If you can’t make it, the concert will also be webcast, so check this link a few minutes before the concert is scheduled to start. That’s 7:30pm Central — or as I like to call it, Elvis Time.

It’s going to be hella-hot in Austin this weekend. I don’t know how I’ll ever get used to the weather after we move. It’s 64 degrees in LA today. It’s 97 in Austin. Ouch.

The verdict, now that the year is done: I loved it. I had five composition students, plus the composition seminar each week. The seminar was basically just a weekly discussion about whatever we felt like talking about — from Corigliano’s “Circus Maximus,” which many of the students had heard at Disney Hall, to the relevance of music theory in actual composition, to self-publishing and the business of making a living as a composer, to the merits of Guitar Hero III. I’ve spoken at other schools where the comp students sat silently in seminar, either too scared or too bored to ever say anything, but the students at Cal State were always engaged and they were definitely a verbal bunch. I don’t know how useful I was, but as you might imagine, I definitely had some opinions to share with them.

The individual lessons were great, too. Before I started, I had no idea what to expect from the students — or what I’d end up telling them. I had given single lessons to composers during residencies at colleges, but I had never seen the same students week after week. In lessons over the past few weeks, I was really struck by the level of improvement that I saw in every student. A few of them even wrote pieces that have completely stuck in my head. (I fell asleep last night with Ryan Luevano’s violin piece in my head, and woke up this morning with Travis Melvin’s piano concerto stuck there.) One student, Matt Carlson, was a finalist for an ASCAP Young Composer award this year — an honor that I only received in grad school. Then there’s Sean O’Kelley’s percussion ensemble ear worm, and Brian Manolovitz’s awesome new bassoon piece with a harmonic language that’s completely over my head but still somehow fantastically attractive.

It was especially fun, looking at each student’s finished pieces, and seeing just a tiny bit of influence in each one. There’s something great about telling a student, “this moment doesn’t quite work,” and seeing it perfected by the next week. I get the reward of seeing it improve, but it’s a whole lot easier than writing the piece myself.

I’m going to miss the students a lot. I hope a school in the Austin area will provide a similar opportunity, ’cause this teaching thing is pretty great — particularly when the students are so good.

(left to right: Sean O’Kelley, unknown, Matt Carlson, Travis Melvin, Ryan Luevano, Emily Kilimnik, and Brian Manolovitz)

The other element, besides concerts (and cocktails), is the clinics themselves. This year, the American Composers Forum had the idea of presenting a very cool clinic at Midwest. The proposal was to have composers and conductors talk about the process of commissioning, working with composers, incorporating composition into the classroom — interesting stuff like that. The panel was to include Craig Kirchoff (Director of Bands at U. Minnesota, and series advisor of the Boosey and Hawkes “Windependence” series), composer Michael Colgrass (winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Music, and composer of some of the great band literature including Winds of Nagual), composer Frank Ticheli (perhaps the most performed American band composer), and me (hack). Doesn’t that sound great? Good lord — Ticheli and Colgrass on a panel together?! I would attend that even if they’d have the sense to leave me off the panel! Hundreds of people would go to that clinic. I mean, who wouldn’t want to see such a panel?

The Midwest Clinic. They nixed the clinic proposal.

So if you attend the Midwest clinic this year, and you wonder why you’re instead attending clinics like “The Euphonium is Not a Cello!,” “One, Two, Three, Four, We Declare a Rhythm War: Why Mixed-Meters are Bad for Marching,” or “Mustache Maintenance: The Cutting Edge for Today’s Band Director,” you’ll know why.

(What? Me, bitter? And don’t even get me started on their policies regarding programming restrictions…)

The performance was at PM Hutchins Street Square, which in the past has hosted performances by such luminaries as 70’s “magician,” Gallagher…

… and New Age “musician” George Winston!

The concert had theatrical lighting and video projections. Here, David conducts a performance of Steve Bryant’s piece, “Dusk.”

Hey, I’m up next!

The performance — and the djembe soloist in particular — was awesome.

Here, David thanks the donors, including this monkey.

