So we got a big snow storm today in Portland, Oregon. As you would expect, people starting freaking out and getting worried about driving.  So I had some cancellations in my day.  The snow was so BEAUTIFUL!  I was very moved while watching it drift down in such a lovely and elegant way (with the backdrop of everyone around me being very worried, and watching traffic crawl by outside the window).  This was my musical response as I tried to just enjoy the beauty. 

It incorporates a little of the jazz song "Snowfall" and the Christmas song "Let It Snow" as well as some of the Robert Frost poem "Stopping By a Woods on a Snowy Evening."  

Enjoy!

Here's some fun I'm having with my new looping machine.  I'll be performing this at my upcoming live shows.

Sometimes it's hard to articulate how excited you are about something.  And this something I'm VERY excited about.  I'm going to be doing 3 live shows of my own original music!  More info here.  

Daniel Buchanan in Concert
A studio concert featuring original music 
for voice, piano, and electronic media by Daniel Buchanan
and featuring a new painting by Thérèse Murdza

December 4, 5, and 6, 2013
7:30pm
Portland, Oregon

Reserve your seat here

For the third time this month, I'm going to do a performance of the Beethoven Missa Solemnis, this time at the Oregon Bach Festival.  I'm down in Eugene, Oregon doing rehearsals this week leading up to our performance on Friday.  I haven't been here for two years, so of course it's lovely to be in Eugene, see old OBF friends, and be making music under Helmuth Rilling.

Here's a picture from rehearsal:

This is just the beginning, because June has been a very musical month for me.  I also did some performances with Cappella Romana, reprising the repertoire from our Greece tour a year and a half ago ("From Constantinople to California").  We performed at the annual Chorus America conference in Seattle, and also a show in Portland.  This review just came out today from Oregon Arts Watch, which was glowing.  You should read it, because when it talks about 2 singers taking on a slightly nasal tone (in the Eastern style), that's me! (And the wonderful Les Green.)

As if those experiences aren't enough, there has been even more music-making!  I was so excited to collaborate with my amazing wife Abby to do a concert last week.  For the first time ever, we presented a concert/sound therapy event together.  It was called "Summer Centering" and we did a wide variety of music, including Snow Patrol, John Lennon, Greek chant, The Civil Wars, and some music I wrote.  And the real centerpiece was Abby's performance on the singing bowls she trained to play in Nepal. 

We're going to do another event like this on August 1st.  Info here

Also, Abby is performing her singing bowls at another event on July 7, which includes yoga, acupuncture, and sound therapy in a single event.  Info here

This picture is from after the event, when several people had lots of questions about the bowls:

Lastly, I've gotten a little behind on my composition project, but I managed to get into a practice room at the University of Oregon today for my latest idea (recorded just with my laptop).  For some reason, ragtime was speaking to me this week!

I've posted Idea 20 below.  It's just some ideas I'm trying to flesh out right now.  I'm currently asking the question: how can music be beautiful and touching without being excessively cheesy or corny?  So here is one attempt on that topic.

In other news: I have returned not long ago from a European tour with Cappella Romana, but I'm actually headed out of town again this week.  I'll be singing at the Victoria Bach Festival in Victoria, Texas and then running up to Austin, Texas to repeat the performance.  This is the same conductor as Conspirare, Craig Hella Johnson, and we will be performing Beethoven's massive and powerful work, Missa Solemnis.  This will be my first time performing this monumental music, and in just a couple more weeks, I'll get to repeat the experience performing Missa Solemnis with Helmuth Rilling at the Oregon Bach Festival.  

I'm back from an amazing tour with Cappella Romana to London, Germany, and Greece. 

I made a highlights video from our adventures. 
You can also see my pictures on Flickr. 

Exciting news!  In less than a week, I'll be headed across the Atlantic to do a 10 day European tour with Cappella Romana.  We're going to sing in London, Germany, and Greece.  

