Sitting in a coffee shop right now in downtown Albany, awaiting tonight’s première of Look Around You by the Albany Symphony. It’s suddenly frigid and blustery; a haphaz­ardly-locked mountain bike was just blown over in front of me. There’s a strange dichotomy between the scale of Albany and the feeling of it, as though its planners had envi­sioned a much grander place than actually turned out. Bars here close around 11:30; at one, we witnessed an impromptu push-up contest between the barmaid and a bouncer. 

Luckily, there are many friends here: Owen, of course, because he is playing my concerto, with his lovely girl­friend Meena; Rob, my friend from Yale, in town for the ASO’s composer readings; Anna, a composer/visual magic-maker who lives in Troy and goes to RPI; my old Hindemith Ensemble cohort Yi-Ping, holding down the ASO’s viola section. We all headed out to a rather unlikely Lebanese restau­rant last night and were fussed over like long-lost family.

Tomorrow, it’s off to New Haven for the première of Crashing Through Fences, a short piece I wrote for Ian Rosen­baum and Mindy Heinsohn for piccolo, glock­en­spiel, and two kick­drums (which I believe to be a unique combi­na­tion). I hadn’t been able to make it to New Haven to hear them rehearse, so late last night Ian drop­box’d me a WAV file of one of their run-throughs, which turned out to be completely perfect, polished, and ready for perfor­mance, without me ever saying a word. It is so grat­i­fy­ing when that happens; it’s one of the main advan­tages about writing for friends, some­thing I’m also reminded of in Owen’s fierce rendi­tion of Look Around You’s violin/viola part. If you can’t make it to New Haven for Ian’s show, you can listen to it stream­ing, live, over the internet; thanks, Fred Plaut Record­ing Studio!