Category: Headlines

2016 NEA Jazz Masters Announced

Posted on October 22, 2015 by NewMusicBox Staff - Headlines, Ledes

The National Endowment for the Arts will honor four jazz leaders–three musicians and an advocate–with the 2016 NEA Jazz Masters award for their significant accomplishments in the field. The 2016 honorees are: jazz fusion progenitor and educator Gary Burton whose four-mallet technique on the vibraphone has given the instrument a fuller, more piano-like sound than the traditional two-mallet approach; Grammy Award-winning saxophonist and composer Pharoah Sanders who is known for his distinctive sound marked by overblowing, harmonic, and multiphonic techniques; saxophonist, composer and educator Archie Shepp, best known for his Afrocentric music of the late 1960s, whose long career as an educator has focused on history of African-American music from its origins in Africa to its current state; and Wendy Oxenhorn, executive director and vice chairman of the Jazz Foundation of America, an organization that is committed to providing jazz and blues musicians with financial, medical, housing, and legal assistance as well as performance opportunities, with a special focus on the elderly and veterans who have paid their dues and find themselves in crisis due to illness, age, and/or circumstance.

The NEA Jazz Masters award is the highest honor that our nation bestows in the field of jazz and includes a cash award of $25,000 and an award ceremony and celebratory concert, among other activities. As part of the National Endowment for the Arts’ 50th anniversary events, the annual NEA Jazz Masters celebration will take place in April 2016 in the nation’s capital, in collaboration with the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. More details are available on the NEA’s website.

(–from the press release)

Musical America Announces Recipients of Its 2016 Awards

Posted on October 15, 2015 by NewMusicBox Staff - Headlines, Ledes

Jennifer Koh (Photo: Juergen Frank) and Tod Machover (Photo: Lucerne Festival/Priska Ketterer)

Musical America has announced the winners of its annual Musical America Awards which recognize artistic excellence and achievement in the arts. Tod Machover has been named 2016 Composer of the Year. Violinist Jennifer Koh, who has been commissioned music by Anthony Cheung, Vijay Iyer, and Andrew Norman, has been named Instrumentalist of the Year. Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP), an orchestra devoted to music of the 20th and 21st centuries which, since its founding in 1996 by conductor Gil Rose, has presented more than 100 premieres and has made over 50 recordings, has been named Ensemble of the Year. British tenor Mark Padmore, who has performed works written especially for him by Harrison Birtwistle, Mark Anthony Turnage, and Thomas Larcher, has been named Vocalist of the Year. Musical America’s highest accolade, Musician of the Year, has been awarded to Philadelphia Orchestra Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin.

BMOP rehearsal (Photo: Liz Linder)

The awards will be presented in a ceremony at Carnegie Hall on December 8, 2015. The announcement precedes the December publication of the 2016 Musical America International Directory of the Performing Arts, which, in addition to its comprehensive industry listings, pays homage to each of these artists in its editorial pages.

—from the press release

Hamilton Creator Lin-Manuel Miranda Named 2015 MacArthur Fellow

Posted on September 29, 2015 by NewMusicBox Staff - Headlines

Playwright, composer, and performer Lin-Manuel Miranda, 35, has been named one of 2015’s MacArthur Fellows. The MacArthur Foundation’s website noted that he reimagines “American musical theater in works that fuse traditional storytelling with contemporary musical styles and voices. Well-versed in the structure and history of musical theater, Miranda expands its idiom with the aesthetic of popular culture and stories from individuals and communities new to Broadway stages.”

His critically lauded Hamilton (2015) explores the potential of hip-hop to reframe history. This further develops musical work he delved into with his Tony-winning production In the Heights (2007).

Lin-Manuel Miranda
Photo courtesy the MacArthur Foundation.

Lin-Manuel Miranda received a B.A. from Wesleyan University in 2002. His other theater credits include co-composer and co-lyricist of Bring It On: The Musical (2011); actor in revivals of tick, tick…BOOM! (2014) and Merrily We Roll Along (2012); new original music for a revival of Working (2012); and the mini-musical, “21 Chump Street,” for This American Life (2014). He is also a member of the improv hip-hop group, Freestyle Love Supreme.

Learn more about Miranda on the MacArthur Foundation’s website.

Mimi Lien
Photo courtesy the MacArthur Foundation

Mimi Lien, a set designer for theater, opera, and dance who worked on Dave Malloy’s Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812 among other immersive sets, was also among this year’s round of 24 fellows.

There are three criteria for selection of fellows: exceptional creativity, promise for important future advances based on a track record of significant accomplishment, and potential for the fellowship to facilitate subsequent creative work. The MacArthur Fellowship is a “no strings attached” award which comes with a stipend of $625,000 to the recipient, paid out in equal quarterly installments over five years. The foundation does not require or expect specific products or reports from MacArthur Fellows and does not evaluate recipients’ creativity during the term of the fellowship.

