[finally written on 12/14/07]

Well, we did it.

I got everything set up in the studio at the Newnan School of Dance, and the cast drifted in on time, and we hit a few rough spots. All will be well, and yet all will be well, I assured them.

The audience arrived, about thirty people, which was not bad. Lacuna itself was under-represented, I thought. Perhaps that original group has lost all momentum.

I got flowers! The card said, “Best wishes, William Blake.” No one will confess to having sent them. We all suspect (or hope) that Nancy Willard sent them. Here’s the picture:

I explained to the audience what the evening was, and what it was not: it was a sing-through of the work so that people could hear it and judge it for a possible production; it was not a polished performance. (The cast made me say that.)

And so we began. It went very smoothly, no train wrecks at all. Yes, there were glitches. Mike Ferrante, who after all had only seen the music for 48 hours, slid over some rhythms, but he never got lost and he never sounded wrong. Melissa Houghton, our intrepid clicker, was off on the slideshow a couple of times, but since it was the first time she had had the opportunity to even try to do the whole show, who cares? Marc insisted on singing “snails and knotholes” instead of “nails and knotholes,” but let’s face it, that type was awfully small. Malcolm began his solo on the upper melody rather than the lower, but again, it didn’t sound wrong at all, so all was well.

Audience response was enthusiastic. They loved the poetry, they loved the music. I was gratified.

We allowed people who were not interested in talking about the future of the work to leave, and then we talked about the future of the work.

I’m not going into detail here, because some of what we talked about counts as backroom machinations, and we don’t need to be sharing those with the world at this point. But I will give the gist of what we decided.

First, we will move forward with the work. We will invite anyone who’s interested to join us on Wednesday nights, starting January 24, to workshop three pieces: Sun & Moon Circus, Man in the Marmalade Hat, and Two Sunflowers.

In late April or early May, we will invite “backers,” i.e., those in the community who have the authority and the money to make this happen, to a special performance where we feature the workshopped numbers. This is because we felt that non-theatre types might be at a loss to visualize what the work would look like on a stage (especially since some theatre types have been at a similar loss as we’ve worked on this.)

If all goes well, then we will begin working in August on the production itself, which would take place sometime in 2008. More definite than that, we cannot be.

So life is good: after 20+ years, William Blake’s Inn is coming to life.

Some comments on the performance: it was the first time I had heard the work all the way through. I was struck by how completely it took you in, and what a complete experience it gave you. There is movement from the beginning to the end, and you are left with the impression that you have been somewhere and that you have been shown things that you didn’t know existed.

I also found that the choral writing is very effective. The storm sequence in Tale of the Tailor in particular was striking, and that’s a section that I had had concerns whether or not it would work.

The solos are all delightful. They will enchant the audience as they showcase the inhabitants of the Inn.

Finally, it actually gave me confidence. (I am now pausing for everyone to finish snorting coffee out of their noses.) Seriously, anyone who has read this blog knows that I have not been at all sure that I know what I’m doing. But you know what? I do, and I am ready to tackle new stuff: my symphony, the fugal quartet movement, even Mike Funt’s musical.

All in all, a very good night indeed.

We had our final rehearsal tonight of the octet, singing through A Visit to William Blake’s Inn. Good group, and we are totally going to be not as good as we could be tomorrow night. Milky Way, of course, is a total bear, and it’s hard to rehearse any piece, much less that one, sitting around a dining room table, unable to hear your part, etc., etc.

Still, the solos sound good, and people are truly enjoying the music, which is gratifying. They’re very enthusiastic about all of it, and many of them have favorites, and that’s fun to hear. The group is good enough for me to hear what it will sound like with proper preparation, and that’s pretty darned good.

The next question is whether we will have an audience tomorrow night, and more importantly, whether it will be an audience with people who will jump at the chance to work on the three sample pieces for the next three months in workshop.