It was David’s final concert with the band before he leaves to attend grad school. The band and the parents gave him a warm send-off.

And the band gave me perhaps the coolest souvenir I’ve ever received from an ensemble — the head of a djembe, destroyed during a particularly enthusiastic rehearsal, signed by the entire band.

Thanks for the great visit!

Bright and early on Saturday — and I mean EARLY — I fly from Sacramento to Kansas City, then drive to Lawrence, Kansas, for the recording session of my Concerto for Soprano Sax and Wind Ensemble. Scott Weiss will be conducting the University of Kansas Wind Ensemble with Vince Gnojek playing the soprano sax solo. We record all afternoon Saturday, and all afternoon Sunday, and then I fly home Sunday night.

I have to say: Grand Theft Auto IV is hard. The driving is fine, but I can’t seem to master the shooting. I’m sure I’m doing something wrong, and hopefully I’ll figure it out before it gets too frustrating. Mario Kart Wii, on the other hand, is straight-forward and really fun. Maybe somebody could combine the two games. It would be great to be Luigi, driving his little go-kart around some cheery track like Peach Beach, while running over prostitutes, shooting drug dealers, and hearing Yoshi curse like a sailor.

My biggest complaint about GTA4 is that while there are a lot of fun cars, there’s no Prius. Wouldn’t it be awesome in GTA4 to carjack a Prius and try to maximize your miles per gallon? Your drug dealer friends would be in the car with you, shouting, “step on it, Niko!” but you’d be holding your speed below 55 mph and breaking on the downhills. That would rule.

Texas has been awfully good to me — as my dad has pointed out, I wouldn’t have much of a career if not for Texas — and it makes sense to go where the work is. (Having three performances at the Texas Music Educators convention in February kind of felt like a sign.) It’s a nice bonus that I really like Austin. I think it feels like the San Francisco of Texas (work with me, here…) — good restaurants, politically liberal, and environmentally green. The biggest differences, as far as I can tell: the weather is better in San Francisco, but I can afford to buy a house in Austin.

Here’s a little blurb about Austin from Treehugger:

The politics in Austin, Texas, home base of Whole Foods Market, have earned it the title of “the blueberry in the bowl of tomato soup.” But the city’s energy portfolio could make it known as the ray of sunshine in the field of oil pumps. If you want to sign up for green power from Austin Energy, possibly the greenest power grid in the country, you can get in line—this year’s demand was unpredictably high, and they’re fresh out. Austin’s growing list of proactive energy maneuvers is, to say the least, striking. Not only does Austin lead the country in wind power and biodiesel production, but it has built advanced plug-in hybrid vehicles into its energy strategy.

As part of the recently announced Austin Climate Protection Plan, all facilities, fleets and operations will be carbon-neutral by 2020, and 100 percent of city facilities will be powered by renewable energy by 2012. There will also be CO2 caps and reduction plans for all utility emissions, something the federal government hasn’t dared do.

That sounds pretty sweet to me. I have loved living in LA, and I’ll miss a lot about it (the sushi and weather, in particular), but I won’t miss the smog…

Our plan is to look at apartments when we’re out there in two weeks for the premiere of my middle school piece (premiering on May 13 at UT, with Cheryl Floyd conducting the Hill Country Middle School Band — be there!). We’re planning to rent a place for a year while we get to know the city and the various neighborhoods, and buy something next year.

Now that I have two pieces on the Texas Prescribed Music List, I’ve gotten a handful of invitations to come work with high school bands in Texas. Unfortunately, even fancy-pants schools have trouble justifying the expense of flying me from Los Angeles and putting me up at a hotel in, say, Houston — but if I live in Austin, I can drive somewhere and work with a group for a day. There’s a higher concentration of great high school bands in Texas (particularly in the Austin, Houston, and Dallas areas) than anywhere else I’ve found in the US, and I think it’ll be good to be “in the hood.” My hope is that there will be even more opportunities for school residencies, but without nearly as many hours lost in airports and on planes. (I’d much rather spend time in the pretty new Prius.)