(–from the MacArthur Foundation’s website)

Four Emerging Composers’ Works Premiere in Columbus Through EarShot

Posted on September 29, 2015 by NewMusicBox Staff - Headlines, Ledes

Four emerging composers have been chosen from a national candidate pool to participate in the 2015 Columbus Symphony EarShot program: Rosalie Burrell, Saad Haddad, Patrick O’Malley, and Iván Rodríguez. For this latest iteration of EarShot, a nationwide network of new music readings and composer-development programs organized and administered by the American Composers Orchestra (ACO), two intensive reading sessions/rehearsals (closed to the public) will take place on October 27 and 28, 2015 accompanied by feedback sessions with Columbus Symphony musicians and their music director Rossen Milanov, along with mentor composers Robert Beaser, Margaret Brouwer, and Clint Needham. Donald Harris will serve as honorary guest composer. On October 29, the orchestra will hold a final dress rehearsal, then perform the works in a one-hour program at the Ohio Theatre which is part of the Columbus Symphony’s Happy Hour Concert Series. The CSO will ask the audience to vote for their favorite piece before the program’s mentor composers and Maestro Milanov select an official “Live Composer Competition” winner. Now in its third year, Happy Hour concerts offer free, informal, after-work concerts performed by the Columbus Symphony, preceded by complimentary appetizers, a DJ in the theater lobby, and a cash bar.

ACO President Michael Geller said, “The four composers chosen for this unique new program are as talented as they are diverse in their musical styles. Rosie, Saad, Ivan, and Patrick are only in their 20s, but they are incredibly accomplished at what is a very ‘tender’ young age for composers. Each of them has a really distinctive musical outlook. We can’t wait to work with them and the talented musicians at the Columbus Symphony. And I think for listeners in Columbus, who come out for the culminating concert of the program, they will be ‘blown away’ by the brilliance, energy, and vitality of the music they hear. Years from now, I’m sure we will all look back at the EarShot Columbus Composer Competition as a watershed moment for these composers, for CSO audiences, and for the entire field of American orchestra music.”

Rossen Milanov added, “I am delighted by the partnership of Columbus Symphony Orchestra and EarShot in the first season of my tenure as music director in Columbus, Ohio. My strong commitment to music of our time and career-long support for young composers could not have been expressed better then in this original and meaningful introduction of newly composed works to our audience. I hope that the composers, the musicians, and the audience will develop a better understanding and appreciation of the creative, performing, and listening process.”

In addition to the Columbus Symphony, EarShot partnerships have included the New York Philharmonic, Berkeley Symphony, Detroit Symphony, Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, Colorado Symphony Orchestra, Memphis Symphony Orchestra, Nashville Symphony Orchestra, Pioneer Valley Symphony (MA), New York Youth Symphony, and the San Diego Symphony. To date, more than fifty composers have been selected for readings with orchestras.

Read on for more details about the four composers and their new orchestral works. (The Columbus Symphony’s performances of each of them have been archived on the website Instant Encore where they are available for streaming.)

Rosalie Burrell: Paved with Gold

Rosalie Burrell (This and all other photos courtesy Jensen Artists)

The music of Rosalie Burrell (b. 1988) has been performed at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Lesher Center for the Arts, the All Women’s National Brass Convention, and Bush Creek Arts. For the last two concert seasons she has been the artistic coordinator, composer and orchestrator at The Little Orchestra Society, a chamber orchestra that, under the baton of James Judd, performs for young families and children. As an artistic administrator, Burrell plans, programs, and produces concerts and workshops at venues that have included maximum-security prisons, hospital wards, veteran rehabilitation facilities, and schools. She received her Master of Music degree from the Mannes School of Music, where she studied with David Tcimpidis, writing primarily chamber music. In 2013 she was a finalist in the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composers competition, and she won both the Martinu Composition Award and the 2013 Mannes Orchestra Composition Competition. Other accolades include the 2012 Jean Schneider Goberman Award second prize for her piano quartet Secret Gardens.

Of Paved with Gold, Burrell said, “I was taking long walks through New York City; grime and glitter, glass and iron, duality at every turn. I drew a landscape of New York, not as it exists in any physical sense, but in a sweeping, sensory summary. Lines and rectangles colliding, each a duplicate of the last. Between angular clusters I drew the curved shapes of birds, untethered in the air, sometimes spilling out between blocks, or soaring right over the building clusters. I put a pin in that drawing, right above my desk, and began to compose the shape of that abstract skyline. An orchestral landscape, loud and unbridled, paved with gold.”

Saad Haddad: Kaman Fantasy

Saad Haddad

Saad Haddad (b. 1992) focuses on creating compositions that incorporate Arabic musical tradition in a Western context, both in acoustic and electro-acoustic mediums. In addition to the performance by the Columbus Symphony, premieres of his music will also be performed this season by the American Composers Orchestra at Carnegie Hall and the New Juilliard Ensemble at Alice Tully Hall in New York City. Other performances include the Virginia premiere of Shifting Sands, for piano and electronics, at the Electroacoustic Barn Dance and the Ariose Singers’ performances of his choral works, The Little Boy and Ah Sunflower, as part of the New Music Works series in Santa Cruz, California. A recipient of the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award (2015), the Gena Raps Chamber Music Prize (2015), the BMI Student Composer Award (2014), and the Copland House Residency Award (2014), Haddad holds a Bachelor of Music Composition from the University of Southern California where his teachers included composers Donald Crockett, Stephen Hartke, Frank Ticheli, Brian Shepard, and Bruce Broughton. He is currently in his last year at the Juilliard School, pursuing a Master of Music Composition with John Corigliano.

