Johnny Reno


Last night I went to bed with composers brain. Basically the creative process going on between my ears did not get the message that it was time to sleep. So it took a while before I was able to drop off, resulting in me dragging my sorry ass around for most of the morning.

At breakfast, John Korsrud appeard. He had gotten in from Vancouver at 3:00am and looked more chipper than me. He has a new work of his, written specifically for Francois Houle, premiered with the Turning Point Ensemble last night. The dining room manager came by and apologized for the behaviour of that rude woman on the desk yesterday and refunded my money, a nice way to start the day.

We spent the day doing a study of John's compositions. He is one heavy cat when it comes to innovative writing. I really liked going through his scores and getting an insight into his writing techniques. The last thing we heard was a recording of his new piece from last night. It was terriffic - Francois can do no wrong.

At the end of the afternoon session, I caught up with Dominique and we went to the percussion room to discuss our song room project. She can swing a marimba for the gig, so we checked out a couple of the beautiful instruments that they keep up here. The sound of these instruments is amazing and I got really jazzed up about the possibilities for this piece. Dominique is a great 4-mallet player and you could feel the vibrations from the bass notes in your gut - very neat. I got the idea that bass clarinet may be a good fit - nice and woody.

After dinner, I got down to work on the composing assignment and got it done and into the computer, which took a little longer than usual. I just switched to a Mac Powerbook after 20 years of PC, so there were some things to learn with Finale.

There was just enough time to sit in on the last tune of the nightly jam session, then it's time to go for a nightcap then try to get some rest. Really, I'm still so excited about the marimba that it might be another sleepless night.