Composing in the 21st Century

Just received this in my inbox:

From: bonjourfatped RE: Jaunty Blues

Hello Stephen Duro,

I'm doing a film production course at the University of Central Lancashire. I'm in my final year, in which I have to do two films.
I was looking for music and I came across your video.

Originally I was going to compose a song on my own but I thought your song was pretty much spot on for what I wanted to use.

I was wondering if there was any way you could perhaps send me a recording of your Jaunty blues to use in my film?

I hope you can accept. If you do, I will send you the full details.

Thank you for your time, I await your reply.

- Ruhull Alom

My response was more or less as follows:

Greetings from Edgware, Middlesex.

Interesting. I am not Stephen Duro. I am the Composer/Pianist Jonathan FeBland. As well as performing my own compositions on YouTube I also occasionally feature the work of other musicians/composers.

Stephen Duro is a published composer whose work is published as it clearly states on the page where you found Jaunty Blues, by ABRSM.

Now, since the music is published it is very much in the public domain and anyone can play it as long as Mr Duro receives royalties, PRS, MCPS etc etc

I feel the best way forward for you if you want this exact piece of music (whether performed by me or by someone else) is to contact the Composer directly.

How might you do this? My suggestion is write to the ABRSM music website which is easily discovered here:

http://www.abrsm.org/?page=home

In any case, good luck with your venture & I hope you will listen to some more of my compositions and performances!

Best wishes,

Jonathan S. FeBland (Composer)

"Our social life consists of doctors and hospitals"

was just a little bit too much information given to me by the grandfather of a 13 y.o. boy who just enquired about the prices of one-hour lessons for a beginner.

I pointed out to him that a beginner only needs 1/2-hour lessons.

The one major flaw in the ointment is that he forgot to tell me near the beginning of the conversation that he was looking for a teacher to travel to his home to give the lessons.

Plus he only had some puny little cheap and nasty keyboard at his place.

Fewer and fewer teachers travel out to people's homes these days. Just the travelling between a, b & c kills it becuase of the time factor involved in dragging through traffic.

The conversation ended pretty quickly after that.

Sometimes Piano Teachers go off subject.

I asked my grade 6 boy if generally speaking he considered that there were a lot of unhelpful people around.

He asked me why I'd asked him that question, but thoroughly agreed with me!

An 8 y.o. girl has just passed grade one with 115 (a very solid pass).

I was extremely worried about this becuase the exam people gave me a date and the father said he couldn't do it as both he and his wife were working that day.

I phoned through to the exam people and they offered me a different (but similar) date. Once again both parents were tied up. I asked them if they could get an Uncle or Aunt to do the honours, but no luck.

When I phoned the exam people up again they went slightly crazy as one of their rules is that you can only change the date once!

They then offered me a really early date which I just took without further argument.

The parents still couldn't easily manage to take their daughter on this 3rd agreed date. After a lot of wangling and wrangling they finally agreed to take her to the exam.

This was really 2-3 weeks before she was even ready to take the exam and I was biting my fingernails over it as I was sure she was going to struggle.

Fortunately, she had a particularly good day and we can now progess on to grade 2.

The exam people are noted for not being particularly flexible, but I will have to have words with the parents as they were making things very difficult for me.

A German Radio Station has now expressed interest in Piano Colours. This makes 6 Radio Stations in total that are talking in terms of airplay/broadcasts.

The CD is not even on sale to the public yet!

It should be on Amazon/iTunes in January.

I'm back in the YouTube charts at position #39 today!

http://uk.youtube.com/user/FeBlandMusic

As well as the young Concert Pianist yesterday, I also heard from an exceptional Clarinettist who wants to start programming my work.

YouTube is without doubt the way forward for me.

I just received the following comment from young budding concert pianist Enzo (who goes as blueyoyi on YouTube) who is based in Manila, Philippines.

http://uk.youtube.com/user/blueyoyi

"Dear Jonathan,
May i thank you a googlezillion for all the encouragement you have been giving. Being the prolific and fine composer yourself, I am most flattered and honored.
I have gone through a good number of your compositions as posted here and frankly I would not know what to say. I felt this way the 1st time I heard Chopin and Beethoven my dad is fond of playing. It feels totally different from what classical music my ears have been used to these past few years. My dad says I should also try learning jazz and contemporary music, that is why I have been listening to your compositions... which you have a lot of.
Thanks again and my very best wishes goes to you!
Enzo"

YouTube direct link -

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=LsIbZ_oD8_I

This is a clip from a composition dating from 1983 entitled "Transitions" which was written for my Pianist colleague Louis Alvanis. It has been performed by my colleague in various concert halls including the Queen Elizabeth Hall on the South Bank as well as venues in Athens and Salonika.

