Neely's Blog #4

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BLOG NUMBER FOUR - January 7, 2006

It’s January 7, 2006, and I am WAY behind on these blogs! I have a good excuse—a commission for a new orchestra piece from the South Carolina Philharmonic. But the score is bound and in the hands of the conductor, and the parts are safely in the hands of the orchestra librarian, so I can catch up on the rest of my life. The piece is entitled “Introduction and Grand March: An Orchestral Homage to the late W. A. Mozart of Salzburg and the late C. E. Ives of Danbury.” I’ll write about it in Blog Number Five, but let me finish up Number Four first. It was eight weeks ago (!!!),

WHAT I WROTE THEN:

I wrote to Lila Ferrar, who intended to perform the First Amendment at her church last Sunday (November 6, 2005).  She wrote back right away:

“Yes indeed! We did sing the First Amendment in church, yesterday, and I was very pleased and proud of how it went.

I just finished putting a copy of the order of service along with our November church Newsletter, in the mail to you.

I read the First Amendment aloud to the congregation before we sang it.

I am very happy to hear you are making progress with singing the whole thing in DC and elsewhere.  I have had at least one choir member (besides Rob Adams who came with me and sang with you at Wesleyan) express interest in doing the whole thing.  I don't know about logistics, but am eager to hear more.  Thanks for keeping me posted.

Best to you

~Lila”

And here’s a follow-up comment from her a few days later:

Neely,

when I met with the minister today, she said that at least a dozen different people came up to her after the service Sunday and said, what a wonderful service (the whole thing)  She herself was blown away by the First Amendment.

CONTINUING AND FINISHING UP, JANUARY 7, 2006:

There have been some other performances of the First Amendment since that time, but I don’t know anything about them. There are also plans in the works for a tour of the Bill of Rights, under my direction, in June 2006. It’s premature to talk about the details, but soon I hope to share more information.

I didn’t achieve my goal of a download in every state by Thanksgiving 2005. However, there was a December download (and possible performance) in Georgia, and a second one in Pennsylvania. The New England states still lead in the number of downloads. It’s time to seriously get to work on the other twenty-nine states where my setting of the First Amendment has not seen the light of day! That’s one of my New Year’s resolutions, and one which I should be able to meet, with a little help from my friends.

A CD of the performance at Wesleyan last September of the entire Bill of Rights is just about edited and ready for limited release. More on this subject in the next blog.

HAPPY NEW YEAR everyone!