Tag: collaboration

Diligence is to Magic as Progress is to Flight

Posted on October 7, 2013 by - Field Reports, Headlines

Austin Wulliman

Austin Wulliman
Photo by Doyle Armbrust

Two weeks ago, I visited a pair of dynamic, hardworking Chicago musicians in their studio. I was intrigued to see violinist Austin Wulliman (known for his work with Spektral Quartet and Ensemble Dal Niente) and composer/bassoonist Katherine Young (known as a great improviser and increasingly in-demand composer) working together in an entirely new context. The pair was preparing to reveal Diligence is to Magic as Progress is to Flight, the result of more than a year and a half’s worth of improvisation, sound creation, and collaboration. The immersive, fifty-minute piece would find its first home in the Defibrillator Gallery for a weeklong residency and culminating performance.

The instruments Wulliman would use for the performance—a prepared viola, two prepared violins, and a “normal” violin—were scattered throughout the small, windowless electronic music studio where the pair had holed up for the day. Young was stationed at the computer with an enormous array of sound samples arranged on the screen in front of her. Although they were at the end of a long day in the studio, the pair spoke with great energy about their upcoming performance. It was evident that their long-term, close collaboration had led to great mutual admiration and a wide array of new experiences for both of them.

When I asked Wulliman what was new for him in the collaborative process with Young, he answered: “Basically everything.”
“That was the intention going into it,” he explained. “When I approached Katie about this over a year and a half ago, I wanted to do something where I had the freedom to explore sounds with somebody who’s great at that.”

Wulliman saw the collaboration with Young as a chance to embark on sonic explorations that performers aren’t often afforded in the context of a fully notated score. Young began their collaboration by sending Wulliman videos and photographs for him to respond to with improvisations, and from this jumping-off place the pair began to develop a common language of sounds that would comprise Diligence. “This has been by far the most I’ve been in the workshop with somebody,” Wulliman said enthusiastically. “I feel like we made the materials together. I’ve always been in the room helping to make the sounds; Katie has always led the way in terms of shaping things, and guiding it becoming a piece.”

Prepared string instrument

Photo by Doyle Armbrust

The collaborative process revealed exciting new territory for Young as well. “It’s been really exciting to be able to spend this much time with sounds that I am not responsible for producing in the moment,” she said, referring to her work as a performing bassoonist. “I’ve been able to get outside of the closeness of having this instrument that [I’m] so connected to. I can say, ‘What if you do this thing, Austin?’ It’s hard to ask yourself those questions in terms of your own instrument. You feel it’s not possible. You think you know what’s possible, with your own instrument. It’s been exciting and has freed me up to think more about structure.”

The result of this collaboration, revealed September 27 at Defibrillator Gallery, was a subtle, sensual performance that enveloped the audience in an ever-changing ecosystem of sound and color. Many moments of Diligence were surprising, even revelatory: Wulliman tearing into a growling prepared G string with cadenza-like fervor, blending hushed bridge sounds with the surrounding tape part, or turning wild pizzicato textures into a virtuosic anti-caprice.

What made Diligence so satisfying was that it brought the greatest strengths of both composer and performer into bold relief. Young’s compositional hallmarks—her visceral approach to sound; her organic use of repetition, structure, and pacing; her attentiveness to the smallest details of timbre; her adventurousness in using instruments in unexpected ways—made the work feel like a living thing, breathing and unfolding as the evening progressed. And Wulliman’s strongest characteristics as a performer—his intensity of focus, his absolute commitment to each musical gesture—made listeners feel that the pair’s collaborative vision was being fully embodied in each moment.

As the performance ended and the packed gallery gave a series of enthusiastic ovations, an unexpected quote came to mind: Mother Teresa’s adage that “we can do no great things; only small things with great love.” In our contemporary music landscape, long-term collaborations can be logistically and financially difficult to achieve. We live in a culture where bigger is better, where more is more. Composers and performers are often required to write, learn, and perform music on tight timetables, and without a great deal of time for inquiry and reflection. Diligence, then, was a particularly rare treat: the chance to enter a sonic world created by two gifted musicians over a long period of time; the chance to hear sounds that were crafted intentionally, gradually, and with great love.

Friends

Posted on August 30, 2013 by - Columns

Classes began this week for many college, university, and conservatory programs around the country, and it won’t take long for those who teach composition to begin to offer up sound advice to their students for the year ahead. That advice can range from repertoire listening lists and reminders about deadlines to suggestions pertaining to process, technique, concept, or a hundred different aspects of life as a creative artist. One of the primary reasons why students decide to study at a particular institution or with a specific instructor is because of the nature, tone, and content of that advice.

