Orchestrating Ellington

Posted on June 8, 2023 by Ethan Iverson - Analysis, Articles, NewMusicBox

a hand placing a square shaped piece of paper in an arrangement with eight others forming a square (based on an image by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash)

Duke Ellington was born in 1899, before anyone knew the word “jazz.” As a young man, he learned how to play “stride,” the two-fisted virtuoso manner espoused by his mentor James P. Johnson, at that time a popular piano style to accompany dancing and drinking in Harlem apartments. In his thirties he fronted his famous big band, making hit records of tunes that almost everybody still knows today. At 44, he led his orchestra at Carnegie Hall in the extended work Black, Brown, and Beige, which he introduced as “a tone parallel to the history of the Negro in America.”

In some ways Ellington was still just getting started. Going forward, Ellington collaborated with everybody, from traditional greats like Louis Armstrong to gospel icon Mahalia Jackson to the modernists Charles Mingus and John Coltrane. More casually, he hobnobbed with Leonard Bernstein and penned romances for Queen Elizabeth II. The big band era was over by 1956 — or was it? Ellington at Newport was a surprise bestseller and put the maestro on the cover of TIME magazine.

Ellington liked to call others “beyond category” and course he intended to live up to that sobriquet himself. One of the best film scores is Ellington’s Anatomy of a Murder for Otto Preminger; one of the best ballet scores is Ellington’s The River for Alvin Ailey. His final years included three full-length Sacred Concerts.

For all his fame, Ellington can be curiously hidden in plain sight. Posterity enjoys anointing a lauded genius sole credit, and in Ellington’s case there were certainly collaborators: Not just a galaxy of legendary horn players like Johnny Hodges, Cootie Williams, Rex Stewart, Tricky Sam Nanton, Lawrence Brown, Ben Webster, Paul Gonsalves, Harry Carney, and many others, but also a co-composer, Billy Strayhorn, the poetic soul who penned much crucial Ellingtonia including the band’s theme song, “Take the A Train.” Some critics attempt to wrest the laurels from Duke and give them to Strayhorn.

Strayhorn’s greatness is undeniable, but Ellington certainly wrote an epic amount of music on his own. Strayhorn wasn’t even there in the first decade and a half, and Ellington kept churning out pieces after Strayhorn’s decline and death in the mid-‘60s.

***

The classical establishment has been yearning to program Ellington for decades. It makes sense, for everyone instinctively knows that Ellington is a Great American Composer. Wouldn’t it be nice to have some Ellington for an Americana pops concert on July 4 alongside the usual suspects like Copland?

Until now, everything that has gotten performed under the rubric “symphonic Ellington” was overseen by relatively conservative orchestrators. It was all more practical than anything else. Working with a full symphonic orchestra may have been a good way to remain “beyond category,” but there is little to suggest that Ellington treated the submitted orchestrations as more than an easy way to fulfill commission requirements. Indeed, private recordings of Ellington himself playing the music from various suites before they were orchestrated prove that much potential energy was lost the minute the scores escaped Ellington’s direct oversight.

At the same time, we know for dead certain that Ellington was interested in the idea of a glamorous symphonic concert. When he recorded the album Orchestral Works with Erich Kunzel and the Cincinnati Orchestra, Ellington performed his piano parts with flair and vigor.

When the Artistic Director of the 23Arts Initiative, Piers Playfair, was asked to program a jazz themed evening for the Grange Festival in Hampshire this summer, he suggested the charming umbrella Duke Ellington: From Stride to Strings and asked me to write new arrangements for full concert forces. Gavin Sutherland will conduct the Bournemouth Symphony.

Piers and I both believe that we owe it to Ellington to keep his symphonic ambitions fresh, relevant, and exciting. The result is Valediction: An Ellington Suite, a substantial 45-minute orchestral journey through eight Ellington compositions.

The first question is, “Does an orchestra swing?” The answer is, “probably not.”

Indeed, all sorts of classic Ellingtonia is impossible in the hands of people who are not jazz and blues professionals. Compositions like “Satin Doll” and “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got that Swing)” become the worst sort of amateur musical theatre when taken up by classical players.

