On hearing that I got to the final round...

About a month after I submitted the application, I heard that I'd got to the final round, where four people would be interviewed, and that I'd now have to submit a developed proposal. The panel had several concerns about my project a) whether I was adequately aware of the standard of the Greystones Orchestra, b) how the school workshops would work, c) whether the concerto would have a life after the premieres in Co. Wicklow, and d) they were concerned about whether there would be enough publicity for the work.

So, first of all I got a list of over thirty schools in Wicklow, Bray and Greystones and phoned them all up: seven were interested in the composition workshops that I had devised, so that was great to back up the application. Then, through a rejigging of the money that I was hoping to win, I managed to budget for the production of 1000 CD's (to be given out free to local libraries, schools, and any audience members who would like one), the recording of the CD's (my good friend Bartosz Klimaszewski, a brilliant composer of electronic music, will record the premiere in Ireland), and the production of 5000 leaflets. I came up with the idea for this blog, budgetted for all the materials to produce scores of the finished work (one to go to every library/school again etc), and so on and so on...basically trying to think of everything that I could to make the projects as well publicised as possible..

I must have sent over fifty emails to lots of different organisations, socieities and groups, and got many enthusiastic replies. I'm even going to have tea with the members of the Greystones and District Active Retirement Club some time in the autumn, where I'll hopefully hear lots of stories about Greystones' past which will provide inspiration for some of the work!

Also, as luck would have it, two days before my interview, the Greystones Orchestra were doing a concert in the Artane School of music (see next post for more info about this). So I was able to hear them first hand (and I was really impressed, the concert was great!), which helped to prove that I knew the standard of who I was writing for. I added an extra two pages about the school workshops, detailing how Bobby Chen and I will help pupils to devise their own compositions/improvisations, to be performed in the workshop, and I also made a case for the work having a life after the premieres. Although the new piano concerto will be based on the ideas of the local people of Co. Wicklow, it won't be some awful pastiche of Irish music, or a cheap rip off of Ralph Vaughan Williams (Wicklow is known as the Garden of Ireland...) and I hope that a concerto for professional pianist and mixed ability orchestra will be really useful for pianists who are beginning their careers and want to play some contemporary music, but are not at the stage where they are performing with professional orchestras yet. Well, that's the aim anyway!

More about the Greystones Orchestra's concert in the next post...