Yesterday afternoon, I received a recording of the premiere performance of my new Harvest: Concerto for Trombone. I won’t be posting the complete piece yet because we made a “studio” (actually, in a hall) recording before the premiere, and I’ll eventually be releasing that studio recording as a free download here on the website.

That recording isn’t coming until summer, but Joe Alessi gave me the go-ahead to post the middle movement of the concerto now. This is live, so it isn’t perfect, but damn, it ain’t bad.  (Just wait until you hear the studio recording… Woot.)

This is the four minute central movement of the concerto, and this immediately follows the brutal sacrifice of Dionysus (the trombone soloist). The idea with this middle movement is to represent Dionysus in death, or the stillness of winter after the pruning of the vines. (In case you’re just joining, Dionysus was the Greek god of the vine.)

The sound quality is weirdly hissy, as if this had been recorded using my old Radio Shack cassette recorder and then played through my childhood Realistic stereo system, but again, this is just a little preview of what’s to come this summer when I post the whole piece. You can find the audio through the “Audio & Score” button on this page.

Speaking of sneak previews…  The other day, AEJ and I visited the Austin Rodeo.  I took nearly 300 pictures, and I’ll have a blog entry up about that soon, but in the meantime, here’s a taste of what’s to come.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you…