Some highlights of the tour include:

• Appearance at the Tage Alter Musik festival in Germany
• Performance at St Bartholomew the Great, one of London's oldest churches
• Cappella's first appearance in Athens, Greece
• Masterclasses and special events at 2 different academic institutions

I've done several tours with Cappella, but this one will be a little different for me, because it is only men and we will only be singing Byzantine chant (as opposed to other programs, which often have women singing and incorporate some modern music).  I will be traveling as an isokrat, which means my primary role is to hold the ison or drone for the chant.  This can be a very unique experience - in some ways very stagnant, but also quite meditative and trance-inducing.    

Here's the full schedule:

May 14, 2013, 8:00pm

Recital of Byzantine chant by Cappella Romana 
and the Choir of the Archdiocesan School of Byzantine Chant
The Great Hall at the Hellenic Centre
16-18 Paddington St. Marylebone, London W1U 5AS
Free admission, reservation recommended
More info here

May 15, 2013, 8:00pm

Desert and City: Medieval Byzantine Chant from the Holy Land
Cappella Romana 
St. Bartholomew-the-Great, Cloth Fair, EC1
(London's oldest church)
London, England
More info here

May 17, 2013, 10:45pm

Cappella Romana in Concert
Tage Alter Musik festival
Regensburg, Germany
More info here

May 19, 2013, 8:00pm

Cappella Romana in Concert
Holy Metropolitan Church of the Annunciation
Patras, Greece
More info here

May 20, 2013

Cappella Romana in Concert
The American College of Greece 
Athens, Greece
4:00pm: Master Class
8:30pm: Concert in Cotsen Hall
More info here

Lastly, here is a video of our men's chant group performing a couple months ago at Stanford University, in a "virtual acoustic" of Hagia Sophia:

It's been a little while, so I'm excited to be performing an opera this weekend!  I'll be singing the role of "Jupiter" in Handel's Semele. These performances are put together by violinist and shop owner David Kerr through Baroque Opera Workshop. 

It feels so good to be singing this music!  My part has some really lyrical moments and some wickedly-challenging coloratura. 

Here's a picture from rehearsal yesterday:

And here's info about the shows:

It's a BEAUTIFUL day today in Portland - sunny, warm, and just happy.  Curiously, this is the music that emerged from my soul.  It's a reflective piano piece that uses the concept of quintal harmony (chords built on the interval of a 5th).  Enjoy!
(You can also listen on SoundCloud)

My friend Brynn Baron is a very talented writer and actor.  We work together in Playback Theater.  She recently posted on her Facebook page: 

An engaging conversation followed this comment, including comments like "keep writing, and edit it later" and "cliches are part of the process."  One person even noted that her metaphor about the soccer fans was completely original, not cliche at all!

I can TOTALLY relate to Brynn's comment.  That's part of the reason I created 52 Ideas.  Any time I would compose before this year, I would get frustrated that what came out sounded so much like someone else's music, or like something I had written before.  Or sometimes the work would evolve to the point that I would just start playing and singing the song I already knew....thus ending any originality for the day.  

My thought this year while I've been composing goes like this: if it sounds cliche, go ahead and write it.  If it's showing up in my head, it clearly needs to come out, so let it.  And there's always next week!  I've got 52 chances to write something original!  

So I'd like to take this moment to honor my favorite cliches!  NONE of us can escape our influences and musical history.  As much as I wish some of these influences weren't here, they are part of me.  So I'd like to show them some love.  

Influence: Chris Rice

Chris Rice is a very established Christian Contemporary singer-songwriter.  He is here to represent the years and years and years of time I have spent sitting in church singing.  Church was where I began singing when I was a toddler.  Probably more than half of the time spent singing in my life has been in church as a church member, choir member, soloist, and finally years and years of being a worship leader.  Chris Rice is my cliche fall guy for all other Christian Contemporary and Praise and Worship music that is rolling around in my head, including Michael W. Smith, Chris Tomlin, Amy Grant, Bebo Norman, etc. 