One suggestion that I give constantly and that I’ve heard over and over from innumerable colleagues and guest composers is a simple one to students of any age or at any level: “Make friends with your fellow classmates—instrumentalists, singers, and conductors—as they will be your collaborators for the rest of your life.” It is easy advice to give because it is absolutely spot on; one would be hard-pressed to find composers whose collaborators do not include at least a few classmates from their undergraduate or graduate studies.

From the viewpoint of a young composer just beginning down the dimly lit path of the creative life, this advice rarely elicits a groundbreaking epiphany. Some may be more outgoing than others, but most students will already have their own circle of friends, so hearing from their mentors that they should go out and “make friends” can easily come across as a “Duh! I’ve already done that” moment. It is also very difficult for college students to see their friends and colleagues as anything but that—to imagine that these same people who are making jokes in the student lounge, dozing off during an early morning theory class, or devouring pizza late at night will be the same professional performers who will be commissioning them years later is a monumental feat.
As I mentioned before, however, many experienced composers would consider the relationships that grew organically during their own formative years to be some of the most consistent and long-lasting of their career. In my case, it was in 2006 when I got a message from Chicago-based trombonist Tom Stark. Tom and I are the same age and we’d played in the same bands and jazz ensembles since the late ’80s. (I’ve heard him say that he’s played more Deemer works than anyone because of how many times we collaborated back in the day.) Tom’s message to me said that his chamber group, the Chicago Trombone Quartet, had been invited to the Eastern Trombone Workshop and he hoped that I could write them a new piece.

I had just finished my doctorate and this opportunity to have a new work performed on a national stage was just what I needed at the time. The fact that it was Tom asking for my first post-grad school commission was totally fitting and, in hindsight, almost inevitable. The result of that collaboration, my trombone quartet Shock & Awe, has borne fruit several times over, with performances by several quartets, a recording by the Chicago Trombone Consort, and several new friendships, collaborations, and new works that all spawned out of that one initial piece between two old school friends.


Minor 4th Trombone Quartet performing Shock & Awe, mvt. 1 ‘Spin Cycles’

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the flip side of these long-standing friendships. It would be easy for an objective observer to note that the new music community is rife with exclusive clubs, cliques, networks—I’ve used the term “tribes” more than once. Whatever you want to call ’em, these relationships can seem, from the outside, foreboding, impermeable, and unfair, and so many of these groups can be traced back to the crucible of graduate school. I myself try to look at the entire situation with open eyes: It’s foolish to begrudge performers for sticking with composers who they’ve worked with before and with whom they’ve cultivated strong friendships, just as it’s folly to expect that friendships alone dictate how opportunities arise.

We as a community have moved past the didactic “schools of thought” concept that shaped so much of the new music scene decades ago, but we haven’t splintered into an “every man/woman for themselves” concept either. Connections and relationships ebb and flow constantly (even more so now, with the help of social media), but underneath the skills and confidence that allow for those new connections to be built is the foundation that comes from our friendships of old.

Grant Enables Major Expansion of American Lyric Theater’s Composer Librettist Development Program

Posted on August 19, 2013 by - Headlines, Ledes

ALT Banner

From the banner on the American Lyric Theater’s website

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded a $150,000 grant to the American Lyric Theater to support capacity building and the national expansion of the company’s Composer Librettist Development Program (CLDP), which is the only full-time professional mentorship initiative for emerging operatic writers in the country. The new grant will enable the company to expand CLDP from a 10-month program offered annually, to a comprehensive three-year artist mentorship cycle through which artists will not only receive personalized mentorship, but also be commissioned to write new operas. In addition, newly acquired high definition videoconferencing equipment will increase the geographic scope of the program, allowing gifted emerging artists with an interest in writing for the operatic stage to participate regardless of where they live. Previously, the program was only able to serve artists living in the metropolitan New York City area. A total of eight new resident artists have been selected to join CLDP beginning in September, selected from a national pool of applicants: 4 from the New York City area and 4 from cities across the nation.

