I’m happy to now be allowed to share with you the news that my lovely wife, Crystal Kurek, will be playing the leading lady, Sarah Brown, in the musical Guys and Dolls! I think she’s perfect for it (and vice versa). It will play November 8 – 23, 2024 at The Arts Center of Cannon County, who always do a fine job. Crystal once played the role of Truly Scrumptious there in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Here are a few snaps from that show.

Some of you who aren’t theater people might not know about the traditional “table reading” (or “table read”), usually at a show’s first rehearsal. This is always an exciting way to start the rehearsal process. Someone took the photo below and posted it two nights ago. That’s where the cast all sits around a table with their scripts and reads (sometimes sings) their own parts through the whole show aloud. More cast members are cropped off from this photo but were there on the sides of the table. The laptop in the foreground is for playing the accompaniment music. Crystal is on the far right end between two men.

The downside for yours truly (or yours truly scrumptious, as I might prefer to be known) is that her rehearsals, along with obligations at her school, will prevent Crystal from coming with me to Bulgaria for the recording of my new symphony, September 19 -24. But I do hope to return there yet again to record my ballet music, and so we’ll hope she can come then. This time, at least I do have old friends from the U.S. in Bulgaria to dine with on the 23^rd, since that happens to be my birthday.

Right now, I don’t know what it’s like where you live, but here, everyone, including yours-truly-scrumptious, has been battling some kind of virus, complete with headaches, major congestion, and coughing. I think Crystal brought it home from school, where many of the kids are sick. But a lot of our other friends have it, too, and two have pneumonia. Maybe it’s just that season. Yuck. We’re both pretty much well as of today.

The last couple of weeks have been spent converting the remaining music notation files of my symphony’s orchestra parts into PDF files – about 700 pages-worth of them! I finally e-mailed all of these PDF’s to the orchestra management last week, and they will print and bind them for me, as they had kindly offered to do, to save me from carrying that heavy bundle there on three airplanes.

However, I did have two big 11 X 17 conductor’s scores printed and bound here (at around $125 each! ouch), one for me and one for Robin, our conductor, and we will both take those with us on our planes. Robin has a month to put all his own markings into his score. Conductors have their own symbols as shorthand, in case you don’t know. For example, if the time signature changes to ¾ time, they might put a triangle at the top of the page.

For my part, during the sessions I will be circling on my score in pencil any mistakes I hear and marking which “takes” are good to use on the album. So, at last all the printed music for the symphony is proofread, cued, and done, a month before the sessions, whew!

Now when I go into my home studio, instead of doing copy work, it is at last to clean and rearrange it! It has been so cluttered with too much stuff. I’m putting most of my books from the bookcases into big plastic boxes to make room for the items stacked up everywhere in piles of mess. I also bought one of those computer desks that you can raise and lower in order to stand behind it, for a break from sitting all day, which is still sitting in the box waiting for me to assemble it.  

At this point, Lord willing, I’m planning that my next composition will be another symphony, my fourth. But that needs to brew inside me for a good while. I also need to live with the recording of this third symphony for a while before I can entirely know what the fourth should be like. I am also continuing, as always, to listen to the great symphonic music for peace and inspiration. I recommend everyone do that, anyway, especially if you are weary of the constant yacking by media pundits.

Teaser: Well, it appears that my Concertino for Celesta and Orchestra: Fairy Dreams, which was performed last December by the Buffalo Philharmonic, will be played by another major orchestra soon. Stay tuned for details. Maybe it will make a comeback. It has had many performances around the world and was once featured on NPR’s “Morning Edition,” because it is the very first concerto for the celesta with orchestra in the history of that sugar-plum-fairy instrument. More recently, I stole from myself and used a bit of it to portray “The Emerald Queen” in our Raffaella ballet.

Sadly, it is practically impossible nowadays to have an entire, new 50-minute symphony, like this one, programmed on a live concert. That is understandable because there is a risk of poor ticket sales if you take up so much time in a concert with a new, not-yet-established piece, sadly because many people will — in my case, mistakenly — assume it is going to be too modern sounding to suffer through.

Yet, how wonderful for a composer in the 21^st century to have recorded albums of one’s symphonies. Many more thousands of people can then hear them (and are already hearing them) while I am still alive than would be able to attend a live concert, anyway.  Still, there is nothing like a live concert, if you can get to it or be on one, of course.