Tiraki takes shape

This afternoon the Auckland Philharmonia had their second read-through of my new piece for organ and orchestra, Tiraki. The first workshops were in May and so now the pieces are really taking shape. I initially talked about the project here, but since then I have changed my organist to the wonderful Nick Forbes, who is doing an outstanding job. We've spent a fair amount of time at the organ working on the notes and developing the different colours which we've been saving on the organ's computer. Sounds all very flash, but we lost them all before today's play-through!

The piece is coming along. I'm happy with most of the orchestrations and the general material, but the transitions still need plenty of work and today it really wasn't sounding together so I might have to tweak a few things to help out the listening. It needs to constantly tick along like a metronome and with often just relentless semiquavers and quavers that need to lock together while having the organist miles away, it makes it challenging.

I went through two sharpened pencils writing on the score during the session, so plenty to do. Stay tuned!

Oh, you may like to check out some photos I took of the organ here when I first checked it out.