All the great Ellington records are powered by serious drummers like Sonny Greer or Sam Woodyard, the legendary masters in charge of early and middle Ellington. It is impossible to write a swinging drum part for some “professional percussionist in a symphony” that is remotely worthy of Greer or Woodyard.

However, late in the game, Ellington’s music became a bit less involved with raw blues and swing and more involved with even-eighth grooves. Rufus Jones was the drummer, and the delightful Ellington albums The Latin American Suite and The Afro-Eurasian Eclipse set comfortably on the shelf next to bachelor pad LPs by Henry Mancini and Quincy Jones. This kind of feel is perhaps more possible for symphonic forces, offering something more akin to a sweeping and dramatic movie score (as compared to the elite nitty-gritty of “Take the A Train” and the rest of the swinging hits).

All the selections in Valediction come from after Strayhorn was gone. I cherry-picked eight fun or soulful pieces from eight different suites. Much of late-era Ellington is barely known except to Ducal specialists, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be heard. Again, we owe it to Ellington to dig deep and find out what is really there.

In the concert hall, it is conventional to treat Ellington with reverence — almost with too much reverence, for nobody knew more about having a good time than Duke Ellington. Much of Valediction is intentionally entertaining. I’m ready for that July 4th pops concert to include Duke at last!

1. “Oclupaca” from The Latin American Suite (1968). Of all my selections, “Oclupaca” is the most familiar, for it opened a popular record at the time and school jazz bands play the David Berger transcription today. The piece is definitely “exotica,” and the orchestral colors are somewhere not too far from one of John Barry’s scores for a James Bond movie.

2. “Daily Double” from The Degas Suite (1968). The amusing melody is about horse racing. Duke tried it out in a few places but never got around to finalizing a full Ellington band treatment. On one rendition he plunks quarter notes in a relentless fashion on the piano. H’mm. Maybe this means: pizzicato feature? Leroy Anderson was no Duke Ellington, but Leroy Anderson did know his way around a pops orchestra. Somewhere in the back of my setting of “Daily Double” lurks Anderson’s horrible (but very successful) “Jazz Pizzicato.”

3. “King Solomon” from Three Black Kings (1974). Ellington’s last three pieces were not performed by Duke himself; the only version we have of the suite was completed by Mercer Ellington and Maurice Peress. It’s fine as far as it goes, but much more could be done. My setting features English horn, while the harp gets a child-like second theme.

4. “Acht O’clock Rock” from Afro-Eurasian Eclipse (1971). Many serious Ellington fans and scholars look down on “Acht O’clock Rock.” However, Duke programmed it frequently, looking for something contemporary that resonated, just like he always did. (“Beyond category” was always part of the Ellington process.)

Ellington wrote in 1955, “Rock ‘n roll is the most raucous form of jazz, beyond a doubt; it maintains a link with the folk origins, and I believe that no other form of jazz has ever been accepted so enthusiastically by so many. … I have written a few rock ’n roll things myself, but am saving them for possible use in a show.”

In time Duke revealed several “rock” numbers to his public and released a few arrangements of the Beatles.

In terms of orchestrating Ellington: Driving rock music fits a string section better than swinging jazz does, and my orchestra “rocks out” several times in this Valediction suite. However, I admit my arrangement of “Acht O’clock Rock” owes far more to Igor Stravinsky than the Fab Four.

5. “The Village of the Virgins” from The River (1970). Surely “The Village of the Virgins” is unlike any other 12-bar blues in existence. When I set to work, I immediately heard two of the most famous orchestral pieces intermingling in my mind: the high string prelude to Wagner’s Lohengrin, and the repetitive theme of the second movement of Beethoven’s 7th Symphony.

6. “Bourbon Street Jingling Jollies” from New Orleans Suite (1970). One of Ellington’s ominous tone poems in the manner of his early masterpiece “The Mooche.” “The Mooche” was apparently a pimp, and the saga of “Jingling Jollies” is now something like The Rake’s Progress, with early swagger, a plateau of high living, and then the inevitable descent into madness and despair. Ellington usually wrote in 4/4; in this case I changed the meter to 7/8, recalling the ’60’s “crime jazz” themes of Lalo Schifrin and Jerry Goldsmith.

