Stookey - The Composer is Dead

[emcallaway]

Hello all,

For our annual Halloween concert my college's orchestra has selected the following program:

HOLST - Mars
STOOKEY - The Composer Is Dead (libretto by Lemony Snicket)
HOLST - Jupiter

The two planets I'm quite familiar with, but have never played before. However, this is the first that I've heard of "The Composer is Dead." A quick search on Google seems to indicate that it is a murder mystery in which an inspector is interrogating each section of the orchestra in turn to determine who killed the composer; sort of a "Young Person's Guide to Orchestra" as envisioned by Agatha Christi.

Calling out to the TNFJ, has anyone on the board performed this work? What did you think of it?

Cheers.

[cambrook]

We're playing it next week, I'll let you know. Thomas Allely (Kiwituba) played it recently with his orchestra, maybe you could ask him? I think I remember him saying that he enjoyed it.

Cheers

Cam

[Tigertuba]

Great piece. Fun for the audience, challenging for the orchestra. Tuba has a solo with only harp accomp.

Have fun!

[Jeff Anderson]

Nate asked me some tuba "questions" while he was working on "The Composer is a Dead". He's a Bay Area guy and would be around Davies Hall quite often. He wanted to know what type of tuba solo I would like if I had my choice. Wanting to stay away from monsters, animals, sea creatures and fog horns, I told him a lyric, beautiful song would be my preference, and that's exactly what Nate did.

The solo is a simple, singing melody in 3/4 (or 6/8 I can't remember) and recurs a couple times throughout the piece. It does have harp accompaniment as the tubist in the work is a solitary bachelor and the harpist in the orchestra is also his land lady.... Outside of that, the tuba part is not difficult, but the piece has some overall tricky moments as it "recreates" works from the orchestral repertoire.

"Composer" is a really fun work for audience and orchestra and we had the good fortune of always doing it here with Daniel Handler, AKA "Lemony Snicket" the author, doing the narration.

We also recorded the score that is included in the published booked version.

http://www.amazon.com/Composer-Dead-Boo ... 792&sr=8-1

Hope this helps.

Jeff Anderson
San Francisco Symphony

[emcallaway]

Thanks for the insight, Jeff-- that answers all my questions in one fell swoop. It sounds like this is going to be a lot of fun to play.