The eight new resident artists who have been invited to join this season are composers Clarice Assad (New York, NY), Elizabeth Lim (New York, NY), Evan Meier (Silver Spring, MD), and Kamala Sankaram (Brooklyn, NY); and librettists Rob Handel (Pittsburgh, PA), EM Lewis (Woodburn, OR), Jerome Parker (New York, NY), and Niloufar Talebi (San Francisco, CA). They will be introduced to the public during a salon featuring their work at the National Opera Center in New York City, on Wednesday, September 18, 2013. Biographical details about each of the new resident artists as well as previous participants in the program are available on the American Lyric Theater website.

The American Lyric Theater was founded in 2005 to build a new body of operatic repertoire for new audiences by nurturing composers and librettists, developing sustainable artistic collaborations, and contributing new works to the national canon. CLDP, which was established in 2007, is a tuition-free program that includes a core curriculum of classroom training and hands-on workshops with some of the country’s leading working artists and has been regularly recognized for artistic excellence by the National Endowment for the Arts. The principal faculty for 2013-2014 includes composer/librettist Mark Adamo, composer Paul Moravec, librettists Mark Campbell and Michael Korie, stage directors Lawrence Edelson and Rhoda Levine, and dramaturg Cori Ellison. Recent guest teachers and lecturers have included composers Kaija Saariaho, Anthony Davis, Ricky Ian Gordon, Nico Muhly, Stewart Wallace, Christopher Theofanidis, and John Musto, and librettists Stephen Karam, Donna DiNovelli, and Gene Scheer. Composers and librettists who participate in the program also have the opportunity to observe the development of productions at The Metropolitan Opera. Plus additional networking and membership resources are provided through a partnership with OPERA America.

(—from the press release)

Sounds Heard: Shelter—Gordon/Lang/Wolfe

Posted on April 30, 2013 by - Albums, Listen

The human desire for a safe space—a roof over your head, a room of one’s own, a place to hang your hat and call home—is both an evolutionary constant and yet a fickle target. An emotional harbor as much as a physical shield, it’s a comfort all too easily destroyed at the hands of both men and Mother Nature. Sometimes the longing is rooted in the need for a secure place to sleep, sometimes in the desire for landscaping that will impress the neighbors.

To create Shelter, Bang on a Can founders Michael Gordon, David Lang, and Julia Wolfe joined forces to explore the parameters of such architecture.  The resulting seven-movement evening-length oratorio is sung for this recording with crystalline precision by vocalists Martha Cluver, Mellissa Hughes, and Caroline Shaw (yes, that Caroline Shaw) with Ensemble Signal (Brad Lubman, conductor) at their side.

Though teasing apart who wrote what might be an amusing game for serious fans of these composers (see video for insight into their process), in truth their distinct vocabularies braid together with a remarkable ease that only serves to heighten the overall auditory interest of the piece. The arrestingly spare, meditative consideration of doorway activities—looking for keys, taking off shoes—offered in the opening “Before I Enter” gives way to the in-your-face aggression of “Is the Wind.” In this movement, the electric guitar and bass end of the instrumental ensemble drive the pulse, the woodwinds screaming an arc of complaint across the top as the higher strings stair-step their way through aerobic feats of endurance. The emotional tenor of the music continues to shift through passages of grandiose pronouncement (“American Home”) and almost prayerful ascension (“I Want To Live”). The vocal play and instrumental intricacy of “Porch” stood out as a personal highlight, but in truth it’s hard to play favorites here. Even when the tension ebbs, it never fully lets go of the line, clinging to a violence only fully allowed to crash into the structure of things in the piece’s final movement.


Shelter (2005) is the third in a trilogy of collaborative works by this trio of composers, a remarkable series that also includes The Carbon Copy Building (1999) and Lost Objects (2001). Fans of those previous pieces, particularly Lost Objects with which Shelter shares some distinct aesthetic sensibilities, as well as its librettist Deborah Artman, are likely to fall into this final chapter with relish. Even if Shelter is a first brush with the power trio’s output, however, it’s sure to leave a strong impression—whether the underlying panic reads to your ear and experience as the stress of making the next mortgage payment or confronting the specter of rising flood waters.

