united states
united states
I once tried to commission a composer that was a mentor of mine to write an original work for wind band for me. His response was—to me—perplexing. He told me that he didn’t “know how to write ‘band music’” and that he had “no desire to learn how to do so” at this point in his career. I didn’t understand what he truly meant at the time. Over a decade later, I submitted some of my music to various publishers. Here are the some of the responses I received from them:
Between these rejection responses and after commissioning/premiering over seventy-five works myself, I have finally woken to what my mentor told me all those years ago. Somehow, “band music”—for better or for worse—has become an alienating, self aggrandizing genre in-and-of itself, and music for the wind band medium that might march to the beat of its own drummer, that might have a hitch in its giddy-up stands outside of the genre of band music. But as a composer/conductor myself, this is the music that I write and that I seek to perform myself. Here you will find music from off the beaten path, including music from other countries that might be difficult to find otherwise.
Thus the inception of weird box music publications, a place to find wind music that is ”…something else…”
