous pieces receive the honor.  This tends to equate to the piece being very popular (and selling quite well).  It happened with my first piece, Il Est Né, my arrangement of The First Noel, and others.

For the current year, they've named five of my pieces as Editor's Choice for the year: Come, Christians, Join to Sing (which came out six months ago from Hope and, as near as I can tell, is doing quite well, judging from the comments I get from groups that have played it); Fum, Fum, Fum and Sleep in Heavenly Peace (which are just now coming out from Beckenhorst); and then, in a rather ironic twist of fate, two arrangements of Twas In the Moon of Wintertime -- one for level 1 handbells from SoundForth, and one for level 2 string orchestra from Grand Mesa Music (my first publication with them).  I'm really excited, and, in a rather materialistic and selfish way, hope this means a nice, large forthcoming donation to my son's college fund. 


That's all from here.  Here's hoping your week is creative, your children remain uncharacteristically silent, and even your most paranoid of felines will eat regardless of the overall noise level of your home.