Tag: choral music

Melissa Dunphy: Composing Has To Be a Calling

Posted on June 1, 2019 by Frank J. Oteri - Conversations, NewMusicBox

A woman with platinum blonde hair sitting in her home

One of the highlights of my attending the 2019 National Conference of the American Choral Directors Association in Kansas City was encountering Melissa Dunphy during the Composer Fair at the end of the first full day of the conference. Dunphy was full of energy and passionate about what she does and was also incredibly articulate—an ideal candidate for a NewMusicBox Cover! And after I returned home and started exploring her musical output, most of which she has generously made scores and recordings available for on her website, I was even more eager to have a sit down conversation with her about creative work.

What struck me about her music, and what she confirmed when we visited her at the bizarre place in Philadelphia where she lives (more on that later), is how deeply it relates to her ideas about social justice and inclusivity. Primarily a composer of vocal and choral music, Dunphy frequently creates music which is inspired by current events. The Gonzales Cantata, her 2009 gender-reversed faux-Baroque setting of the public US senate testimony that culminated in the resignation of attorney general Alberto Gonzales, landed her on national television while she was still pursuing an undergraduate degree in music composition. Her unaccompanied choral work from the following year, What do you think I fought for at Omaha Beach?, is also based on public testimony, this time from an 86-year-old Republican World War II veteran and VFW chaplain arguing for marriage equality, an issue that still divides people in this country.

“I had an incredibly emotional reaction to watching the YouTube video of his speech,” Dunphy remembered. “I soaked an entire dishcloth with my tears because I was so touched by the testimony. In 2009, there was such a cultural struggle between people who wanted marriage equality to be on the books and people who were pouring huge amounts of money into stopping it. His testimony gives you hope that the other side might understand that it’s an issue of human rights and freedom. So again—ping—I immediately needed to set this to music.”

Among her most ambitions works to date is her 2018 American DREAMers, a multi-movement choral setting of texts from five young Americans who were brought this country as children. “This is completely up my alley for various reasons,” explained Dunphy, who was born and raised in Australia and is the child of immigrants who fled Greece and Mainland China during the Cultural Revolution.

I think that all politicians should have a life-threatening health scare. ... You should be thinking about your legacy.

Melissa Dunphy, composer

The idea of just being an artist and only an artist is, has, is and has always been a bit of myth.

Melissa Dunphy, composer

There’s always going to be a place in the world for people who make art and can also get on that marketing train.

Melissa Dunphy, composer

When I realized what I wanted to do as a composer, I realized that it sounded much more like a political mission than purely an artistic mission.

Melissa Dunphy, composer

One of the reasons I came to composing so late was because I didn’t have any examples to look up to who looked like me.

Melissa Dunphy, composer

Some people are like, “Throw out those old masters.” Like, bull.

Melissa Dunphy, composer

For a little while in my late teens, classical music was really pissing me off with its obsession with technical perfection. So I broke up with classical music for a while...

Melissa Dunphy, composer

Everybody comes to music school thinking they’re going to be the next John Williams or Danny Elfman.

Melissa Dunphy, composer

Teaching is just as much about learning new things yourself, and your students will teach you just as much as you teach your students.

Melissa Dunphy, composer

There are a lot of similarities between the almost absurd mannerism of a Baroque cantata and the absurd manner of American politics.

Melissa Dunphy, composer

We as composers have the ultimate power in deciding the gender split on stage.

Melissa Dunphy, composer

If you’re not considering the context of the world around you, your art is bullshit.

Melissa Dunphy, composer

I don’t think people who criticize arts entrepreneurship look at grants as being in that category.

Melissa Dunphy, composer

One of the things that art can do is present things that are shades of gray and have you understand those shades of gray emotionally, rather than just intellectually.

Melissa Dunphy, composer

There’s a lot of room for error in an orchestra piece. There is no room for error in an a cappella choir piece.

Melissa Dunphy, composer

I don’t care if my piece becomes irrelevant if my friends can get married.

Melissa Dunphy, composer

Art needs to be grounded in what’s happening around us.

Melissa Dunphy, composer

I understand, because it’s my history, what motivates people to go to a new country and face instability.

Melissa Dunphy, composer

I am happy to accept sacred commissions if the religious organization will give me some leeway on what text I choose.

Melissa Dunphy, composer

Composers should stop worrying about being as intellectual as possible and start thinking about what reaches the next generation.

Melissa Dunphy, composer

I literally make concrete in the other part of my life.

Melissa Dunphy, composer

But creating intense politically-themed music is only part of how Dunphy spends her time. That bizarre place she lives in is an 18th century building that most recently had been the site of an abandoned magic theater. When she and her husband acquired the property, it was in a ruined state. So, on their own, they embarked on a huge construction project that has resulted not only in a viable place to live and artistic studios, but also an AirB&B they rent out. However, more interestingly, in excavating the former theater which they had hoped to eventually turn into a performance space, they discovered a wide range of 18th century artifacts and have become significant archeologists of early Americana. Dunphy gave us a guided tour of the construction work and some of their findings following our extensive conversation about her music, some photos of which appear toward the end of the transcript.

“We tore every room down to the studs,” Dunphy euphorically exclaimed. “I learned how to sweat copper pipe and do dry wall, build a kitchen, and build a bathroom. We just went through and did it. And I loved doing that kind of work. And it’s not only a source of revenue generation or wealth generation, it enables you to buy a really cheap, crappy house, and turn it into something that’s livable. In some ways it’s like this nice corollary to what I do as a composer. Composition is very ethereal. You write something—yes, you have it down on a piece of paper—but when it’s actually presented, it’s in the air and then it’s gone. It’s a memory. It’s not tangible. It’s not concrete. But I literally make concrete in the other part of my life. … This whole theater venture fulfills both a long-term financial idea and also this intellectual hunger for creation. You create ideas, but you can also create stuff. It’s nice to be able to do both.”

Frank J. Oteri in conversation with Melissa Dunphy at her home in Philadelphia, PA
March 13, 2019—3:00 p.m.
Video Presentation by Molly Sheridan

‘Singers and Musicians’ Part 2: On Conductors, Identity, and Musical Segregation

Posted on February 25, 2019 by Dominick DiOrio - Columns, NewMusicBox

When I wrote the first post in this series, “Singers and Musicians” and Why Our Language Matters, I expected there to be a strong response from the people in my closest circle of friends and colleagues. I was not expecting the response to be quite so far-reaching. While I don’t know how many times the article has been viewed, my own Facebook post with the article was shared over 150 times—certainly a new personal record!

I think one of the reasons the article resonated with people so strongly is because it deals with fundamental issues of identity. These labels and categories that we construct to describe who we are and what we do are critical to understanding how we are viewed in both the music profession and in society at large.

A helpful exercise is to take an identity and think of the immediate mental image that comes to mind when you invoke it. Let’s take “conductor.” Picture a conductor in your mind. What does this person look like? What are they doing? What are they wearing? Who is in the frame with them?

If you have been subject to training in a music academy or conservatory (or if you’ve just been a witness to “classical music” in any form in the last 200 years), your first gut-reaction image of this person is probably male, probably white, probably tall, probably north of 60 years old, probably dressed in a tuxedo, probably gripping a wooden stick, and probably leading an ensemble of instrumentalists usually called an orchestra.

You probably wouldn’t initially think of someone like Lidiya Yankovskaya, the only female music director of a multi-million dollar opera company in the United States.

Or of someone like Francisco J. Núñez, founder and director of one of the world’s most accomplished youth choruses, who also happens to be a MacArthur Fellow.

Or of someone like Jeffery Redding, director of choral activities at West Garden High School in Winter Garden, Florida, who was just named the 2019 winner of the GRAMMY Music Educator Award.

That’s because when we use labels like “conductor,” we don’t usually think of educators, or children’s choir directors, or women. As we consider the word “conductor,” we have to work through the ingrained biases and assumptions about what they often or usually look like and what they often or usually do (which can easily be misinterpreted as what they are supposed to look like and what they are supposed to do). The above exercise is illustrative, because our first impressions have the power to reveal our own biases.

Every identity comes with inherent biases, assumptions, and privileges to varying degrees.

Dominick DiOrio

Our first impressions have the power to reveal our own biases.

Dominick DiOrio

Who deserves to be called musician?

Dominick DiOrio

Is “composer” an identity to be bestowed as some honorific title?

Dominick DiOrio

Our art is made smaller by the segregation of identity and the rationing of privilege.

Dominick DiOrio

In the majority narrative, conductors work with orchestras (not choruses or wind bands), they work exclusively at a professional level (not in schools, churches, or civic communities), and they tend to look like the conductors of yesteryear: old, white, male, with gray hair and a strong belief that their interpretation was handed down to them by some divine power. The conductor as authoritarian maestro is a trope as usual and pervasive as it is tired and tiresome.

The problem is systemic, and it comes down to how we define “conductor.” Many definitions are woefully inadequate. Take for example the Dictionary.com definition, which states that a conductor is:

a person who directs an orchestra or chorus, communicating to the performers by motions of a baton or the hands his or her interpretation of the music.

In this reading, we ignore any ensembles that are not choruses or orchestras (even though the oldest professional musical organization in the USA is not an orchestra, but a band: “The President’s Own” United States Marine Band, established in 1798).

While this definition thankfully includes women (which is an improvement, as many older definitions did not), it also perpetuates a false belief that there are only two genders, ignoring a wide array of possible gender identities. (An appropriate gender neutral pronoun to use in the above definition would be “their.” Here’s a quick primer on understanding gender, for the curious.)

Aside: Quixotically, the definition also states that a conductor can only communicate with a baton or their hands. To that, I say, Bernstein clearly must not have known what he was doing.

I like Merriam-Webster’s definition best, which states that a conductor is “the leader of a musical ensemble.” It doesn’t tell us who they are leading, or how they are leading. It doesn’t make assumptions about the conductor’s gender identity.

