Steve's piece, Song of the Great Khan, premiered on April 3, 2008. The piece was written for the McGill Percussion Ensemble and incorporated over 40 different percussion instruments!
He's been working on this song since October last year and it was super cool to actually hear it after watching him toil over the score for 6 months. The piece was amazing and as our friend Jo aptly said "it was the best piece there and would have been my favorite even with my eyes closed so that I didn't know it was his"!
Steve spent months muttered that it was super weird and no one was going to like it so he just about fell over when I told him that I had mass emailed everyone that we knew within a 500 km radius and invited them to the show. Fortunately/ unfortunately (?) he's actually not as weird as he thinks he is and everyone in "Steve's section" loved it. He was the only composer that got hoots and hollers from the audience when the song ended! Dom even yelled out "that's my roommate!". I think Steve sort of wanted to die a little at that point. (He was also the only student composer and the rest were all faculty or composers from Europe and the US)
There was a problem with the recording and it has to be re-recorded. Once that happens I will try to figure out how to put the song on the blog. Here are a couple of pictures that I managed to catch before the show started and I was forced to put the camera away.
PS. Steve's looking a lot less haggard as of late in case anyone is worried.