Working with Choreographers

Posted on April 26, 2013 by - Columns

Many years ago, before I had even begun to compose, I had the opportunity to improvise the music for a piece on a dance recital. One of the dance faculty at Northern Illinois University needed some accompaniment reminiscent of Native American music, so I brought in a tenor recorder and a drum, and worked with her over a few weeks until I had come up with material with which she could perform. At that point I had no idea what was going on dance-wise on stage, but it was enjoyable enough and we collaborated several more times after that. These projects culminated in a series of full-length concerts where I would improvise on a wide assortment of woodwind instruments along with a percussionist colleague; nothing was written down, but everybody had come to an agreement about what the basic ideas were going to be, and for all intents and purposes the series was successful.
Fast-forward six years to when I was just finishing up my film music studies at USC and I got a call from my alma mater asking me to write a short work for chamber orchestra that would be performed as a ballet for their centennial celebration at Navy Pier. I was still a novice at composing during this time, but who would give up such an opportunity? So I wrote an elegy for a friend who had passed away suddenly a year before and sent off a MIDI recording (on cassette, if memory serves) to the choreographer (with whom I had never worked before, and had only discussed the project once). I had 30 minutes to rehearse with the orchestra before we got onstage, and about 20-30 min. to run the piece a couple of times with the dancers. It was then that I realized that the orchestra was not in a pit, but on stage behind the dancers and I would be conducting with my back to them.

I remember the rehearsal seemed to go well, but during the performance I guess I got a little emotive, because soon the faculty choreographer was gesticulating wildly just offstage attempting to speed up the tempo. I had no idea what the dancers were doing behind me and was clueless to the concept that a deviation in tempo would have massive ramifications for their performance. We all survived, but that experience got seared into my consciousness. Of course, at that point, I was planning on having a long, fruitful career as a film composer, so I doubted I’d get another chance to work in the world of dance.

Seven years after I had decided to forgo that long, fruitful career as a film composer and pursue my graduate studies in composition, I was on cloud nine—I had written a 40-minute ballet for my doctoral dissertation and had just finished a successful three-performance run of the work. I had worked several times before with my choreographer, University of Texas faculty member David Justin, and as I created the work and brought it to fruition, I realized that this was even more satisfying than film scoring. In film I was beholden to the pacing and emotions on the screen, but in dance it was like I got to write the score and the visuals were interpretations of my music. As that project concluded, Justin asked if I would consider joining him on a new dance project that he was forming. It wasn’t long before our scheming produced a rather unique concept—a hybrid ensemble called the American Repertory Ensemble that combined local Austin musicians with ballet dancers from around country. For the next two years I had many valuable opportunities to have dance made to my music and to collaborate with a top-notch choreographer.

American Repertory Ensemble performing Deemer's "Epitaphs" at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Photo by Lori Deemer.

American Repertory Ensemble performing Deemer’s “Epitaphs” at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Photo by Lori Deemer.

Through all of those previous opportunities, I discovered that working with choreographers and dancers was challenging not only from a technical standpoint, but also that the various limitations forced me into artistic directions that I would have never explored otherwise. Now that I’m working with “emerging” composers, I try to ensure that they get those same opportunities during their studies. Just this past weekend we presented the fourth collaborative concert between Prof. Helen Myers’s Choreography II class and my composition studio. More than one audience member mentioned to me afterwards that these choreography concerts are consistently the best student composition concerts of the year, and I’d have to agree with them. Whether it was the collaborative nature of the project, the idea of imagining one’s own music with dance, or having a longer timeline in which to compose a work, the result was a noticeably high level of composition throughout the concert.

Student dancer and musicians at SUNY Fredonia. Photo by Lori Deemer.

Student dancer and musicians at SUNY Fredonia. Photo by Lori Deemer.

We start planning the concert several months beforehand, pairing up choreographers and composers and allowing them to choose from a collection of visual art works that Myers and I pick ahead of time. This serves to give both collaborators a non-dance and non-musical focal point to interpret. Composers have several deadlines over the course of January and February so that the choreographers can see what they’re getting into—the student choreographers, of course, had never worked with anything but pre-recorded music before, and putting them at ease is always a top priority in these projects. Six weeks out, the composers deliver their final scores and mock-ups to the choreographers, and the choreographers begin their creative process. Dance and music are finally put together in our run-through rehearsal hours before Sunday’s performance with dancers and musicians on the same stage, and while these rehearsals tend to be more than a little stressful (getting through 14 works in three hours is tricky at best), the result is a concert that really transcends what each student might have invented on their own.

I’ve met many professional composers who enjoy working with dancers and that type of collaboration seems to be one that won’t go away any time soon. Being forced to compromise and to understand one’s own work from the interpretive eyes of another artist is a process that composers—especially ones currently in school—should get a taste of, if not a seven-course meal. I hope more composition programs look toward this type of collaboration project as a valuable tool for composers to discover things about themselves as well as to prepare them for potential opportunities outside of the classroom.

