In 1995, the Dia Foundation commissioned an internet project from Vitaly Komar and Alex Melamid. These artists created a survey in which they asked participants from various countries what they like most and least in art. The duo then created paintings to these specifications, the Most Wanted and the Most Unwanted paintings for fourteen countries. An additional Komar and Melamid survey about music led to the creation of a Most Wanted and Most Unwanted song by David Soldier.
While the popular music of the United States seemed to be everywhere in Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay, the significant cultural legacies of these three nations have had too small an impact on us. Yet considering that their histories mirror our own in many aspects, there is a great deal we could and should learn from these places.
I don’t believe that music, as it exists in our world today, is a language in the true sense of the word—that it’s capable of communicating any part of our thoughts or intentions with any level of precision. But I do think that, like language, music is culturally significant and “belongs” to societal units (villages, tribes, institutions, etc.) and enhances our ability to communicate.
Recently Anne Midgette, the Washington Post music critic, published a thought-provoking article (complete with video) and related blog post about introducing contemporary concert music to folks who did not know where to start listening. I have an alternative that I would humbly submit: introduce the uninitiated not to composers, but to chamber ensembles.
Instead of jumping right into a graduate program after finishing my bachelor’s degree, I felt a little world experience might do me well. Oh, trust me, I was going to continue my education. I just needed a break for a year or so to really figure some things out. So, what’s a recent grad with a BM in composition to do? Teach English in Japan, duh.
Classically trained violinists are, generally speaking, a focused breed accustomed to long hours in the practice room refining a phrase down to static perfection. This is perhaps what makes the Oberlin and Juilliard-trained violinist Jennifer Choi’s seemingly voracious appetite to try new things so striking. From Brahms to improv to serving as the concertmaster for the pit orchestra of South Pacific, Choi seems unable, or at least unwilling, to sit still.
From August 18-21, 2011, over 500 taiko enthusiasts gathered at the eighth biennial North American Taiko Conference sponsored by the Japanese American Cultural & Community Center, organized by the Northern California Taiko Network and San Jose Taiko, with support from Stanford University.
File this one under “only on the internet”: My Better Half and I were looking over a textbook she’ll be using next semester. We noted that this book instructs students to analyze cadential 6-4 chords as tonic chords in second inversion, a gravely misguided message which—according to our core beliefs and values—hurts America: The cadential 6-4 is a dominant chord with a double suspension; its root is V, not I. That’s just how ordinary Minnesotans like us see things.
The second piece of Nate Wooley’s planned seven-part Seven Storey Mountain cycle dropped on Important records last week. It is a haunting, often aggressive sound world that moves from a place of chilled droning into a pummeling chaos, before returning to a stressed restraint reminiscent of the work’s opening moments. After listening to the work, all I wanted to do was have a conversation with him about the music that was ultimately created. Luckily for me, he was game for a little Q&A.
The upcoming 10th anniversary of September 11th looms large, with plans for memorials and television specials already underway. Like so many in New York and across the nation, deep personal memories are rooted in the day, and for me, some powerful ones connected to choral moments. So I was interested to learn about the world premiere of Philadelphia-based composer Bob Moran’s Trinity Requiem, commissioned by Trinity Wall Street, the Ground Zero church, for their youth chorus.
This summer, I’ve been fortunate enough to spend time at two different artists’ colonies: the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Ragdale Foundation. These communities provide composers and other creative types with a studio, a place to sleep, and meals. I find them to be an ideal place for me to produce new music and to connect with the greater artistic community.
One of the great things about playing music like this is how the performers leave the concert with new eyes and ears. Although Harvey Sorgen and I have known about each other for a while, we had never played together before (that I can remember, anyway) and we both found ourselves playing things we normally wouldn’t in a “free-jazz” setting. Part of that was each of us just seeing what the other would do when presented with an impromptu “motive” and part was the discovery of what we can do well together.
