Heading to Boston this weekend for the premiere of North Woods, a new multi-movement work for women's chamber choir. After returning from the Detroit performances in Berlin, I spent the remainder of the summer creating this piece. It was commissioned by Beth Willer and the Lorelei Ensemble, Boston's incomparable women's vocal octet, with some key support from a NewMusicUSA Project Grant. More on the piece, including audio excerpts, after the premiere this weekend.

Two updates on the professional front:

First, I accepted an invitation earlier this year to join the faculty at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, and I am happily into my first semester working with the students there. It is truly a remarkable community of musicians and I'm so excited to be a part of it.

And second, I've begun working with a very cool organization in Philadelphia called Network for New Music. Founded in 1984, it's one of the oldest contemporary chamber ensembles in the country and has worked directly with a ridiculous number of composers, from Luciano Berio back in the 90s to Bernard Rands and Michael Hersch and Stephen Hartke and a million others more recently, as well as some glamorous guest performers like Leon Fleisher, Peter Serkin, and Christoph Eschenbach. Just this weekend we unveiled a new $30,000 commissioning fund that we'll grow during years to come. By making commissioning a permanent and public part of our annual operating budget, we hope to demonstrate to other ensembles that both audiences and institutional funders appreciate and expect to hear new works on a regular basis. I've been involved with several ensembles before (as a conductor), but I've never had the chance to support other composers and the rest of the new music community on this scale before. Very excited.