In a year packed with highs, lows, and plenty of news, here’s a look back on some highlights, both worldwide and personal.

Best Of

Best of 2019

Best Album

Price, Symphony No. 1 and 4; Fort Smith Symphony, John Jeter (Naxos). Was there any doubt? The premiere recording of Price’s final symphony is paired with the sophomore recording of her first. It is a high-fidelity reading with plenty of character and verve from one of the nation’s leading interpreters of one of the nation’s laureate composers.

Best Music Festival

Co-Founded by Joy-Leilani Garbutt and Laura Colgate, the inaugural Women Composers Festival, or #WoCoFest, was one of the most ambitious new music offerings in the country in 2019. With rehearsals on either side, it’s hard to overstate how much I appreciated the proximity to DC to be able to bop in for a full day of activity and then bop back out. Anne Midgette provided the best summary so I will only add to it by saying that I enjoyed the combination of this festival with the premiere at Peabody one week later of her latest work for saxophone quartet and electronics that put me in much better touch with Alexandra Gardner and her terrific music, a composer I deeply admire.

Best Track

Caroline Shaw: ‘Valencia’

I took a listen to the New York Times’ 25 Best Classical Tracks of 2019. Caroline Shaw’s ‘Valencia’ is my favorite. From “Orange”; Attacca Quartet (New Amsterdam/Nonesuch). Listen below or on the Nonesuch Blog.

Best Personal Discovery

A student at the Peabody Conservatory, I often crossed paths with the legendary Thomas Dolby it wasn’t until this summer that I began to spend time with his impressive oeuvre. In general, this summer–like many–was a period of music discovery outside of the genres in which I work. Thanks to Alex Temple for the Twitter guidance through synth pop!

Best Tv Show

Watchmen

In a strong field, HBO’s Watchmen rose right to the top. It hit more notes for me than anything else out there.

Best Mega-Franchise FILM Finale

Avengers: Endgame. Hands down. At some point, franchise finales risk getting crushed under their own weight, as Star Wars recently demonstrated to the world. Somehow, the Avengers brought their storyline to a convincing close. This is not high art but it is meaningful. And meme-able…

Best Book

Boulez, Music Lessons

Don’t take my word for it. Read John Adams’ take.

Best new Research on music

Universality and diversity in human song

Mehr, Samuel & Singh, Manvir & Knox, Dean & Ketter, Daniel & Pickens-Jones, Daniel & Atwood, S & Lucas, Christopher & Jacoby, Nori & Egner, Alena & Hopkins, Erin & Howard, Rhea & Hartshorne, Joshua & Jennings, Mariela & Simson, Jan & Bainbridge, Constance & Pinker, Steven & O'Donnell, Timothy & Krasnow, Max & Glowacki, Luke. (2019). Universality and diversity in human song. Science (New York, N.Y.). 366. 10.1126/science.aax0868.

Read more here and here. To keep in the spirit of the superlatives list under which it falls, I’ll still modify with “best,” although it might be better understood as the most controversial work of the year. (Perhaps it is the best at catalyzing further discussion.) I won’t repeat my objections or my endorsements here but I go into a bit more detail and share my take below:

Best Blog post

Nebal Maysaud: “It’s Time to Let Classical Music Die”

Also provocative but in a very different way is Nebal Maysaud’s essay for NewMusicBox. Have a look.

Best Online Personality

Linda Shaver-Gleason (@lyndahyphen).

It is clear to see that Linda’s influence and circle of concern in the music world is vast and deep. One need only look at the dozens of twitter accounts with recently-modified names in honor of Linda to see how far her reach extends. What a brilliant light in our world!

Best of the Decade

Best Album

Beyoncé, Lemonade

Not to brag, but I called this long before the AP.

Best tv show

The Colbert Report

We desperately need a show like this again.

Best Book

• Music - Douglas Shadle: Orchestrating the Nation

  • This is an astonishing book by a brilliant scholar that, full disclosure, I now count as a friend and Price Fest colleague. Within minutes of my first session with this book, it was clear that virtually everything I thought I knew about 19th century American musical life was wrong. How could this be? Every serious musician should get the book and reckon with that question.

• Non-Music - Timothy Snyder: On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the 20th Century

  • If there was just one reading I’d ask every likeminded person to consider as we move into the turbulent waters of 2020 and beyond, it would be this one. It helped me reclaim the portion of my humanity that seemed to have gone adrift.

• Biography - Walter Isaacson: Steve Jobs

  • I am not a big biography fan, I don’t get into hero-worship, and Steve Jobs is not a good person. But this was the most riveting biography I’ve ever read. Possibly the only biography that I’ve read cover to cover. An astonishing tale of success, humiliation, and resilience. In short, a human story.

Best new composition

• Personal Premiere - Andrew Boss: Concerto For Alto Saxophone and Chamber Orchestra (2015)

  • What an unbelievable decade it was, filled from stem to stern with musical riches, most notably in the way of several dozen world premieres I had the privilege to conduct. It is hard to select just one work for special praise. But if I was forced to do so, the composition that comes immediately to mind was the Andrew Boss Saxophone Concerto. It also happened to be the one premiere which received a full length print review from the newspaper of record.

• Worldwide - John Luther Adams: Become Ocean

  • I thought this was one of the most profound additions to the orchestral repertoire in the past several decades. In pop culture news, hearing this work inspired Taylor Swift to make a huge contribution to the Nashville Symphony at the time.

Personal Highs and Lows

Lows

Lowest Trim Setting

I made a significant change up top this year and I quickly realized it was the right move.