7. “The Lord’s Prayer” from Third Sacred Concert (1973). At the start of the final religious concert at Westminister Abbey, Ellington played a few minutes of transcendent piano chords that seem like they were beamed down from the heavens above. It’s not clear if this was formal composition, but it’s listed on the record as “The Lord’s Prayer,” and is surely worthy of chimes, strings, harp, and trombone in solo and duet. (Mahler said the trombone was the voice of God, and this was before Gustav had a chance to hear Tricky Sam Nanton or Lawrence Brown.)

8. “Loco Madi” from from Uwis Suite(1972). “Loco Madi” was the final and most lunatic entry in about 50 years’ worth of Ellington train pieces. As already declared, it is risky to ask an orchestra to swing, but since this piece is already rough-hewn and chaotic, I wrote out the shuffle for all 80 instruments and expect the resultant discordant revelry to please the ghost of Charles Ives. At times the train nearly goes off the tracks, but that is perfectly okay.

***

Like many 20th-century artists, Duke Ellington was not always good about giving credit to his associates. In the 21st century, most of us have wised up to sharing the kudos. If Valediction: An Ellington Suite is successful, then some of the praise (and none of the blame) goes to Tom Myron, a wonderful composer and the house arranger for E.F. Kalmus Signature Editions. Since I had never written for orchestra before, I knew I needed the help of a kind professional who truly understood the idiom. Tom told me what orchestration books to read and answered key questions as I sat in front of my score for three months; eventually I spent a week at Tom’s house while we went through everything bar by bar. I didn’t argue, or at least I didn’t argue very much. If Tom said, “Nobody will hear that” we took it out, and if Tom said, “That needs more” we added what was required. A few times I turned my back, and when I next looked again, a phrase was completely re-orchestrated for maximum impact. Sincere thanks to Tom Myron!

Duke Ellington was born in 1899, before anyone knew the word “jazz.”

Ethan Iverson

Ellington liked to call others “beyond category” and course he intended to live up to that sobriquet himself.

Ethan Iverson

The classical establishment has been yearning to program Ellington for decades. It makes sense, for everyone instinctively knows that Ellington is a Great American Composer.

Ethan Iverson

Everything that has gotten performed under the rubric “symphonic Ellington” was overseen by relatively conservative orchestrators.

Ethan Iverson

Private recordings of Ellington himself playing the music from various suites before they were orchestrated prove that much potential energy was lost the minute the scores escaped Ellington’s direct oversight.

Ethan Iverson

The first question is, “Does an orchestra swing?” The answer is, “probably not.”

Ethan Iverson

We owe it to Ellington to dig deep and find out what is really there.

Ethan Iverson

Ellington wrote in 1955, "Rock 'n roll is the most raucous form of jazz, beyond a doubt."

Ethan Iverson

Driving rock music fits a string section better than swinging jazz does.

Ethan Iverson

Mahler said the trombone was the voice of God, and this was before Gustav had a chance to hear Tricky Sam Nanton or Lawrence Brown.

Ethan Iverson

GLFCAM — New Day

Posted on June 7, 2023 by Iman Habibi - Articles, Commentary

Mirror images of Iman Habibi with branded GLFCAM Guest Editor and New Music USA logos

(Note: The following essay was originally shared as a Weekly Musing as part of the Composing Earth program on June 21, 2021.)

It has been years since I truly celebrated Norouz, the Persian new year, which welcomes the rebirth of nature with the spring equinox. Norouz is a remnant of a millennia-old Zoroastrian Iran, which in so many of its cultural and technological achievements, strove for the sustainable life we seek today. The architecture was ever so carefully designed to harness the power of nature (wind, sun, and water). The literature, going as far back as Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh, makes clear a distinction between biaban (wilderness) and abadi (urban center), with the latter being shielded with a greenbelt, moistening the air, preventing the expansion of the desert, protecting people from the wildlife, and the wildlife from people. The avestan vision of pardis, from which the English word paradise was later derived, could be summarized as a walled reserve, in which an ideal equilibrium between humans, animals and plants could be achieved (read more on these here, if interested).

