Mid-Semester Update

It is currently crunch-time for my thesis, as I have just about 6 weeks until I need to turn in a final draft, and I still have a long way to go! Nonetheless, a lot of exciting events have happened this semester. First was the electronic music concert on February 9, where I finally performed my piece for piano and live electronics, entitled "Transformations." It was part of a great concert which featured a few other student works and our resident composer for the week, Katherine Balch. It was such a fantastic night and I enjoyed getting to hear a lot of great works. I hope to have a recording of my piece put together soon. It was my first time working with Max in a live capacity, and as such there were issues to work through. Now that the piece has been performed, I feel that it ended up being successful, but I am also ready to move on to the next project!

My next event was the Midwest Music Research Collective (MMRC) Spring Conference, which occurred at the University of Kansas on March 19 and 20. The conference featured a number of research presentations from both musicological and theory backgrounds, with a special focus on de-colonizing music and focusing more on the unheard voices from music past and present. The conference concluded with a concert, where my piece, "Meru," for tenor and percussion, was premiered. The conference opened my eyes to a number of issues that I hope to address in my future professional work, and the concert was a joy to experience (my performers did a fantastic job on a difficult piece). It certainly made it worth the long drive to Lawrence, Kansas!

I hope my next update will be after I wrap up work on my thesis-- I am ready to turn in this piece!