Your Composer Quest quest, should you choose to accept it, is to arrange a pop song or movie/TV theme for the Twin Cities Trio (Maia Hamann on bassoon, Karen Jennings on oboe, and Mary Beth Huttlin on clarinet). They're looking for fun tunes to perform for children in schools.
In episode 18 of Composer Quest, electroacoustic composer Ted Moore enlightens us about coding music to interact with human performers. He also shares his ideas on choosing a musical form for your piece, like sonata form (ABA) or binary form (AB). We also talk some philosophy when I bring up Ted's piece "Eyes May Be Impaired," which he based on Plato's allegory of the cave.
I felt like I was right back in a composition lesson with Dr. Brian Campbell, my former CSB/SJU music professor, when I interviewed him for this episode of Composer Quest. As always, he imparted plenty of wisdom, this time about writing music from a single "seed" and developing that idea. We also talk about form, writing melodies, "robot composers," and using the Japanese aesthetic of "ma" - silence.
Is opera a dying art? Maybe, maybe not. If it is, the English National Opera has defibrilator paddles poised and ready. The ENO has started a mini-opera competition, and they're hoping to rejuvenate opera for a younger generation through an online crowdsourced project.
Scriptwriters, composers, and Continue reading... 
My friends and I just finished an elaborate video using a technique called light painting. In ultra-slow motion (4 hours!), Maia Hamann played Bach's Fugue No. 2 in C minor, while I took long exposure pictures of our friends Oanh, Peter, and Pat "painting" with colored LED lights. I took one photo for Continue reading...