The spirit of this celebration got lost on me somewhere along the process of immigration, and while the tradition is alive, its powerful symbolism seems lost on much of the Iranian populace today. An Islamic Iranian government doesn’t have much interest in people’s Zoroastrian roots, rarely educating them on its meaning. Not fully understanding the power of its symbolism as a child, I realize it wasn’t the Norouz itself that was meaningful to me, but the people who truly loved and cherished it, and as I saw less and less of the people who formed my childhood memories of Norouz, the excitement for the festivities faded in me. The Persian culture is so replete with traditions, and one ancient belief has it that whatever one does on the first day of Norouz, the day following the spring equinox, that activity will represent what one does for the remainder of the year. The moral may be: seize the day! Just as accomplishing that first task in the morning can propel you to accomplish the next and so on, if you use your time well on the first day of the year, that may just give you the momentum you need to make it through the rest of the year.

So I want to start my Weekly Musing by telling you how much I appreciate you all, and the time we have together. I spent two quality hours of my Norouz meeting with you last Saturday, discussing something we all care so deeply about, and I couldn’t be happier if this was to be the type of discussion I have all year. I feel I have just begun this journey. But already, I find the lessons of Amitav Ghosh, Kate Raworth, Rob Davies and David Wallace-Wells finding their way into my day-to-day life, forming my understanding of the world around me and my relationship with art. Twice over the past five days, once during a virtual rehearsal and another time while guest lecturing to the chamber piano students at The University of Michigan, I found myself explaining my take on gradualism and catastrophism as could be translated to music, and the need to keep an open mind as we explore new narratives. I found myself talking about a sustainable ecosystem, Raworth’s doughnut, one that takes balance, justice, and our finite resources into consideration. Last month, I received an invitation to speak at Earth Day Boston 2021, after the organizers took interest in the connections I made between climate change and the classical music industry in an interview, ideas I continue to absorb from our ever-amazing mentor, Gabriela!

What I am learning from these experiences is quite heartwarming to me! There is an immense thirst; a thirst for learning more about climate change, a thirst for finding the most effective ways to take action, a thirst for leading a more sustainable lifestyle at micro and macro levels, and a thirst for translating it all to music and to express it in the form we know best. When climate change entered the conversation during my guest lecture at Michigan, it quickly derailed (in a good way) our enthusiastic discussion about piano, chamber music, and collaboration with composers. The students were interested in learning more about climate change, how it can be incorporated in their lives, their career, and in their art. They were interested in learning about what GLFCAM is doing, through this study and in its climate commitment, and how that model can be translated to what they do.

It is not the traditions that made Norouz meaningful to me, but the people cherishing those traditions. And while I am finding little practical hope in realizing the solutions proposed to climate change, I find renewed energy in the unification of people under this cause. So I thought for this season of renewal, it may be apt to share some people-led projects and links I have been collecting, mostly related to carbon capture, that have given me some hope!

Ocean-based Climate Solutions in Santa Fe is working on a cool project increasing the levels of phytoplankton in the oceans to remove carbon dioxide biologically. Project Vesta is working on weathering volcanic minerals and using wave energy to lock up CO2 in the form of limestone at the bottom of the ocean (one has to wonder though, what ultimately happens to the CO2 trapped at the bottom of the ocean in this way)? This Norwegian cement factory is trying to go carbon neutral by figuring out a way to capture its own emissions! Climeworks uses subscription-based public donations to directly capture carbon from the air. And of course, there is the expansive project Drawdown, about which we will be reading later!

Norouz has been a uniting tradition, and is celebrated by more than 300 million people worldwide. Among them are the Parsis, Iranis, Baluchs, Pashtuns, Baltis and some muslims of India and Pakistan. Amidst a decades-long ongoing conflict between them, India and Pakistan, two countries highly affected by climate change, are leading the way in fulfilling their climate goals: India is the only G20 nation on track to meet its Paris Climate Goals, and Pakistan is a decade ahead of its goals to meet UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 13. If two countries involved with an external conflict and plagued by domestic terrorism can turn their focus to climate change, perhaps there is hope that the rest of the world can too!

If you use your time well on the first day of the year, that may just give you the momentum you need to make it through the rest of the year.

Iman Habibi

When climate change entered the conversation during my guest lecture at Michigan, it quickly derailed (in a good way) our enthusiastic discussion about piano, chamber music, and collaboration with composers.

Iman Habibi

While I am finding little practical hope in realizing the solutions proposed to climate change, I find renewed energy in the unification of people under this cause.

