Publishing Inanna on my website

I can publish the score and upload the Sibelius music files on my website... this has just occurred to me today! 50 tracks of music and God knows how many pages of music - full score and piano reduction - all up there for people to check out.

Especially useful as I am about to advertise for singers. Thy can go print off the music - listen to the files - research the history of the piece... it all makes sense!

I finished the layout of Act 2 yesterday - and now just the parts of Act 2 left. Phew! Will be going through the piano reduction again with Alex tomorrow evening. We're getting to the stage soon where we'll be ready for printing. Another odyssey in itself no doubt! Each stage has had it's epic trials to over come I can tell you! I got a feeling today that the worst is behind me. That the fun can really start now. I've put in the work and now the path is clear for some collaborative creativity, music making and project development research - yes - another odyssey awaits.. !

The Descent of Inanna - My journey to make this Opera happen again.

I'd like to use this blog to record the progress of my work on relaunching a production of my first opera Inanna. Now retitled The Descent of Inanna (Inanna for short!). This piece was first performed in 1992 at the ICA in London and you can see it's history, since then, on my website. However what you can't see - is it's future. Since May 2005 I have been quietly thinking about, and working, on this piece. It has been a slow, joyful, yet labourious journey to get to where I am today, one and a half years later. I decided, with the encouragement and belief of conductor Alex Ingram, that the piece needed reworking. It also needed rescoring. It also needed a new piano reduction, and - it also needed a good audio demo for prospective supporters.

All these stages have been achieved - almost. I am in the final throes of finishing the score and piano reduction and then proof reading both of these will take place. Meanwhile I have also created an audio version of the piece using Sibelius software. The audio demo is pretty good - I used Garritan Personal Ochestra and Kontakt Gold together to get the best results I could. I won't go on about the whole Sibelius side as that has been quite a steep learning curve in it's own right - and I'd prefer to keep this to things of general interest and not get too geeky.

Tonight Alex is coming round again - as he has been tirelessly over the last year - working at various stages on the orchestration, the layout, the piano reduction, the audio etc with me. Without his help I wouldn't have been able to get this far. It was a massive task - what I thought might take three months - has taken - in terms of labour - a solid year. This evening we are going through the piano reduction and with his brilliant piano playing skills he is helping me tidy up the piano part. No small task - it's 350 pages of A4. He has gone through my piano writing with a fine tooth comb and spotted many corners that could be rewritten more effectively. We are now also adding a lot more phrasing and sluring to the vocal lines - which we will then transfer over to the full score. The overal pharasing of the piano writing too will form a reference for any parts of the full score which I missed on the three trawls through it bar by bar that i have already done.

We managed 26 pages (from the 350) in two and a half hours last night - so it will be slow work. Hopefully we'll speed up!

Then another visit back to the full score to transfer all updated phrasing from the piano reduction. Meanwhile - I still have to finish the layout the full score - Act 2, Act 1 is done - and also the parts layout for Act 2, again Act 1 is done.

On top of this I have decided that, despite the pretty good result I got from Sibelius, I will be making a live recording of 20 minute of the piece as a better representation of the music than any computer could ever muster. That's the plan! And the recording dates are set for April 2 and 3.

Watch this space to find out how I get on - week by week as the final stages of this initial first stage in making this piece come alive again - actually happens!


jenni-roditi.com

Jenni Roditi.com