Come out or tune in this Saturday, December 18 at 7:30pm PST to hear International Orange Chorale sing my latest, Come to Us in Water. 

IOC will be live-streaming the concert on Facebook! Facebook registration is not required. For you East-coasters who would prefer not to burn the midnight choral oil, I am told the concert video will be made available at a future date. 

Live concert-goers: Mindy and I will see you at St. Marks' Lutheran, 1111 O'Farrell Street, San Francisco! Please note that masks and proof of Covid vaccination are required to attend the concert. (Says the guy who forgot to bring his card to the Berkeley concert and had to drive home to get it. #embarrassing)

I can tell you, it really was a delight to hear live singing again at the December 4 concert. Kind of surreal, actually. Surreal in a good way. What I mean is: you should come if you can. 

Live Concert Details
Live Stream Details

If you missed my interview on the In Unison podcast, you can find it here. We talk all about Come to Us in Water, past choral work like O Child, A Prayer in Spring, and Cast Thy Bread Upon the Waters, my compositional origin story, what it means to be a Druid, and how I ended up with hotmike.com as my website. 

Merry Christmas, Joyous Solstice, and Happy belated Hanukkah to all! 

The Upcoming Concerts page on my website was blank for a long time. But I'm pleased to announce that the International Orange Chorale of San Francisco, with whom I have been composer-in-residence since before Covid was a thing (you might remember them as the Zoom choir), will be premiering my newest piece, Come to Us in Water, in two concerts this December:

Saturday, December 4, 7:30pm at Christ Church in Berkeley, CA
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Saturday, December 18, 7:30pm at St. Mark's Lutheran Church in San Francisco, CA

When the singers of Sunset and Aloha high schools in the Portland, Oregon area signed up for choir, they probably didn’t expect to be asked to sing in Anglo-Saxon, the distant ancestor of modern English. I’m guessing the same goes for director Chris Rust when he invited me to write a piece for his students to sing virtually, adding, “Write whatever you want.”

The fool! Little did he know that I’ve long been harboring a desire to set passages from Beowulf, the ancient epic poem that I have loved ever since taking a class in college studying Anglo-Saxon poetry in its original language. In the twenty-plus years that I have been toting around my various Beowulf translations and Anglo-Saxon grammars, I have noted many a wrinkled nose and tart reactions like, “Uh, are you reading that for fun?” 

Hey all, Happy December!

​Please join me and Dr. Lynne Morrow for a free Oakland Symphony virtual event this Friday, December 4, 3:00-3:45pm Pacific Time.

Lynne and I will discuss the Mass for Freedom, my five-movement work for chorus and orchestra that Lynne commissioned and directed with the Oakland Symphony Chorus last year. I'll play some original recordings of the five spirituals that form the core of the work, and talk about why I was inspired by these particular songs. 

We’ll end with a video showing of the full premiere performance, so if you weren’t able to make the concert, I especially hope you'll check it out! There will be some Q&A afterward. 

Just RSVP here for a link to the Zoom. 

​I'm excited to relive the awesome experience of writing and premiering this work. Hope to see you there! 

Mike

Have you heard? Today’s a pretty important day. Everyone is feeling pretty anxious. I know I am. And yet, unless you are one of those fantastic people still making calls and sending texts to get out the vote (thank you, people), there’s really nothing election-related to do today. No news worth consuming until later tonight (and maybe not even then). 

So instead, I invite you to consume some beauty. It’s delicious, and good for you too. I’d like to share a few pieces of music (not mine) that never fail to stir my soul. I have been listening to these, usually late at night, when I feel my spirit getting a little parched. The next time you feel the itch to read another poll, or article about “How Trump can still win,” perhaps you can listen to one of these instead. 

Histoire du tango: Bordello 1900, by Astor Piazzolla (3.5 minutes)
Listen on YouTube
Listen in Apple Music
Family-friendly and Safe For Work, despite the title. This piece single-handedly got me excited about learning classical guitar. I’ve been listening to it for twenty-five years and never get tired of it. If you have time, listen to all four movements. 

Beau soir, by Claude Debussy (3 minutes)
Listen on YouTube
Listen in Apple Music
A beautiful arrangement for violin and piano of this gorgeous song by one of my favorite composers. It conveys a welter of emotions that particularly speaks to me right now, but ultimately it is just a magnificent three minutes of music. 

Is Any Afflicted, by William Billings (1.75 minutes)
​Listen on YouTube
​Listen in Apple Music
In honor of America, here is a quick choral piece by our finest composer of the Revolutionary era. The melancholy of the title lasts for about five seconds; the rest is decidedly chipper. The refrain, “singing and making melody,” is one you’ll be happy to have stuck in your head. 

Petite suite: Cortège, by Claude Debussy (3 minutes)
Listen on YouTube
Listen in Apple Music
Turns out I really like Debussy, and this piece for piano-four-hands is a gem. Again, listen to all four movements if you have time. 

Even if you don’t listen to these pieces, I hope you’ll take some time today to listen to any music you love!

With you in spirit and in unity,
Mike

There’s too much going on right now. What this world needs is a video of singers meeting virtually to sing about virtual meetings. 

Please enjoy Zoom, my first official piece as composer-in-residence with San Francisco’s International Orange Chorale. (It’s three-and-a-half minutes long, and there are lyrics in the video description.)

The planned June concerts did not happen, obviously. But I did have a nice Zoom chat with the choir (and two other composers on the program) about the music they had been planning to perform. And in the ensuing conversation I found myself talking about how it can be tough for us as choral composers to write music that really speaks to the moment, because for legal reasons we tend to use public domain text that is, by necessity, old. 

As I signed off the call, I thought: well, of course we can always write our own text. I could do that again. But what to write about...?

You never know what's going to bubble up. I must have needed some levity in my life; at a time when everything feels really, super serious, Zoom is not. But there is a genuine message here: we are getting through all of this together, one day at a time. We couldn’t possibly do it alone. So isn’t it really, really amazing that we have some tools to help us carry on with our business and be with our loved ones whenever we want, even if we are far away? My twice-weekly Zoom chats (and online card games) with my brother in Tennessee and my dad in Florida have helped keep me afloat these past seven months. That’s something to sing about. And I’m really lucky to have this amazing choir to do the singing for me. 

Hurrah for International Orange Chorale, and hurrah for all of you. Hope everybody’s staying safe in these uncertain times. 

Lots of love,
Mike

I’m pleased to announce that International Orange Chorale (San Francisco) has asked me to be their Composer in Residence for this upcoming season. (I said yes.)

You may remember IOC as the choir that premiered my piece O Child in 2018. I was so delighted to get a piece on their program, as I had been to several of their concerts and consider them one of the best choirs in the SF Bay Area—not just the bestly-named chorus in the Bay Area. (They take their name from the official paint color of the Golden Gate Bridge, FYI.)

So you can imagine how happy I am to have the opportunity to work very closely with them this year. The residency will have two parts:

1. IOC will perform my piece A Prayer in Spring on their June program.
2. I will compose a new piece, text TBD, for their fall concerts. 

Please save one of these dates (or both, go nuts) for the June concerts:

Saturday, June 6, 2020 at 7:30 PM, East Bay
Saturday, June 20, 2020 at 7:30 PM, San Francisco

Exact locations TBA—I’ll let you know as soon as I know. I’ll be attending the June 6 concert (but will have to miss the June 20 concert, alas). 

More to come! 

Speaking of O Child: this past December, Accord Treble Choir premiered the women’s chorus version of the piece.