A follow-up to the blog post, Three Principles, or, “What do you mean, ‘I’m a perfectionist’?”

Craft! Technique! Perfectionism! Sondheim?

A podcast following up on the blog post, Three Principles, or, What do you mean I'm a Perfectionist?

Referenced in this Podcast:

• Ned Rorem Interviews Stephen Sondheim at the 92nd Street Y in 2000: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzTuIbqgzJU&t=3134s

• Sohndeim's final interviews for the New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-interview/stephen-sondheim-final-interviews

• Bernstein analyzing Beethoven's decisions and discarded material from his 5th Symphony sketches: https://youtu.be/2_iRyNsOtMQ?si=H914AQbO9V3UH-rf

Different singers, different settings, different purposes.

A follow up to the blog post, Writing for Singers.

A follow-up Podcast to the blog post, Writing for Singers.

The capabilities of instruments are generally known and standardized: range limits, how dynamics affect sound, which mutes to use, how to use them, and how long one must budget for a player to insert or remove them before they can be ready to continue playing.

Not so with singers. Singers do not have a set array of performance options that are uniform across voice types, styles, or any other parameter. They are individual.

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Church choir is where I learned to sing, and - through collaboration with those around me - learned what singers could do. Later, my experience singing in opera chorus opened up the available possibilities of writing for singers on the stage.

But, Church Choir and Opera Chorus are not the same animal, and my writing had to adapt to handle both.

What did I think I knew? And how could that have benefitted from a mentor's assistance? Is it possible to mentor oneself? After the fact?

A podcast follow up to the blog post, "After the Mountaintop: Notes from the Rubble Pile."

During the production of my last opera, I would frequently quip that I was going to write a book about the experience titled, "I didn't learn this in school." There has been so much in my career that was never discussed in my university program or my composition seminars, that one book would not be enough.

The education arm of Resonanz - the blog, the podcasts, the coming school - is based on this principle (or, the lack therof, I suppose).

This podcast is the second of a series of three, whcih serve as an extension to the blog post, After the Mountaintop: Notes from the Rubble Pile. The post can be found here: https://www.frankpesci.com/post/after-the-mountaintop-notes-from-the-rubble-pile

Always have a model, my first teacher told me. While he was primarily talking about a model for every piece, I had been looking for a model for this phase of my career. How should I dress and present myself? How should I behave in rehearsal? Should I even go to rehearsal? How do I lay the foundation for what's next?  I spoke to old teachers, old-timer composers, active European composers who were kind enough to offer a little time, but didn’t find a lot of answers; no roadmap, no master plan, no definitive advice. 

Where I am now is the composer mentor I needed then.  

An expansion on the blog post, "After the Mountaintop: Notes from the Rubble Pile"

"Set-able” is not the same as “singable.” Some texts look great on the page but are a nightmare for singers.

Intended for composers, songwriters, and anyone who wants to write for singers, wether it be in the choral, operatic, musical theater or pop/Rock/Jazz idioms.

A podcast follow-up to the post, Mutual Illumination, on the Resonanz Blog.

Where Do I Find Texts That Are Set-able?

Not every good text can be set to music, and even if it is, you may not be legally free to use it.

Intended for composers, songwriters, and anyone who wants to write for singers, wether it be in the choral, operatic, musical theater or pop/Rock/Jazz idioms.

A podcast follow-up to the post, Mutual Illumination, found on the Resonanz Blog.