🎼 March 2024
March 2024 update: Learning to ask more from musicians, supporting Barron Ryan's Kickstarter, and my latest music!
Hello!
I am Chris Krycho, a working composer (among other things), and this is my monthly(ish) music update for March 2024.
🎼 On the craft
One of the things I continually catch myself doing is asking too little of an orchestra. This past weekend we went to see the Colorado Springs Philharmonic, playing Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis”, Anna Clyne’s DANCE, and Saint-Saëns” “Organ Symphony”. In all three pieces, but especially the Saint-Saëns, I was struck by just how capable professional musicians are: how far you can push them, how difficult or complex or technically challenging a passage they can handle. This happens every time we go see the orchestra, in fact—whatever the program. Composers, from the classical tradition up through those working today, have all been willing to push the orchestra harder than I am.
I do not mean writing un-idiomatically, or composing passages which are difficult just for the sake of it. I mean, rather: these are musicians at the top of their game, and they are remarkably capable, and it honors them to give them challenging things to play which contribute to making interesting and beautiful music.
I could chalk this up to a lack of sophistication on my part as a composer, but I don’t think it is that, exactly. I think it is rather a lack of confidence. I worry that I will write something that people find unplayable. I had one experience that way in college and it left an imprint. Back then, my orchestration (and my composing in general) was much more intuitive than well-studied. I got away with it because I have a very good ear. That was, to be clear, not to my credit! To the contrary—I very much wish I had read more scores and relied less on my ear. Since then, though, I have spent a great deal of time studying orchestration, including getting a much better handle on the abilities of each instrument. I do not need to be so worried about “messing it up”. Worse comes to worst, a player can tell me that something does not work, and I can change it!
I am trying to keep this in mind while working on a large orchestral piece I have been chipping away at for the past couple years. I can ask more of the orchestra when it serves the music to do so. They are professionals. They can handle it. More than that, they might appreciate it if it suits their instruments well.
🎵 Other notes
Once upon a time, I was classmates at the OU School of Music with Barron Ryan. Unlike me, though, he stuck with music as a career, and has been working as a pianist and a composer for the past decade and a half. I particularly appreciate his current Kickstarter project: a recording of a work he composed for violin, cello, and piano to commemorate the Tulsa Race Massacre.
- Turning that dark moment in American history into something beautiful and hopeful is excellent.
- Getting recordings into the world is hard.
Let’s make it happen! I would love to see this project hit its goals and make it into the world—and hey, it has a donor who will match up to $25,000 (way past the base goal). Worth your time and support!
🎤 Links, updates, &c.
đź’ż The Desert
First, I published a piece of music at the start of March: The Desert, for solo piano. With just 40 notes spread over ~4 minutes, it draws heavily on the “holy minimalism” tradition developed by Arvo Pärt, John Tavener, and others.
Stream it:
- Spotify
- Apple Music
- YouTube Music
- Amazon Music
- (or search for it on whatever other service you use: it’s there!)
Buy it:
If you listen and like it, would you share it with a friend?
I went from idea to recorded and submitted for distribution in under 48 hours, which was very fast work for me. You can read more about the process here, or watch a deep dive on the musical ideas over on YouTube.
I would love to hear your thoughts on the music, as well as any comments or questions I can answer about it in future writing or videos.
🏠New website
I also took launched a new dedicated home for my music: music.chriskrycho.com. (I also gave this newsletter a matching home: newsletter.music.chriskrycho.com. Neat!)
Up till now, my music has always just lived alongside everything else on my main site. That worked fine when it was just a little here and there. With more works out in the world, and a lot more in the pipeline, though, it felt like time to give my music a home of its own. It still needs some polish and iteration, but I am really happy to have a place I can point people for my music specifically.
👋🏼 Happy March!
I will be back in April with another update. Thanks for reading—and listening! If you have thoughts, suggestions, questions, comments, etc., please reply to this email: I will read and reply to all such correspondence!
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