Kaman Fantasy takes its name from ‘kamanjah,’ the Arabic word for ‘violin.’ The piece is an exploration of the Arabic ‘maqamat’ (sets of scales) and rhythms in a Western classical context. The music embraces both traditions, often swaying back and forth between Arabic and Western idioms. Haddad said, “As a first-generation Arab-American, I have often found myself shifting between both cultures in the way that I think and act, sometimes voluntarily, most times not. Kaman Fantasy is a reflection on those experiences.”

Patrick O’Malley: Even in Paradise

Patrick O’Malley

Patrick O’Malley (b. 1989) is a composer whose works explore the musical interplay between emotion, color, energy, and landscape. Currently living in Los Angeles, O’Malley grew up in Indiana, where he cultivated an interest in composition from hearing music at the local orchestra, studying piano and double bass, film scores at the movie theater, and even MIDI compositions for video games being written at the time. His works span many of the contemporary mediums for classical music (orchestra, chamber ensembles, vocal music, film scores, etc.), and have been performed across the United States as well as in France and Germany. Most recently, O’Malley has been recognized and/or performed by organizations including the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Next On Grand National Composers Intensive with wild Up, the Society of Composers Inc., The American Prize (3rd place in orchestral music, and finalist in wind band and chamber music, 2014), the Boston New Music Initiative, ASCAP’s Morton Gould Award (finalist in 2012 and 2014), and Fulcrum Point New Music Project. He has spent summers as a student at various music festivals, including Aspen, Bowdoin, Fresh Inc., and the FUBiScomposition course in Berlin. He is gratefully indebted to his private teachers over the years for helping guide his work, the most recent of which include Andrew Norman, Samuel Adler, and Frank Ticheli. O’Malley is currently pursuing a doctorate degree in composition at the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music.

Of Even in Paradise, O’Malley said, “The Latin phrase ‘Et in Arcadia Ego’ is a wonderful little line that nobody seems to know the actual meaning of. The words essentially translate, ‘I am also in Arcadia,’ and are most famously known as the subject of two paintings by Nicolas Poussin from the 17th century. I first encountered the subject when reading an essay by the art historian Erwin Panofsky, in which he traces the evolution of interpretation of the phrase by artists. Panofsky’s analysis, as well as the various artistic interpretations of the phrase, immediately struck me as a source for musical elaboration. While nothing in the piece is a literal depiction, there are two ideas that stem directly from the life and death images associated with the subject. The piece opens with atmospheric sounds made by the strings playing unpitched material behind the bridge (a well-known technique for representing death in music thanks to Bernard Herrmann, though I do not use it in the same way). Against that, simple triadic gestures (the ‘life-blood’ of tonal harmony) begin to pop out of the murk. Eventually, the music breaks into a fast, playful mood completely opposite to the introduction, exploring a variety of moods and colors.”

Iván Rodríguez: Luminis

Iván Enrique Rodríguez

Aspiring young conductor and composer Iván Enrique Rodríguez (b.1990) learned how to play the saxophone, harp, piano, and violin, as well as vocalize at the Escuela Libre de Música (ELM) Antonio O. Paoli in his native Caguas, Puerto Rico. Rodríguez’s first piece, Ogoshness for chorus and string orchestra, was premiered in 2007 by the ELM Antonio O. Paoli choir when Rodríguez was 17. Since then, Rodríguez has composed for internationally acclaimed trumpeter Luis “Perico” Ortiz, and John Rivera Pico selected two of Iván’s Crípticos for inclusion on his album featuring contemporary classical guitar music from Puerto Rico and Cuba. Rodríguez’s music has been performed in Uruguay, Brazil, the U.S., and Italy where the San Juan Children’s Choir performed his Madre Luna and won the 2014 Rimini International Choral Competition First Place Prize with the judges noting the integral part his composition played in their decision. He holds a BA in Composition from the Conservatorio de Música de Puerto Rico where he studied with composer Alfonso Fuentes and conductors Rafael E. Irizarry, William Rivera, Roselín Pabon, and Genesio Riboldi. Beyond the walls of the conservatory, his cultural involvement and leadership was recognized by the Puerto Rico Chapter of Junior Chamber International with the 2014 Ten Outstanding Young Persons of the World award.

“Luminis is a set of fantasy variations on original musical motifs,” said Rodríguez. “Throughout piece, the original motifs remain relatively unchanged. However, the surrounding musical environment changes constantly. As the variations develop, they progressively describe the encirclement of light by darkness. Even when describing musically what could be total darkness, the original motifs remain relatively untouched. This is intended to give Light a ubiquitous quality to state that regardless of the conditions surrounding it, the energy emanating from this point–whatever it may symbolize for us individually–reinforces an inextinguishable radiance and omnipresence.”

(—from the press release)

New Music USA’s Six Submissions to the 2016 ISCM World Music Days

Posted on September 4, 2015 by Frank J. Oteri - Headlines, Ledes

Later this month, the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM)’s 2015 World Music Days (WMD) will take place in Ljubljana, Slovenia (from September 27 to October 2, 2015), but program planning is already underway for the 2016 WMD in Tongyeong, South Korea (March 29-April 3, 2016). To encourage that a fair and equitable distribution of new music is chosen from all over the world, all of the ISCM’s member organizations are encouraged to submit repertoire from their respective countries for consideration. As per the ISCM’s by-laws, if a member organization submits a total of six works in at least four different categories (which are grouped by instrumentation and must conform to the set duration limits), at least one of the works is guaranteed a performance during the festival. New Music USA, which is a full associate member of ISCM, has submitted six works for consideration. All are works that received funding through our grantmaking programs and all are works composed since 2010. Below are some details on each of the pieces.