Sounds Heard: Simone Dinnerstein / Tift Merritt—Night

Posted on April 23, 2013 by - Albums, Listen

The collaborative album Night, which pairs classical pianist Simone Dinnerstein with rootsy singer-songwriter Tift Merritt, is a smorgasbord of songs cherry-picked from various corners of history and culture. Classical music, jazz, American traditional songs, and a smattering of brand new compositions are included on the recording. It is an interesting and revealing sonic journal of a musical partnership in which both artists embrace elements of risk and experimentation.

As might be expected, it is possible to hear somewhat of an inverse relationship between the artists’ comfort levels, depending on what song is being performed. According to interviews with the two, Merritt, who learned her art by ear, was not accustomed to reading music when she and Dinnerstein began working together, while Dinnerstein had never really improvised before. So in Schubert’s “Night and Dreams,” “Dido’s Lament” by Purcell, and Bach’s Prelude in B minor from the Clavierbüchlein, Dinnerstein sounds as if she is very much in familiar territory, while Merritt seems less so. The singer substantially calms down the more pop/country-ish inflections in her voice for these songs, but the resulting delivery feels a little stiff. However, she effectively conveys the emotional content of those works, and it would be interesting to hear how her interpretations develop over repeated performances.

But put a guitar in Merritt’s hands, and she breaks out of that shell to let her voice fly free, most notably on the traditional song “Wayfaring Stranger” and on her own compositions “Still Not Home” and “Colors,” which incorporates a delightful, spare background of plucked piano strings, rendered by Dinnerstein.

Dinnerstein gets her moment—though I kind of wish there were more moments just for her on this disc—on Daniel Felsenfeld’s “The Cohen Variations.” Originally commissioned by Dinnerstein, the work is a poignant fantasy on Leonard Cohen’s iconic song, “Suzanne.”

The two artists seem best paired in the Nina Simone arrangement of Billie Holiday’s “Don’t Explain,” and Brad Mehldau’s arresting “I Shall Weep at Night.” Each is a bit outside of her element, but together they power through any personally uncharted territories to make the songs work.

Especially notable about this CD is the recording quality, which is drop-dead gorgeous. The piano, Tift Merritt’s voice, and her guitar sound lush, full, and close at hand; a decadent massage for the ears of artfully captured acoustic sound. While some aspects of Night may not be completely effective, it nevertheless houses thoughtful arrangements and elegantly wrought performances, making it a rewarding listen.

Marcos Balter: Hyperactive Unity

Posted on April 17, 2013 by - Conversations, Spotlight

There is an arresting, high-voltage energy that often infuses presentations of Marcos Balter’s music, and an obvious fascination on the part of the composer with exploring new sonic possibilities while keeping the human element—the living, breathing performer—center stage. While the roots of these influences are clearly reflected in Balter’s own personality, putting too much emphasis on his Brazilian upbringing and the Portuguese accent that lightly colors his rapid English would be a mistake.

“I’m a Brazilian composer, I’m a gay composer, and people always go for those things as if they are the really crucial, defining elements in my music, when they’re really not,” Balter explains with a mix of understanding and frustration. A composer born and raised in Rio de Janeiro who currently calls Chicago home, he appreciates the American interest in how where you come from shapes the music you write. In his case, however, growing up in a diverse metropolitan city offered him a broad slate of experiences, and the hallmarks of his own music are much more personal.

“As you can probably tell, I’m a very hyperactive person,” Balter concedes with a knowing smile. “I’ve always been very energetic and doing one million things at once, very fast paced in general in life. And when I look at my music, I see that. I see that sense of—unity. It’s that one thing sometimes, but if you look very carefully, it’s one billion things within that one thing.”

As a young conservatory student, his musical passions “were very well behaved,” he admits, with a special affinity for the keyboard composers he was studying as a pianist. Composition was also already a “very natural act to me,” coming almost hand in hand with learning to read and write. In 1996, a piano scholarship to Texas Christian University brought him to the States, though his educational focus was ultimately on composition. Study at Northwestern University followed, and he is currently the director of the music composition program at Columbia College Chicago.

During his first years in the U.S., he found that his music became a little more conservative before he rebelled—a reaction, perhaps, to the education he was receiving, which he found stiflingly dogmatic. “I think that sometimes the least interesting thing about my music is how it’s made,” he clarifies. “If you want to know about that, that’s great, and you can do all kinds of crazy analysis and find out some fun stuff. But to me the most important part of music is still the emotional connection between the composer and the performer, and the performer and the listener. The rest is secondary.”