Extra creative bit for the day: I was imagining Anne Tarbutton singing Wise Cow Enjoys a Cloud today, which falls far short of hearing her actually sing it, and a vision came to me for staging. At the risk of short-circuiting the workshop process: Wise Cow is a shadow puppet and appears over William Blake’s head as he asks where she slept the night before. As the harp sweeps up, Anne steps from the shadows wearing a beautiful gown/costume, and releases from her hands a glowing cloud, which the Wise Cow catches and then eats: we see the cloud enter her body, where it glows even brighter than before.

That would work.

Well, whattaya know? I did it.

Here is the mp3 of the underscoring of the Epilogue. I already hear some changes I should make, but I think I will refrain.

Traveling as we were today to Greensboro, I didn’t get a lot done. I thought I would at least sketch out the music for the Epilogue, but with Grayson’s iPod playing, I couldn’t hear what I was writing, not even through my headphones.

So I settled for marking my score for slide transitions. Not a lot, but it needed to be done. Perhaps Ginny’s iPod will be quieter on the way home tomorrow and I can get the Epilogue started.

I looked at the string quartet again, but didn’t really do anything with it.

I didn’t get a lot done today: we went to the Apple Store to shop for speakers for Grayson, part of his Christmas. I did go through the music earlier and write the times from the sound files for major sections of the score. Should be a little help Tuesday in working through the whole thing.

Oh, and I rewrote the measure in the opening number where we couldn’t get the pickup note to the 6/8 time, starting the 6/8 a measure earlier and giving us a pulse to get us into it.

At some point, I need to go through and mark the score for where the slideshow gets clicked.

And at some point, I have to write the underscoring for the Epilogue.

Tonight we met again, Marc, Mary Frances, and I, to go over the music. It was most helpful.

We decided that I needed to write at least some music to play under the Epilogue, while we did a choral reading of it. This was after deciding that the Epilogue was pretty necessary to complete the work. I guess I can do that in the van on the way to Greensboro this weekend.

I sent out a memo to the whole octet, outlining the notes and decisions about each piece that they need to be aware of before we meet next Tuesday.

I sent out email invitations to the Newnan Crossing staff, media specialists, and GHP folk. I got an email from an elementary music teacher whose media specialist had shown her the invite, asking if she could forward it to all the other music teachers. Sure, I said.

Have I mentioned that the dance studio has no chairs?

Tonight we had half the octet meet to go over the music for A Visit to William Blake’s Inn. Ginny, Malcolm, Marc, and I met to learn parts and try out our solos.

I had set up my computer, iPod, boombox, speakers, and keyboard in the dining room. We sat around the table and went from piece to piece, stopping to pluck out parts and get a little surer.

We weren’t bad. It will be interesting to put the whole group together next week to see what it sounds like. Marc and I are both strong basses, while Malcolm is a light tenor, so we’ll have to pull back and give Matthew some room to balance us out when he joins us.

The music stands up very well. I have fears that it’s going to sound crummy with people singing words: I try to plan it so that it will all work right, but the truth is that I only hear the piano/orchestra/”choral ahs” when I’m working on it. That’s a lot different than humans trying to articulate the lyrics.

In 2. Blake’s Wonderful Car Delivers Us Wonderfully Well, for example, I think the first section could be sung straight through, but it’s very rushed with no room for a real breath. And so we divided it up between two alternating groups. It will sound fine that way, and I probably should have realized that to begin with.

One cool tool we used tonight was a little program called djay. I blogged about it before, saying that I would probably forget that I had it when I needed it, but I did remember it. It’s actually a double DJ turntable thingie which hooks into your iTunes collection. You can drag files to the two turntables and do your mixin’ thang in all kinds of interesting ways.

I however only needed it to do one thing: slow down the complicated passages without changing the pitch. We tackled both the end of Sun & Moon Circus and the storm sequence of Tale of the Tailor that way, and it was a great help.

Tomorrow is a workday, and I think I’m going to be at loose ends most of the day. I have to print out a new score for me and one for the techie, even though no one’s volunteered to be my tech person yet, and I think I will also go through my score, listening to the sound files and marking times. That will make it a lot easier to find the sections we need to go back to tomorrow night and next week.