Iman Habibi

If two countries involved with an external conflict and plagued by domestic terrorism can turn their focus to climate change, perhaps there is hope that the rest of the world can too!

Iman Habibi

Brandee Younger: A Hip-Hop Baby Transforms the Harp

Posted on June 1, 2023 by Frank J. Oteri - Podcasts and Discussions, SoundLives

Brandee Younger sitting next to a harp with the branded text for episode 22 of the NewMusicBox SoundLives podast from New Music USA

Brandee Younger has carved out a very unlikely music career for herself. A classically-trained harpist but also a self-confessed “hip-hop baby” who loves popular music, Younger deeply immersed herself in jazz as an undergrad at the Hartt School and by the time she entered grad school at NYU was already established in that scene. Then shortly after forming her own quartet over a decade ago, Younger soon became a go-to collaborator not only for jazz artists such as Ravi Coltrane and Marcus Strickland, but also for creative artists across a very wide array of genres, including multiple Grammy winners rapper Common, singer-songwriter Lauryn Hill, and R&B producer Salaam Remi.

“I wanted my instrument to fit into my personality; I didn’t want it to be limited,” Younger explained during our recent conversation. “I knew I didn’t want an orchestral career, but even as a kid I wanted to play other styles of music … Over time I finally became comfortable with blending those worlds together, but it took a long time to confidently try and put them together.”

How Younger has transformed the harp, which is typically associated with salons or angels, into such a malleable and yet still distinctive instrument seems without precedent. But she had two very significant role models in Alice Coltrane and Dorothy Ashby. Her love for Alice Coltrane, whose cascading harp sonorities matched the intensity of the free jazz improvisers with whom she performed, began in high school when her father gave her a Priceless Jazz compilation of her recordings. She was immediately captivated by “Blue Nile” and soon thereafter asked every jazz musician she encountered if they knew her. Brandee never actually met Alice Coltrane but she was invited to play at her memorial at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in 2007. Dorothy Ashby, whom Brandee also never met (she was only two years old when Ashby died), has had an even more significant influence on her career trajectory. Ashby also led her own ensembles starting in her 20s and quickly leaped from jazz to a much wider stylistic palette that embraced a spectrum of pop and world music traditions. She even made a guest appearance on Stevie Wonder’s legendary Songs in the Key of Life and, as Brandee pointed out, has been heavily sampled in hip-hop, which is how she first became aware of her.

“The one huge HUGE thing for me in Dorothy Ashby’s music, you listen to what she was recording, she was doing music of the time,” said Younger. “She was playing whatever she wanted. She was not jazz-specific. She was playing traditional Jewish melodies. She was playing the pop tune that came out. She was playing the soundtrack of the most popular movie that came out. And to think back as a kid and what I wanted to do, I wanted to play the pop music that I heard on the radio. I wanted to play these familiar tunes for my friends and family.”

So it makes sense that Brandee Younger would want to record an album acknowledging Dorothy Ashby. But that album, Brand New Life, which was just released in April, is a far-cry from an ossified compendium of covers.

“It was really important for me to make it 2023,” Younger explained. “It wasn’t to be a tribute album, you know, it was to really celebrate her legacy but like moving along. … It was really important for me to collaborate with folks that shared a special kinship with her. And the first person to pop up was of course Pete Rock who was the first person I know of to sample her.”

Brand New Life also features a memorable contribution from Meshell Ndegeocello, who is featured on a reggae-infused version of “Dust,” an Ashby original which was originally released on her 1970 LP The Rubaiyat of Dorothy Ashby. And Mumu Fresh, who is mostly known as a rapper, adds extremely soulful vocals to Younger’s original “Brand New Life,” the title track.

Brandee is currently on tour, her first time traveling to different cities to perform since the pandemic shut down everything three years ago. It’s been a long wait, but she won’t only be playing material from Brand New Life. She’ll also be performing her extraordinary original Unrest, a turbulent composition created during lockdown.

“We’ll be doing new music and some of the stuff from the last album,” she explained. “I also will throw in an Ashby or Coltrane tune because that’s my thing, what I’ve been doing forever. And the tour is mostly going to be trio–Rashaan Carter on bass, Alan Menard on drums. So yeah, harp trio baby.”