Considering how closely Balter likes to work with the musicians who play his pieces, that primary consideration carries particular weight. “I really see the act of composing as a collaborative act. Even when you’re composing by yourself, not talking to anyone, you’re still working with that entity, you’re still working for those people.”

In Balter’s case, however, that person often is in the room at certain points in the process, offering feedback and demonstrating possible sounds and techniques. In the case of his extensive work with the musicians of the International Contemporary Ensemble over many years, he’s writing not only for respected colleagues, but also very good and trusted friends.

“That’s why I love working with them. I know that when I walk into a rehearsal, that the rehearsal is still a workshop. We’re still debating ideas; we’re still negotiating things.” And that, he argues, is an essential step in the artistic process that he’d be foolish to overlook. “Things change considerably when they leave the paper and they reach the performer, and for me to not acknowledge that and make that part of the creation of the art work is insane.”

He also counts on that feedback to keep him pushing forward in his own art. In one extreme example, during the creation of his Descent from Parnassus—inspired by Cy Twombly’s painting The First Part of the Return from Parnassus and written for ICE founder and flutist Claire Chase—Balter sent his first sketch of the piece her way. “She called me back, and she said, ‘That’s not it.’ And I was deeply offended! I was mad at her. I’m the composer; you shall not tell me if it is or it isn’t—I’ll know!”

A step back and some reflection offered new perspective, however. “Within four or five hours, the coin dropped, and I looked at this sketch and thought, ‘She’s absolutely right. This is not in any shape or form what this painting is about.’ I called her back and I said, ‘You know what? Let me give it another shot; let me try to process things differently here.’
“Within 72 hours, I had Parnassus.”


That openness to exploring new paths and changing direction on the fly is why Balter considers himself at heart an experimental composer. “I don’t know where I’m going. And I actually think that if I knew, I would have stopped composing a long time ago,” he admits. “So no, I don’t know what’s going to happen to my music next year, I don’t know what’s going to happen next week. And that’s the beauty of it; that’s the excitement of it—it’s the not knowing. If I knew everything, I could write a book about it and be done.”

Katherine Young: Notes of Collaboration

Posted on March 20, 2013 by - Conversations, Spotlight


Composer, improviser, and bassoonist Katherine Young takes an adventurous, creative, and extremely hardworking approach to her career. She seems at home in a variety of musical communities: from the DIY band scene in Brooklyn to the improvised-music scene in Chicago to the academic composition department at Northwestern where she now studies. To help me prepare for our interview, Young handed me an impressive stack of CDs. Most were released on small boutique labels; one cover was beautifully hand-stitched by Young herself. Each of the represented projects—Young as solo bassoonist, her improvising duo project Architeuthis Walks on Land, her rock/experimental quartet Pretty Monsters—has toured in the United States and in Europe.
Young cites Anthony Braxton, with whom she studied at Wesleyan, as a profound influence on how she has developed a body of work. “Working with Anthony was very influential in this ethos of how you see a project through,” she says. “He both demonstrated, and would explicitly say: you write a piece, you get it performed, you make a record, you tour it, and then you’ve done the project. You don’t write a piece, get it performed once, and call it a day. This comes from the idea of being a performer, and getting your music out in the world.”

Young’s approach to the bassoon, which is on fascinating display in her 2009 solo record Further Secret Origins, is as physical as it is conceptual.  With this record, it’s clear that Young’s years of work as an improviser have led to a highly detailed and expressive map of the bassoon’s sonic possibilities. The percussive clacks of the keys, the multiphonic capacities of the reed, the resonance of breath—Young deploys these varied colors like a great orchestrator. Being an active bassoonist not only helps Young “keep [her] feet on the ground,” but also provides a place to experiment with sound. “Developing the sounds that I use on the bassoon, especially with amplification and pedals, is really informing my current interests as a composer,” she explains. “Teasing out these small sounds and making them big. Maintaining an active relationship with an instrument gives you a laboratory to explore sounds very immediately.”

In some of her current work, Young is experimenting with how extra-musical elements—like a collection of photographs, a poetic text, or even the opening scene of Once Upon A Time in the West—can be a “foundational part” of the composition process. In two upcoming large-scale collaborations with violinist Austin Wulliman and artist Deniz Gul, Young is experimenting with how to make these elements “not just this inspirational flash at the beginning of the process of composing, but rather, [something that] informs the whole piece.”

