Category: Conversations

Pianist and composer Michael Djupstrom may have been born in 1980, but don’t come to his work expecting trendy, genre-bending, “I want my MTV!” sonic pop-culture references.

“Well, we didn’t have cable,” Djupstrom teases. He also didn’t have musician-parents to guide him, and his own conservative classical training was provided by the public school system and the town’s local organist—largely revolving around Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms. Though he had plenty of opportunity to expand his listening while earning his undergrad and graduate degrees at the University of Michigan, in the end he came back to a fairly straight-ahead style of composing music.

Michael Djupstrom Photo by Molly Sheridan Listen Up Hug your grandma, eat your turkey, and then tune in to Counterstream Radio at 9 p.m. on November 22, when Djupstrom will tell us more about his approach to writing music and share concert performances of his work. If the tryptophan puts you to sleep before the show, don’t worry—you can catch a reprise broadcast of the program on November 25 at 3 p.m. Listen to a sample of the interview right now.

“When I was a student, I was deliberately trying to stretch boundaries a lot and experimenting,” he explains. “But honestly, I think just in terms of the music that I respond immediately to as a listener, as a performer, as a musician, is music that’s more traditional, frankly.”

Djupstrom, who is now facing the very traditional problem of being a young composer and performer picking up a variety of jobs while establishing himself, says that he appreciates the many musical roles he plays. “I wouldn’t be the kind of person who can sit in a room all day long and compose and compose and compose, let’s say ten hours a day—or even six hours a day—every single day. And if I didn’t have some other aspect of my musical life that kept me so busy, I wouldn’t be able to deal with it.”

When he is at work on a piece, collaborative ventures keep him from feeling isolated. Djupstrom has found himself to be a particular fan of text setting, which allows him to step into a world created by another artist. “The fact that a piece [of poetry] is finished usually suggests a lot of things to you when you’re trying to set it to music,” he says. The challenges of working with such a fixed object can provide inspiration, but it can also be painfully limiting. Djupstrom stumbled upon the ideal combination while paired with the poet Michelle Deatrick in a workshop setting. “I remember when I was composing it, I couldn’t get a certain stanza to work—I just couldn’t do it…it sounded great when you read it, but every time I’d try and compose it, the climax needed to come now, but I still had another stanza to get out of the way.”

So he called her up. “I said, ‘You know, Michelle, can we just cut that?’ And she thought yeah, okay, that’s fine. And it was that easy.”

The process is not always so effortless.

“This summer I did a Neruda setting and there was a stanza I really wanted to cut,” Djupstrom admits. “But he couldn’t be reached.”

“I should probably tell you, I don’t really like talking about my music,” Anna Clyne shyly confesses partway through our interview. The British-born, New York-based composer is laughing and gamely trying to answer my questions, but the whole exercise is clearly starting to wear her out.

Anna Clyne Photo courtesy of the composer Listen to a sample of her interview on Counterstream Radio.

“It’s a strange thing when you put something out there,” she explains. “I’m in the middle of a piece right now, and when you’re writing, you’re absolutely in that world. For me, every part of me is in that piece. So it’s a very concentrated period of time when I’m writing. And then that’s it; I move on and I give the same commitment and energy to the next piece. So it’s interesting to have this conversation, to be reflecting back on these other pieces and to actually see that there is a common thread going. But generally I’m not really a backwards thinker. I’m more of a ‘what’s coming next’.”

Clyne (b. 1980), who picked up a bachelor of music degree with honors from Edinburgh University and a master of music degree from the Manhattan School of Music, has capitalized on that forward-looking focus, successfully exploring and integrating electronic, small ensemble, and full-orchestra sound palettes in a range of situations—from collaborations with choreographer Kitty McNamee and her Hysterica Dance Company to reading sessions with the Minnesota Orchestra and commissions from Carnegie Hall and the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

Though you might say that Clyne’s deft hand at writing for electro-acoustic combinations is what sets her apart, the mix of sounds has always worked quite naturally in her ear. “I don’t think I’ve ever thought of electronics and acoustic music as being two separate things,” she says. “I think sometimes I’ll lean more to one side—it could be the extreme being tape and the other side being an orchestra—but when you’re composing, you’re painting with sounds. So if it’s in ProTools with samples or it’s on a score with instruments, to me, I treat it the same way. It’s a visual representation of sound. So, for me, they’re really not that different, and they’re both really exciting.”

