I am excited to be playing Stephen M. Cormier’s “Modal Song'“ with Rhonda Buckley-Bishop on tomorrow night’s program! I have posted our latest rehearsal audio here.

This is my second attempt to perform his music, which is unique, in that he has evolved a modal harmonic system that is perfectly congruent with classical harmony, only based on the whole range of modal scales, (as far as I understand it). He has published the only real textbook on modal harmony, and although people gripe and complain about how hard it is to understand, they purchase it and read it - it is in its fourth English edition.

My previous attempt to play his music came to grief, at least temporarily, due to the great unfamiliarity of the harmonic language, in part. The writing was very contrapuntal, in ways reminiscent of fugal writing, but without the familiar tonic and dominant pillars to rely on. Furthermore, his writing makes great use of a peculiar quarter note triplet displaced by one eighth note, which sounds wonderfully jazzy, but requires some re-education to feel naturally. The piece was large, ambitious, and required coordination with a (!) trap set drummer. After six months I reluctantly gave it up, and welcomed this much easier example of his wonderfully unique music.

We have commissioned a new work for flugelhorn and piano, based on the writing of Josquin des Prez. (I begged him for a simplified piano part!) Looking forward to premiering it this season!