Tag: graduate studies

When Life Throws You Cincinnati, Redefine Chili

Posted on April 10, 2014 by - Columns

In the spirit of creating my own artistic future, I may have decided to move to Vermont from Los Angeles immediately after graduating from college. (Yes, Vermont, the Green Mountain State, not Vermont Avenue in Los Angeles, the place where my parents thought I was moving.) Random? Yes. Crazy? Most certainly. But here is what happened.

After the supposed devastation that was “failing at composing” while an undergrad (that is, not winning young composer awards, not obtaining good recordings of my work, and not applying to good graduate programs), I decided to take a break from school. Admittedly, this was quite a bit scary: all of my other composer friends were going off to prospective graduate schools (and good ones, might I add), and most importantly, it was my lifelong goal to complete my education. What was most scary about this romantic notion of leaving Los Angeles was that I wasn’t exactly sure what to do when I arrived in New England. In fact, when I suggest to undergrads that they should take what is now called a “gap year,” the first question they blurt out is, “What will I do?”
“Get a job,” I say.

I know this sounds scary, but it’s the logical thing to do. I ended up living in Vermont for four years, and honestly, it was the best thing I did for my career. Even though I didn’t write much music, I stayed active: I conducted a church choir, accompanied and taught students at a Waldorf school, and helped produce concerts for the Vermont Contemporary Music Ensemble. And after four years, the beckoning from my past became too strong to avoid any longer.

Overture and Prolog to the opera Erzsébet by Dennis Báthory-Kitsz. Premiere performance run, October 2011. Lisa Jablow as Erzsébet. Directed by Ann Harvey, conducted by Anne Decker with the Vermont Contemporary Music Ensemble.

And so I started the dreary process of applying to graduate schools. I was hoping the recordings from my undergraduate recital of four years ago would still be relevant. I was also hoping that the two pieces I had written in the course of my four years in Vermont would be substantial enough for a portfolio. So, fingers crossed, I applied.

And then I was rejected from most of my graduate school choices.

Fortunately that school in Cincinnati decided to take a chance on me. Ultimately I decided to enroll since they gave me a good scholarship, and I thought the campus was not that bad.

In hindsight, I’m quite thankful the other graduate programs rejected me since living in Cincinnati has helped me as a composer far more than winning any composition competitions. I didn’t know it at the time, but living and composing and staying musically active in a major American city (possibly outside of New York or Los Angeles!) can do wonders for a composer.

MusicNow Festival

MusicNow festival at Music Hall, Cincinnati, Ohio, March 2014.

When I first moved to Cincinnati in 2007, I was a little underwhelmed. The town was slightly run-down (the 2001 race riots are partially to blame for that) and dreary (the 181 overcast days don’t help either). This city also had a small-town feel to it, which was something I wasn’t used to as an Angelino. And it seemed my only connection to the Queen City was that Carson Palmer, then quarterback of the Cincinnati Bengals, was quarterback of the USC football team during my undergraduate tenure.

However downtown Cincinnati—or Over-the-Rhine as the neighborhood is called—was making a little bit of a comeback. By 2012 (five years after I settled), the neighborhood was home to an influx of young professionals, and hip restaurants and shops were popping up on Vine Street. And with this revitalization, I concurrently learned that Cincinnati has a rich musical and cultural history.

As a Californian, I had no idea that the Cincinnati Symphony premiered Aaron Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man. Or that the Cincinnati Opera is the second oldest opera company in the nation, or that the Contemporary Arts Center is one of the first contemporary art institutions in the country. Furthermore, the city has made a vested effort to provide the public with new music. Most recently we had premieres as part of the MusicNOW Festival by Nico Muhly and David Lang; Lang in his piece mountain was actually inspired by Cincinnati’s commissioning of Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man.

concert:nova percussionists perform Musique de Table by Thierry de May
How is this relevant? The combination of a revitalized downtown, the ample cultural history and resources, and the small-town feel of the city (in other words: talented performers are nice here and are willing to talk to you) makes for a fertile creative ground for us composers. My composer friends and I know performers in the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, and sometimes we chat with them after a concert. Some of us composers know chorus members of the Cincinnati Opera since many of our singer friends are hired by that institution. Some of us know Drew Klein, performance curator for the Contemporary Arts Center, who recently had TRANSIT and Roomful of Teeth stop by the Queen City. And on a micro level, Ixi Chen of concert:nova and Laura Sabo of Classical Revolution Cincinnati have been doing a fantastic job with their contemporary programming and have reached out to local composers.

In other words, if curating your own musical future supposedly takes you away from your original plans, don’t fret: it all works out in the end, especially if you make the most of where life takes you.

A performance of my Krispy Kremes and Butter Queens opera at Classical Revolutions Cincinnati.

The Dangers of Dopamine

Posted on April 26, 2012 by - Columns

I must admit that Colin Holter’s final post yesterday rendered me a little verklempt, and this statement really jumped out at me:

Unfortunately this need for approbation from the field is piped so subtly and deeply into one’s sense of self that one doesn’t even realize it’s activating one’s dopamine receptors.

