Going to Pavia!...

I was just accepted to the soundSCAPE music festival in Pavia, Italy for this summer from July 15th - 25th..it’s about 40 minutes south of Milan. This is a huge honor and I can’t wait to spend the time in Italy!

I think about 10 composers and 10 performers will be participating. We’ll be rehearsing and presenting new pieces, having master classes with distinguished guest faculty, taking private composition lessons, and I can take Italian lessons! They host the whole thing at the Vittadini School of Music right in the center of town.

I’m making a version of “The Clemency of Milk” for violin,flute and piano for the festival...the original is for bass clarinet, contrabass and piano, and Trio Tara will premiere the bass clarinet, viola and piano version at the end of this month...it’s great to try different versions of the same piece without being too picky about the instrumentation! In fact the original original version of this piece was for contrabass and percussion (five octave marimba, vibes, tam, and some other metals)...marimba and bass would seem like a natural combination, but the bass is so quiet I had a hard time making it sound like something against the also very quiet marimba...anyway, the piano+ version is much better...today in rehearsal (for the Stony Brook premiere on Thursday) the bassist, Lisa Dowling, suggested a scordatura and tuned her E string down to a C...there is this one very loud cadence on a C chord and it sounds totally great. Thanks Lisa!

Rebecca and I may take a few extra days and tour Italy some...she is fluent in Italian and lived there for a while...knows all good sandwich shops to hit. A couple of years ago we went to Rome, the Amalfi coast, Sicily and Calabria (where her family is originally from) and it was excellent for me to see Southern Italy (where most Italians in the states are from)...their food, their coffee, their attitude...very infectious. Now we get to see some Northern Italy...it’s pretty close to France and Switzerland. Looking forward to comparing with the Southern flair...if anyone has any restaurant recommendations please let us know!

-md