Admittedly, though, facing 80 people on a stage is quite different from rows of multi-colored tracks on a computer screen. “Definitely, a huge learning curve because [when working with an orchestra] you have to be as specific as you can be, and there’s very little time for editing. The luxury of electronic music is that you can really have 100 percent control. With the orchestra, you really have to know what you want.”

For reasons both aesthetic and financial, a number of 21st-century opera composers are leaving fantastic visions of Zeffirelli productions behind. Instead, they are focusing on creating penetrating stage shows that draw on the versatile talents of smaller ensembles which encompase a range of performance disciplines. Audience reaction to their work has shown that you can indeed take the elephant and all three tons of scenery off the stage and still capture ears and eyes with piercing effect.

Garrett Fisher Photo by Molly Sheridan Listen Up Tune in to Counterstream Radio at 9 p.m. on September 27, when we’ll talk with Garrett Fisher about the challenges of writing an opera in the 21st century, the perks of West Coast living, and listen to excerpts from his commercially recorded The Passion of St. Thomas More. Catch a reprise broadcast of the program on September 30 at 3 p.m. Listen to a sample of the show right now.

Among this slice of operatic visionaries is Seattle-based composer and sometimes-librettist Garrett Fisher. Deeply influenced by Asian and Middle Eastern timbres and acting styles, Fisher has created nearly a dozen mixed-media stage shows which integrate his own myriad influences along with those of his many collaborators. Under the umbrella of The Fisher Ensemble, the performers have staged productions that fluidly incorporate dancers and mask-makers, film and recorded sound, and instruments that span the globe.

Fisher says success in this situation requires more than the technical talents of the artists. “The performers have to be able to be very spontaneous. They have to be trained singers or musicians, but they also have to be able to sort of break from the tradition in terms of repeating what’s on the page and feel free to try out new things.”

It’s a way of working, however, that also requires a particular openness on the part of the composer once the initial composition is given over to the performers. “When it’s not [a mistake] and they’re just really trying something new, the control freak inside of me wants to reach out and slap them, but then the other part of me is like, wait, that was pretty cool,” Fisher explains. “They usually get so inside the part and they’re so talented that they somehow pull it off.”

The perfect entry point into The Fisher Ensemble’s work perhaps comes through Fisher’s The Passion of Saint Thomas More, first presented in 1995. Rather than a literal telling of events—More refused to sanction Henry VIII’s denial of the authority of the Pope and was beheaded for high treason—Fisher’s one-hour long piece forgoes the hows and whys and instead serves more as a post-minimalist and ritualistic meditation on the final hours of More’s life. “What I’m really interested in,” Fisher says, “and what I have always been interested in is where a narrative coincides with music. And the way I approach it is not necessarily the traditionally operatic way where you have a story you’re telling and then here’s a leitmotif that fits with this character and in Act 3 such-and-such happens. I’m more interested in the structure of an overall musical progression or an idea that develops, and how that kind of parallels or works with the storyline.”

Kathy Hanson as Thomas More Photo courtesy of Nayia Frangouli; headpiece by Louise McCagg

The ensemble has continued to refine that structural pairing, and a critically-praised recording was released on the BIS label out of Sweden in 2001. Though Fisher says the recording can be viewed as an ideal version of the piece, the show really must be seen to be fully appreciated. The singers each wear a striking headpiece (see photo at left) designed by Louise McCagg and incorporate stylized movement to express the inner emotions of their characters. The combined effect reinforces the internal focus of the material. Fisher hopes this allows the listener to see the piece “as a large meditation, in a way. It’s very dramatic; it’s not like a meditation where you’re sitting in a corner like a Zen monk or something, but it’s the type where you’re kind of immersed in this question and the music takes you different places.”

To achieve that, a literal play-by-play is not the point. “For me what I find really attractive about a story like that is that simple conflict, the choice, what it comes down to: the line that’s drawn. Do you cross it? Do you not? And what I hope is that, because it’s so simple, that it will offer the audience the chance to kind of fill in the blanks.”

Earlier this month, Chris Tignor stopped by to talk about his electronic chamber ensemble Slow Six’s new album, Nor’easter, just out on New Albion. As it turned out, it was an interview that began not with a question from me, but a clarification from Chris related to a couple of articles I’d previously written about the band.

