You Tube Concert

It's the start of a new school year here in the States! Hooray! I thought I'd kick things off with another YouTube concert of performances of my music that I've discovered over the summer.

First up is a performance of Star of Valor, uploaded by the AFA Symphony Orchestra of the American Festival of the Arts Summer Music Conservatory at Pershing High School in Houston, Texas. They do a really nice job balancing the overlapping melodies and negotiating the tempo changes. Their intonation is really good. And just look at the concentration in their faces.

Here's a really nice performance of Westward Motion, performed by the CMS 8th Grade Orchestra. Again, there's no indication of where they're from, geographically. But they do a nice job with the piece. My only quibble: they clearly have timpani, chimes and a glockenspeil on stage and they're completely unmanned and silent throughout the piece! The percussion parts are optional, but I always prefer to hear them whenever possible.

I've saved a really good one for last: check out this performance of Gauntlet from the String Quartet Program of Northern Colorado Works in Progress concert. It looks like an all-ages group and they do a remarkable job bringing the emotion out of the piece. This is definitely one of the best performances I've heard of Gauntlet. The whole concert is great, but Guantlet starts at about 12:10.

There is another video of this same performance, just of Gauntlet, taken from a closer angle at stage level, but I wasn't able to link it to this post. It should be easy enough to find with a quick YouTube search, though.

Royalty Statement 2010 - Part 1

I got my annual royalty statement from Alfred Publishing recently, which outlines how many of each of my pieces they've sold in the past year, and first, let me just say

THANK YOU JAMES CAMERON!

You see, James Cameron decided to name what would become the highest-grossing movie of all time after a piece of music I wrote five years ago (kidding - the fact that we used the same titles was a complete coincidence).  Anyway, it seems a lot of people mistook my music for James Horner's film score. Or they really enjoyed my music on its own considerable merits.

Here are my top five sellers this year (4/1/09 - 3/31/10):

1. Avatar
2. Gauntlet
3. Gargoyles
4. Agincourt
5. Quicksilver

So Avatar comes out of nowhere to become this year's number-one seller.  Gauntlet and Gargoyles are perennial favorites and always seem to make the top five and I'm pleased to see that Agincourt has retained its popularity.  Quicksilver was a new one last year and music often sells well in its first year.  Plus, Quicksilver was performed at the Midwest Conference last December, giving it a huge boost.

Last year's other new pieces were Porcupine Pantomime, which would have come in sixth place, and A Hero's Welcome, which has a place further down in the rankings.

Now, this is just domestic sales of scores and parts. Scores are sold separately, for when orchestras go to contest and the judges need to follow along.  Here are the sales of just the scores:

1. Avatar
2. Gargoyles
3. Gauntlet
4. Crusader
5. Westward Motion

Interesting - perhaps Avatar is becoming a contest staple like Gargoyles and Gauntlet.  Or maybe people just want to see the score to Avatar, thinking that it's the film score.

There are still foreign sales and mechanical fees to report on as well as a certain long-standing bet to settle, but that's for a later post.