Graduation Cupcake

I think it is safe to say that nearly anyone who reads and/or writes for NewMusicBox can understand this statement at some level. The force of which Colin speaks is perhaps strongest within academia, which can be a tragically bad thing for still-developing composition students. Becoming a “good composer” is not the responsibility of the institution; its job is to get you through that program and prove that you learned something, which does not necessarily assume “good composer.” If a composition student has the good fortune of a teacher who can help develop compositional skill, then that is tuition well spent, but the reality is that the attainment of “good composer” credentials are icing atop the mortarboard.

Some folks are brilliantly suited to being creative, original voices in the world of music pedagogy, and flourish within that context. For others it is not their cup of tea, and if they are lucky they figure that out and migrate to greener pastures. I have two friends who recently decided to forego doctorates in music for excellent jobs that will keep them busy, happy, and financially stable, working in musical communities that fit their aesthetic sensibilities to a tee. Another friend with a really exceptional performance and composing career (and a very serious and thoughtful musical mind) is actually returning to school, to study a field outside of music. He simply wants to pursue a different thing, and use his brain in a new way, while continuing to play the music he loves on his own terms. I’m not sure what’s been causing all this major decision-making (astrologically speaking, I think there’s something afoot with Mars right now, or maybe it could be, you know, economic collapse) but in these cases the changes seem like positive moves.

Needless to say, neither of the above scenarios meets any sort of institutional ideal of what a composer “should” be. As much as folks claim we should be open to a multiplicity of musical ideas and influences, the talk is not always being walked. It’s obvious in even simple conversation—when I meet a new person for the first time in a concert music context, the next question out of that person’s mouth nine out of every ten times is, “So you’re a composer… where do you teach?” Which can translate to “So how do you really make a living?” or possibly more often, “Should I take you seriously?” (Honey, I am serious as a heart attack. Please change the question.)

On occasions when “non-academic” composers give presentations to students at colleges and universities, it is often couched within the context of, “Look kids! A composer can have a life outside of academia!” Despite the occasional “Please do not feed the wild composer” vibe, I very much appreciate the opportunity to make these visits (and I loved meeting composers doing things I had never imagined when I was a student), not only because it’s fun, but also because students need to know that there a million different ways to be a composer in the world. It seems it can’t be stated too many times.

Whether you are situated inside or outside of academia, may you find satisfaction and a sense of achievement in your work. No one knows what that means better than you and you alone. Dopamine blasts be damned.

Taking the Long View

Posted on March 2, 2012 by - Columns

Taking the Long View

Since music is such a temporal art, it’s rare when composers aren’t talking about time in one way or another; whether the topic is metric modulation or missing deadlines, the ever-present clock is never far from our thoughts. More often than not, when we schedule our lives, for instance, we tend to organize time in terms of what is near to us: today, this week, this month, and maybe two to three months down the road. It isn’t until one’s career reaches a certain momentum that the thought of months and years in advance becomes not only necessary but also crucial.

I recently got to see first-hand some choice reactions when my students were alerted to this special aspect of time at our Composers Forum this week, and their reactions resonated with me for many reasons. As my colleagues and I were discussing the topic of graduate schools and what went into the application process for composers, I started talking about the list of deadlines that next year’s seniors needed to keep in mind. I try hard to instill in my students a healthy respect for their deadlines, so we started by nailing down the typical date for graduate applications, which for most schools is December 1st.

As we talked through the various time constraints that exist before that deadline occurs–proofing, editing, and binding scores, editing recordings, proofing and editing curriculum vitae, confirming letters of recommendation, Thanksgiving vacation, etc.–they began to realize that their portfolio scores needed to be performed by mid-October, which meant that anything they were going to send out needed to be composed by early to mid-September at the latest. It was then that eyebrows began to creep upwards at the same rate as jaws were being lowered–the seniors were now coming to the realization that they had a mere six months left to compose anything that might help them move on to the graduate school of their choice.

Now I had their attention.

It had been quite some time since I first began needing to think of projects in terms of months and years as opposed to days or weeks, but I recognized the reactions well enough. Between my own composing projects and my duties as advisor to our student-run new music presenting organization, I’ve slowly grown accustomed to thinking of 12-16 months from now as if it were happening next week and sympathize with anyone who has a hard time with the idea. The ease of succumbing to the lure of procrastination can be even more pronounced when one’s deadline or due date is months or years away–just think of how much work and other projects can be accomplished in that time! And then reality starts to set in–one dimly remembers how fast those weeks and months slide by, with barely familiar resolutions about improving one’s own work habits echoing faintly in the distance. Increased heart rate, shallow breathing, irritability, and a proclivity for sudden outbursts of epithets are not far off.

Luckily, many of my students have been dealing with these long-range time concepts for a while now, which, in my humble opinion, is the only way to learn how to survive them. By reverse-engineering timelines backwards from their deadlines, they’re pretty comfortable with the idea of how to tackle such projects. Hopefully that past experience will keep them from freaking out too much and allow them to realize not only how much time they really do have to create some quality work, but also how much they’ve already accomplished and how to balance the two together.