Photos of Nolan Lem, Julia Adolphe, Missy Mazzoli, Matt Evans, George Walker, and Gabriella Lena Frank

Top row (left to right): Nolan Lem, Julia Adolphe (photo by Martin Chalifour), Missy Mazzoli (photo by Marylene Mey); Bottom row (left to right): Matt Evans (photo by Jaime Boddorff), George Walker, and Gabriella Lena Frank (photo © Sabina Frank)

1. Julia Adolphe: Veil of Leaves (2014) for string quartet
Julia Adolphe’s string quartet Veil of Leaves was one of the highlights of the fourth season of the Pikes Falls Chamber Music Festival in Jamaica, Vermont, which received a 2015 New Music USA Project grant.

2. Matthew Evans: Still Life for Ensemble (2015) for chamber ensemble
Evans’s Still Life for Ensemble was one of several works created and premiered by members of the ensemble Contemporaneous on a concert in celebration of their fifth anniversary, an event that was awarded a New Music USA Project grant. Here is a video from that performance.

3. Gabriela Lena Frank: Requiem for a Magical America: El Día de los Muertos (2012) for orchestra
The orchestral version of Requiem for a Magical America: El Día de los Muertos was one of several compositions created by Frank during her residency with the Annapolis Symphony, which was supported by the Music Alive program, a collaboration between New Music USA and the League of American Orchestras.

4. Nolan Lem: push-pole (2014), a sound installation
Nolan Lem’s push-pole is the centerpiece of the New Music USA Project Grant-funded SoundArt2016, a two-week exhibition of Sound Art presented by Qubit New Music, a contemporary music and performance art initiative founded in 2010.

5. Missy Mazzoli: Vesper Sparrow (2012) for unaccompanied chorus
Mazzoli’s Vesper Sparrow is the opening track of roomful of teeth’s new recording render on New Amsterdam Records. The recording was awarded a New Music USA Project grant.

6. George Walker: Sinfonia No. 4 ‘Strands’ (2011) for orchestra
Walker’s Sinfonia No. 4 ‘Strands’ was a consortium commission that was funded through Meet The Composer’s Commissioning Music/USA Program.

Hopefully they will choose more than one. Better yet, all six!

New Music Gathering 2016 Schedule Posted

Posted on August 31, 2015 by NewMusicBox Staff - Headlines, Ledes

Marin Alsop
Image courtesy the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra

The full schedule of lectures, concerts, and discussions that will be part of the 2nd annual New Music Gathering has been posted. Taking place January 7-9, 2016, at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore, the focus of the meeting will be on “Communities.”

The schedule currently indicates coverage of a range of field issues, from economics to musicology to technology, plus a keynote address delivered by Marin Alsop, music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.

ICE Hires New Executive Director

Posted on August 13, 2015 by NewMusicBox Staff - Headlines, Ledes

Vanessa Rose

The International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) has announced that Vanessa Rose will be its new executive director as of September 1, 2015 at which point ICE founder Claire Chase will remain co-artistic director and flutist in the ensemble alongside co-artistic director and clarinetist Joshua Rubin. Rose comes to ICE from the Lark Play Development Center where she served as director of development from 2013-2015. Prior to that, Rose was managing director of The Knights, a New York-based orchestra collective, and associate director of patron program and membership at the Metropolitan Opera. In 2006, she completed the League of American Orchestras’ Orchestra Management Fellowship Program, which included residencies with the Dallas Symphony, Elgin Symphony, Aspen Music Festival and School, and the San Francisco Symphony. Rose was selected by ICE’s Board of Directors on August 3 following an 18-month international search.

“I am thrilled to have this opportunity to collaborate with the creative and inspiring artists, supporters and partners in the ICE community,” said Rose. “A longtime ICE fan, I am very excited to help the group expand its groundbreaking programs and exceptional music-making.”

ICE Board President, Claude Arpels, stated that “Vanessa shares ICE’s commitment to creating exciting new music through an artist-led organization. She brings the right mix of experience, sensitivity, and management skills to help ICE continue to succeed.”

Claire Chase adds, “Of all the trails that this mighty group of artists has blazed over the last decade and a half—from our seedlings as students at Oberlin in 2000, to our very first public concert in 2002 produced on $603 amassed from my holiday catering tips, to the group’s performances this coming Sunday at Alice Tully Hall—this moment of welcoming new leadership in Vanessa Rose stands in my mind as one of the bravest and most remarkable. I am so proud of the entire team at ICE for taking the enormous leap from being a founder-driven organization to being an organization that can stand boldly on its own feet. I have deep faith in Vanessa to lead ICE into the next era, and to do it with the passionate collaborative artistic spirit that has fueled everything this group has accomplished to date.”

In addition to Vanessa Rose’s work behind the scenes on behalf of music and musicians, she is also a violinist and has performed with the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra and the Harrisburg Symphony as well as at the Spoleto Festivals (Italy and USA). She comes from a musical family and attended the Eastman School of Music, Mannes College of Music, and the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, The Netherlands. Rose lives in Riverdale, NY with her musician husband, Patrick Pridemore, and their two children.

