…to hear a performance of my Two Intermezzos by a performer I hadn’t known before!
Dr. Adam Clark was on a list of performers who had made themselves available for the College Music Society meetings in Louisville this last week, and my Intermezzos were selected to be performed. When I contacted Dr. Clark he was very gracious to take one my pieces on as a project — and they’re not easy. We made first contact in April, and yesterday he gave the performance in the final concert of the CMS meetings.
I’ve told audiences and my composition students that we composers are often the beneficiaries of a particular kind of love: hours upon hours of practice and discipline, in order to bring someone else’s ideas to life. In a very real way, we composers rely on others to make our dreams come true. Dr. Clark put lots of that sort of love into his performance
Dr. Clark was not only a pleasure to work with, he clearly had prepared the music well and thought about it, which is always an honor. And the performance was terrific: He brought out the poetry I had intended for those pieces, and found some nuances that even I hadn’t expected, but which worked beautifully. He found meaning in the silences in both pieces which I hadn’t heard before. All in all, a real honor to be represented so well by such a skilled performer. If you have a chance to hear this guy, do yourself a favor and go.