It’s time again to get dates put into the calendar and confirm those already there. Looks like a busy fall, with some new pieces getting their first performances, and some playing clarinet/bass clarinet with a bunch of colleagues (Nightmare Before Christmas! Façade! Nina Rota!)
One premiere I’m really looking forward to: the new piece written for Spencer Brand (trumpet) and Katrina Clements (clarinet) for their 2025 fall tour. It uses Joan Wickersham’s poem “The Eroded Lion” from her book No Ship Sets Out To Be a Shipwreck, a work inspired by the Swedish ship the Vasa and its place now in the museum in Stockholm.
The poem focuses on the elements of the Vasa that either did survive being in the harbor water of Stockholm for hundreds of years, or did not. I saw the ship in its bespoke museum a few years back, and delved into the museum’s digital sources for some of the video accompaniment for the duo.
An early still from the video – it’s kind of a melancholy piece.
Before that tour, I have another premiere at the Bar Harbor Music Festival this month. Allison Kiger asked for a piece based on a poem by an important person in the town, James Russel Wiggins. She requested two versions – one for flute, cello, and piano, and one for flute and strings. The first version will be played this summer at St. Saviour’s Episcopal Church, August 20th. It’s inspired by a poem by Wiggins that Allison sent, from WIggins’ time at the Ellsworth American –
Much later in the season, there will be a premiere by Boston Opera Collaborative, as part of its Opera Bites series. Librettist Cecelia Raker and I pushed around a few ideas for a short opera (an opera bite..), and kept coming back to this:
The workshops are spread through the fall, with the premiere mid-winter. It’s a really fun story, and I think the actresses in it will have a grand time.
Let the season begin…
beth wiemann 