Two busy days of lectures

The last two days have been a rewarding series of talks and lectures to several different groups. I first started out by giving a talk to each of the DeLand Middle School Choir’s classes about what composers do, how and why I compose, various kinds of music composing jobs and career options, how copyright works and why is is important. It was an exceptionally long day as I went right into my last shift at my seasonal job immediately after, and promptly fell asleep after being on my already injured feet for 18 hours straight. 

There were several good question from several students, so I think I did an ok job of not boring most of them. My personal favorite was when a group students came up after the talk and handed me a piece of paper. They wanted to see if they could challenge me to write something with an instrumentation they picked based on examples I used in my talks. Keep in mind I was picking random, slightly unusual combinations for my examples to keep it interesting. This is the sheet here:

Spelling aside, I will be adding into the list of projects I am trying to complete this semester. It was great to see them so enthusiastic and I love a brain-challenge.

Today I returned to my Alma Mater, Stetson University and talked briefly with their Composition Studio about my experiences in graduate school and some options they could have after graduation. (The music school at Stetson is only undergraduate level) I also talked about new things I had written and my advice for them now that I had had some experience outside of their environment. I also got to see several of my old professors and classmates, and while I felt like I have the same “this is what I’m doing now”  speil 20 times, it felt good to talk with people I hadn’t seen in over a year and hear about how their lives were going.

I’ll be traveling back to Boston over the long weekend and will start school on the 10th. From there I’m anticipating a whirlwind of activity as I go through my last year of my Master’s so be sure to keep checking out this page and my various social medi pages for updates and new compositions!