When I was compiling the list of questions I wanted to ask composers during this interview project, I knew ahead of time that I wouldn’t have to worry about whether or not the artist would have an answer for most of them; process, titles, business, self-doubt—these are topics to which any composer is going to have some type of response. The one question I really wasn’t sure about was what kind of relationship, if any, the composer had with their community.
In just three years, the fledgling Chicago-based EveryPeople Workshop has asked this question about the jazz quartet, the big band, The Nutcracker, and the string quartet, and there is more to come. The EveryPeople Workshop is a collective arts organization formed by Mikel Avery with the assistance of Nick Gajewski, and Nick Mazzarella to produce the original artistic work of its members and to build community through creativity.
It’s one of those things that doesn’t occur to you until it does: For a bunch of musicians, my musician friends and I don’t often make music together. Maybe it’s a symptom of the academic specialization I noted last week; when we think of collaboration, it’s typically in a cross-disciplinary context. But a few opportunities for collaboration among composers (rather than between composers and choreographers or sculptors or whatever) in my circle are beginning to coalesce, and it’s a development that I find very exciting.
The mind boggles that it has taken nearly 70 years—and a year after the William Schuman centenary in 2010—for there to be a commercially available recording of Schuman’s A Free Song, the first composition to win the Pulitzer Prize in Music back in 1943. Yet this summer has seen the release of not one, but two “world premiere recordings” of A Free Song, both from groups based in Illinois.
On Sunday, The Guardian newspaper in London published this story, detailing some very sad consequences for the new music community. The flutist Carla Rees, a true friend of experimental music, had her residence burned to the ground, and in the process lost her two cats, 10 flutes—several of which were specifically designed for her—and her library of over 600 scores, including many originals of works commissioned by her and her ensemble, rarescale.
Last Monday I went to hear yet another concert at University of the Streets. This time, though, I had no reason to be there other than to watch and listen to the group headed by guitarist/composer Omar Tamez of Monterrey, Mexico. The 37-year old Tamez is a moving force in the Mexican music scene. For the last fifteen years he has led the Non-Jazz Ensemble, a group with a varied personnel and repertoire.
As I’ve been asking composers what their creative process is, I’ve noticed a curious pattern related to orchestration. Most experienced composers tend to put the specific and painstakingly complex task of orchestration on the back end of their process, waiting until the piece in the abstract is sketched out (especially if it is a large ensemble work, where they have a great deal of timbral flexibility). Even those who feel comfortable composing “direct to score” on a large work will wait until they have a very good sense of what the piece is about conceptually before making orchestration decisions.
On Tuesday night, I attended a performance by Mantra Percussion of Michael Gordon’s new work Timber. I entered the Apple store on Broadway feeling slightly harried, with a million different things on my mind, and an hour later I left feeling as if all that junk in my head had been emptied out and replaced with a wonderful sense of peacefulness.
Meet The Composer has announced the projects and awardees for three of its core programs: Commissioning Music/USA, the Cary New Music Performance Fund, and Van Lier Fellowships. This year, MTC will award $210,000 to 18 soloists and organizations for the commission of 18 new works through Commissioning Music/USA, $220,000 in general operating support to 51 New York City-based new music ensembles through the Cary New Music Performance Fund, and two $8,000 Van Lier Fellowships for a grand total of $446,000 towards the advancement of new music.
I routinely receive emails (often from younger or beginning composers) asking me what equipment I use for such-and-such, and while some pieces of equipment are more necessary than others I always write back trying to find out what that composer has available, now. Waiting until we have the “right” equipment to start can be a form of procrastination and a missed opportunity to discover our own resourcefulness.
There are few opportunities these days to hear live performances of the deeply felt, sonorously shaped music of the New England composer Walter Piston. His colleague Aaron Copland called Piston “one of the most expert craftsmen American music can boast,” which has become a standard assessment. It has also boxed him in. While intended as a compliment, this appraisal suggests Piston to be something of a technocrat, a musician of the mind rather than the heart. This impression is far from the case.