The Hilltop bunnies I mentioned on May 8 have been out in force since that first one I spotted and told you about. I got a snapshot from inside our kitchen window of this little critter standing by the patio, and Crystal got some videos of it washing its little face by licking its paws and rubbing them on its face, just like a cat. Meanwhile, lots more lilies have burst out in front and back. I posted yellow and white ones here previously, so here are some beautiful pink calla lilies. And also we now have a return of our perennial purple “balloon flowers.” June is bustin’ out all over!

At last and finally, all the parts and score for the ballet are done and are at the symphony office. Hooray! Travel plans have been made to go to the ballet rehearsals and performances the last week of June, and Crystal is thick into rehearsals of her show that will perform here at TPAC the weekend before the ballet. Then she will fly up to South Bend to join me and see the ballet performances.

I don’t have to conduct the orchestra (not my specialty) but have enlisted a proper conductor for the ballet. My job will be to follow the score as they rehearse and take notes. I might be asked to offer any suggestions on the spot, or to tell those suggestions to the conductor and/or the sound engineer later. This conductor and I have worked a lot together and are on the same wavelength.

I will take a little break and do some domestic chores like reorganizing my home composing studio before returning to my new symphony. I need to finish composing its last movement, about ten more minutes of music (adding up to over 50 minutes for all four movements), and then I will have to edit all of those scores and parts to record the symphony in Europe in early September. No rest for the wicked.

Just to reflect a bit, I have been working on this ballet off and on for two years, while also composing this new symphony (my 3^rd, called Symphony No. 3: English) Of course, I have previously composed several other orchestral works like concertos and tone poems that are not called symphonies. This ballet and symphony have grown up side by side, like siblings. The symphony is the elder and more serious one, while the ballet is the lighter and more fairy-like. In early September we’ll record the symphony with the 92-piece European Recording Orchestra, who recorded my 2^nd symphony, for release by Parma Recordings in early 2025. If the funds are ever forthcoming, I hope to later record the ballet with the same large orchestra for another album as a concert work, that is, apart from any dancing.

The ballet production team, all dedicated to the memory of the late St. Louis principal ballerina, Raffaella Stroik, have bonded to honor her and worked well together with that vision. With the beauty and grandeur of this big production (over 50 dancers, many top professionals from professional ballet companies across the country) and with such publicity in all the top ballet magazines that this production is getting, not to mention how compelling the true story of Raffaella is, it would not surprise me if there were many more performances of the work by many ballet companies. This is only the premiere!

These two biggest of my works have together constituted a season of my life, I would say. I think that through them, together, I have somehow emerged this June (or I might say “busted out all over”) into another artistic level and vision for my work. It feels as though my life as a composer is just beginning in a fresh way. I believe I still have much to say and now an even greater facility and a more seasoned craft in which to say it.

After all, many of the past masters of classical composition reached their peaks in the last decades of their lives. Unless you are Mozart, it just takes that long to get good at classical music! It’s darn hard. For just one example, there are so many different instruments you must come to know intimately and for your melodies to vicariously sing through in that instrument’s own idiomatic voice. This fine fellow of a turtle turned up at the Hilltop a couple of days ago, and I took it as a reminder from The Tortoise and the Hare, that “slow and steady wins the race.”

One of my musical role models, Ralph Vaughan Williams, did not write his last couple of big symphonies (numbers 8 and 9) until he was 85 years old! I would like to leave behind five to ten symphonies, God willing. That’s because it is the most expansive genre of music where you can really stretch out your wings and fly without fear of bumping into the boundaries of time. There is no radio commercial to get to, there is no new movie scene or movie dialog to interrupt the music after just a few minutes.

It may sound like wishful thinking, but it is good to have a dream, and mine is to bring back the long-neglected genre of the long symphony, which has not had much use in the last 80 years or so. This is, frankly, because audiences have not wanted and would not tolerate hearing Modernist classical music that lasted very long. Of course there have been exceptions, but more typically orchestras can only get away with playing a 10 to 15-minute Modernist piece. But if some neo-tonal, narrative composers can find a fresh, personal, and unique new voice of their own and not sound merely derivative of the past, and if they can develop a true mastery of that craft, and if they can create something of genuine beauty and emotion that people actually want to hear, I think it just might be accomplished once more. Maybe this is a crazy dream. But the important thing is to have a dream and to try to do it, whether or not you actually accomplish it. Wishing you lovely dreams of your own, however crazy they may sound.