At the National Gallery in Washington DC last week, an unusual piece of music had its premiere.  Called "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird," the work takes its title from the Wallace Stevens poem of the same name.  Several things make it unusual:  (1) the piece has thirteen movements;  (2) it is composed for high school men's chorus and piano, not unique in itself but because each is stylistically an entity unto itself; (3)  the movements can be arranged aleatorically, a la John Cage, by the throw of a die (and was in this case by one of the female singers present, who threw a pair of fuzzy dice).

Most unique of all -- I don't think I've ever seen this anywhere else -- each of the thirteen movements was written by a DIFFERENT composer.  In this case, the roster of composers includes some of the giants working in the field today:  Stephen Paulus, Libby Larsen, David Conte, Jaakko Mäntyjärvi (of "El Hambo" and "Four Shakespeare Songs" fame, for those longtime CAC fans reading this), Daniel Gawthrop, Rollo Dilworth, Matthew Harris, Daniel Gawthrop, Tarik O'Regan, Stephen Hatfield, Ola Gjielo, and Christopher Delp.

That is twelve, and I am the thirteenth.  Woo hoo!  What an honor.  I got stanza # 2 to compose:

"I was of three minds,

Like a tree

In which there are three blackbirds."

Who undertook this project?  None other than Dr. Joseph Ohrt ("Joe" to most people), director of the choral program at Central Bucks High School-West in Doylestown, PA, just north of Philadelphia.  Joe had commissioned me to write a piece for his SATB choir two years ago, which was "The Lincoln Memorial," a piece that Chicago a cappella also performed on our concert called "The American Dream."  He had commissioned most or all of the people on above list of composers before, and since he knew we could meet a deadline and might be interested in a quirky project, he gave us the nod.

My movement is about 40 seconds long, which is all Joe said I had!  The logistics of coordinating the project fell to Matthew Harris of NYC.  Matt has written some great stuff, and he's best known for his books of a cappella Shakespeare settings, among which we recorded four on our "Shall I Compare Thee?" album for Cedille Records a while back.  Matt took the first movement and shared it with us over e-mail;  we all chimed in after that.

Matt Harris sent the following link in case we wanted to hear "live" sound clips of blackbirds, so I'm sharing it with you:

http://www.wildsong.demon.co.uk/LR/listening.html

(I think you need RealPlayer to hear it)

More to come as the whole cycle gets its premiere "in order" at the Eastern Region ACDA convention in Hartford in February.  I hope it gets recorded.  The whole thing is really "out there," and that is a good thing.

Have a good week.