Plus, the National CBDNA Convention is in Austin next spring — and this way, I won’t have to pay for a hotel room! Think of the savings!

Another curious coincidence: the founder and CEO of the Whole Foods grocery store chain — based in Austin — is named John Mackey. I’m hoping that will somehow get me free stuff at Whole Foods when I flash my credit card there.

The title of this blog entry is Austin 78704, but that doesn’t mean we’re necessarily moving into that trendy zip code, although it looks like a fun area. (It is, after all, the location of Uchi, a most-excellent sushi spot.) For those who know Austin well, where do you think we should rent for this first year?

As I mentioned in my last entry, I bought a Prius yesterday. It was kind of a spontaneous purchase, which may not be the best way to buy a car. We’ve wanted one for years, but back when we bought our first car, there was a wait for the Prius, and we had to buy a car fairly quickly for the move to LA. We decided on Sunday night, though, screw it, we’d go ahead and buy one soon. Like, the next morning.

We started by going to Toyota of Glendale. The salesman was pleasant enough, but when the manager came up to us to make the offer, he was an ass. We came prepared with all of the documentation about our trade-in — a 2005 Volkswagen Golf GLS with 24,000 miles on it — which two websites had valued at anywhere between $12,200 and $13,500. There was even a VW dealer selling one on Craigslist here in LA — same year, but fewer features, and with more miles — for $17,000. I knew we wouldn’t get $17000, or even the Edmunds trade-in estimate of $12,200, but I figured we’d be somewhere in that lower ballpark.

So the guy in Glendale offered us $8000 — without even looking at our car. When I told him that was a little offensive, he said he was offended that we would even suggest that it might be worth more. Oh dear. We offended him. Oh, and he also quoted us a price for the Prius that was more than list. And he didn’t have the model we wanted on the lot. So, we could take a $4000 loss on the trade-in, pay $500 over list for the Prius, and wait “at least two weeks” for them to get one in. When I told him that his price was higher than the sticker price — and I showed him the printout that I had with the correct price — he said that the prices are going up. I told him, “er, I printed this price today — from Toyota.com.” This clearly was not going well. The guy was rude and he was trying to scam us. So we left — pissed off. If you live in LA and you want to buy a Toyota, whatever you do, do not go to Toyota of Glendale. Buying a car should be fun and exciting — not a frustrating, insulting pain in the ass.

We decided to try one other dealership — Toyota of Hollywood. It’s the oldest Toyota dealership in America, and they have the biggest selection of Priuses (Prii?) in America. The experience there was completely different. Our salesman was Sal Santos, and he was helpful, nice, funny, and sincerely seemed to want us to be happy. Whereas the manager in Glendale determined the value of our car simply by reading a form filled out for him by his salesman, the used car manager of Toyota of Hollywood actually took our car for a test drive and closely checked it. He also offered us much more than we were offered in Glendale. Knowing there was still a difference between what we thought our Golf to be worth and what they were offering, Sal was able to lower the price of the Prius to meet us in the middle. Oh, and they had the exact car we wanted — a black Prius with package 6 and bisque leather interior — on the lot. In fact, they had at least 25 Priuses on the lot — even after selling 18 of them on Saturday.

Sal is great — as were the rest of the staff that helped us, from Morris (in the finance department — wow, who knew that could be so pleasant?!) to the manager, to Tom, who installed our alarm and Sirius. When we went to pick up the car after the installation, Tom asked us to bring the car back next week to be re-detailed, as some of the wax had been scratched off. (They’re going to provide us with a free rental car to use while they detail the car. How great is that?!)

The Prius is sweet. Even if it didn’t get 45 miles per gallon, it would still be awesome, just as a gadget. It’s like driving a robot. The stereo is nice, the GPS is slick, the seats are comfy, the trunk is big, the Sirius satellite radio integration is good, and it even came with a full tank of gas! (No small thing here in LA, where gas is $3.89 a gallon.) We love the Prius. It’ll make the drive for the move to Austin so much cheaper, it’ll practically pay for itself!  Bloop!