I believe that my article on the careless use of the phrase “singers and musicians” caused such a stir because it forced us to examine the way we define each of these two labels.

NOTUS and Indiana University Chamber Orchestra with conductor Dominick DiOrio after a performance of James MacMillan’s Seven Last Words from the Cross, March 2017. Photo credit: Indiana University Jacobs School of Music

In the comments I saw on Facebook following the article’s publication, I saw many individuals attaching an element of quantifiable musical aptitude or skill to their definition of musician. It isn’t that a singer is not a musician, but that a singer is not as much of a musician as an orchestral player. Or as soprano and IU doctoral student Alejandra Villarreal Martinez stated so eloquently in a Facebook thread:

If we have a pianist who maybe is largely self-taught and plays pop tunes well enough to be paid for making music at the mall, I’d still call him a musician next to the pianist doing Rach 1 with a symphony. They are both getting paid for their artistry, even if they are worlds apart in musical/technical “skill.”
With singers, I think making this distinction also perpetuates the [false] idea among singers that it’s okay to not be as good as instrumentalists, i.e. that we are naturally inferior at music. I had a music director when I was studying for my undergraduate degree who insisted that singers were musicians and had a very high standard. Now, I’m carving a niche for myself singing extremely challenging modern music.
But if you ask me to compare myself to a girl singing in a folk ensemble, who learns by ear but keeps up with the ensemble, I think we should still call her a musician. I think what I’m getting at is that making a distinction between singers and musicians is the result of ingrained institutional elitism.

In other words, when someone makes this kind of distinction, what they are really saying is: who deserves to be called musician?

Case in point: the Pulitzer Prize in Music. Even though the prize is defined very simply as “for [a] distinguished musical composition by an American,” there is a history of awarding the prize to only the very smallest subset of musical styles, essentially blocking entire strata of artistic activity in music from consideration. The Pulitzer Prize committee famously refused to award a citation in 1965 to Duke Ellington, relayed in this story about Wynton Marsalis’ 1997 win:

Since the inception of the prize in 1943—when composer William Schuman received the award for “Secular Cantata No. 2, A Free Song”—every Pulitzer-winning composition spoke in the language of European-derived, Western classical music. As for jazz, blues, gospel, country, spirituals, and every other genre the United States gave to the world, all had been excluded. Completely.

This caused a contretemps in 1965, when a certifiable jazz genius—Duke Ellington—was denied a special citation the jury had recommended to the Pulitzer board. The subsequent and continued exclusion of jazz, often cited as America’s greatest cultural invention, disturbed some Pulitzer board members and distant observers alike. But it took years of effort, hand-wringing, argument, and public discourse to change the trajectory of the music Pulitzer in 1997 [when Wynton Marsalis became the first composer of jazz music to be awarded the prize].

At the root of the problem lies the term “composition.” Who is allowed to claim the mantle of “composer”? Is “composer” an identity to be bestowed as some honorific title? Are songwriters (composers of words and tunes) or arrangers (composers who use pre-existing material) locked out?

Why is Bach (a prolific arranger of Lutheran hymn tunes) called simply a “composer” when Moses Hogan (a prolific arranger of African American spirituals) qualified as a “composer and arranger”?

I believe our art is made smaller by this segregation of identity and by this rationing of privilege. I believe, as Alejandra does, that the definitions of conductor, composer, and musician should be broadly defined to include all possible forms of music-making.

When Kendrick Lamar won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2018, everyone had an opinion, because his selection was historic. Hip-hop was not a genre that the Pulitzer Prize had ever recognized as having the potential for “distinguished musical composition.” In awarding this prize to Lamar, jazz violinist and Pulitzer jurist Regina Carter had the following to say:

It wasn’t a decision of, Oh, let’s just give this to a hip-hop artist, or to Kendrick Lamar, because of that. The piece stands alone. I think it’s a brilliant, brilliant work. I think he’s brilliant. Knowing that we were considering this, I felt really proud of us, the jurors, being able to realize that there’s other great American music and great American art forms besides what we’ve always been told is great.

Merriam Webster’s definition of composer is “one who composes; especially, a person who writes music.” It does not say that a composer is “a person who writes great music.”

The right to be called a composer belongs to Lamar as much as it does to a composer of symphonies, string quartets, or operas. And it belonged to him the moment he decided to start writing music to tell his story, not the moment he won the Pulitzer Prize.

In the same way, each and every singer should proudly claim the mantle of musician, each and every time they raise their voice in song.

On Networking: A National Conference Preview

Posted on February 18, 2019 by Dominick DiOrio - Columns, NewMusicBox

Dominick at the exhibit hall in Minneapolis in 2017 with conductor Maria Ellis.

At the end of February, choral directors from all over the country will descend upon Kansas City, Missouri, for the biennial national conference of the American Choral Directors Association. Do not be fooled by the moniker of “national”; this is truly a global event for thousands of conductors, composers, educators, publishers, and other industry professionals from around the world. For five days, choral leaders will meet in one place and be inspired by performances, attend interest sessions presented by teachers they admire, and forge new connections that—for the composers present—often lead to new commissioning projects and second and third performances of just-written works.

I am grateful to serve ACDA as the chair of the Standing Committee on Composition Initiatives. In this role, I work with my colleagues—composer Susan LaBarr and conductors Andrew Crane and Nancy Menk—to consider how ACDA can better serve the community of composers that exists within and just outside our choral orbit. We’ve been working diligently for two years, asking ourselves how we can welcome new composers into our choral profession. The national conference is one of the best ways to do just that, as it serves as a perfect place to build new connections through networking.

It can be incredibly daunting to attend a national gathering like this for the first time. Composer Dale Trumbore has already laid out so eloquently the “how to” of negotiating the professional choral conference in a terrific blog post. I recommend it to you highly as essential reading in preparation for any choral conference, whether it be your first or fifteenth. She speaks with great clarity of insight, and I have learned much from reading her personal stories. I know you will, too.

Dale Trumbore, inaugural winner of the Brock Competition for Professional Composers

Dale is also being honored this year as the inaugural winner of the Raymond W. Brock Competition for Professional Composers, “professional” to distinguish this competition from the “student” competition which will now be offered in alternating years). (Aside: Prior to this year, the Student Competition was offered annually since 1998. ACDA decided recently to begin offering a professional competition, in response to many remarks from composers who felt there were fewer opportunities for composers who had aged out of “young” or “emerging” status.)

Dale’s winning work In the Middle will be performed by The Aeolians from Oakwood University and conductor Jason Max Ferdinand on Thursday, February 28 from 2:00-2:45 p.m. in Helzberg Hall (Gold Track) and 4:15-5:00 p.m. in the Muriel Kauffman Theater (Blue Track). You can preview this work below, performed by Brandon Elliott and Choral Arts Initiative.

If you’ve never attended a choral conference, I welcome you to join us! Below, I’ve included a preview of some things that composers will not want to miss at the coming ACDA National Conference, along with a few pieces of advice.

1. Hang (i.e. “network”) with other composers and conductors at the first-ever Composer Fair and Happy Hour.

On Wednesday, February 27 from 5-7 p.m. in the Kansas City Convention Center Exhibit Hall B, we will feature our first-ever Composer Fair & Happy Hour, a meet-and-greet opportunity for ACDA members to have quality face time with composers from around the world. Distinct from the exhibit hall area, the Composer Fair is a two-hour “pop-up” experience, where members can all gather in the same space and move from table to table, interacting with composers of many ages and backgrounds. Conductor members will gain valuable time with composers of the music they love, while also having the chance to meet a composer they’ve heard about but never met in person. This is a chance for composers to also meet conductors of ensembles they’ve admired.

Here is the list of composers who have registered to take part in this inaugural event, in alphabetical order:

Ivo Antognini
Kim André Arnesen
William Averitt
Timothy Banks
Sergio Barer
Eric William Barnum
Josh Bauder
Bud Wayne Bisbee
Matthew Brown
Richard Burchard
Peter Burton
Michael Bussewitz-Quarm
David N. Childs
Charles Dickerson
Dominick DiOrio
Melissa Dunphy
Daniel Elder
Bradley Ellingboe
Donald Fraser
Daniel E. Gawthrop
Stacey Gibbs
Howard Goodall
Amy Gordon
Joseph Gregorio
Jocelyn Hagen
Elaine Hagenberg
Marjorie Halloran
Mark Hayes
J. Edmund Hughes
Victor Johnson
Ron Kean
Lee Kesselman
Katie Allison Kring
Susan LaBarr
David Michael Layne
John Leavitt
Mary Lynn Lightfoot
Karen Marrolli
Richard McKee
Jacob Narverud
Kyle Pederson
Diane Laura Rains
Philip W. Riegle
Paul John Rudoi
Kevin Siegfried
Z. Randall Stroope
Roger Towler
Bruce Trinkley
Michael John Trotta
Dale Trumbore
Christina Whitten Thomas
Deanna Witkowski

Also, for very early rising composers attending the ACDA conference as well as choral directors/choristers interested in new music and in meeting a bunch of composers, there will be an informal meet-and-greet at the nearby Chez Elle creperie on Friday, March 1 at 8:00 A.M. with Laura Krider and William Lackey from the American Composers Forum and Frank J. Oteri from New Music USA. I’ll be there, too. But in order to make sure there’s room for everyone, please let us know if you are able to be there as soon as you can, so we can give the folks at Chez Elle a head count and also inform us of any food allergies/intolerances (e.g. gluten-free, vegan, etc.) so the kitchen can be prepared. Separate checks will be provided; see Chez Elle’s website for menu and pricing.

2.) Be inspired by performances of new music, such as “The Music of Chen Yi and Zhou Long: Legacy from the East.”

This may come as a shock to many composers, but the overwhelming majority (greater than 75%) of music performed at ACDA National Conferences was written in the last fifty years. Stop and admire that statistic for a moment. It’s quite impressive, and immediately shows as false the oft-cited claim that choruses are fearful of new or contemporary music. Nothing could be further from the truth.

