– News –
by Modern Songbook Records | Aug 24, 2017 | Charlie's Blog, News
A few years ago, I wrote a film score for a guy who—soon after finishing the film—got deported to his home country of Sierra Leone. My hopes of getting paid seemed slim until he emailed me a series of numbers for a money transfer. I took the numbers to the bank, where the teller told me he couldn’t help me and sent me across the street to the CVS. “Ask for the red phone,” he advised. Astonishingly, after the clerks at the drug store helped me do some dialing on this mysterious phone, the store manager walked over to me waving a check! (And yes, it cleared.) This was my first in-person contact with the concept of “remittances,” the payments that immigrants receive from and, more often, send to loved ones back home. Fast forward to a new commission I am working on: to musically examine the immigrant experience of my beautiful Montgomery County, Maryland. I’ve decided to use spoken words in the piece: the real, collected stories of local immigrants. This will be another first: interviewing story subjects. But I’m coming to understand that the immigrant experience in this country is one of many firsts, as well as one of many ties to the loved ones left behind.
by Modern Songbook Records | Jul 16, 2017 | Charlie's Blog, News
I’m currently writing the score for a new musical theater piece called Nineteen. Jennifer Schwed and Doug Bradshaw are my collaborators, and they’re the ones who came up with the idea for the show, which is based on the life of suffragist Alice Paul, a leading figure in the push for the Constitution’s 19th Amendment—that’s the one that granted women the right to vote. This is the first time in a long while that I have collaborated with a lyricist, and I’m loving the challenge, and the fun of bouncing ideas off one another. Right now, we’re working on a song called “I’m Prim. So What?” There’s a 30-minute preview of this work scheduled to be performed in Alexandria, Virginia, the first week of November.
by Modern Songbook Records | Jun 30, 2017 | Charlie's Blog, News
I’ve just finished a new piece to be premiered next spring under the baton of maestra Victoria Gau. When I wrote it, I was going for a retro-modern, sci-fi, Jetsons, mid-century vibe, so naturally I called it Rocket Ship Model X-14z19 (Personal Space Vehicle P-90). This 12-minute work is for a standard big orchestra. I hope it’s a blast to play—pun intended—especially for the entire brass section.
by Modern Songbook Records | Jun 16, 2017 | Charlie's Blog, News
For decades, my city didn’t have a baseball team, and I didn’t miss it. I was not a ball player when I was young—well, certainly not a good one. But in the dozen years since the Nationals arrived in DC, I have become a true fanatic. I think it’s because for me, baseball has a lot in common with jazz: both pursuits combine a predictable structure with an unpredictable outcome. When you listen to Art Tatum playing “Honeysuckle Rose,” you know he is playing variations of the song’s structure, AABA, over and over, but you don’t how he will sail away from the melody, from the original harmonies, from the key center, to unexplored places. Baseball is structured like that: 6 outs an inning, 9 innings a game (barring a tie). But from the umpire’s “Play ball!” until the last out, no one knows how the game will unfold. No two games are the same. And a game can last one hour, or eight. When my beloved Nats were off for the night recently, I found myself happily watching the women’s NCAA softball tournament, with the same enjoyment of the gentle journey that every baseball game takes. I hope your summer, and your musical life, are taking you to a few unexpected but reassuringly familiar places.
by Modern Songbook Records | Jun 2, 2017 | Charlie's Blog, News
The play I wrote last year about George Gershwin and Arnold Schoenberg, 12ness, is having its first production soon, and I was lucky enough to get to see part of a rehearsal last week. The director is a total pro named George B. Miller who seems to instinctively know exactly what I had in mind for each scene. No, actually he seems to know much better than I how each scene should appear on stage. Suffice it to say, I can hardly wait to see what the final production looks like. If you happen to be in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley next week or the one after, I hope you consider seeing it. The play is being produced by the Crowded Kitchen Players. It opens on June 9.
by Modern Songbook Records | May 25, 2017 | Charlie's Blog, News
On April 1, I released Retablos, a CD of several of my works for strings. The title track, which I’ve written about before, is a new, Latin-themed work commissioned last year. The other two pieces, The Brisk West Wind and String Transparencies, are earlier works recorded here for the first time. Living near Washington, DC, I know a lot of top-notch string players from the National Symphony and other local orchestras. It’s always a joy when I can bring a few of them into the studio to interpret a work I’ve heard only in my head (and on synth tracks, of course). Robots may be coming for all of our jobs eventually, but for now, there’s nothing like a living, breathing human to take black dots on the page and turn them into music.
