It all started with a dream I had a few months ago… (insert Wayne’s World transition music HERE)

It was sometime during this past academic year and I was asked to create a piece of art for a gallery opening at the Phoenix Art Museum. Not being a visual artist, my work ended up looking like this: 2 medium-sized canvases painted various shades of grey and hung one in front of the other. The front canvas had a huge slash, allowing the viewer to see through the canvas… it was a makeshift shadow box. Suspended in between the two grey planes were several pink My Little Pony figurines. My artwork had been hung in one of the modern galleries, along with other newly commissioned works. For those of you who have been to the museum, it’s in that gallery past the big, black Upside Down Inside Out sculpture. Anyway, we all leave to go home, waiting for the gallery opening the next morning. The Next Day: the artists return eager for the crowds to arrive. I walk over to the space reserved for my painting. It had been destroyed and re-arranged over night. The wooden frame for the canvases were gone, and in their place, the previously flat surfaces were now crumpled up into one big, splotchy grey ball. Radiating out from the ball like lines on a sundial stood my ponies. They were tethered to the central grey wad by thin strips of canvas. To be completely un-artistic, it looked like an odd pony clock. I was shocked because my art had been destroyed, but not furious, because honestly, it looked kind of cool. As I stood there, a tall male figure walked up to me and stood to my left. In his shadow I could see he was wearing a large cowboy hat. After a moment or two of gazing at the maimed painting, he cleared his throat and in a thick Texan accent said, “Well, now it’s just ponies to nowhere.”

I immediately woke and knew I had to write something, anything titled Ponies to Nowhere. How did I know this? The day before my good friend Dan Puccio had shared with me his list of ultimate and awesome song titles. Here is a sample:

May I Turn off your Oxygen?? (This title is TAKEN!! Dan wrote a great jazz chart based on this… story to follow if he is willing)

Choked on Jesus (referring to chocking on the baby Jesus in a King’s Cake)

Screaming Watermelons (my addition, based off of this pic.)

The next day in Romantic Music (shudder) I told Dan about my new title and he added it to the list. I began brain storming… my composition teacher at the time, Roshanne Etezady, wife of famous saxophone player Tim McAllister, who has a phenomenal recording of John Mackey’s Soprano Saxophone Concerto, and I had agreed that one of my semester projects would be to write a chamber piece consisting of the following instruments: flute (doubling picc), clarinet, alto sax, trombone, vibes, non-pitched perc., electric guitar, piano and violin. This felt like the perfect opportunity to put my dreamy inspiration into action. Ponies to Nowhere would be a chamber piece constructed in 6-8 various sections, each one representing a different “pony” or emotion. This evolved into each section representing a different composer that I admire… 1. Berio 2. Muhly 3. Mackey 4. Corea… 6. Reich. It wasn’t a bad idea. I would have to do some score studies and use techniques that I liked in their various sections. The first section, “in the style of Berio” has been scrapped. So has “in the style of Muhly” (sorry, Nico). The only two left are a slow section based off of the third movement of Mackey’s Sax Concerto and a section that may remind you of Steve Reich’s Violin Phase. What, or who, ended up as my primary inspiration is postminimalist composer Eve Beglarian and a piece of hers that I cherish called Landscaping for Privacy. There’s just something about it, and I can’t get away. I would suggest buying her album, Tell the Birds. I picked up the album back at Baylor, but never gave it a good listen until this year (no idea why, and it’s too bad that I waited!). Anyway, back to Ponies. My first arrangement of Ponies to Nowhere was performed at the Oregon Bach Festival Composers Symposium about a week ago. I strayed away from my original ensemble to fit the performers offered for the festival. The Ponies ensemble was then (and continues to be) flute, alto sax, vibes, non-pitched perc., electric guitar, piano, violin, cello and double bass. Only three sections were completed from the symposium. The performers were so amazing, in the end, I could have cared less that the piece was not complete. Oren Fader played electric, Elizabeth Janzen on flute and Idit Shner on alto. During our only rehearsal, the director from the Fireworks Ensemble, Brian Coughlin stuck around to listen. A day or two later while drinking beer at High Street, Oren and Brian both said that they would like to see the piece when it was finished. I won’t say anymore for fear of jinxing the situation, but if something good happens, I will be sure to let the world know.

And the story brings us to the present. I am back in Tempe, AZ and should have the score of Ponies to Nowhere arranged for the Fireworks Ensemble finished later this afternoon. I’ve decided to stick with just the three sections presented at OBFCS. Many of my other sections will require two percussion players, and FW is an octet vs. a nonet. I will save the full version of Ponies with my original instrumentation for the Ponies to Nowhere concert that my office mate Kurt and I plan to put on in the spring. And that brings us to the future.

So until then, keep listening.