From glancing at the conference programs in the Choral Journal (ACDA’s monthly magazine), nearly every choir performing at the conference has a work by a living composer (or several living composers!) on their program. Any concert you attend will feature new music. That being said, there’s one special event you won’t want to miss…

On Wednesday, February 27 at 6:30 p.m. (Blue Track) and Thursday, February 28 at 6:30 p.m. (Gold Track), the University of Missouri-Kansas City Conservatory Singers (Robert Bode, cond.) and UMKC Conservatory Concert Choir (Charles Robinson, cond.) will give a featured performance of the music of Chinese-American composers Chen Yi and Zhou Long. The presentation will feature a wide range of choral a cappella and choral-instrumental music by these two dynamic and long-established composers. The performance will conclude with Zhou Long’s major work, The Future of Fire, for the combined choirs and wind ensemble.

3.) Go to interest sessions, but not all of them. Here’s a curated list.

The ACDA National Conference features a veritable smorgasbord of possible interest and literature sessions for attendees to witness. It’s impossible to go to everything, so don’t even try. (Literally, actually impossible.) So for your guidance, here is a curated list of some of these sessions, earmarked in the conference program booklet as “of possible interest to composers.” Reading the titles alone gives you a good sense of the diversity of perspectives present at this gathering.

Choosing, Adapting, Composing, and Publishing for Middle School Choir
Presenter: Emily Holt Crocker
A Conversation with John Rutter
Presenter: Moderated by Tim Sharp, ACDA Executive Director
Finding Common Ground:
A Panel Discussion on Conflict Transformation through Choral Music
Presenters: Arianne Abela, Emilie Amrein, Micah Hendler, André de Quadros
Heartbeat and Harmony: Exploring Vocal and Choral Repertoire with Percussion
Presenters: Susan Brumfield and Lisa Rogers
It’s About All of Us: The Collaborative Future of Choral Music in Empathy, Servant Leadership, and Selflessness
Presenters: Geoffrey Boers, Clara Osowski, Tesfa Wondemagegnehu, Paul John Rudoi
Making it Plain: Transcribing Contemporary Gospel for the Mixed Chorus
Presenters: Brandon Waddles and Brandon A. Boyd
Meaningful Improvisation in the Choral Rehearsal
Presenter: Leila Heil
Performance Practice of Latin American Music
Presenter: Cristian Grases
Programming for the 21^st Century: Quality, Inclusion, and Diversity
Presenters: Hilary Apfelstadt, Lynne Gackle, Eugene Rogers, and Jo-Michael Scheibe
Quality Accessible Repertoire for Intermediate and Small-but-Mighty Women’s Treble Choirs
Presenter: Shelbie Wahl-Fouts
Tarik O’Regan: Orchestrating Voices
Presenter: Tarik O’Regan

With Cameron Chase McCall and Dale Warland at the ACDA national conference in Salt Lake City, 2015. (Photo courtesy Dominick DiOrio).

4.) The Exhibit Hall: Be overwhelmed, yes, but be present.

The Exhibit Hall is unquestionably one of the most overwhelming places to be at the national conference. Located this year in the Kansas City Convention Center, there are literally hundreds of exhibitors, from publishers and composers to tour companies and instrument makers, and it’s always very loud. The chaos of people moving in and out and about can be difficult if you’re not used to such activity.

But, some of the best conversations I have during the entire conference occur in this room, when I’m walking around with no purpose in particular. I’ve met conductors for the first time who have performed my music. I’ve run into composers who are present at the conference for the first time, hoping to meet a friendly face to show them around. On more than one occasion, I’ve started the conversation about a commission in the exhibit hall, and then I’ve followed up the next week with an email. So much business and connection happens on the Exhibit Hall floor, and I encourage you to plan unstructured time there to allow for such serendipity.

The exhibit hall is also the perfect place to meet with potential publishers. Representatives from all of the major publishers have booths in the hall, as well as many of the online distributors (MusicSpoke, Graphite Marketplace, etc.) that allow composers to keep the copyright to their scores. Go and meet with these people, and bring copies of your scores to share.

This gets to one larger point about networking in general: never be afraid to say hello, even if you don’t think you have anything in common. Taking that first step to make a connection with a simple hello and a handshake will lead, step-by-step, to a greater professional network of colleagues.

5.) Finally: Do something that has nothing to do with choral music.

Maybe you step away from the conference for an afternoon to go to a museum. Or maybe you decide that on Friday night, even though you want to go to a concert, it might be better to have a leisurely dinner with a friend you haven’t seen in years. Whatever it is, we can’t all be “on” for four days straight without going a little crazy, so step away for a bit and don’t feel shame in doing so.

So…

If you’re already registered for the ACDA National Conference, great! I look forward to seeing you there. If you haven’t, it’s not too late. To do so, you first must join as an ACDA member and then register for the conference. Please note that the cost to attend, even with the cost (and benefits!) of annual membership, is cheaper than many other music industry conferences. The cost is well worth it.

If you are interested, online registration closes at 11:59 p.m. Central Time on February 18. Learn more at the ACDA website.

Conference attendance has been one of the great joys of my career, as it combines the best parts of being a professional with belonging to a community of colleagues and friends. I hope you will feel welcome to join our choral community at the ACDA National Conference this year and take part in the wealth of new music offerings that will be of interest to composers from all walks of life.

Writing for “The Chorus”: Text, Dynamics, and Other Occupational Hazards

Posted on February 11, 2019 by Dominick DiOrio - Columns, NewMusicBox

As a composer-conductor who works primarily with new choral music, I encounter over 500 freshly minted new works for chorus each year. Sometimes, I am considering newly published works for potential programming; other times, I evaluate new manuscripts as part of a jury in a composition competition. At still other times, composers will send me scores via email and ask that I consider programming them.

Some of these scores are beautifully crafted, expertly notated, and idiomatically written. More usually, however, the scores will often make exceedingly unwarranted demands on the singers or include some rather basic errors.

In order to guide us all toward a more perfect harmony in writing for the chorus, and because writing for the chorus is often neglected in the training of composers at academic institutions, I am including below some of the most prevalent pitfalls that I have seen over and over again—even by some of today’s most reputable composers.

Point #1: “The Chorus” contains multitudes.

According to Chorus America’s 2009 Chorus Impact Study:

[A]n estimated 42.6 million Americans regularly sing in choruses today. More than 1 in 5 households have at least one singing family member, making choral singing the most popular form of participation in the performing arts for both adults and children.

You can probably surmise that not all of the 42.6 million Americans who sing in choruses are paid professional musicians. This leads us to our first consideration: for whom am I writing?

Unlike in an orchestra, where you can probably expect a section of violins to sound a certain way, a section of sopranos can be any one of a vast range of possibilities—10 trained opera singers, 16 Anglican boy trebles, 50 non-professional community singers over the age of 55, etc.—and it is quite critical that you have some awareness of which choral instrument you are envisioning before writing. As you might imagine, the fortissimo of an opera chorus will likely be very different than the fortissimo of a high school chamber choir.

Whether writing a new commission for a youth chorus or a professional chamber choir, recognize that your role in writing for the chorus is closer to what in fashion is known as “bespoke.” You are tailor-making a new work for a specific group of individuals, and those individuals may come from a wide array of professional or non-professional backgrounds.

The same is true in publishing: you probably wouldn’t submit a sacred anthem for mixed chorus and organ to a publisher that offers its catalogue predominantly to a secular, educational market.

So: before you do anything else, define “the chorus” for your situation or project. It will anticipate and surmount a whole host of problems before they even have a chance of existing.

Point #2: “The Chorus” is not “The Orchestra.”

Where many composers lack academic training in writing for the chorus, nearly all composers are expected to learn how to compose for the orchestra and its various instruments. Composers are taught the technical considerations of the string family—harmonics, bowing techniques, which strings are open, etc.—and about optimal voicings when combining the winds and brass into harmonic sonorities.

Composers also learn what is inadvisable in writing for the orchestra: namely, which pitches do not exist on certain instruments, the dynamic tendencies of certain instruments, why you can usually only write seven pitches for the harp, etc.

Here, then, are some regular rules for “The Chorus,” especially as they differ from “The Orchestra.”

1. Dynamics:

Most voices are naturally quieter in the lower register and naturally louder in the higher register. (Very few people naturally “scream” low in their voice; young babies, when they want your attention, will cry high and loud in their range.)

For this reason, it is very difficult to adequately balance a choral sonority when the sopranos are high (F5-A5) and the basses are low (F2, etc.), as the basses will naturally be softer than the sopranos. This is unlike an orchestra, where a dramatic crescendo may often be built with the low instruments descending (cellos, tuba, bassoons) and the high instruments ascending (violins, clarinets, trumpets, etc.).

Unlike an orchestra, the most effective choral crescendos occur when ALL vocal parts move to the upper part of their vocal range.

Four different chord voicings sung fortissimo: not good (SATB=G5,D4,B3,G2); better (SATB=G5,B4,D4,G3); best (SATB=G5,D5,G4,B3); and best with multiple voices (divisi: sopranos singing E5 and G5; altos singing C5 and D5; tenors singing F#4 and G4; and Basses singing B3 & D4)

Voicings beneath a soprano high G and how they will likely sound.

2. Breath

It is easier for a section of strings to sustain a sonority than it is for a chorus of singers. This may seem self-evident, but singers need to breathe to produce their sound, where string players need to breathe to stay alive, yes, but not to create sound with their bow.

When a chorus is clear on how, when, and where to breathe in music, the resulting performance is always more compelling and artful.

Of course, a chorus can stagger their breathing—where some voices in the section continue singing while others breathe, and then they switch off—but there are limitations to this technique, too. It is easier to stagger one’s breathing without a noticeable effect during passages that have quieter dynamics and lower ranges. It is much more difficult to do so without noticing when louder dynamics and higher ranges are in play.

If you want to sustain a chord over a long period of time, consider planning the breaths and releases into the over-arching sonority and texture. Not only will it be more successful in performance, it will also probably be more interesting to the listener, too.