(—from the press release)

New Detroit Symphony Streaming Service Filled with New Music

Posted on August 12, 2015 by NewMusicBox Staff - Headlines, Ledes

Screen shot of Replay website featuring a photo of Sarah Chang holding a violin.

A screenshot from the DSO’s just launched Replay streaming archive. Note the full down menus for American repertoire and music by living composers as well as that the highlighted work is Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto.

This morning, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra (DSO) launched Replay, an on-demand classical performance archive in HD featuring over 100 full-length classical works originally performed on the orchestra’s Live From Orchestra Hall webcast series. The archive will be refreshed with new content each week during the classical season. Members can browse content by composer, date, or through a rotating series of curated playlists such as “Living Composers,” “Made in America,” “Virtuoso Violin,” and many more.

“Thanks to Live From Orchestra Hall, lovers of great music have been able to enjoy our performances here in Detroit no matter where they may be,” said DSO Music Director Leonard Slatkin. “Through Replay, they can relive these concerts whenever they would like.”

While works currently available for streaming cover virtually every era, there is a particularly generous amount of contemporary music available including works by 17 different living composers (among them 11 Americans) as well as 8 additional American repertoire classics including such rarities as Benjamin Lees’s Concerto for String Quartet and Orchestra and Aaron Copland’s entire early ballet score Grohg. Among the recent compositions featured on the site are: Mason Bates’s Violin Concerto (with Anne Akiko Meyers), Gabriela Lena Frank’s Concertino Cusqueño, Missy Mazzoli’s River Rouge Transfiguration, Augusta Read Thomas’s Cello Concerto No. 3 (with Lynn Harrell), André Previn’s Double Concerto (with Jaime Laredo and Sharon Robinson), and Cindy McTee’s Solstice (featuring DSO Principal Trombonist Kenneth Thompkins).

All visitors to Replay can experience a free two-minute preview of any of the performances included in the archive, but already there are 5,000 annual fund supporters who are immediately eligible to use the new service to its full extent to see and hear all of these performances in their entirety. All patrons who join the annual fund with a gift of $50 or more will receive full access. The DSO is the first American orchestra to make its performance archive available on-demand. The DSO’s contract with its musicians grants permission to stream performances each week live and then replay that content for three years on demand. Prior to today, past Live From Orchestra Hall footage was only available through special encore broadcasts on dso.org/live or through YouTube clips. Live From Orchestra Hall is presented in partnership with Detroit Public Television, with support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Ford Motor Company Fund. Replay’s streaming archive is made possible through hosting services provided by Brightcove, an online platform that offers CD-quality audio and video in 1080p HD resolution.

“Replay is an innovative use of Brightcove Gallery and positions the DSO as a leader among Brightcove customers using the product to engage and inspire audiences across any device,” said Linda Crowe, Vice President of Digital Marketing at Brightcove.

(–from the press release)

Maintaining a Creative Life: New Orleans Edition

Posted on August 5, 2015 by Ray Evanoff - Field Reports, Headlines

My first reaction to the prospect of writing about the contemporary music scene in New Orleans was: what scene? New Orleans does not have a new music scene, at least not in the way that New York City or Los Angeles or Chicago does. Even Minneapolis has some brilliant post-post-jazz, and Omaha has a small but burgeoning community accumulating a critical mass around Amanda DeBoer Bartlett’s eclectic Omaha Under the Radar festival. In comparison, New Orleans is a new music desert, a fact laden with irony given its deep musical roots. There are certainly a few oases here—the improvisation series at the Blue Nile and the recently-established Versipel New Music come to mind—but they are just that: isolated activities within a landscape largely devoid of new music features.

So why do I, as a composer, live here?

New Orleans became my home through a mixture of circumstances. My wife is from here, and we both leapt at the opportunity for her to return when she received a solidly funded offer for graduate school. Moving to a place with familiarity and family made it easier to transition back to the States from England, where we had been living, and the city’s affordability allowed me to comfortably continue putting composition at the center of my time commitments. Over time, these practical advantages were surpassed by the intangibles of place and culture—the food, the neighborhoods, the people, all the nooks and crannies that define a city for its inhabitants. I developed a strong connection to New Orleans and now preach its merits at every opportunity. An international acquaintance once quipped that my passport must be Louisiana specific. His reasoning was sound.

My Big Life Question has thus become how to lead my artistic life in a city I love but a city that lacks obvious support and outlets for the music I am passionate about. It is not a matter of having the means to showcase my own artistic output within my zip code, but rather about keeping new music front and center in my daily life without mechanisms that keep it there for me. There are no general answers to this problem: each is individual- and context-specific, and it is a life-long process. Here are some of the steps I have gone through, both internally and externally, in an effort to resolve this question for myself.

What Do I Want from Where I Live?

I often say that New Orleans checks all the boxes of my ideal home, save a music-related job and an established new music community. That is a lot of checked boxes. I have to ask myself: would the trade off required to get those music boxes easily checked—namely moving—be worth it? Having experienced the other side of the coin, where placing music first determined where and how and with whom I lived, I can comfortably answer no, not for me, at least not at this time. I would rather work with what I have.