New Music USA · SoundLives22. Brandee Younger: A Hip-Hop Baby Transforms The Harp
Brandee Younger in Conversation with Frank J. Oteri
May 18, 2023, 10:00 AM via Zoom
Introduction by Brigid Pierce
Audio production by Anthony Nieves

If you’re on tour and you’re going from state to state to state, the detuning and retuning and detuning and retuning, it’s not healthy for the instrument either. So I don’t think I would want to ship my harp so frequently. I just shipped it back from Chicago and I’m like, "Oh, poor baby, are you okay?"

Brandee Younger

I wanted my instrument to fit into my personality. I didn’t want it to be limited.

Brandee Younger

My dad gave me Priceless Jazz: Alice Coltrane. It’s a compilation series. So this particular record, the first track on it was "Blue Nile," and I was like, "What is this? Oh my gosh, because, whatever this harp is doing, it sounds really cool, it sounds really soulful, what the heck is going on and I wanna do this!" So that was my introduction to: "Okay the harp can sound different; it can do something different and it can sound really cool."

Brandee Younger

When I record something and I sit on it, I start to think, "I have to do this, I have to change that" And I start picking it apart. Some people wait for that moment. They wait for the pick apart so they can make it as perfect as they can. If I do that, I’ll never get anything done.

Brandee Younger

The one huge HUGE thing for me in Dorothy Ashby’s music, you listen to what she was recording, she was doing music of the time. She was playing whatever she wanted. She was not jazz-specific. She was playing traditional Jewish melodies. She was playing the pop tune that came out. She was playing the soundtrack of the most popular movie that came out. And to think back as a kid and what I wanted to do, I wanted to play the pop music that I heard on the radio. I wanted to play these familiar tunes for my friends and family.

Brandee Younger

You’re a woman in jazz. That’s a strike. You’re black on the harp. That’s a strike. And then you’re putting the harp into jazz. That’s like a trifecta! Things are hard now, but then? Forget about it.

Brandee Younger

Even though this is her music, this needs to come across through my eyes, with my voice.

Brandee Younger

It was really important for me to make it 2023.

Brandee Younger

In keeping my mind on Dorothy Ashby and her legacy, and me just being a New Yorker hip-hop baby, just how celebrated she is in hip hop because she’s sampled so heavily--it was really important for me to collaborate with folks that shared a special kinship with her.

Brandee Younger

To have these people that share this love for Dorothy Ashby who don’t know me agree to work with me on this, it was really an honor.

Brandee Younger

That’s why I appreciate it when there’s like 2 measures of 1 chord; I like lean into it. Because you know, we can do the chromatics, but depending on how fast they are, you can hear the footwork. I call it the tap dancing with so many pedals.

Brandee Younger

If you’re a harpist or even just a harp listener, there is one area you don’t wanna hear and that is the lower register with notes close together. ... And that is how I started Unrest. ... It’s uncomfortable to play and it’s uncomfortable to listen to and that was my intention.

Brandee Younger

That was the one great thing about lockdown, being able to just play and really play and become more familiar with my instrument and to newer harps. When you’re traveling around, you don’t even get to break in your own instrument.

Brandee Younger

2023 ASCAP Foundation Morton Gould Young Composer Awards Announced

Posted on May 31, 2023 by Frank J. Oteri - Headlines

A collage of photos of 2023 ASCAP Foundation Morton Gould Young Composer Award Winners

ASCAP Foundation President Paul Williams has announced the recipients of the 2023 ASCAP Foundation Morton Gould Young Composer Awards, which are eligible to young creators of concert music ranging in age from 13 to 30. Established as The ASCAP Foundation Young Composer Awards in 1979 with funding from The ASCAP Foundation Jack and Amy Norworth Fund, the program grants cash prizes to composers whose works are selected through a juried national competition. These composers may be American citizens, permanent residents or students possessing U.S. student visas. Following his death in 1996, the Young Composer program was renamed to honor the memory of Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Morton Gould, who served as President of ASCAP and The ASCAP Foundation from 1986 to 1994, to honor his lifelong commitment to encouraging young creators. (A child prodigy himself, Gould’s first composition was published by G. Schirmer when he was only six years of age.) In addition to the Norworth Fund, The ASCAP Foundation Irving Caesar Fund also provides financing for the Morton Gould Young Composer Awards. This year’s Morton Gould Young Composer Awards composers/judges were Lisa Bielawa, Patrick Grant, Joseph Jones, Shuying Li, Tamar Muskal, Jorge Sosa, and Kathleen Tagg.