There is an easy solution for this: when you are writing choral music, sing every part as if you were performing it. Is it clear where the breaths should be placed? Are you having trouble sustaining a particularly long line? When you begin to put yourself in the place of the singer, your choral writing will improve.

3. Range & Tessitura

Singing high notes is difficult. Singing high notes over a long stretch of time is especially difficult and especially fatiguing, just as it would be if a composer were to demand the same of a brass player. Singing high notes non-vibrato, at a very quiet dynamic is exceedingly difficult. Asking a singer to do this for pages on end is simply cruel.

One of the most common mistakes I see in choral writing is a disregard for the tessitura of the singers. Tessitura—according to Wikipedia (I know)—is “the most aesthetically acceptable and comfortable vocal range.” It’s not just an issue in the higher registers either. It is fatiguing for singers to be in any narrow range for a long period of time.

In composition, it is best to consider questions like, “How long has the section been singing in this range?” If you find that the tenors are only singing between D4 and G4 for six pages in a row, you should probably consider re-voicing their part. They will grow tired, their intonation will suffer, and they probably won’t enjoy singing your piece.

So, vary the range and tessitura of your vocal parts, especially for longer and more extended works.

Point #3: “The Chorus” does not have valves, keys, or slides.

From whence cometh the pitch?

While some highly trained choruses can perform any selection of pitches put in front of them, even the very best professional radio choirs in Europe often have to use tuning forks to find pitches in extremely complex music. It is to your benefit as a composer to make this job easier for the singers by skillfully preparing your score to be more successfully executed.

To be clear: I am not advocating for a “dumbing down” of your music. I am saying that we should be aware that a singer cannot just push down a key to find an F#. It is helpful to sometimes find other ways of forecasting the pitch prior to singing.

This may be apparent in the motives played by other instruments before a choral entrance, in the case of choral-instrumental music. In a cappella music, it might be a skillfully placed unison statement for the chorus before a treacherous 11-pitch sonority. Be resourceful but also kind.

A good rule of thumb: Can you, as the composer, pitch every note in your score accurately? If the answer to that is not “yes,” then perhaps consider a rewrite.

Point #4: “The Chorus” does have consonants, vowels, and other assorted phonemes.

Ah, text! Nothing differentiates a chorus from an orchestra more clearly than the use of words and all that they entail.

If you are not used to writing texted music, then some basic disclaimers are worth mentioning:

The vowel sound of any syllable is what occurs “on the beat” or “on the note.” So, if you write the word “Strength” on a downbeat, the “Str” will all have to occur before the notated pitch, and the vowel will occur on the beat.
Some consonants can be lengthened (m, n, f, v, s, z, sh, zh, etc.) and some cannot (t, d, k, g, p, b, etc.).
Chorus releases after notes usually occur on the rests in the music: so when a quarter note on the word “great” is followed by a quarter rest, the “t” sound will occur on the quarter rest following the word. (You do not have to notate this as the composer; the chorus will do this naturally.)

Further: It is your responsibility as the composer to know not only the meaning of the text you are setting, but even and especially the inherent stresses of the language. Nothing shows a novice choral composer more obviously than when the composer writes a motive for a text that inadvertently stresses the inappropriate syllable. Check your dictionary, especially when writing in a less comfortable language, to ensure that you are stressing each word appropriately in your setting.

One of the most common problems I encounter is when a composer hears the composite text of a part in their head, but does not think carefully about what each of the singers have to perform.

In instances like this, the conductor has to reconfigure the arrangement of syllables to make the composer’s intention clear.

Finally, text is expressive. The chorus can communicate not just the text, but also the meaning behind the words. Make sure you, as the composer, have given some thought to how you would express the text—poetically, rhetorically, etc.

A good practice that works for many composers I know: memorize your text and speak through it regularly, until its natural rhythms, inflections, and lines begin to emerge. Do this before you set any of the words to notated music.

Point #5: “The Chorus” is made of people.

At the end of the day, a chorus is a collection of people. These people come into the rehearsal room with an assortment of daily experiences: one of the baritones may have just won an award, while one of the altos may have lost a parent. They both enter that room to have a communal singing experience that will connect them to others and give voice to where they are on that day.

Millions of Americans sing in choruses because making music is part of being human. To truly be successful as a composer of choral music, we have to recognize that all choral music is in some ways communal music. And all choral music gives voice—literal voice, with text—to our human experience.

So let’s be empathetic composers. Let’s put ourselves in the singers’ shoes. And let’s make the study of choral composition and its rudiments as usual in the academy as the study of string harmonics.

“Singers and Musicians” and Why Our Language Matters

Posted on February 4, 2019 by Dominick DiOrio - Columns, NewMusicBox

There it was yet again, this time in an article written by a living composer in October 2018. It stuck out like a four-inch crease in a freshly ironed shirt. While it may first appear—like so many other biases—to be simply a polite substitution, it actually carries a condescension that comes from a long history of implied assumptions that communicate “separate and certainly not equal.”

Not even The New York Times is immune from this double standard. Quite to the contrary, you’ll come across the phrase hundreds of times if you spend just a few minutes scouring their archives. You’ll find it in headlines and reviews, in news articles, letters, and obituaries:

An article on the Bayreuth Festival from 2015 includes the line: “Plaques just outside the Festival Theater poignantly memorialize Bayreuth singers and musicians who were persecuted by the Third Reich.”
The headline from a 2001 obituary reads: “Alix Williamson, 85, Noted Publicist for Singers and Musicians.”
A news article on the Metropolitan Opera’s union and management negotiations from 2014 includes this gem: “Outside the opera house on Friday, the day began with about 150 singers and musicians from the Met’s chorus and orchestra holding a demonstration, with a melodious score, in Dante Park, a small park opposite Lincoln Center.” (Aside: yes, I recognize that this is complicated by the names of the unions themselves—i.e. the American Federation of Musicians, which represents the orchestra players, and the American Guild of Musical Artists, which represents the chorus and the principal singers, as well as other professionals including the stage managers—but there is no good reason to use this language when referring directly to the artists themselves and not to their union representation.)
And there it was as recently as October 2018 when Nico Muhly was describing his new dramatic work: “My role, as I understand it now, is to be an editor and custodian of the document Nick and I created, and to guide — but not prescribe — the various options the singers and musicians have in expounding it.”

To be absolutely certain that no one misses my point: singers and musicians are not mutually exclusive categories. All singers are musicians, but not all musicians are singers (some are players, some are composers, etc.).

Language matters. When we use the phrase “singers and musicians” in one breath, we communicate—even if inadvertently—that they are mutually exclusive categories. In other words, singers are not musicians.

That’s a problem.

When we use the phrase “singers and musicians” in one breath, we communicate that they are mutually exclusive categories.

Dominick DiOrio, composer and conductor

The vast majority of singers are individuals who have dedicated years of their lives to studying the art of performance and the craft of music.

Dominick DiOrio, composer and conductor

These ‘singers’ are making some of the most adventurous new music being written today.

Dominick DiOrio, composer and conductor

This subtle but false dichotomy reinforces many of the assumptions that singers are forced to confront in their careers: that they are not as musically literate, that they came to their career through a path of sub-par training, that they lack the ability to hear and understand the underpinnings of a musical score, that they have to hire a vocal coach to teach them their part, etc., etc.

We hear it in the subtext beneath the “Eureka!” stories about famous opera singers being discovered, endowed with a beautiful voice but lacking any formal training. (Woody Allen troped on this quite famously in his 2012 movie, To Rome with Love, where a mortician’s perfectly developed operatic tenor is only revealed when he’s singing in the shower.)

It is further reinforced by the history of choral-orchestral music performance, where an important tradition still flourishes: a professional (read: paid) orchestra of players and a non-professional (read: non-paid) chorus of singers combine to perform some of the great warhorses of Western art music (your Beethoven 9s, Mahler 2s, and the like). In this reading, musicians are trained professionals, while singers are those other people participating in the performance who could not have learned their part if it were not taught to them by a chorus master (which, it should be noted, is another problematic name for someone who can and should simply be called “conductor”… but that’s an issue for another article).

All stereotypes are grounded in some kernel of truth, and you may indeed encounter singers who conform to and confirm some of the worst stereotypes. But in my experience as a conductor-composer who has worked with literally thousands of singers, the vast majority of them are individuals who have dedicated years of their lives to studying the art of performance and the craft of music: i.e. musicians.

As a conducting faculty member at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, I lead NOTUS, a select vocal ensemble that is unique among collegiate choirs, as we have a singular mission to perform, commission, and record the works of living composers. As you might expect, we regularly perform contemporary music that is exceedingly challenging. We recently released our first commercial album, NOTUS: Of Radiance & Refraction, which features five world premiere recordings of works that we commissioned from IU faculty members. Listen here to a movement of John Gibson’s In Flight, for chorus and electronics, featuring soprano soloist Kellie Motter:

The thirty-or-so student singers that I work with each year are musicians in every sense of the word. These young people can sing pitches out of thin air from tuning forks. They can tune (and express!) 10-part chords. They can sing melodies with complex polyrhythms and syncopations. And they can do all of this while communicating a poetic text clearly and distinctly. (You might surmise that I’m quite proud of them. You’d be right.)

I prepare these students to be responsive to the musical gesture. I ask them to come to rehearsal already familiar with their musical part (no spoon-feeding their pitches with the piano). In short: I expect each one of them to be as professional a musician as the first oboist in an orchestra is expected to be.

I believe that we confront this bias head-on by making sure that we do everything we can to hold singers to the same musical expectations as our players, especially in our training institutions. I take comfort in knowing that I have many colleagues in this profession who believe the same, and who are also training their singers to be as responsive as the best orchestral players.

Excitingly, the choral repertoire has been expanding and transforming over the last fifty years as this artistic shift in our professional expectations of singers has led composers to imagine new choral musics that were never possible before.