Part of working with what I have is understanding how I want to earn an income and what I want out of a job beyond money. This has not been an easy process, but it has given me some valuable insights. For example, realizing how much I valued job stability contributed to my accepting an ongoing position as an elementary school teaching assistant over a temporary assignment filling in for a composition professor on sabbatical. It was a difficult decision to choose work outside of my apparent field, but in practice the elementary school position offered me many things that the university position did not: increased job security, a steady wage, and the hours to continue spending time composing. This made it seem the more desirable choice, and one that facilitates and complements my compositional pursuits, rather than veers away from them. It was not a purely practical decision, however: I immensely enjoy the work. Working with children requires flexibility, patience, and humility that I can only hope feed into my music. And it is just such this interrelation between my life as a musician and my life otherwise that building an artistic life in New Orleans continues to promote.

Redefining What Applies to My Art

When I was studying as a percussionist, I practiced four to six hours a day, seven days a week. Less than five felt like slacking; less than four was cause for self-flagellation. Family, friends, love interests, school, eating, and sleeping were all secondary to my pathological need to log these hours. This narrow understanding of what came first in my life was both unhealthy and unimaginative.

I first approached composition with the same attitude of punching a time card, but composing resisted this mentality. It lacked the physical component that enabled the rote labor allowed in practicing an instrument. Composing’s demand for acuity and introspection required a more fluid understanding of my artistic labor: I learned to allow for playful wanderings of the mind along tangents, and judged the success of my creative work sessions less quantitatively. I still log my hours obsessively, but also understand composing is not the same as manufacturing widgets. My once single-minded pursuit of instantly gratifying output has been replaced by broader inclusiveness as to what constitutes my creative work.

I have consequently sought to understand my non-artistic interests artistically. Sports, for example, have progressed from a cursory fascination to a lens through which I can better understand my art. Musical virtuosity has for me been redefined from a showcasing of control to a pursuit of personal boundaries, like the athlete’s. Just as an athlete’s exceptional abilities sublimate and their failures humanize, musical virtuosity can be a means for laying bare the soul rather than erecting an artifice of perfection.

In the same spirit, my appreciation for New Orleans’ famous fusion of cultures—architectural, culinary, and otherwise—has developed alongside a broadening in my musical language. I have become increasingly inclusive with the sounds and events that make their way into my work. While these changes have run parallel rather than unfolded causally, I do believe a certain influence through osmosis has taken place. This influence has been cultural if not specifically musical. I once eschewed certain basic musical elements wholesale. Consonance, for example, was a harmonic characteristic that I struggled to take ownership of: rightly or wrongly, I felt unable to integrate strongly consonant intervals into my music. But in recent years I have endeavored to find a role for such intervals in my work, and their strengthening presence has in turn opened up unanticipated directions. These days it is not uncommon for, say, a major triad to unexpectedly surface while I am composing. And importantly, I find myself more willing to entertain its place in the piece than I was in the past. I would like to think that this move away from musical puritanism is at least partly a response to the celebration of diversity that is my adopted home’s hallmark. I understand New Orleans’ ideal as a celebration of diversity that maintains uniqueness, and I certainly aspire to evermore sparkling individuality in my music from one moment to the next.Connecting my non-musical experiences and interests to my artistic motives like this has enabled me to synthesize facets of my daily life into artistic directions and musical material. This has helped me to keep art central in my daily life in an environment that often lacks more obvious means of doing so.

Community Building

As a recovering hermit, I am constantly grateful for music’s social dimensions. I love how being a composer requires me to work with others to realize my artistic visions. The dialogue, both concurrences and disagreements, enriches my work in a way that working alone could not. It allows me to benefit from others’ unique perspectives, interests, and knowledge, and for me to share my own. Such collaboration is increasingly the lifeblood of my artistic practice.

The lack of a preexisting new music community in New Orleans has been one of the biggest difficulties in my establishing a creative life here. There are obvious ways to mitigate this remotely—email and Skype are a composer-in-exile’s best friend—and I have worked to extend technology’s opportunities. For example, I curate an online arts periodical, FOCI Words, which features a variety of content from contributors throughout the world. Soliciting entries is an easy way to start and sustain conversations about music, creativity, social issues, and whatever else is on the minds of artists I deeply respect. The end product often spurs further conversation and debate through social media. Undertaking this project has the dual advantage of perpetuating my connections to the global new music family, and keeping me regularly listening to, thinking about, and discussing music with others.

An exhibit from ANODE, a series of performances, discussions, exhibits and events curated by the author.

Closer to home, I find myself making similar efforts to keep the conversations going. Many of these are simple—coffee, dinner, board games, disc golf with the few musicians in my field who do live in the area. I have learned over time that taking the afternoon off to just talk music with a friend is worth it, a hard-won lesson given my zeal to punch that time card. These social moments are integral and would often not happen if I did not prioritize them. So, I do so.

I also curate a small concert series. I have been overwhelmed by the eagerness of some very accomplished musicians to travel here for less-than-ideal compensation and perform for less-than-ideal sized crowds, all for the sake of furthering our work together (and consuming some phenomenal New Orleans food along the way). Bringing musicians I respect into town is a wonderful, uplifting way to connect the broader music community to my home life. The lack of obvious venues means I have to be creative, fostering relationships with local institutions and scenes that can bear fruit down the road. Many of my concerts have taken place in spaces more regularly devoted to visual art, because these are the venues that exist here. I have also gotten involved with poets, who have a more widely established community in New Orleans. This has led not only to stimulating conversations across mediums, but also to the prospect of new projects on down the road. This process and its unexpected fruits all further establish a creative lifestyle.

