What Did You Do Today at Jeffey's House?

Tom Bacon is a fine horn player and a fairly wild guy. The first time I wrote for him was when he was in Metamorphosis (nee Symphonic Metamorphosis), a rock group made up of musicians in the Detroit Symphony Orchestra; that piece was Requiem Mantras. Then, when Tom quit the orchestra to begin a solo career, he commissioned and premiered my horn concerto, "Pentangle" (he said he didn?t want just a regular concerto, which is why, in addition to more straightforwardly serious music, the piece features a movement in which the soloist performs magic tricks and another in which he sings). When Tom decided to put together an album of horn music for kids, he realized that the main stumbling block was a complete lack of repertoire. When he contacted me about writing something, I told him I couldn?t make any promises, but eventually ideas began accruing. Tom has played in jazz bands as well as symphony orchestras, a fact that certainly influenced the last movement. Although the various activities alluded to in the movement titles are based on general rather than specific memories, the choice of a name was not haphazard; Jeff Pilat was one of my very best friends when I was eight to eleven years old. The work was finished on July 29, 1988. The first performance took place at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis on October 14, 1988; Thomas Bacon was accompanied at the piano by Brian Connelly.