Douglas Detrick

Nate Wooley and Carol Robinson at the Outset Series

I heard Nate Wooley and Carol Robinson perform music by Eliane Radigue at the Creative Music Guild‘s Outset Series tonight, and the gentle, subtle humming and thrumming of the sounds these musicians produced has me feeling very thoughtful. Here are ...

Interview with Christian Wolff

Sometimes you just get lucky. I was honored to interview the one and only Christian Wolff for Nate Wooley’s Sound American music journal. In all my experience with Christian, some of which I wrote about here, I’ve found him to be very ...

Learning Across Artistic Disciplines: Improvising at Performance NW’s FANFare

There is so much to learn from working artists from other disciplines. Last Saturday I improvised accompaniments to dance at Performance Works NW with Luke Gutsgell, Ben Kates, Danielle Ross, Noel Plemmons, and Elise Knudsen. Linda Austin, the owner and ...

The Bright and Rushing World Released!

I’m happy to announce that my fourth album as a composer and leader, The Bright and Rushing World, is now released. There’s much more information on AnyWhen Ensemble’s new website including program notes on the music, our tour dates ...

AnyWhen Ensemble at the Rubin Museum: The Path Leads Here

Even when the art we make is sacred, we artists are still just regular people. And we have been for generations. In anticipation of our concert at the Rubin Museum on January 17th, I took a guided tour of its collection last September. I was struck by the ...

Tribute to Nelson Mandela: Hugh Masekela’s “Bring Him Back Home”

After the death of Nelson Mandela, there have been many tributes paid to this hero of the South African anti-Apartheid movement, and the global fight for equality. Since I heard Hugh Masekela’s “Bring Him Back Home” I’ve been ...

A Hoping for Peace: Pax vobiscum

The word premiere of Sidney Marquez Boquiren’s Pax vobiscum on our concert tonight at the San Francisco Center for New Music makes this a special landmark for the group. This is the first piece that we’ve commissioned for the group since the early days of ...

Galloping Gertie: Telling the story of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge

The castles of sound that we musicians build always fade away at the end of the concert, but at least we don’t have to worry about them crashing down in the wind. The thousands of tons of twisting and bucking metal of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in its ...

Party in Pardeeville: My Community Band Debut

As a (mostly) professional musician, I’m used to watching other professionals keep a perfect, expressionless face when they make mistakes. And I do it too. (Maybe I do it a lot.) Its part of being a professional — we can’t let on that we made a ...

Grant Writing Basics: Finding Individual Arts Grants that Fit

As I’ve said before, grants shouldn’t be the only way you raise money — think of them as “part of this complete breakfast” of fundraising tools. But, a grant can provide a big chunk of cash that would allow you to undertake projects that would have ...