The 2023 Morton Gould Young Composer Award recipients are listed below with their place of birth and current residence followed by the title of their award-winning composition, its instrumentation, and duration. Recipients under the age of 18 are listed by state of residence:

Liam Cummins (b. 2004 in Mansfield, OH; currently in New York, NY): Essay for orchestra [14′];

Sophia Kunxu Dou (currently in NY): Dance of Unconscious Particles for string quartet [4′];

Grace Ann Lee (b. 1996 in Seoul, South Korea; currently in Ann Arbor, MI): Emerald Night Sky for orchestra [10′]:

Jacky Jiaqi Liu (b. 2002 in Beijing, China; currently in New York, NY): Crossing for orchestra [10’30”];

Reid Merzbacher (b. 1998 in Cambridge, MA; currently in Brooklyn, NY); We’ve Made It This Far for 2 pianos and two percussion [15’45”];

Marc Migó (b. 1993 in Barcelona, Spain; currently in New York, NY): Concerto Grosso No. 1 “The Seance” for baroque flute, two violins, viola, cello, violone and harpsichord [9′];

Yash Pazhianur a.k.a. Yash Paz (b. 2003 in Princeton, NJ; currently in New York, NY); On the Threshold of Inevitable Madness for solo piano [15′];

Alyssa Regent (b. 1995 in Guadeloupe; currently in New York, NY): Un Coin de Ciel Brulait (Burnt a Corner of the Sky) for string quartet [16′];

Dorian Tabb (b. 2010, currently in NY): Hymn For a Forgotten People for string quartet [6’25”];

Ziyi Tao (b. 2002 in Beijing, China; currently in Forest Hills, NY): ALL for orchestra [15′];

Alex Tedrow (b. 1999 in Shoals, IN; currently in Washington, DC): Jeat for alto saxophone duo with electronics [9′];

Isabelle Tseng (currently in Gainesville, FL): Gardyloo for solo piano [5’45”];

Benjamin Perry Wenzelberg (b. 2000, currently in Tenafly, NJ): NIGHTTOWN, an operatic reimagining of James Joyce’s Ulysses for nine singers and orchestra
[1 hr 40′];

Yiqi Xue (b. 2001 in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, China; currently in Kansas City, MO): Ride the wind and cleave the waves for nine traditional Chinese instruments [9′];

Christian A. Yom (currently in NY): Sansori for alto flute doubling C flute, harp, and string quartet [6′]; and

Charlie Zhong (currently in MA): Like a Single Star in the Night Sky for orchestra [5’28”].

The following composers received Honorable Mention:

Lucy Chen (b. 2005; currently in MD): Water Interludes for brass ensemble, water percussion, piano, and strings [8’50”];

Sean Danielson (b. Muscatine, IA; currently in Chicago, IL): Prelude, Elegy, and Phantasm for violin and piano, Mov. 1- Prelude [8’45”];

Yaz Lancaster (b. 1996 in Mountain View, CA; currently in New York, NY): OUROBOROS for solo soprano, two high voices, electric guitar, violin, cello, and media [22’10”];

Albert K. Lu (currently in MD): A Turbulent Festival for flute, clarinet, 2 pianos, and string quartet [4″11″];

Johnny MacMillan (b. Toronto, Canada; currently in Rochester, NY): Songs from the Seventh Floor for string quartet [10’23”];

Christopher Duong Nguyen (b. 2001 in Rome, GA; currently in Canton, GA): Adrenalize for wind ensemble [3’27”];

Cole Reyes (b. 1998 in Bartlett, IL; currently in Brooklyn, NY): Shadowstains for flute, bass clarinet, violin, cello, piano, and percussion [11′];

Gabriel Stossel (b. 2001 in Columbus, OH; currently in Cleveland, OH): Four Fractals for unaccompanied violin [11’06”]; and

Philina Hanyi Zhang (currently in NY): Siren Meanders for flute, bassoon, and piano [6’28”].