It is included (in full) on the forthcoming CD "Piano Colours".

I composed a Jazz Symphony over a 5-year period 2002-2006 for a competition called "The Masterprize" which offered a £50,000 first prize but which also seemed to go bankrupt one day after I finished composing my masterpiece.

I offered it to the Royal Academy of Music (where I studied 1978-82) for a World Premiere only to receive an 'unhelpful' response.

I have since befriended two conductors, both female and both called Collier.

They have both been trying to premier a pair of works I've written for string Orchestra.

The Collier on the French/Spanish border has been banned by her agent from performing my work for at least the last two years. No performance is currently scheduled.

The UK Collier who really likes my compositions as well has just been banned by RAM (yes, the same place I studied as per above) from performing my work with the String Orchestra.

Reason? They wish to focus on "established repertoire".

Here's a review of one of my string orchestra works that was written by another former Academy student, Mark Donlon:

"This is an impressive piece - all the threads are woven together with excellent craftsmanship in a tautly argued musical process - this would sound superb in live performance."

[extract published at the Sibelius Music website]

Here's another talented musician I discovered on YouTube today! this builds up to a pretty awesome Jazz solo!

This is one of the talented musicians I discovered today on YouTube.

Here is an amazing composition for 2 Clarinets and Piano entitled "El Pereirano" composed by the Clarinettist wearing the red, Mauricia Murcia.

I will be inviting him to play some of my compositions on his YouTube channel.

Today's promo- consists of trying to find talented musicians who perform on YouTube and ask them whether they'd be interested in playing some of my compositions on their channel.

I've had a couple of promises like this in the last few months but nothing has yet materialised.

This work is in two sections or "movements" which are almost seamlessly linked. Up to 3.03 is the slow first movt. the link or bridge passage is up to about 3.12 and the rest of the composition is fast.

This is an example of "Late Romanticism" and is one of my favourite Piano Compositions.

To those who knew or were interested, the BIG deal I was waiting for didn't materialise. I found out about 12 hours ago.

I am making light of it in view of the fact that I have a lot of very major things going on in my life right now.

How big a deal would it have been? It's hard to put into words exactly. It would have been massive, though. Still, that's the problem with these all or nothing situations. The chances are you are going to end up with nothing.

My next step (in that direction) is to find another major player in the Classical Publishing world. I think there are about 12 Worldwide that are worth considering. I've researched the next best option and a preliminary email will go out next week. This could be a long game.

"The Limpid Stream" Op.61c No.5

A valuable contact in Radio in Belgium has materialised today. The broadcast involved has a website here ~

http://autourdebabel.blogspot.com

With some seriously fantastic innovative music programming.

I think Piano Colours will fit really well into their scheduling.

This is now the 4th Radio Station that has shown interest in the CD since I launched the Press Release about 5 days ago. Quite a positive result IMHO yoho.

The glass is half full.

Samuel King, a smallish British Publishing Company phoned me up for 20 minutes today with a promo update.

This company publishes about 7 of my titles, most importantly they have the 12 Jazz Piano Pieces (2000) which took the best part of a year to compose and are of an extremely good quality. They are also potentially highly commercial.

They have lots of ideas to do with soloists, performances, concerts, broadcasts, iTunes, Press Reviews, Articles/Features etc. so I am trying to remain optimistic about things.

Piano Colours promo is making progress.

I've been promised broadcasts in Norway, Estonia and Turkey so far!

Some of the Radio Stations were not easy to contact via email and if using an online form, one had to language-bust and hope to get through to the right desk.

Some Radio Stations for example had up to 20 possible contact people to write to. I wonder how many of the emails actually get read.

Another option open to me is simply to shove a CD in the post to all of the major players. I was hoping to have an email from interested parties though - maybe that's not realistic?

3 positives out of about 40 tried, anyway.

http://febland.googlepages.com/pianocolourscd