Her collaboration with Gul, a Turkish artist, is allowing Young to explore a long-standing interest in transcription. The piece began with a series of found interviews which Gul then transcribed into a poetic text and then used as the basis for a sculptural installation. Now, the installation will be the inspiration for Young’s improvised sound.

Although Young’s growing profile as a composer means that she is working more within traditional commissioning structures—including upcoming pieces for Northwestern’s Contemporary Music Ensemble, Spektral Quartet, Fonema Consort, and Distractfold—working directly with the musicians she’s writing for continues to be of primary importance for her. “I think the collaborative ethos of being a performer is still incredibly important to my process of composition,” Young explained. “Working closely with other people, involving multiple perspectives—a lot of my current work is very collaborative.”

For a composer like Young, who often allows for improvisation and somewhat open parameters in her work, this relationship is particularly essential. “Part of the goal for me is finding the right balance between specificity and openness, for whatever group it is, whatever the performance practice will be. When you’re working with a group of people, different structures and different specificity will work better than others.” In each project, Young is renegotiating the boundaries between performance and composition. “In some ways,” she says, “it’s just about getting to know people.”

Adventures in Orchestra, Part 2: Unlikely Collaborators

Posted on November 15, 2012 by - Columns

More and more frequently, orchestras and other ensembles of all sizes and shapes are embracing thematic programming that in some way strives to forge a connection with communities beyond the concert hall. This can take many forms, such as concerts specifically for children, having the orchestra perform in a public space to honor some anniversary or event taking place in their resident city, or by incorporating musical forms other than classical music into a concert setting. The work I composed for the Seattle Symphony was part of such an effort. It was commissioned as part of their Sonic Evolution project, which asks composers to create new works which reflect upon the past and future of the Seattle music scene. Before I signed on to the project, the orchestra had decided that this year one of the works would include a soloist, and I was invited to work with drummer Alan White. The long time drummer with the band Yes, Alan has lived in Seattle for over 30 years with his wife and family, and is a popular and well-loved figure in the local music community. The work would not be a concerto, but rather, there would be a drum set presence through the piece, and he would have a short solo.

Working with Alan was an amazing and inspiring experience that was at times totally easy and at others insanely challenging. The easy part stemmed from the fact that Alan has a very relaxed and easygoing personality. At the beginning, before we actually met, I thought, “How on earth am I going to deal with an honest-to-goodness rock star?” Well, that part was no problem; we got along famously. After playing with Yes for what is now 40 years (!!), if there is one thing he can do, it’s collaborate. The challenge lay in the fact that he doesn’t read music fluently. His entire musical existence has happened by ear! Has anyone out there ever listened to the third side of Tales from Topographic Oceans? Can you imagine memorizing that?! Insane.

Anyway, I decided to work him into the piece by creating structured improvisations within certain sections of the music. Together we worked out rhythmic material that served as a basis upon which he could play more freely. The drum set had specific points at which to start and stop in the score, and I wrote material for the other three percussionists that served to guide Alan into and out of his sections. In addition, because it seemed important to maintain a drum set sound even when Alan wasn’t playing, I ended up making the entire percussion section into one big slightly off-kilter drum set by splitting the different parts like snare, cymbals, and kick drum between the other players and mixing up the types of drums used amongst them. The kit sound expanded and contracted to meet the needs of the rest of the musical material. With all of this in mind, I decided to place Alan’s drum kit with the percussion section at the back of the stage, raised on a platform so that the audience would be able to see him playing. During the concert there was a spotlight on him during his solo! It was fabulous:

Alan White

Alan White performing “Just Say Yes” with the Seattle Symphony. Photo courtesy of Jerry and Lois Photography.

When the piece was finished, along with a MIDI mockup (yuck!) of the piece, I sent Alan the full score plus a special drum set part that, in addition to all the information a part generally contains, also had copious text instructions such as “STOP after seventeen bars of this!” I also marked lots of clock timings, so that he could listen to the MIDI audio and know exactly where he needed to be. He listened obsessively to the mockup recording for months (I have already sent my apologies to his family), and when I arrived to work with him right before the concert, he had things totally under control. In the end everything worked out, and here are some things that we both learned during the final period of rehearsals:

It is LOUD up in there.
We both were well aware that being on stage within a full orchestra is one of the loudest experiences anyone will ever have (Alan said that playing with an orchestra is much louder than playing in any amplified rock band, even in a huge stadium), and that made his experience difficult. Suddenly playing live with so many other musicians is mind-blowingly disconcerting—even seasoned performers of classical music will attest to this—and nothing sounds the same on stage as it does in the audience or on any recording. He had trouble hearing the cues he had become accustomed to, and had to work fast to get acclimated. There really is no way to recreate the experience of playing within a live orchestra. You just have to be there.