In Sweden, Eric Ericson and his Chamber Choir redefined excellence in choral performance on an international scale with their recordings. They performed music more complex than any other choral repertoire then-written and helped establish careers for composers such as Sven-David Sandström and Lars Edlund. (Here’s the Eric Ericson Chamber Choir performing Sandström’s Agnus Dei consisting of gnarly tonal-ish clusters that float in and out of each other:

Today in the USA, Donald Nally and The Crossing are exhibiting new levels of choral artistry and technical mastery in the performances they give to works by composers such as Ted Hearne, Anna Thorvaldsdottir, David Lang, and Lansing McLoskey. (Here’s The Crossing performing Ted Hearne’s Animals:

Roomful of Teeth and Brad Wells have embraced the “choir as rock band” aesthetic, combining vocal traditions from across the globe to create stunningly otherworldly works by their singer-composers Eric Dudley, Avery Griffin, and Caroline Shaw. Listen to RoT sing Shaw’s “Allemande” from her Pulitzer-winning Partita for 8 voices:

And for inspiration beyond measure, look no further than Francisco Núñez and the extraordinary Young People’s Chorus of New York City. Through their Transient Glory program, they have commissioned some of the most interesting, diverse, and eclectic contemporary music for youth chorus ever written, from the likes of Paquito D’Rivera, Joan La Barbara, Meredith Monk, and Michael Torke. And these young people ages 9-18 sing as good as—and in some cases better than—any professional choir. Here they are singing Michael Gordon’s Every Stop on the F Train:

Yes, these groups are made of ‘singers.’ They are choirs, or vocal ensembles, or choruses, collections of people who make noise together with their vocal cords or whatever else you want to call them. But these ‘singers’ are making some of the most adventurous new music being written today, and you can be damned-sure that they are also musicians of the very highest caliber.

So enough. Let’s embrace some new language.

We could say “singers and players” or “vocalists and instrumentalists.” Or maybe call them all “performers” or “artists.”

Or how about just “musicians?”

Exploring Timbre in Choral Music

Posted on March 26, 2018 by Fahad Siadat - Columns, NewMusicBox

Full Disclosure: many of the samples I share in this article are from the See-A-Dot Music Catalog, a company for which I am the director.

Unlike many aspects of the experimental music world, choral music in the western classical realm has historically avoided employing a variety of vocal timbres in any given piece, usually defaulting to the inherited English choral cathedral tradition. By contrast, string players are readily prepared to perform a variety of sounds on their instruments from sul tasto and sul ponticello to pizzicato and scratch tones. But while this kind of experimentation with sound used to be unusual in the choral world, it is now becoming more common.

In choral music, timbral varieties are generally confined to specific styles and genres.

It’s not that choral singing as a whole does not employ a variety of timbres: singers sing differently in a gospel choir than when singing in an Anglican church; musical theater and opera choruses ask for very different vocal production, and that’s just sticking to the most common styles in the United States. If we back up even further and look at ensemble singing from a global perspective, Bulgarian choirs use an entirely different timbre from singers in West Africa, Sardinia, and India. But these timbral varieties are generally confined to specific styles and genres of music. Modern recording and communication technology has brought a new level of awareness and exposure to vocal timbre to a large group of people, and there is an increasing interest in playing with the sound possibilities of the voice influenced by music of other cultures—from yodeling to Mongolian throat and overtone singing. I believe the future of choral music will embrace timbre as an integral component of sound making.

I give credit to Meredith Monk for pioneering music for vocal ensembles that focuses on the different sounds of the voice, perhaps above and beyond the individual notes and rhythms. For example, Dolmen Music has an entire section where the soprano line gradually changes from a more open, “traditional” sound to a very bright nasal technique, and that transition in timbre is the main driving force behind the drama of that section.

Like the above example by Monk, much of this choral music is wordless, putting the focus on the voice itself as an instrument, rather than the musical interpretation of the text. Here is an example from the composer Toby Twining, who is also a versatile vocal performer familiar with a variety of techniques. Twining treats the voice like an instrument and incorporates a slew of different styles and techniques into a single composition.

While the piece certainly isn’t easy, it has been performed by college and community choirs around the country. Twining has also recently written new pieces for Roomful of Teeth, an ensemble popularizing the incorporation of techniques from global singing styles into Western music. While most of the music written for them is extremely specialized and likely not performable by large choirs, avocational singers, or even most semi-pro ensembles, there is a growing body of work that incorporates a variety of timbres and techniques in such a way that is accessible to avocational and student singers.

There’s a growing body of work incorporating a variety of timbres that is accessible to avocational and student singers.

I’d find it silly to not include my own most performed piece for choir, which is an example of timbral exploration for choirs. Hymn to Aethon uses four different timbres, ranging from dark to bright sounds, and it’s the use of timbres and rhythmic groove that provide the bulk of the aural interest, not the harmonic content which mostly revolves around melodies and open fifths.

I believe what contributes to the popularity of this piece is the relatively simple harmonies (it’s only 4 parts with almost no divisi) and straightforward rhythms making it relatively easy to perform without compromising its interest. I’ve taught this piece to unauditioned college groups and professional ensembles, and in both instances, the rehearsal process relies on rote learning, vocal play, and listening rather than note learning, blend, and lyrical interpretation. I think exploring vocal timbres will play an increasingly important role in the future of choral music as a way to expand the expressive palette available to choirs without relying on the harmonic content of the work.

The Future of Choral Music

Posted on March 5, 2018 by Fahad Siadat - Columns, NewMusicBox

Here’s a common experience I have as a publisher of choral music: I’ll receive a piece with all the hallmarks of a composer who knows what they are doing. The piece is well engraved, follows the rules of voice leading, is idiomatically written for the voice—and is dull. But then I’ll do a little sleuthing and find samples of this same composer’s instrumental music, which will often by contrast be lively, engaging, and innovative. Nothing drives me battier than to see this separation between the two mediums, and I’ll often write an impassioned reply to the composer asking why they are so apparently willing to stifle their creative voice when it comes to choral music. Nine out of ten times, they respond with something akin to “thank you for giving me the permission to write the music I want to write.” These experiences have lead me to the belief that while there is plenty of newly composed music for choir, it is not part of the same contemporary conversation around new music as its instrumental and solo counterparts.

Highly chromatic or atonal music is rarely written for choirs.

It’s no shocker to say that the choral and instrumental worlds have evolved quite separately over the past century. Highly chromatic or atonal music is rarely written for choirs, and the deep exploration of timbre found in instrumental pieces from later in the 20th century has mostly been ignored in favor of the pervasive choral sound inherited from the English cathedral tradition. Not only have the two worlds evolved separately, but their cultural importance is weighed differently as well. Using the Pulitzer Prize as one limited metric, it’s worth noting that, until The Little Match Girl Passion in 2008, an a cappella choral piece had never won the prize. This fact is confounding if we consider that choral music is thesingle most popular activity among adults in America. It is estimated that 32.5 million adults in America sing with a choir on a weekly basis and that ensemble singing is the most popular arts activity among adults in the United States. While the majority of choirs are religious or school ensembles, it is conservatively estimated that 12,000 of US choirs are community and professional groups. That’s 10 times the amount of community and professional orchestras in the United States. It’s entirely possible that the Pulitzer committee shares the same perspective as much of the new music world, that choral literature is not in the same “high art” category as its orchestral counter-part. And to be fair, the largely avocational nature of choirs contributes to the cultural sense that, as a whole, it need not be taken as seriously as instrumental music.

Choral music performers are hungry for new types of exploration.

Thankfully, choral music in the 21st century is undergoing a cultural renaissance. More and more ensembles are bringing together musical innovation in the choral world, and ensembles are performing music that points composers in a new direction. These composers are exploring and expanding what is possible in the choral medium without being stymied by the avocational nature of many of the performers. There has, perhaps, never been a better time to make a national, and even global, impact with choral music. The choral world is one of the most accessible avenues for the public to stay connected with “classical” or “concert” music, especially when it comes to the work of living choral composers, where there is still a mass appeal from the young to the elderly. The medium is hugely popular, it is being taken more seriously than it has for the past hundred years, and the performers themselves are hungry for new types of exploration. There is a wonderful opportunity to use choral music as a way to expose a wide swath of Americans to the adventurous side of today’s new music conversation by getting people involved as performers, not just passive listeners.

In the series of articles that will be posted here in the coming weeks, I will explore: how the choral world is changing artistically, logistically, and creatively; what factors into that change; and where we all might be headed. I’ll also describe how technology is changing the social and business world of publishing and what methods composers can employ to bring experimental musical ideas to a wide demographic of people without alienating the majority of avocational singers in the choral world.

Crowd Out

Posted on February 7, 2018 by Tim Munro - Articles, NewMusicBox

The beginning

Early in 2015, I asked Donald Nally to join me as co-music director for a Chicago performance of David Lang’s crowd out, a work for 1000 untrained voices, written in 2014. It would be the work’s US premiere.

What is the power of a crowd?

When creating this piece, David had asked himself: What is the power of a crowd? What do we as individuals gain by joining with others? What do we lose? crowd out is his answer. Performers are scattered around a large venue, initially indistinguishable from audience members. They whisper a crowd-sourced text. Whispers turn to speech, which turns to shouts, which turns to song. Is this a celebration? A rally? Sports fans at a game? A congregation?

I approached the Chicago Humanities Festival about presenting the work, and in 2016, Illinois Humanities came on board. The work of these organizations complemented one another: Illinois Humanities, whose work brings together communities from across the state to “share ideas that matter,” would gather participants for crowd out; Chicago Humanities Festival, which presents a major annual festival of arts and ideas, would organize the day-of performance.

The project also received a $50,000 grant from the City of Chicago.

Donald Nally, co-music director
I’m interested in creative artists who are questioning how we receive information, how we interact with people. David is at the forefront of that. A piece that is by a crowd, about a crowd.

