This year to date I have been busy continuing the rewrite of ‘scolorire’, a short piece for symphony orchestra; back in late January I was fortunate enough to have a rough draft of the piece workshopped by City of Rochester Symphony Orchestra, as part of their annual workshops for new music. This is a fantastic project for an orchestra of its type to run – the players are a mixture of retired professionals, semi-professional performers, music teachers, and students who perform under the baton of the very experienced conductor Peter Bassano; each year a small number of composers are given the chance to have a piece rehearsed by this group of enthusiastic musicians.

It was an unusual experience for me – of necessity the vast majority of my work to date has been chamber music, often with just a few performers, and the task of handling larger forces continues to be an interesting challenge. I came away from the session with a long list of issues to be fixed, as well as a definite feeling that orchestral music was something I wanted to be much more involved in; in short, I had a blast! Here are some pictures from the session: