Composing?? You must be kidding.

This June I will be back in Moscow to record with the Russian Philharmonic. We got two grants to record a CD with music of Samuel Barber: his Piano Concerto, the Souvenirs (a delightful ballet), The Hand of Bridge (a short chamber opera) and four songs never previously recorded. It will be great to do this project, especially since it will involve some great friends: Carl Cranmer, Randy Scarlata, and Emily Bullock. Since I am there already, I thought I would record some new American works, to go along with the Concerto for Brass by Stephen Limbaugh. I asked several composers whose music I particularly like, and only Larry Nelson has responded with a resounding "Yes." So, what the heck, if nobody is interested in having their music recorded by a fantastic orchestra, I decided to write a song cycle for baritone and orchestra. By the way, I never composed before. And crazy as I am, I want to get it written and recorded in two months.
I started last week, with an eventual middle song - a Vocalise, inspired by the homonym by Rachmaninov. I think it would greatly match Randy's beautiful voice. It is a melismatic (obviously) incantation, with a Middle Eastern feel, and spacious discourse. I felt like "E" so it is in a modal E. It changes here and there. I got about 5 minutes of the piece sketched out. Now the annoying part, I tried to use the Sibelius notation system today and it was painful. It took me 20 minutes to figure out how to write a triplet. In the end I got about 20 measures orchestrated, but I hate the sound - it's minimalistic (not animalistic, come on, be serious). I have to go back and redo the whole thing, simplify it. I got some tone colors in my head, chords in the woodwinds doubled by the piano, harp, pedal E's and a Mark tree coloring the silence here and there. If you don't know what that is, research it.
I'll try to keep you updated about how it goes. Hopefully I can pull it through.
Wish me good luck.