Bassist Kathryn Schulmeister visits New Orleans for ANODE, curated by the author (far right).

Postscript

These are just some of the ways that living in a city where new music is especially uncommon has pushed me to alter my lifestyle and my approach to both community and creativity. It has helped me realize the significance of collaboration and conversation in my creative endeavors, and led me to understand my non-artistic interests in light of my artistic ones. It is not a smooth or linear process, but it is a gratifying one.

And it is one I am not alone in. I am grateful to my numerous colleagues across the country who are in a similar position. Our regular exchange of ideas, be they growth strategies, coping strategies, or just airing grievances, has helped my pursuit to foster a contemporary music community at home. It has also lessened my sense of isolation in the interim. Connecting to others engaged in such a process provides a vital reminder that I am a part of the larger new music community regardless of where I reside. And for that I am thankful.

***

Ray Evanoff is a composer whose work is heavily influenced by his extended collaborations and personal relationships with the musicians he writes for. He has been performed and commissioned by contemporary music specialists across Europe and North America, including Ensembles Apparat, Dal Niente, Distractfold, and SurPlus, Amanda DeBoer Bartlett, Liam Hockley, Mabel Kwan, Kevin McFarland, and Samuel Stoll. He writes unreasonable music while still trying to be a reasonable person. Clearly, he lives in New Orleans.

Got a Question? Get Answers on Twitter #MUSOCHAT

Posted on July 31, 2015 by Molly Sheridan - Field Reports, Headlines

A couple of weeks ago, the #musochat hashtag popped up on Twitter and began to gather new music makers around sets of creative and career questions. This Sunday the virtual salon will hold its third open door event, and we realized that we had a few questions of our own regarding how this all got started in the first place (though we went old school and sent the founding group an email). Here’s what we now know:

What spark of inspiration kicked off the weekly (Sundays at 9 p.m. ET) #musochat Twitter chats? Is someone spearheading this or was it a spontaneous creation of the internet?

Shaya Lyon (@pickleshy):

I’d been chatting with new music friends on a regular basis as part of a research project for NewMusicBox, and when the series came to an end, I found I really missed our conversations! I sent out a plea, they jumped in the ring, and Gahlord pulled #musochat out of a hat.

Gahlord Dewald (@gahlord) a.k.a. Patternroot (@patternroot):

There have been many industry-specific #chats over the years. I don’t know if they’re all still there or not but, for example, #journchat and #edchat—just Twitterheads from those industries getting together and doing the Q&A thing. When we were hanging out the other day, using up all those characters trying to keep everyone included, it struck me that we needed to do a #chat so we could have a few characters left to actually communicate. I chose #musochat instead of #musichat so it would be differentiated should someone from the larger music community start a #chat and/or in case someone invented a hat/radio combo. It also helps identify the real humans from the bots and botlike Twitter accounts.

For the media producers among us (I write for my site, Shaya writes, Megan Ihnen writes, most of us are media producers these days, I suppose) the #chats also provide some useful content ideas for further documentation. That’s an area of weakness for the format. #chat streams become lost and inaccessible over time, and sometimes the ideas shared are worth returning to later.

What are the advantages of Twitter as a platform for such dialog? Can you really get a decent amount of information across in 140 characters?

Hillary LaBonte (@surrendertofun):

Twitter’s demands of brevity really make me focus on getting to the point quickly. That, combined with the rapid pace of the discussion, forces me to prioritize which questions I want to explore further. As a result, there’s not as much of the beating-around-the-bush that you normally get in other forums, which I appreciate.

Gahlord:

We’ve all been to a conference where someone starts asking a “question” that turns into a long-winded speech that is actually a product pitch or completely off-topic. Twitter makes it difficult for that sort of thing to happen. With everything kept relatively short and fast-paced, people say what they need to and get on with it. When others say something intriguing, then more discussion and interaction follow. It’s terribly natural.

Jason Michael Gerraughty (@jmgerraughty):

There’s a lot to be said about Twitter’s leveling of the playing field, in terms of geography—I wouldn’t have been able to interact with the calibre of composers that I can today. What I appreciate the most is that the conversations happen in almost realtime. It gives a sense of vibrancy that other written formats don’t have.

Megan Ihnen (@mezzoihnen):

One of the reasons I fell head-over-heels for Twitter as a social media platform was that it helped me connect with my new music tribe all over the globe. I didn’t have to know them in person, yet, to start participating in conversations about music both artistically and business-wise. I completely agree with Jason that this type of platform releases me from some of the limitations of geography. #musochat is like the masterclass or forum I wish I had as an undergrad in South Dakota.

Are there rules of order that a newbie might not be aware of? Can anyone with a Twitter handle and 30 seconds dive into this virtual salon with a question?

Gahlord:

Yes anyone can dip in or even be late (I was an hour late last time and just dumped my responses in). It’s a bit crazy at first, but you get the hang of it if you go slow enough. It really is completely manageable by anyone who has been to a 7-year old’s birthday party. Mostly I’d say, don’t just lurk. Throw your answers in the pile. This isn’t an “experts only” thing or whatever. There are no real experts. The raw pile of ideas and experiences is what makes the experiment worthwhile.

