Leaving the Studio

There is a strange moment in every project that I have come to appreciate.

For weeks, sometimes months, a piece exists almost entirely in my own imagination. I live with it, question it, rewrite it, and gradually learn what it's trying to become.

Then the score leaves my studio.

From that moment on, the piece no longer belongs only to me.

I don't send a score because it's finished. I send it because it has reached the point where it needs other ears.

The performers begin asking questions. They notice details I hadn't considered. Sometimes they confirm an idea. Sometimes they hear possibilities I never imagined.

The arrangement I shared this week is based on my mini-opera A Girl Who Missed the Train. Like the original version, there are moments that intentionally invite interpretation. I left questions throughout the score—not because I hadn't made up my mind, but because I wanted to invite the performers into the conversation and hear how the piece would grow through them.

One of the things I value most about collaboration is that it reminds me a piece doesn't stop growing when it leaves my studio.

Sometimes that's exactly when a new stage of its life begins.