Žibuoklė Martinaitytė: Unexplainable Places
Growing up in Soviet-era Lithuania where people were often afraid to express their real feelings, Žibuoklė Martinaitytė discovered early on that music was safer than language and a realm where she could express her innermost feelings unedited. Now an international-acclaimed composer who spends a great deal of her time in the United States, she understands that music “surpasses words; it surpasses the meaning of words because it can go to unknown places and unexplainable places.”
Brandee Younger: A Hip-Hop Baby Transforms the Harp
Brandee Younger has carved out a very unlikely music career for herself, a classically-trained harpist who went from making her jazz debut over a decade ago to being an in-demand leader and collaborator in a wide range of musical genres.
Kevin Puts: Keeping Secrets
Composer Kevin Puts takes pride in keeping secrets, both by being understated in his interactions with people and by never initially giving away all the goods in his music, preferring, as he says, “to keep something in reserve so that there’s a payoff for the attentive listener.” But in this in-depth conversation he reveals some of the secrets about his Metropolitan Opera debut The Hours, his Pulitzer Prize-winning opera Silent Night, his symphony inspired by Björk’s album Vespertine, Contact (his triple concerto for Time for Three which just won the 2023 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition), and much more.
Tania León: The Rhythm of Life
The new music community has been impacted, inspired and transformed by Tania León as a musical creator–as well as an interpreter, educator, and organizer–for decades.
dublab - Composing for Film: A Conversation with Emily Rice
For this edition of dublab x New Music USA, join Elyn Kazarian and film composer Emily Rice as they discuss the process behind composing, collaborating with directors, finding your own voice, and ways to build a strong financial foundation. The first hour of the program will include a 30 minute mix of songs from various film scores composed by women.
Joy Guidry: Transforming Trauma through the Creative Process
Composer/Bassoonist Joy Guidry shares how they protect their own mental health while exploring personally traumatic content in their art.
Frank Ticheli: Overcoming Anxiety & Trusting the Subconscious
Composer Frank Ticheli shares his experience with Generalized Anxiety Disorder.
Anthony Davis: Any Means Necessary
For Anthony Davis, whose compositional aesthetics are an amalgamation of several different musical traditions (jazz, Western classical music, gamelan), different kinds of music recall different emotional states and experiences in terms of what the music implies. So it’s inevitable that he has devoted so much of his compositional energies to opera, and in particular to using the operatic medium to tell stories that either deal with significant historic events or which focus on important social concerns.
Sasha Cooke: Managing Imposter Syndrome & the Benefits of Couples Therapy
Mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke shares her experience of imposter syndrome, a feeling that one is not worthy or deserving of one’s success.
Myroslava Khomik: Creativity as Spiritual Work in Times of War
Ukrainian-born violinist Dr. Myroslava Khomik shares how anyone with creativity and compassion can work as a spiritual leader during times of global crisis.
Sarah Hennies: Getting at the Heart of a Sound
How we perceive sound on a psychological level as it unfolds over time is key to the sonic experiences that Sarah Hennies creates. Despite the extremely broad stylistic range of her output, everything from her early collaborative work as part of an experimental rock band to a multimedia documentary to extended duration solo and chamber music compositions for various instrumental combinations, it all shares a concern for extremely precise sonic gestures and involves a great deal of repetition. While Sarah Hennies prides herself on scores that are extremely economical (a score for a nearly 34-minute piece is a mere two pages), the sonorities feel extremely generous.
Creatives Care: How Therapy Enables Creativity & Finding Affordable Care
Psychiatrist Alana Mendelsohn, MD, PhD, Catherine Hancock, and Katya Gruzgliina share the mission of Creatives Care, which aims to partner artists with affordable mental health care providers and help individuals assess what kind of therapy might be right for their specific needs.
Alice Parker: Feeling the Same Emotion at the Same Time
Composer, arranger, conductor, and teacher Alice Parker has been a fixture of the choral music community since working with the legendary Robert Shaw Chorale when she was fresh out of college in the late 1940s. Parker has devoted herself almost exclusively to music for the voice, since she strongly believes that people find their common ground through singing together.
Andrew Norman: Anxiety & Creative Process
Composer Andrew Norman shares how his creative anxiety has led him into a current period of writer’s block.
Huang Ruo: Creating Four Dimensional Experiences
For Huang Ruo, music–like theater–exists in a four-dimensional space. There is also a larger purpose in most of Huang Ruo’s work, whether it is to call attention to stories of people, particularly Asians and Asian-Americans, whose voices have often not been heard, or to provide an environment for reflection and healing.
Ryan McAdams: How Myths of Artistic Leadership Fuel Destructive Behaviors
Conductor Ryan McAdams shares how the myth of the “ideal” conductor, perpetuated at conservatory and within Western culture, glorifies destructive lifestyles such as living in isolation, excessive behaviors, constant striving for perfection, appearing omniscient, and hiding all human vulnerabilities.
Adjusting Creativity During Times of Crisis
Julia Adolphe shares her strategies for continuing to write during a time of personal hardship and discusses the pressures and myths surrounding creating art in response to moments of crisis.
Matthew Aucoin: Risking Generosity
Among the recurring themes of our conversation with composer-pianist-conductor Matthew Aucoin was generosity and risk-taking, something that is in abundance in Aucoin’s own music as well as his personality. Over the course of an hour we talked about his opera Eurydice which was just performed at the Metropolitan Opera, the first commercial recording of his music, his just released new book about opera, The Impossible Art, which was also just released, his desire to develop new musical repertoire that addresses climate change, and much much more.
Trusting Your Voice with a Mental Illness
You need to trust your voice in your personal life in order to fully trust your creative voice and vision as an artist.
Maia Jasper White: How Crisis Changes Artistry
Maia Jasper White shares how her relationship to music-making changed as she cared for her young daughter, who underwent surgery for craniosynostosis and a subsequent period of PTSD.
Terri Lyne Carrington: A World of Sound Waiting for Us
Terri Lyne Carrington was practically born into jazz, but she is not a traditionalist. By embracing elements from rock, rhythm and blues, and hip-hop into her own compositions, she is making music that is very much about the present moment. And in founding the Berklee Institute for Jazz and Gender Justice and now partnering with New Music USA on the new Next Jazz Legacy program, Terri Lyne hopes to build a future that dismantles the jazz patriarchy and eliminates the gender imbalance among instrumentalists.
Letting Go Of Your Work
I reflect on why art is always imperfect and unpack a wave of anxiety that emerged for me while finishing a large-scale work.
Billy Childs: Creative Process, Internal Pressures & Racial Identity
Composer/pianist Billy Childs shares the impact of the pandemic and systemic racism in America on his creativity and how he returns to his writing process with practice and persistence.
Dale Trumbore: Recognizing Anxiety, Creating with Empathy
Composers and best friends Dale Trumbore and Julia Adolphe discuss living with anxiety disorders and writing during a pandemic.