My friend Adam Scime - a wonderful bassist, pianist and composer - broke his right hand, and had to stop playing bass while it heals. But Adam is turning lemons into an exquisite fountain of lemonade! He wants to commission seven Canadian composers - including me - to write new left-hand piano pieces for him to premiere this May.
Just look at this composer line-up. I'm seriously woozy to be in this company:
Christopher Butterfield
Taylor Brook
Anna Hostman
Emilie LeBel
Adam Sherkin
Nick Storring
Christina Volpini
and me (Alex Eddington)
(And if you weren't aware, left-hand piano music is a pretty huge genre, especially taking off in the early 20th century for pianist Paul Wittgenstein, who lost his right hand in WWI)
Adam has put out a call for crowdfunding donations, with the goal of paying us composers for our time. Every amount pledged will go 100% to commission fees. You can choose which composer your pledge will support, and then they will DEDICATE their new left-handed piano piece to you - along with the other commissioners... unless you want to sponsor one entire piece for $300!
(Adam himself is doing this for the fun and the love of it...)
Government arts grants are a tenuous way for composers to be paid for their work, so I think it's very positive to see colleagues, fans and fams getting behind crowdfunding for commissioning. It needs to be the right project of course... and this one strikes the right (…well, left-handed) notes.
Thanks for clicking and reading, friends!
Alex