Welcome to the official site for Wes Stephens. Here you can remain current on all of
his new works, commissions, premieres, performances, and clinics.
Sunday, January 26, 2014 at 09:07PM A few days ago a friend informed me via Facebook that my arrangement of Debussy's Le Petite Negre for marimba received a positive review in Percussive Notes! Check out the January 2014 issue for the whole thing. The score is available for purchase from Amalgam Publishing.
Monday, January 20, 2014 at 03:52PM I just received confirmation that Who Knows if the Moon's a Balloon will be choreographed by Tulsa Modern Movement. The performance will run two days (June 7th-8th, 2014) at Tulsa Ballet Studio K. Needless to say I am excited to see my music set to dance by such talented performers!
Friday, January 10, 2014 at 09:19PM I spent last night pondering how I can use the setup of a lead pan (for those who don't know, the notes are laid out in a circle of fifths) as a compositional starting point. I began by trying to come up with interesting scales by starting on a given pitch and skipping one note in a given direction, then two, three, etc. While I came up with is what is considered to be "standard" 20th century pitch classes (Augment/Diminished chords which can be synthesized into whole tone/octatonic collections) I now at least have a more idiomatic understanding of the pan from a composer's point of view.
Today I did a little research on youtube regarding Kotekan patterns (interlocking rhythmic patterns found in Balinese gamelan music) used in the tradition of Wayang Kulit (Balinese shadow puppet theater). I stumbled upon some cool examples that I will definitely have to play around with.
Thursday, January 9, 2014 at 07:23PM So after struggling to come up with a musically satisfying setting of The Blossom I have decided just to make the piece a three song collection rather than create something I am ultimately unhappy with. I have submitted the first draft of the final score and await comments from my vocalist.
Now that the first piece in the Birthday Project is all but finished I am looking forward to writing my first purely instrumental piece in three years for my close friends Jason Baskin and Beaux Lux. The piece is tentatively entitled Shadow Play and will be for Flute and Lead Pan. The term shadow play refers to many facets of creating art with shadow ranging from photography, dance, and Balinese shadow puppetry. I want to incoporate musical ideas inspired by all of these elements in the work as well as using Jungian concepts of the Shadow in the piece somehow. That being said I am just in the very beginning stages so it will be interesting to see how it all plays out.The deadline for this piece is March 6th, the latest of the two birthdays in the duo.
Friday, December 27, 2013 at 05:35PM I just finished The WIld Flowers Song from Four Blake Songs and sent it to my singer. For whatever reason this piece had a difficult birth. It will be interesting to see how it fares with the rest of the work as a whole once it is finished. Three of the four songs are done with only five days left (if you include the 1st which at the rate I am going I probably will have to). The Blank Page Syndrome will rear it's ugly head tomorrow but tonight I am going to the movies.