Hello All,

Those of you from outside the East Coast of the US are probably very aware widespread destruction that Hurricane Irene has caused us. The devastation of communities from North Carolina to Canada has been incredible, and major areas of the Northeast–like Long Island, Westchester County (NY), Connecticut, Boston-area, Vermont–who are not used to such storms were hit very hard. I want to say right now that I’m extremely thankful for the precautions taken by Mayor Bloomberg of NYC and the great work by the FDNY, NYPD, and the various other offices and the great number of volunteers. NYC was spared the brunt of storm, but even so without such a plan or infrastructure in place, many more lives would’ve been lost and damage would have been more widespread. Again, thank you. And although many of my fellow New Yorkers may have been upset with the inconvenience of shutting down the MTA and the airports, if they would just look a few miles in every direction towards New Jersey and Long Island and even to the surrounding counties, I believe that they may start to consider themselves pretty damn lucky.

We’ve had some extreme weather this year in NYC: heat, tornadoes, earthquake, hurricane…this has caused some of my more religious-minded fellow Americans to speculate that these weather patterns are not due to global climate change, but to Divine design to punish NYC for its ‘evil’ ways…hmmm…if I were more of that thinking, I would probably chalk it up to the omnipresent spirit of George Gershwin commenting on the rewrite of Porgy and Bess…but I digress…

Well, onto the good news!

This week begins my time as the Con Edison/Exploring the Metropolis Resident Composer for the borough of Queens. The best part about this residency is that I get to use the wonderful facilities at Flushing Town Hall, which is in the center of a vibrant community.

Now, the idea of my project is to research and create source material to compose a new large-scale piece entitled Roots Music. This piece will combine traditional Chinese instruments, traditional Irish instruments, European classical instruments, and a solo jazz saxophone (performed by yours truly:)) Flushing is a perfect location to begin researching the traditional music and instruments of China since it has the largest Chinese population in NYC. The schools, shops, restaurants (yes, restaurants!) and community centers will provide incredible access into the culture.

The commission for this piece came from Benoit Granier, who is a composer and director of the TIMI Modern Music Ensemble, in residence at the Beijing Central Conservatory. Roots Music will have its premiere on St. Patrick’s Day, March 2012 at the Beijing Irish Modern Music Festival.

My thought is to base the piece on traditional melodies (or create my own that ‘sound’ like traditional melodies) and styles from all of these cultural genres. I also plan to take this ‘source material’ and use it as a basis to compose a series of new pieces for varied instrumentation over the next year. I expect to use some of these smaller pieces as part of my final residency concert at Flushing Town Hall, which will take place in February 2012.

Many of you remember that I started working with Dr. Granier in 2009, a collaboration that led to performances at the 2009 Musicacoustica Festival in Beijing. In April 2011, we collaborated again for a series of concerts in Boston (Northeastern University and Berklee College of Music), NYC (at (le) Poisson Rouge), and in New Jersey (Rutgers University). During this tour, TIMI performed the new version of my work Gymnopaedia. Here is the video of the premiere at Northeastern University, as part of the TransCultural Exchange International Conference on the Arts:

I’m excited to begin researching and preparing Roots Music, and the other smaller works which will be generated from it.

Well, that’s all for now. I do promise you that I’ll write the 4th (and probably final) blog on volume sometime in the next week or so.

Thank you all again for your support!

Demetrius

What If? (60x60x60) up and on-line! March 18, 2010

Greetings,

It is my pleasure to tell you that the NMNMNE’s (New Media New Music New England) project What If? (60x60x60) is now up on-line for public access.

http://www.nmnmne.org/what_if.php

For the project, there was a competition for both composers and film makers to create works of 60 seconds. The idea is that the viewer can choose (or let the website choose at random) any combination of music and video. The website will sync up the two.

My composition, The Ballad of Olga D., was chosen for this project. This was especially fun for me since this piece is the first ever stand-alone electronics-only work that I have ever composed (not counting electronics-only film scores). The one non-electronic component is me speaking the Russian word “Zdravstvuite! (Здравствуите!)”, which means “hello”…you can probably tell by the inflections in my voice what the piece is about (hint: think Russian club scene…).

There are lots of really interesting works that will give you, the viewer, endless hours of random pairing fun!

Thanks again to NMNMNE for putting together this very cool project, and for choosing my work to be a part of it!

Demetrius

Tenor saxophone/bass clarinet in the premier of Anthony Cornicello’s Coney Island of the Mind. Eastern Connecticut State University, October 11, 2:30PM.