Back to Wyoming: Recording Session, Part One

After months of planning, my CD recording project is off and running! In early July, I travelled to Laramie, Wyoming with Mark Bunce, my recording engineer to begin part one of my upcoming CD recording release. Two major works will provide the substance for this project that will also be released on CD and to selected streaming services sometime in 2024.

On the campus of the University of Wyoming, we met up with the Helios Trio to record While I Run this Race, for violin, cello and piano. Commissioned by the Helios Trio and the Wyoming Music Teachers Association (WMTA), While I Run this Race is a programmatic theme and variations composition, based on the African American spiritual, Guide My Feet While I Run this Race. The spiritual was also heard prominently during the Civil Rights era. The Helios Trio premiered the work at the annual conference of the WMTA in June of 2021.

While I Run this Race is cast in 6 movements; all were successfully recorded in a series of intense sessions that took place on July 11-12 on the campus of the University of Wyoming. Work on editing the takes from this session will take place in the months to come. The next recording session will take place at Stone Soup Studios in Maumee, Ohio, where Langston's Lot, my song-cycle for tenor voice, alto saxophone and piano will be recorded. This work features seven movements, based on the poetry of American poet Langston Hughes.

My thanks to John Fadial, violin, Beth Vanderborgh, cello, and Chi-Chen Wu, piano, for their tremendous work on a very challenging and difficult piece. Their hard work and artistry throughout this process has been extraordinary! My thanks also to Mark Bunce, for his skilled work as our recording engineer, working so comfortably in unfamiliar surroundings. And a shout out to John Wilhelm, from the staff of the School of Music at the University of Wyoming, for helping us find our way around the technical resources that we needed to use in the performance hall. What a great team!

From left: Mark Bunce, Chi-Chen Wu, John Fadial, Beth Vanderborgh, Doug, John Wilburn