At the Asheville Composers Concert this Sunday, you can hear one of the very first pieces I wrote, finally being played in its full glory. I played Dia y Sueños many times as a solo but never had the chance to do the version with strings and clarinet – until now. (See my earlier post for more of that story.)

This is a fantastic room for chamber music. Also on the program are works by local composers Dosia McKay, Jason DeCristofaro, Michael Jefry Stevens, and Tim Winter.

Here’s an article in the Mountain XPress about the concert.

Sunday, July 21  3:00 pm

St. Matthias Episcopal

1 Dundee St, Asheville

suggested donation $10 (goes to the musicians and the church’s maintenance fund)

One of my first full compositions – maybe the very first one that I took seriously – was a marimba solo called Dia y Sueños. Written in 1992-ish, it was a hit around the ETSU music department and convinced me that maybe I could do this composing thing for real.

At some point I expanded the piece and added a piano accompaniment. This version was performed a few times but met with a big “meh” from most listeners – people who heard both preferred the original. In trying to understand this reaction, I dug deeply into my writing for the first time and really analyzed it, pulled it apart, and started figuring out what the hell I was doing.

The result of this process was a further expanded version of DyS for marimba, string orchestra, and clarinet. When the solo version became my first published piece (by Studio 4 Music, now MPI) the orchestrated version was also made available for a while, but as a rental. To my knowledge it was never rented (no surprise, as I was completely unknown to anyone at the time) and has never been performed.

On July 21 that will change! I will be performing the orchestrated version of Dia y Sueños at the 3rd annual Asheville Composers Concert hosted by Jason DeCristofaro. We have a fantastic chamber group lined up to play, and after 20-ish  years my first large piece will finally make its public debut.

The show will be at St. Matthias Episcopal in Asheville, which is a great room for chamber music, and will also feature works by Dosia McKay, Tim Winter, and Michael Jefry Stevens. ~ 3:00, Sunday, July 21 – donations encouraged ~