I should note, usually it is one person, the host, that is asking the questions. The reason is that all the questions get numbers and the answers get corresponding numbers. If everyone asks questions then the numbers get out of order and the chaos gets a little unmanageable. If you really want to know the answer to something there are two great ways to do it: 1) Volunteer to be the host for the next session and then you can ask all kinds of questions. 2) Ask the host to ask your question to the group—keeping in mind that the hosts are insanely busy during the #chat, so don’t get worked up if they don’t get around to your question.

Also, if you’re new to Twitter, a #chat would be a difficult environment to learn how to use the tool. They tend to be fast-paced and confusing. If you don’t already use Twitter, sign up and mess around with it a few days in advance so you learn how to post, how to include a hashtag, how to use the search feature, etc. Then you’ll be less stressed out during the #chat. Also, remember that you can take your time and go very, very slow. You don’t have to read and respond to everything, just answer the questions and keep moving along at your own speed.

Shaya:

A tip for newcomers: It is nearly impossible to keep up with the entire chat as tweets fly by. I’ve found it helpful to use a third-party tool like Tweetdeck or Hootsuite and set up filters for the individual questions. In Tweetdeck, I dedicate a separate column for each question, by searching for “A1 #musochat”, “A2 #musochat” etc. Here’s what it looks like on my screen:

We’re also trying to collect the responses on Storify. Here’s a transcript of our first chat.

Garrett

Remember, it’s a multi-person conversation. So, just like any large conversation, it’s as important to listen to (or, in this case, read) what other people are contributing as it is to contribute yourself.

Hillary:

I was a half-hour late to the second chat, so I decided to create a schedule for myself—10 minutes to quickly answer the first 5 questions, then 5 minutes of responding/favoriting/retweeting, and repeat with the remaining questions. I haven’t used any special tools to organize it for myself yet, but I’ve found that even just on the mobile app, I can keep up with things.

What have been some of the most remarkable/illuminating revelations (and/or good jokes, best use of emoji) the conversations have generated so far?

Gahlord:

For me it’s been enlightening to see what kinds of challenges people are facing in producing more music and what the general bent is in terms of how to do more of it. There are moments of insight and idea generation. But looking for “key takeaways” or other stuff like that is probably not the best way to approach it. Better to just go in, answer the questions, and read others’ answers. Make connections with other people, try what they’re trying, etc.

In our “entrepreneurial” #musochat I realized that some people confuse “entrepreneurial” with “wearing lots of hats” and that there might be some opportunity to help in that regard. As a result, I’m going to do a free webinar going over Business Model Generation/Business Model Canvas—something I do in my work life on a regular basis.

I also suspect several of the composers who have attended will begin work with some of the performers who attend. I got added to a local-to-me composer group by way of one of the attendees, for example… sort of a friend of a friend thing. I’ll probably end up performing something they write in the fall.

It is these outgrowth projects that are the result of people just hanging out and answering some questions etc. That is probably the more tangible outcome, more networking that leads to production.

It works this way in other industry #chats all the time, so I’m certain it will work that way here as well.

Jason:

What struck me the most with the “entrepreneurship” #musochat was just how willing people were to contribute. I was not expecting such a sizeable turnout (and we can’t even account for the folks who followed along without answering any questions!).

Favorite tweet, from David Rakowski: “I’m not an entrepreneur. But I am entrepreneurial. It’s not something with binary properties.”

Hillary:

So many people have had interesting, compelling responses (in part due to that Twitter brand of brevity!). I’ve also loved getting to connect with people I don’t know and may not otherwise meet, but who engage with me on the significant issues of our field.

Favorite tweet, courtesy of Shaya:

Megan:

I cannot say that #musochat will be extremely relevant in the future, but it is such a powerful use of our current resources. As new music people, we are inherently interested in the new, the untested, the frontier—this is a genuine way to explore socially what that means. How we make music isn’t only dependent upon what you hear in the performance space—it’s wrapped up in conversations like #musochat, and I want to be a part of that.

Garrett:

I don’t think I can top any of the above references. All I’ll say is how impressed I’ve been by the tenor of the #musochats: most everyone who is participating wants a sincere exchange of ideas, which is difficult to achieve in any context in which a bunch of composers/new music folks are having a conversation. I think this attitude speaks to (what I perceive as) Shaya’s original impulse to pursue what has become the #musochats—recapturing the congenial, open discourse of the New Music Gathering last January in San Francisco. I think this out of bias, mostly—many of the participants in the #musochats (Shaya, Megan, Hillary, for example) are people I met for the first time at NMG, and one of that event’s defining qualities was the approachability and openness of its discourse. Conversations happened between strangers that were more forthright than what I’ve observed among cohorts of students/professors who have known each other for years. At NMG, I think this dynamic came from the recognition that everyone at the conference, regardless of what they might have accomplished elsewhere, had the same stakes, the same investment, because they had taken the time, trouble, and expense to be at the New Music Gathering. Participating in #musochat is, obviously, far less burdensome, but I think some of the same spirit of what I saw at NMG has infiltrated these Twitter-based conversations.

As someone who has used Twitter for a long time, the functionality of the #musochat discussions is very impressive, because Twitter is not, in my opinion, well-suited for conversation. Possibly because #musochat is a specifically designated time and space, the folks who have participated in these chats have, for the most part, bought in to the idea that #musochat is a time for exchange and connection, not broadcasting.

Molly Sheridan

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