David Lang, composer
Twenty-five years ago, I was doing a project in London. I wandered through the neighborhood of Islington, where the Arsenal football team had their stadium. I was walking by right as a soccer match was about to begin. And someone was outside selling tickets. You entered this arena, there were 60,000 people, and they’re all singing, yelling, screaming. And occasionally there are these songs that every single person seems to know. A bunch of ordinary people making this music together. Everyone was welcome.

Bindu Poroori, Illinois Humanities
Crowd Out Chicago was an opportunity to develop relationships and have conversations about the state of the arts in our neighborhoods. We didn’t just want to engage with music groups, we wanted to engage with other community organizations. To be part of the conversations. None of us knew exactly what it was exactly going to look like. We just jumped in.

Heidi Hewitt, Chicago Humanities Festival
The scale, the partnership, the amount of players, that made it one-of-a-kind for us. I was a bit skeptical. I know how small Chicago Humanities Festival is, and what an undertaking it would be.

Kait Samuels, Chicago Humanities Festival
I come from a background as a stage manager in musical theater, and the largest thing involved seventy preteen tap dancers…which is its own bout of chaos. But nothing like this!

Co-director Donald Nally and I discussed possible venues for crowd out over several months. Indoor, outdoor, stadium, park, mall. All had pros and cons.

Donald Nally
There is nothing wrong with the way that the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group produced [the premiere of] crowd out [in a shopping mall], but I had an aversion to the idea that the piece would be involved with commercial activity. We wanted to find an organic setting where a crowd didn’t feel unnatural, where one could choose to be in the midst of the performance, or find a place to observe.

All images: David T. Kindler, courtesy of Chicago Humanities Festival and Illinois Humanities

Illinois Humanities set itself an ambitious goal: draw participants from all fifty wards of the city of Chicago. Each ward would have a “member ensemble,” but all city residents would be welcome to join. Each ward-based group had its own group leader. Illinois Humanities structured each ward’s rehearsal as part-conversation, part-rehearsal.

Bindu Poroori
We [contacted] choirs, art groups, after-school and church groups across the city. There were days when all we did was walk around a neighborhood, put up flyers, talk to the alderman and knock on church doors. We now know the distributions of denominations, about how people come together in different parts of the city.

Sharon Quattrin Campagna, group leader, Hubbard High School
Any time I have an opportunity to expose my students to something out of their neighborhood, that will give them a new experience, I jump on it. And I thought they might love that it is so unique and weird.

Bindu Poroori
We were looking through the lens of this piece, asking what it means for people to cross neighborhood lines, what it means for people to come together, and why they might be interested or hesitant about a project like this.

Michael “Mike” Jones, group leader, Professional Theatre and Dance Youth Academy
A thing that was important was giving them the experience to see something new and different. To go with the kids to meet in Millennium Park. I assumed they were all youth groups. Then to understand that it was everybody, all ages, cultures, genders? It was a great melting pot. I felt really proud for my kids.

Sharon Quattrin Campagna
The thing that drew me is that it was going to bring people together, to be representative of all fifty wards of Chicago.

Jefferey Thomas, Group Leader, The Hideout
It wasn’t my desire to put together a choir of really bitchin’ singers. I believed I could teach it to the most eclectic community group of people who could sing, or not sing, who were strangers.

I look at the world that we live in right now…I never said when singing in a choir, “I hate the person who is standing next to me.”

David Lang
I look at the world that we live in right now, and I try to compare it to experiences I’ve had in choirs. I never said when singing in a choir, “I hate the person who is standing next to me, I don’t like them, so I’m going to wreck their part.”

The music of crowd out is unusual in that there is no musical score, but rather something closer to a script. The work is divided into eight parts, and in each part David describes waves of activity that take place across four colored groups of performers (called “strands”). For instance, the work opens in this way: “ALL 4 STRANDS: each person independently, speak in a whisper at first and gradually move to normal voice, at a normal pace, repeating sentences in order, with varying lengths of silence between each sentence: I draw deep breaths, I feel more confident and calm…”

Donald Nally
It’s a score that you look at and are not sure how it’s going to play out. In a more conventional composition, at any given time you can say “The texture is _____.”

Jefferey Thomas
Theater improvisers would be great group leaders. Cheerleaders would be great group leaders. You don’t have to be a trained singer. Even an alderman would be a group leader. Community organizers and activists would be great group leaders.

Sharon Quattrin Campagna
I teach high school on the south side, and my students aren’t exposed to much in the classical world, let alone in the contemporary new music world. My first reaction to the piece was, “My students are going to hate this.”

The crisis

Gathering a 1000-strong choir from across the city was no easy feat.

Bindu Poroori
There were five million moments when I thought it wasn’t going to happen. FIVE MILLION MOMENTS.

David Lang
During the making of this piece I realized the value of having something difficult that you need a community of people to accomplish. It is something very beautiful and powerful to me, people coming together to solve a problem.

Bindu Poroori
A lot of the stasis happened early. It seemed like a behemoth, and I didn’t know where to start. I was scared to have the first conversations, going in with the anxiety of “Who would want to do this?”

Kait Samuels, Chicago Humanities Festival
You can’t explain [crowd out] in five minutes. You can’t be like, “We’re going to sing ‘Carol of the Bells’ by the Christmas tree.”

Jefferey Thomas
I ended up with several members [from another ward’s group]. They told me that their choir dropped out. And I asked why, and they said, “They didn’t understand it.”

“What does it mean to bring this weird piece of contemporary art by a white dude and take it to a bunch of black and brown people all over the place?”

Bindu Poroori
If you want to do a project in a city as ethnically diverse and segregated as Chicago is, then the first question needs to be, “What does it mean to bring this weird piece of contemporary art by a white dude and take it to a bunch of black and brown people all over the place?”

Michael “Mike” Jones
You know what I called it in my mind? Performance art. I thought it was really cool and different, and I thought, “How do I get my kids to buy in?” I told them about the piece, and you could see that confused look on their faces.

Sharon Quattrin Campagna
I started [rehearsing] the singing first. It was catchy, [the students] could open their hearts to it. When I started introducing them to the text, it was tough. I teach some kids who have tough lives, and the words are isolating.

The text for Parts 4 and 7 includes these phrases, to be shouted: “I feel anxiety,” “I feel awful and I wish to be alone,” “I feel like rushing into tears,” “I feel so alone I could cry.”

Jefferey Thomas
That’s a problem with the libretto. It is kind of jarring. To sing those words, “I’m obsessed with being at the center of attention” in almost a plainchant way.

David Lang
crowd out is very introspective, and it can be a little bit of a downer, because it’s very serious about who you are, what you lose when you’re in this crowd.

Bindu Poroori
When I first started carting this piece around, it was with my implicit endorsement. A group would say, “There are things in this piece that make me feel uncomfortable,” and I felt on the defensive. I wish I’d said, “Here’s this controversial piece, that doesn’t speak to everybody. Now that you’re here, what does it evoke in you?”

Michael “Mike” Jones
[Musical Assistant] AJ [Keller] was really the deciding factor. His strength and confidence, and the way he was able to interact with the kids. Once AJ gave them background and substance, we were able to move forward. You could see them nodding their heads.

Bindu Poroori
At some point in February we made our naive timeline of how things were going to shape up. By May, all fifty groups and the entire schedule should have been put together. And it was a barren wasteland in May. One thing I learned, if you’ve got to throw away the timeline, then, honey, throw away the timeline. Don’t let a piece of paper throw you on the ground. It took me a long time to come to terms with that.

One thing I learned, if you’ve got to throw away the timeline, then, honey, throw away the timeline. Don’t let a piece of paper throw you on the ground.

Heidi Hewitt
We didn’t know until July what the final timeline would be, and there was some mystery around what the number of participants would be. There were trust issues [between Illinois Humanities and Chicago Humanities Festival] that we had to overcome.

Bindu Poroori
In May, the Fyre Festival brouhaha was happening, with people turning up and nothing there. I remember thinking, “This is what crowd out is going to be.” It’s going to be me faking for a very long time, then October happening, and people being like, “Bindu, did this fail?”, and me being like, “Yes, it did.”

Donald Nally
I live my life going, “It’s okay if it doesn’t work this time.” A bunch of times I take similar risks, and not every one can be a home run. Once in a while I have to walk away and say, “Well, nobody died.”

Rehearsals took place at the ward level, then each group attended one of four “dress rehearsals” in the week before the performance.

Jefferey Thomas
At the Hideout [dress rehearsal], one person in another group criticized everything I did: “You know, there’s a space in here, and a space in here.” I thought that was wrong, to interpret it in this strict way. He was thinking of it as a “choir piece”, and that there are standards and traditions that must be observed. All the baggage that comes with performing “high” works of musical art. But crowd out is a piece for a crowd!

Bindu Poroori
As we got into the rehearsal process, as we realized that people coming together were so different from one another, it meant that the piece itself took on a thousand different meanings.

The performance

The performance took place on October 1, 2017, in Chicago’s Millennium Park, in front of Cloudgate, known to locals as “The Bean.” Donald Nally directed, with the help of six assistants holding cue-cards. Before the performance, there was an hourlong rehearsal in the nearby Pritzker “bowl”.

Donald Nally
With crowd out, we didn’t actually know how things would sound until we were in “The Bean” whispering. It was like rehearsing a wind octet without four of the players.

Michael “Mike” Jones
It was exciting from the time we gathered at our school. We took a trip to McDonalds, and the students got what they wanted to eat.

Sharon Quattrin Campagna
The energy of being out with so many people! They were feeding off one another.

Heidi Hewitt
It was a full day of activities, of people getting to know each other. I feel like that is part of the piece.

Michael “Mike” Jones
When we were in the Pritzker, gathering, I wish that we’d had a warm up person or an emcee or a video, to get our minds working together: “Hey, everyone ready for crowd out?!”

Sharon Quattrin Campagna
The [short final] rehearsal at the [Pritzker] bowl was more exciting than [the performance], because the sound was different there and it was the first time my students heard all 1,000 people together.

