Two weekends ago I had the honor of having two of my compositions premiered here in the Los Angeles Area.  The first called “Arise” was premiered by The San Bernardino Symphony under the baton of Anthony Parnther, and the second entitled “Lamentations” was premiered the same night by Thomasz Golka and The Riverside Philharmonic.

Quite interestingly, the pieces were literally played at exactly the same time so I had to choose which concert to go to.  Fortunately, a second performance of the Riverside Philharmonic was scheduled for the following afternoon so I was able to attend one performance of each piece.

I’ve attached the computerized Sibelius playback of Arise below (obviously Katherine Liner’s lyrics sadly won’t playback via this method).  

The AFM Contract for the musicians of both orchestras was for performance only – they are required to be paid extra for recording services.  Even if there was a bootleg recording of these pieces I would choose to not use it as these players work very hard for the amount of money they are paid.  In a perfect world I would love for them to be paid twice or even thrice what they receive but of course funding is always an issue when large ensembles are together.   I recently rejoined  local 47 (AFM) and am doing my best to support the musicians in my community as best we can – and unionization is one of the best ways to do this.

This work has obvious references to other joyous and celebratory pieces.  One of my favorite albums of all time is “Summon The Heroes” and I’ve listened to that album so many times that I am certain much of the music of Williams and the other composers on this album has crept into the composition.  When I first started writing the work on the work I had just attended a concert of “Titanic” live orchestra to picture so I can even hear some Horner influence in the work.

Arise isn’t written in a full classical language; I purposefully kept it “somewhat cinematic” and very accessible.  Another piece I wrote in a similar language to this was “Endeavor”, a work for wind ensemble.