Category: Video

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BAMA@30

The Birmingham Art Music Alliance (BAMA) is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. One part of the celebration is a series of virtual concerts. The first one dropped on Friday, October 10 and features music by Cynthia Miller, Shane Lamb and me.

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Future virtual concerts will premiere every Friday afternoon. Over 100 composers have been active in BAMA during its 30 years of supporting new music in Alabama. So there’s a wide range of interesting pieces to come: chamber music, solo piano, improvisations, electronics, and more. Follow B’ham Art Music Alliance on YouTube to see them all.

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Field Song at Flyover Fest

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Field Song, a docu-poem short film featuring the poetry of Hannah Drake with the (Un)Known Project will be screened Saturday as part of the 2025 Flyover Film Festival in Louisville, Kentucky. I composed the score to the film along with vocalist Jamilah Cooper. A great group of collaborators led this project: Barbara Jane Brickman, John Haley and Catherine Roach.

Saturday, July 26, 2025 3pm
Flyover Film Festival
Speed Art Museum
South 3rd Street
Louisville KY

Field Song is in excellent company for the rest of Saturday’s program: Appalshop, Freeman Vines, Berea College, and more. I wish I could be there in person!

By the way, Field Song was a finalist at the International Poetry Film Festival in Los Angeles.

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Twelfth Day of Christmas

It’s Epiphany, the last day of Christmas, so it’s my last chance this season to share the Composer’s Voice Holiday Show presented by Vox Novus.

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My banjo tune “Shepherd’s Crook” kicks it off. Stay tuned for vocal music, chamber music, arrangements of holiday favorites, and even a piece by Stockhausen!

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Smoot’s Good Foot

Here’s a funky tune from my recent collaboration with fiddler, Esther Morgan-Ellis. We’ve been working for the last year on a group of new old-time tunes. We’ve performed them in a series of concerts beginning in Spring 2024, and we plan to release a recording of them soon. Here’s a performance of my tune “Smoot’s Good Foot” from our concert at the University of North Georgia, Dahlonega.

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Smoot’s Good Foot; Esther Morgan-Ellis, fiddle; Holland Hopson, banjo

Here’s the tablature for the banjo part and a representative melody line.

Download Tablature for Smoot’s Good FootDownload

Notes About This Tune

  • “Smoot’s Good Foot” is in D, played in Double D tuning (aDADE) using the clawhammer style.
  • This is a deeply crooked tune that nonetheless has a great groove.
  • I usually play the quieter, groovier, unpredictable A part as many times as I like, before signaling to move to the louder, straighter B part.
  • Esther and I have been playing “Smoot’s Good Foot” as the closing tune for a set.
  • The tune gets its name from MIT student Oliver R. Smoot, for whom the smoot unit of measure was named. See Robert Tavernor’s Smoot’s Ear: The Measure of Humanity for more.

Give the tune a try, and add a comment to let me know what you think!