Slow Six Photo by Katya Pronin Nor’easter personnel: Christopher Tignor, violin and software instruments Stephen Griesgraber, electric guitar David Nadal, electric guitar Leanne Darling, viola Aaron Jackson, grand piano and fender rhodes Rob Collins, fender rhodes and grand piano Marlan Barry, cello Maxim Moston, violin Brett Omara-Campbell, violin

“Both times [you’ve] mentioned the word ‘pedigree’ when describing my academic background,” noted Tignor, who has studied at Bard, NYU, and Princeton (Oops, I did it again. I just can’t help myself). Indeed, I was guilty as charged; I’d been trying to give readers a sense of the man behind a project that clearly exhibited both indie rock and art music influences.

“I was a literature major at Bard and I have a computer science masters from NYU. A few years ago I was blessed with the opportunity to go through the music composition program at Princeton, but you know, before like, a few years ago, I had exactly zero formal music-writing training ever. So I don’t know if my pedigree is as good as you give me credit for.”

As I learned during our talk for this week’s Spotlight Session on Counterstream Radio, Tignor had been playing the violin since he was young, but his earliest music theory lessons came out of a textbook he started reading during downtime while working as a sound engineer at CBGB. Whether his formal schooling had been dedicated to music study or not, however, I’d argue that his educational pedigree still holds up quite nicely, especially when you want to dig into the ways Slow Six has integrated computers/live electronic processing in its music, as well as the ways they’ve skirted the usual post-conservatory new music performance track.

Though Tignor writes the majority of the music performed by Slow Six, the compositional process is only beginning when he first presents his ideas to the band. The project is intentionally set up to allow plenty of opportunity for Tignor to tweak the electronics and the score, both during rehearsals and after live performances. It also offers the performers the opportunity to live with the parts and make suggestions of their own. That process might go on for a year or more before the band even thinks about going into the studio.

According to Tignor, “We’re just really into capturing the sound of the band as a group of players that really knows and has become hands-on with the music, as opposed to a sort of paid, three-rehearsal thing with brilliant players who come in, learn their parts, and then cut the recording.”

Unconventional ways of working do keep them out of the traditional new music venues in New York, however. “I can probably count on three fingers the number of times some well established organization has reached out to us, and we hustle,” says Tignor. “We’re working, but we have had to do it ourselves.”

Welcome to Spotlight Session, a new monthly NewMusicBox/Counterstream Radio special feature. Each month we’ll profile a composer or performer here in the Box, and we invite you to then tune in to Counterstream to hear several musical selections and a conversation with the artist.

John Morton Photo by Molly Sheridan

Composer John Morton suspects that most of us carry an early sonic memory tied to a music box—perhaps one featuring a plastic ballerina en pointe, spinning around to a cloying soundtrack of “When You Wish Upon a Star.” But he was not a particular fan of the little automated music players when his wife, the sculptor Jacqueline Shatz, first asked him to take a break from his orchestral and chamber music composing in order to help her with a project that was to incorporate the child’s toy. That opportunity to compose his own music using the little machines opened up a sound world in which he has since made himself quite at home. He has taken the timbre of the plucked metal tines of a music box and—by juxtaposing them, electronically processing them, and physically altering them—discovered a very personal vernacular.

His new album, Solo Traveler: Music for Music Boxes (Innova), reveals some of the sonic possibilities Morton has discovered buried inside these simple machines. “I really love experimenting and going as far as it can go in terms of sound quality. If there’s that innocent sound, I want to go to the opposite extreme which is a loud, distorted, sort of numbing sound. And everything in between attracts me as well.”

Morton takes a certain pleasure in finding new ways to pair and modify the music boxes in order to create the sounds he wants for a particular work, but says he’s actually not much of a craftsperson, or at least not an overly perfectionistic one. “I’m very impatient,” he explains, “so while I do like doing things that involve tinkering, my thing is, if I have to do a job, I’ll have to do it twice: the first time to learn how to do it and make all the mistakes and the second time to do it right.”

In addition to altering the music boxes physically, he also works with electronics and Max/MSP when composing a new piece. The resulting sounds often do conjure a certain childhood innocence, but they can also rattle the ear as if a gamelan ensemble were leveraging a full-on sonic assault. For his part, Morton serves as more of a music box shaman than a dictator.

“When I sit down with my Dremel and my files and my drills and create the music boxes, they speak to me of what the piece needs at that point,” he says. “It’s sort of old fashioned; you have the germ or the little phrase that you want to nurse through a piece of music. Well, with these music boxes, I sort of want to nurse them and take them where they wanted to go, but they were just innocent little music boxes.”