Robert Honstein

I’m very excited to have a commission from a great group of singers in New York, the Young New Yorkers’ Chorus. The piece will be featured on a concert with two other new works inspired by or loosely related to the pleasure principle (I have to admit…I’m not quite sure what the pleasure principal means…but I think it’s suppose to feel good). As of now I’m leaning towards setting some Haiku’s by the 17th and 18th century Japanese poets Basho and Issa. Normally I’m quite nervous about setting poetry, because when it’s good poetry I usually feel like there’s nothing I can add to it (poetry itself is already a kind of perfect spoken music, right?). But, with these Haiku’s I feel like there is such a wonderful humor and charm about them that music mighty actually complement the text in a satisfying way. Plus, the haiku form is so terse that there is a lot of room for different text-setting strategies. Like, I can either set it literally with no changes or repetitions or do some renaissance, mass-style, super repetition stuff, or maybe some more adventurous chop-up, weird sequencing stuff. I don’t know. I think it will be a suite so I get to try it a bunch of different ways!

Anyway, I’d love to see you at the premiere.

St.Peter’s Church, 619 Lexington Ave

6.5.2010, 8:00 PM

I’m very excited that the Albany Symphony is going to read my new orchestra piece, 200 OK. The reading is part of their Composer to Center Stage Program and will take place at 2:00PM on May, 22 at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC). I’m not sure exactly what the program entails, but I gather there will be some workshop sessions with orchestra musicians, conductors, administrators, and their resident composer, John Harbison. Also, and I’m very excited for this, we’ll get tickets to concerts in their American Music Festival, which (and this is what I’m really excited about) include new works by my friends Ted Hearne and Timo Andres.

Well, I’m finally going to SEAMUS. I’ve got to come clean, but I’ve actually kind of stopped writing electro-acoustic music. Even so, I still find these conferences to be interesting and eye-opening. Thankfully I managed to eke out one piece while studying electro-acoustic music at UT. Other people seem to enjoy the piece because it keeps getting programmed at all these conferences. I think, however, that this might be the last one. I’m looking forward to hearing what people are up to and I’m also really excited about Minnesota, a state I’ve yet to experience first hand.

So, if anyone is in the St. Cloud, MN area Thursday April, 8th at 10:30 AM. Come on by! I’ll buy you a cup of coffee.

So it seems like the thing to do these days is to find a bunch of buddies who write good music and put on a show. I’m happy to say I’ve jumped on the band wagon and that on April, 12th myself, Ted Hearne, Timothy Andres, Chris Cerrone, and Jacob Cooper are taking over the downtown hot spot, Le Poisson Rouge. We’ll be putting on a show of our music featuring performances by excellent musicians from New York and New Haven. My piece is a trio for violin, cello, and percussion. It should be a lot of fun.

On April 1 my trio for violin, cello and percussion will be on New Music New Haven. The piece has gone through many incarnations. It began this past summer in west texas and grew a bit this past January in Winnipeg. Now it’s grown again. I’m still unsure about a title. For now it’s just called ‘Trio’. Stark, I know, but nothing else seems right. I’m really excited to have three fantastic players from the school of music taking on the piece. Marjolaine Lambert, Neena Deb Sen and John Corkill are all monster musicians and I can’t wait to hear them play the piece.

Come out to Sprague Hall at 8 PM on April, 1 to hear it. Other composers on the program include Adams, Akiho, Johnson, and Kuenn.