Smallest Musicians Taught

Even during my public school teaching days, I only worked with grades 5 and up. That changed when I took a position as Music Director at Hunt’s Church in Towson, Maryland. This position included singing solos, leading the adult choir, chamber orchestra, and co-directing the children’s choir with my good friends and colleagues, Barbara Anastasion and Cheryl Warren. Teaching children as young as four years old introduced me to new challenges and perspectives. That experience, along with leading performances like our Schubert Mass in G with adult choir and orchestra will be deeply missed as I resigned in September.

Lowest Temperatures

This summer, I moved north to Pennsylvania to take a position at Susquehanna University. No one was more surprised than I that 2019 would contain a move. I was quite happy with all of the great things lined up, but incredibly, something terrific happened and I met a terrific group of students at Susquehanna University.

Moving to more moderate climes was also a definite plus for a Texan who has never had much of an appetite for hot, sticky summers!

Low Point

2019 wasn’t all fun and games. Early in the year, I was working with the York Symphony Orchestra as I have customarily for the past three seasons, and after walking back from dinner in a lovely snow flurry and heading downstairs to my dressing room, I slipped on the very first step and fell down an entire flight of stares. It was harrowing; I fortunately broke no bones. I did, however, herald the return of some back problems, the same ones that doctors have failed to adequately explain to me for some time. I was out of commission for two whole weeks and that issue has been followed by other occasional difficulties. Fortunately, the issues seem to be getting fewer and farther between as the year has progressed.

Lowest Elevation

I reached near sea level in my most recent visit to NYC, a brief visit in which I had the opportunity to take my own Dad, the man who introduced me to the music of Broadway, to his very first Broadway show. We went to see his selection, Oklahoma!, which was a modern production in the round with a highly diverse cast. The show had added resonance for me as a big fan of HBO’s Watchmen, which centers on Oklahoma and contained many musical Easter eggs, including naming one of the characters after the musical’s chief antagonist, Judd.

My actual trip to the beach this year was a magical one. I had the great privilege of spending a week touring the beaches of Maryland and Delaware, mostly spending time at the oceanfront condo of my good friend and sometimes artistic partner Diana Cantrelle and her husband Kevin Crysler. It is the first time in years that I have allowed myself to relax long enough to truly clear my mind and simply be. It was much needed ahead of a big move and preparations for this academic year. I was as fresh as ever.

Highs

Highest Symphony Number

After study at workshops and at the Peabody Conservatory, I took a crack at Haydn’s 104th Symphony in my first performance at Susquehanna University. I also decided in the final week to conduct from memory, marking the first occasion in my career that I left the podium off stage for an entire concert. I couldn’t remember how to conduct measure 2, but from then on, things ran smoothly!

First pLace

September opened with quite a bang: after semi-hiatus, Symphony Number One returned to premiere the music of Schoenberg alongside James Lee’s newest Chamber Symphony. Just two days before the first rehearsal, I learned that Symphony Number One had won first prize in The American Prize competition for professional orchestras for 2019. I also personally received Second Place in the professional conductor category.

Most Gratitude

I can remember plenty of times when I have felt like I put in the work but that the effort was undervalued and under-appreciated by those it was meant to benefit. It happens to us all. Not this year. I received some kind notes of thanks from performers across several performances, and I received a tremendous outpouring of love as I sadly left my positions at Hunt’s Church (mentioned above) as well as Frederick Regional Youth Orchestra. The gratitude was a two-way street, without a doubt. I especially miss getting to work with my big brother and guardian angel, Stephen Czarkowski on a weekly basis.

Top Tweet

Never in my imagination would my most popular all-time tweet be as unimportant and frivolous as this, but such is the internet. I certainly made use of this in one of the classes I teach when we reached the Reformation. I wish I knew who to credit!

New and Notable

Price fest

I still find it hard to believe that this time last year, I had only just barely mentioned to friends MK Raplinger and Ryan Ross that I was thinking of trying to get a group of people together to start a music festival named in honor of the great Florence Price. Flash forward to today and I am now just a small part of a grand enterprise to have a summer music festival dedicated to her music and legacy in the Washington, D.C. area. We are particularly grateful for the recent news that we will be partnering with the University of Maryland School of Music to present most festival offerings in neighboring College Park. Thanks to Marquese Carter, Doug Shadle, Patrick Warfield, and the many other terrific souls who have come together to help make this happen. We set sail on August 20-23, 2020.

SUSQUEHANNA University

As I mentioned above, I started work at Susquehanna University this past fall. Too many projects to name, but I do look forward to our next concert together featuring the music of Florence Price and Antonín Dvořák.

Hopkins Symphony Orchestra

I am currently in the middle of my second season as Assistant Conductor of the Hopkins Symphony Orchestra and Conductor of the Hopkins Concert Orchestra (the second orchestra in the program), but I had a tremendous opportunity to guest conduct the HSO this December.

Modern love

This was the first year of my 30’s that I was not in a serious relationship or dating heavily. Last year, I rang in the new year with a bud of new romance with a brilliant and attractive woman, but first she then I found that changes in employment were causing each of us to move one state over, each in the opposites direction. It just wasn’t meant to be.

Since then, though, I have gone on a couple of first dates, I have not been in a serious relationship, and I have been content with that arrangement. Truth be told, I have needed this year to be just what it has been, no more and no less. I have grown closer in many of my friendships and I have had more to devote to projects and people I believe in. L’amour will come again; of this I have no doubt.

Midwest Clinic

I had the privilege of presenting at The Midwest Clinic on a topic of deep concern and importance to me, that of diversity, equity, and inclusion in concert programming practices. I am also thankful that I was able to contribute to an article about it in The Instrumentalist. Chiefly, I want to see people going back to the beginning and discovering more great music by women and/or persons of color, etc. Besides connecting with old friends, I especially enjoyed the opportunity to finally connect with folks like Silas Nathanial Huff and Rob Deemer in the real world!