Influence: Opera 

Yes, this one is obvious.  I went to college and grad school to learn opera, and it stuck.  I have performed for years as an opera singer, and at some point along the way my brain (falsely) learned that this was the "best" way to sing.  Of course, I love opera and continue to sing it all the time.  But I want to use my voice in other ways, too.  If you listen closely to any original song I've written, you'll notice it starts out in a kind of medium vocal range, then in time my voice just starts to ascend higher and higher.  I LOVE the epic and dramatic nature of operatic singing.  

Influence: Choral Music

In my professional singing career, I've spent a lot of time singing classical choral music.  Subsequently, I've begun to really enjoy the sound of people singing together.  I love the blend of human voices and the way each voice is unique, yet we combine into a unified whole.  This is, of course, in spite of years in school being told that choral music was bad for my voice and that I should focus on being a solo singer.  Well - sorry college professors! - I sing choral music!  And I like it.  :)

That brings us to this guy:

Influence: Eric Whitacre  

I don't know why Eric Whitacre's music feels like a guilty pleasure.  He's one of the most successful classical composers today, and he's written so much music.  He also created the Virtual Choir, which is a really beautiful concept where people from all over the world sing together via Youtube.  But "serious" classical musicians are afraid of commercial success, I think.  Alas, I love the sound, and it wants to creep into everything I write.  His music is crunchy and harmonically dense.  Eric also represents a few other composers of similar ilk in my mind, like Morten Lauridsen and Rene Clausen. 

So those are probably some of the biggest "friends" that keep showing up in my writing time.  

When I think of being a COMPOSER, the picture that comes to my head is this:

Mad Scientist Composer

This is an image that really freaks me out.  I don't want to be some sort of mad scientist alone in a room working on my "masterpiece".  People would say, "He's so brilliant!  But he just gets in that room and forgets to eat and bathe and becomes so antisocial.  What a savant!"  LOL!

I am social by nature and interactive.  And I'm much better on my feet and moving than sitting still.  Perhaps in some ways I'm less of a composer and more of an improvisor.  I need to DO IT, not just think it.  

The other image I'm haunted with is this:

Struggling Singer-Songwriter

This is the classic struggling singer-songwriter, spending his life recording his own music and attempting to hawk it off to people at bars, coffeeshops, and anywhere people will listen.  Without major support from a label or a killer online presence, this just feels like a labor of love, without a lot of return.  And I'm pretty sure the music I write is "bigger" than this - musically speaking.  I'm not one to create intimate, living room music.  My nature is more epic.  

So I'm ready to create a new definition of what "composer" means to me.  I am ready to claim a new identity for myself.  

These are some of the identities that want to emerge.  

Emerging Identity: Recording Artist

As a classical musician, I sort of feel like an accomplished film photographer who never learned to use a digital camera.  I know my music theory inside and out, I can make microscopic adjustments musically in a performance situation, and I hear really nuanced details in music.  (All of this comes in handy as a music teacher, of course!)  But when it comes to recording technology, I'm such a novice.  Did you say condensor mic...Phantom power...Signal chain...Huh? I'm attempting to learn more from this vast field.  I'm also trying to let go of being perfect, and just using the skills and technology I have available to me.

In a related category:

Emerging Identity: Electronic Musician

I love electronic music.  Digital media brings endless possibilities of sound.  I could spend hours just tinkering around with the drum loops and sounds I can use in Garage Band.  I have hesitancy around this identity, too, because it seems reserved for the "cool kids".  Also, I can see the price tag adding up on the equipment and software and education required to get good at this.  

Emerging Identity: Producer

I am a little hesitant to even include this one, because it seems like such a pipe dream.  I have this dream of producing large scale performance events, epic and grand in nature.  These performances would incorporate a good number of the influences I've just written about.  But...how?  When?  Where?  I know it's there inside me, but it's hard to see the steps to get there.  

Emerging Identity: Ringleader

As I mentioned above, I'm a social creature.  I'm not always a fan of the musical environment that divides the "creators" from the "observers."  We are all creators and we are all innately musical.  I want to create and write and express myself, but I also long to be a space-holder for others to be creative.  I want an environment where I can create, and others can immediately respond with their own expressive ideas, right in the moment.

For now, I'll just keep writing new music every week.  Onward and upward!