Donald Nally
We had to move quickly in our bowl rehearsal. I would have liked to run the piece, feel the form and structure of it, but we couldn’t do it. There were a lot of cooks in that kitchen.

Heidi Hewitt
When everyone was in the bowl it felt like it was in the 700s, but once we got to “The Bean,” it was so full. It had the power of a thousand.

Jefferey Thomas
Before the performance, people said, “Tell me about this piece. Can we do it?” All of a sudden, someone said, “It’s starting!” And I said to the new people, “Just stand here and watch.” They performed it without knowing the piece.

Donald Nally
The piece began, and it wasn’t just whispering, but also commenting on the whispering from people who weren’t in the piece. And they became quieter, really listening to the whispering.

Kait Samuels
People would come up to me and were like, “Where is the choir performing?” And I’m like, “All around you”.

Bindu Poroori
There were crying children, there were people trying to wiggle in front of “The Bean” to take a selfie. A woman was walking around with a cardboard cutout of Bernie Sanders. Someone overheard a tourist tell his friend, “I don’t know if I like this or I hate this, but I’m not going to forget it.”

Michael “Mike” Jones
I was surprised at the focus of everyone. The only word I can think of is “engulfing.” That’s what I tell everyone when we’re doing performances: When you get like people with the same goal in mind, you’re going to have success. No matter what your color, or age, or ethnicity, or background, the art will bring you together. Art is for all.

Kait Samuels
The gentleman with the hat, the very enthusiastic group leader [Jefferey Thomas], was just a joy to watch.

Jefferey Thomas
I’m wearing this crazy suit and acting like a nutball. I was so focused on my group that I couldn’t focus on the larger work. I don’t even know what the piece sounds like.

Sharon Quattrin Campagna
I challenged myself to try to keep [the students] on their toes, avoiding rote monotony. When we’d do call and response, I tried to make things different.

Donald Nally
The people shouting together were surprised at the power they had. I was reminded of David Lang’s piece Statement to the Court. He said that while writing the piece he would stand in front of his computer and just shout.

Jefferey Thomas
I was having a conversation with my ensemble. In [the shouting of] Part Seven, I realized that the group was mocking me. I wanted them to taunt me more, really let me have it.

Sharon Quattrin Campagna
One of the first comments my students made was, “I wish we were singing more.”

Bindu Poroori
The words on paper have a sense of sadness and loneliness, but when 1000 people were shouting or singing, the words were transformed.

Donald Nally
People commented that I looked like I was having such a good time in a melancholy piece. But it’s such a joyful thing to stand in one of the great public parks and invite the direction of this love and energy.

Bindu Poroori
Emotionally it felt so different from different parts of the crowd, with the amounts of casualness or non-casualness the groups were bringing.

Donald Nally
crowd out is a really intimate piece. It doesn’t look that way on the page, but people came up to me afterwards and said, “I really became very emotional.”

Kait Samuels
I heard a few people say, “Oh, I’ve never been part of a flash mob until now!” It took a lot to not be like, “It’s NOT a flash mob. It is a PERFORMANCE.” But, I thought, hey, at least you’re here, and you’re excited.

Heidi Hewitt
It was very powerful to watch David Lang participating with a group he didn’t know, and smiling, and proud.

David Lang
I went around to every single group and sang with them during the performance. I think I got to experience everyone from every ward of Chicago, from professional people to little kids. I think in a way I had the best experience.

Jefferey Thomas
I bet as a composer that would be amazing, to walk around your own forest of sound.

Michael “Mike” Jones
I was really proud of my kids. If they saw audience members who looked interested, they would say, “Look at this,” or “Follow this.”

Heidi Hewitt
It was lovely having the sign interpretation in and around the piece, and an app made it possible for deaf or hard-of-hearing people to select each “strand color” and follow along.

Bindu Poroori
Illinois Humanities now has this network of cultural organizations, venues, and community groups—a little phone book to help with collaborating across the city. We’re also going to be sending out a survey, and I’m working on a report that brings together notes from the community gatherings.

The participants of Mike Jones’ Professional Theatre and Dance Youth Academy were spurred by their experience with crowd out to create their own version of the work.

Michael “Mike” Jones
They want to call it “singled out.”

Aquantee Hendricks, Professional Theatre and Dance Youth Academy
When we arrived, we were some of the only people of color there, and we thought, “It would be funny if they understood how we feel sometimes in a crowd.”

Michael “Mike” Jones
They want it to express what it feels like to be one of the few African Americans in a place. You see another African American, and you give that head nod. We’re all looking for solidarity, whether it is gender, age, race, creed, or color.

Aquantee Hendricks
At first we were just playing around. They started thinking of concepts, the way it could look, how it could start. Incorporating pieces we already have. It started making sense.

Michael “Mike” Jones
I’m excited that it’s student driven. My hope is that it grows, and organizations like Encore [a choir of seniors] would ask, “What does it feel like to be a senior in a crowd?” Or [a group of women], “What is it like to be the only woman in a world where white men make all the decisions?”

The Man With Qualities: Remembering My Friend, Daniel Brewbaker (1951-2017)

Posted on May 26, 2017 by Lee Kesselman - Headlines, Memorials

I feel as though I knew Daniel Brewbaker (1951-2017) long before I actually met him. Our good friend Doreen Rao would say, over and over again, “You must meet Daniel.” Or she would occasionally start talking about him as though I already knew him. To say that he had achieved a certain kind of legendary status in my mind before we even met is no exaggeration. Now, after his untimely death, while it is still too fresh for me to contemplate, I’m trying to remember everything I can about our friendship.

Disclaimer: I only knew Daniel for 15 years. He lived in New York, in Napa Valley, at Yaddo, at Wurlitzer. He traveled and sometimes lived in his hometown of Elgin, Illinois, where he spent his final few years. I’m sure there were others who knew him better, longer, in different ways. We shared a close community of friends from our Choral Music Experience (CME) and Boosey & Hawkes worlds, and I had the privilege of copyediting much of his published choral music. But I do believe that we shared special bonds—as composers, as Boosey & Hawkes and CME composers, as Midwesterners, as sons, and as, well, just as guys.

When the time finally came for us to meet, I began to understand. This was a rare man indeed. We met in 2002 at the CME Choral Teacher Training Institute, held that year at the National University of Ireland in Maynooth. By then, I had heard other stories about Daniel from New Yorkers who knew him and his music. When I asked conductor Francisco Nuñez about Daniel, he just smiled and said, “Daniel……you don’t know Daniel? You have to meet him.”

It was a late night in Maynooth after a whole day of teaching and singing. A group of us had found an empty room in a dormitory with a few bottles of wine and this man, my age, with what my children immediately dubbed a “perpetually astonished” look, was in the front of the room, reciting Pushkin poetry in Russian from memory. Oh my. At various times I heard him recite dozens of poems for memory: Yeats, Cummings, Sandburg, Pushkin. I think he was always no more than a few seconds from breaking into poetry. Maybe a millisecond.

All week we had been studying and rehearsing Daniel’s Irish Cantata, Out of the Mist, Above the Real. The music was penetratingly beautiful and seemed to be steeped in its Irishness. But Daniel was from Elgin, Illinois. He was educated at the University of Illinois and The Juilliard School in New York. I later found that he had gone on a pilgrimage in Ireland while the piece was in its conception phase. This piece became a romantic soundtrack for my daughter Lindsay and her husband Chris Lees, as it wove its way from the Dublin CME performance to their proposal and their wedding day.

Daniel was passionate about, well, everything.

Daniel was passionate about, well, everything. When he liked a poem, he memorized it. He fell in love, poem by poem. But that’s the way he was about most things. Every time I asked him what he was reading, he would say The Man Without Qualities by Robert Musil. I would answer that he had read it before. And his response was always the same: “But Lee, it is so wonderful!” If he loved a cup of coffee, then he adopted that coffee shop as his own, and Mike as his own personal barista. If he had a great glass of Prosecco, it was always going to be Prosecco. He enjoyed—friends, music, dinners, celebrations, ceremony, performances—like no one else I’ve ever met. He was loyal to his friends, and it took a lot to turn him away. He was a man who lived in perpetual astonishment or, one might say, in italics.

When I asked Daniel to write a choral piece for my New Classic Singers, I apologized for the inadequate fee. He answered that this was his “coming home to Illinois piece,” setting Carl Sandburg poems and dedicating the work to his Illinois family and friends. We agreed on a length of four to five minutes for the piece; I was so excited that he would be writing for our group. Eventually, the piece stretched to a four-movement, twenty-minute piece. Fortunately, knowing this was probable, I had saved room on our program for something longer. Daniel often complained about being perpetually behind in his writing (like many composers). We agreed that if he held to the proposed length of his music, he’d never be behind. But that wasn’t Daniel.

Because Daniel lived FULLY. Not excessively, but fully. I think he fully enjoyed every meal we ate together, whether it was a modest meal of take-out chicken in his kitchen or mine or an expensive meal in an Italian restaurant. Each bottle of wine, each glass of Scotch, every bowl of nuts was the best. And he always took the time to remark about how wonderful it was. He was the most gracious guest and host. He came to my mother’s Passover seder twice, with each trip up to Milwaukee and back to Chicago filled with the eager anticipation and then the avid memory of the occasion, the conversation, the food.

Daniel Brewbaker and Lidia Bastianich holding glasses of red wine at a dinner table.

Among Daniel Brewbaker’s dearest friends was the celebrated and restaurateur Lidia Bastianich. Here they are sharing red wine and a meal at Bastianich’s New York restaurant Felidia.

Like most composers, he loved listening to performances of his music and loved the people who performed it. But he also loved the world of being a musician, whether it was in New York, Napa Valley, Elgin, Chicago, or anywhere else. I can still hear his imitations of musicians he had known—especially his teachers Roger Sessions, Elliott Carter, and Gordon Binkerd. All the imitations had a similar accent, but they were performed with glee and captured essential wisdoms he had gleaned on his path. What he loved about living in Manhattan was how close he was to great art, culture, and music. And to people. It seemed Daniel knew everyone in the New York music world.