This is also a very real issue to consider for composers who are creating their own instrumental parts. Will the performer be able to actually hear your cue? Think about where the instruments are placed; if there is a harp cue in a trombone part, what are the chances that the trombonist is going to hear the harp? They are usually placed across the stage from one another, and there are lots of instruments between them. If any other instruments are playing, even softly, it is very likely that the harp cue will be totally inaudible to the trombone. Alan’s cues were being played by percussionists right next to him and they were still difficult to hear! During the process of choosing cues, always bear in mind where instruments are placed relative to each other, and what else is going on around them. Attending rehearsals—lots of them—of large ensembles is a good way to get a feel for the sonic realities of performance.

Drum sets are loud too.
One thing I didn’t mention in my last post about addressing the orchestra is that when I stepped up onto the podium, I saw that the drum set was enclosed by a wall of plexiglass! This was surprising, but it was intended to prevent him from blowing the orchestra out of the water—especially the woodwinds, whose ears were right in front of the kit at drum head level. The unintended consequence of plexiglass was that it amplified the drum kit sounds to Alan’s ear, making it even harder for him to hear what was happening around him.

Following a conductor is hard.
If it’s not something one does regularly, it’s really, really difficult. It has nothing to do with the quality of the conductor; it’s the nature of the beast. In a rock band setting, the drummer basically IS the conductor, further complicating the orchestra scenario.

There is no substitute for rehearsal.
Alan pointed out after our first rehearsal that before Yes goes out on tour, they rehearse together eight hours a day for about a month solid before they even set foot on a stage. And those are usually songs they already know! Although I was aware of this, I didn’t completely register until that moment how foreign the experience of two speedy orchestra rehearsals must have been. I now have even more respect for his professional attitude and ability to quickly adapt to a very different musical setting.

Vanishing Act

Posted on October 11, 2012 by - Columns

Last weekend I went to see the movie Looper, largely because I was interested in hearing Nathan Johnson’s musical score after checking out the following videos:

Combine music constructed of field recordings with anything related to time travel—I am a total sucker for both—and I am there. Resistance is futile.

Well. About three-quarters of the way through the movie, I realized I had gotten so caught up in the story—which is something, considering the movie has very little dialogue—that I hadn’t even registered the music at all. Not one bit! So I immediately told myself I was going to pay attention to the music the rest of time… I think that lasted maybe 15 seconds. Again, I was hooked into the big picture.

Does this mean that the score was lacking in some way? Nope. It means the score is really, really well done. This is what a movie score is supposed to do—blend so seamlessly into the entire picture (so to speak) that you don’t even notice it. It never jumped out into the foreground, even when technically it did (because it was the only sound happening), but rather, it always solidly supported the storyline.

Having missed the music almost completely, I went back and listened to the score alone and, as is often the case with movie scores, some of the pieces stand on their own, and some don’t. But the music holding its own is never the main goal of a score; really the goal is to, well, vanish. To be an invisible cloak that makes the entire experience work. In the case of the Looper score, this kind of vanishing act may have seemed so thorough because the music had very little melodic content and leaned heavily on rhythmic material (about which I, as a former percussionist, have no complaint whatsoever!).

That said, there are scores that do stand out in a movie without detracting from the full experience. A few examples are Bernard Herrmann’s score for Vertigo, Glass’s scores for Godfrey Reggio’s Koyaanisqatsi, or Ornette Coleman’s score for Kronenberg’s Naked Lunch. However, I think it is safe to say that the primary focus of those collaborations was still on the entire cinematic landscape, and that both composer and director were able to make room for the other’s creative voice to shine.

There are already plenty of composers out there who make amazing film music, music for video games, and who collaborate with artists in other fields such as dance and visual art. I wish that even more composers would—or would be willing—to take on the challenge of something so contrary to the field of concert music (which is so much about ego: about listening to MY MUSIC and understanding MY UNIQUE VISION) as creating something that is truly about a collaborative, group experience that requires everyone involved to somehow leave space for everyone else. I think this is a bit of what Isaac Schankler was getting at in his wonderful post this week, and in the end, this kind of selfless engagement can make the individual an even better composer when s/he turns back toward meeting specifically personal musical goals.