Daniel loved the world of being a musician, whether it was in New York, Napa Valley, Elgin, Chicago, or anywhere else.

Daniel was a devoted son. We talked often about our relationships with our mothers—since we were born only three days apart and had mothers of a similar age. As his mother, Ruth, grew increasingly infirm and he was torn between his New York life and his Elgin mother, we talked often about the choices he faced. As an only son, he was keenly aware that her world revolved around him and he did his best to be there for her in her declining years. As she lay dying in their Elgin home, he asked me to come say Kaddish for his mother. For Daniel, a born Midwestern Lutheran and an avowed Buddhist, there was no limit to the accumulation of the spiritual wisdoms he loved.

He never failed to tell me how lucky I was in my life, especially my dear children, whom he loved. He was in love with many people—other composers, teachers, women—and freely expressed that love. And he was well-loved by his childhood friends from Elgin, who proudly revered him as their native son composer.

I could go on (more than I already have). He was a dear friend. He was a gifted and talented composer, with the lyrical inspiration and the well-honed craft to back it up. I admire and love his music. His music had an ardent, unforced lyricism, and extravagant harmonic language. He even loved counterpoint in an age which often doesn’t. He was a voracious lover of life, in all its facets. He was not the most practical person I’ve ever met (!), but he lived with grace, style, and appetites for the beauty of life and its joys. One was never at a loss for conversation when he was around. One had the feeling that every dinner, every concert, every party was the event of a lifetime for our friend Daniel.

Daniel even loved counterpoint in an age which often doesn’t.

In a world which might value achievement more than soul, quantity more than quality, and prose more than poetry, Daniel was those things for me and I think anyone who met him. Celebrities were drawn to Daniel, and he to them. I think all of us knew how special he was. He was, truly, The Man With Qualities. At the end of the Broadway musical Man of La Mancha, Don Quixote says, “I hope to add some measure of grace to the world.” I think for Daniel, it was adding some measure of poetry to the world. He certainly added it to mine.

Lee Kesselman, Robin Kesselman (holding a doublebass) and Daniel Brewbaker.

Daniel (right) with me (left) and my son Robin Kesselman (Principal bass, Houston Symphony) in Elgin, IL December 2015

On Being a “Choral Composer”

Posted on April 17, 2017 by Dale Trumbore - Columns

When I finished graduate school for composing nearly six years ago, I decided to structure my life and livelihood around the pursuit of a full-time composing career. I took stock of where I’d had the most success with composing, and at that time, I was selling the most scores and hearing the most performances of my choral music. Maybe assessing the commercial viability of my music sounds crass, but my motives weren’t purely financial. Writing vocal music comes fluidly and enjoyably to me, for the most part, more so than writing for (non-vocal) instruments. Given how much I love working with language in music, too, I often find vocal music the best medium for what I hope to express through my composing. I find an easy grace in writing for the voice—and by “easy,” I mean this: all composing is still work, of course, but this is the work I most love to do.

Structuring my life post-grad school, then, it made sense creatively and financially to focus on writing for voice, and more specifically on writing for chorus. I knew I’d eventually return to writing for instruments; I just didn’t know when or exactly how it would happen.

In the years since I decided to pursue writing for chorus, I’ve been asked if I consider myself a “choral composer.” I do, and I don’t. I’m happy to use that label if I’m in a situation—say, a choral conference—where I’m pursuing more opportunities to write for chorus. Other times, I find myself resisting the term, defensively reminding someone that I write for other instruments, too. Sometimes I get the impression that contemporary choral music is perceived as “lesser” than new instrumental works, at least within the new music community. When asked what kind of music I write, I usually mention my instrumental writing first and add that I compose often for voice, almost as if there’s something shameful in being defined primarily by my choral writing.

Over the last six years, I’ve written more than twenty-five works for choral ensembles, ten or so art songs, two pieces for voice with chamber ensemble, one piece for speaking chamber ensemble—there’s text, yes, but not singing—and five pieces purely for instruments, with no vocal element whatsoever. I wrote three of these non-vocal works within the last six months, in an effort to return to writing chamber music, and the transition has been a bit rough. Writing instrumental music doesn’t come quite as easily to me as writing art songs and choral works. My chamber music is not as well-known as my choral writing, and to be perfectly honest, sometimes I wonder if it’s not as good. To be fair, at some point in the process of writing every one of my compositions, I’ve been convinced that the piece in question is absolute garbage—it’s an unfortunate part of my process, not a reflection on the music itself.

All of that said, do I regret structuring my last six years around writing almost exclusively for chorus? Not a bit. I’ve accomplished the goals I set for myself when I graduated: several of my choral pieces have been accepted by and are now available from major publishing companies, and I’ve found viable ways to self-publish my other works as well. I’ve worked with several professional choruses and excellent conductors and released an album of my choral works. I know how to negotiate a choral commission, and I feel confident in my rate and the value of what I write. All of this feels like success.

I’d urge any other composer contemplating a full-time composing career to ask the same questions I considered six years ago: What work do you most enjoy doing? What work of yours have others already recognized as excellent? What medium or mediums stand out as the best fit for the ideas you feel compelled to express in your music?

For me, the answer to each of these questions is still choral music. It’s only when I find myself working on several pieces with a similar instrumentation in a row—say, three pieces for high school-level a cappella SATB chorus, all four to six minutes long—that I start to question my decision to focus so intently on choral composing. I’m sure I’d have the same feeling writing two works of similar length and style in a row for orchestra or for string quartet. Worrying that I might be repeating myself within my work and running low on innovation is what feels tiring, not the genre itself in which I’m composing.

As a result, I’ve found “niching down”—composing in one specialized field for a number of years, in order to build up a reputation and career in that field—to be a solid career choice, yes, but also a complex one. The question of whether to settle in one genre for a year, for a few years, or for an entire career comes down to this, I think: There’s only so much room to grow in your art if you’re not continually pushing yourself.

To avoid burning out and for my work to evolve, I need to seek out projects that don’t conform to what I already feel most comfortable creating. It’s good to stay a little uncomfortable when it comes to creativity. I need to look for variety in the projects that I take on, staggering similar projects across a wide span of time. And as long as I feel compelled to write vocal and instrumental music, I need to do both.

I’ve been considering all of this as I set long-term goals for the next few years, too. I very likely can’t continue to build a career as a “choral composer,” write and record an album’s worth of solo piano music, and compose two new works for orchestra at the same time, or even during the same year. Over the span of a few years, or a decade, or even a whole life spent writing music, though, there’s more than enough room for all of these goals to co-exist. We can focus on one field of music, then branch out to another. We can “niche down,” and we can embrace one identity (“choral composer,” “band composer,” “film composer,” etc.) for however many seasons that identity serves us, as long as we remain open to whatever music—in any genre—calls us to write it next.

I think that all politicians should have a life-threatening health scare. ... You should be thinking about your legacy.

Melissa Dunphy, composer

The idea of just being an artist and only an artist is, has, is and has always been a bit of myth.

Melissa Dunphy, composer

There’s always going to be a place in the world for people who make art and can also get on that marketing train.

Melissa Dunphy, composer

When I realized what I wanted to do as a composer, I realized that it sounded much more like a political mission than purely an artistic mission.

Melissa Dunphy, composer

One of the reasons I came to composing so late was because I didn’t have any examples to look up to who looked like me.

Melissa Dunphy, composer

Some people are like, “Throw out those old masters.” Like, bull.

Melissa Dunphy, composer

For a little while in my late teens, classical music was really pissing me off with its obsession with technical perfection. So I broke up with classical music for a while...

Melissa Dunphy, composer

Everybody comes to music school thinking they’re going to be the next John Williams or Danny Elfman.

Melissa Dunphy, composer

Teaching is just as much about learning new things yourself, and your students will teach you just as much as you teach your students.

Melissa Dunphy, composer

There are a lot of similarities between the almost absurd mannerism of a Baroque cantata and the absurd manner of American politics.

Melissa Dunphy, composer

We as composers have the ultimate power in deciding the gender split on stage.

Melissa Dunphy, composer

If you’re not considering the context of the world around you, your art is bullshit.

Melissa Dunphy, composer

I don’t think people who criticize arts entrepreneurship look at grants as being in that category.

Melissa Dunphy, composer

One of the things that art can do is present things that are shades of gray and have you understand those shades of gray emotionally, rather than just intellectually.

Melissa Dunphy, composer

There’s a lot of room for error in an orchestra piece. There is no room for error in an a cappella choir piece.

Melissa Dunphy, composer

I don’t care if my piece becomes irrelevant if my friends can get married.

Melissa Dunphy, composer

Art needs to be grounded in what’s happening around us.

Melissa Dunphy, composer

I understand, because it’s my history, what motivates people to go to a new country and face instability.

Melissa Dunphy, composer

I am happy to accept sacred commissions if the religious organization will give me some leeway on what text I choose.

Melissa Dunphy, composer

Composers should stop worrying about being as intellectual as possible and start thinking about what reaches the next generation.

Melissa Dunphy, composer

I literally make concrete in the other part of my life.

Melissa Dunphy, composer

Every identity comes with inherent biases, assumptions, and privileges to varying degrees.

Dominick DiOrio

Our first impressions have the power to reveal our own biases.

Dominick DiOrio

Who deserves to be called musician?

Dominick DiOrio

Is “composer” an identity to be bestowed as some honorific title?

Dominick DiOrio

Our art is made smaller by the segregation of identity and the rationing of privilege.

Dominick DiOrio

When we use the phrase “singers and musicians” in one breath, we communicate that they are mutually exclusive categories.

Dominick DiOrio, composer and conductor

The vast majority of singers are individuals who have dedicated years of their lives to studying the art of performance and the craft of music.

Dominick DiOrio, composer and conductor

These ‘singers’ are making some of the most adventurous new music being written today.

Dominick DiOrio, composer and conductor

The beginning

The crisis

The performance

Dale Trumbore

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