In addition, Marc Migó was recognized by the panel with the 2023 Leo Kaplan Award, created in memory of the distinguished attorney who served as ASCAP Special Distribution Advisor. The award is funded by the Kaplan Family.

GLFCAM — A Maxwell Tape

Posted on May 31, 2023 by Gabriela Lena Frank - Articles

A double image of Gabriela Lena Frank with New Music USA and GLFCAM Guest Editor-branded logos

Last Christmas, I received a beautiful gift from my parents. They were up in Boonville from Berkeley, enjoying our (long-labored) remodel of our central room. Christmas was already a day or two past, and I didn’t immediately follow when Mom gave me an old shoebox, nonchalant-like. The contents rattling around inside turned out to be Maxwell cassette tapes, the kind from the 70s with the extra boxy cases and orange stripes. When I opened the cases, my editor Dad’s handwriting, familiar and precise, electrified me.

“Omigodddddddd…!”

Mom laughed. For years, I had been nagging my folks to find home audio recordings from my girlhood — Tapes of me at the piano as a baby and not yet fitted with hearing aids, tapes of my older brother sharing last night’s dream years before he would become a sleep scientist, tapes of our close circle of friends in heated conversation around the dinner table debating Carter vs. Reagan… I remembered my Dad’s old player, still functioning from his college years pre-Peace Corps and Perú where he met Mom, and how Dad would casually slip in a tape when he thought things were about to get good.

So, we made a plan to not fast-forward or rewind so as to not stress the reel, and I found the first cassette dated March of 1975 when I was two and a half. I’ve lived nearly twenty lifetimes since. With Jeremy’s old double-decker on the dining table and all of us gathered around, I pushed play.

A bit of static, and then a song already in motion: Alternating G and D, thin and twangy and recognizable from our first family piano, a tired but earnest blond spinet; through it, an impossibly young voice, light and high and tremulous, hovering around the pitches, a singing time traveler from the past.

My past. My voice.

This went on for a while. Of course, I was weeping. Mom held my hand. Here I had the evidence that although those first few years of my life were largely in silence because my hearing loss hadn’t yet been diagnosed, music wasn’t dependent on a silly thing like, well, audibility. The tapes from immediately after I got fitted for hearing aids, when I was five, showed how quickly I became a confident improviser. By the time I was ten, Dad was relieved from his duties as I became my own engineer, “mixing” with multiple players and cassettes.

The tape I really want to tell you about is dated early 1983. My speech impediment was diminishing quickly by this time, and I headquartered a radio station from my bed with my mini Casio synthesizer on a pillow for jingos. I had my slogan (“Hey hey hey, K-G-A-B, K-GAB/all day all night/don’t be wrong/let’s be right!”) and the news hour where I cautioned my listeners: “Well, folks, today we have some good news and I’m afraid, some bad news. So first, here’s the bad news.” From there, I proceeded to talk, appropriately somber, about the warming waters along the northern California coasts and the tuna, a warm water fish, that was swimming up from the southern Baja region. I declared that this was really bad news and improvised sad music in the background.

I never got to the good news; the rest of the tape is blank. What I do remember is, shortly before this “broadcast,” learning about the warming of our waters from my sixth grade teacher, a self-professed tree hugger. I was completely freaked out as my family and I were frequent visitors to our local cold-water beaches. The frigid ocean brought out the boogie boards and wetsuits in us. It was the perfect temperature for the perch that flitted nearby, the bronze-green kelp forests we’d wander into, and the waves that slammed harder than any warm surf could. (Surfers often talk about the extra “weight” of cold waves versus warm.) All sorts of creepy-crawly shelled creatures loved the cool temperature and we dug them out of the sand just for the joy of the catch before throwing them back into the sea. The day would end with packing up our wetsuits, towels, and blankets while violently shivering, making the outdoor hot water showers by the parking lot even more glorious.

I could not imagine all of this changing. The invasion of warm currents and tuna might have well been an invasion of aliens from my Mom’s cherished 50s sci-fi B-movies. In those, skyscrapers blew up and there were lots of crying women and children needing saving. I didn’t really want my world to change into a disaster flick, and so, with words and music, I fictionalized an alarmist radio show. Listening to that tape last Christmas, I realized I was processing eco-anxiety while urgently alerting the public, even if it was just the public of my imagination.

No fear of stressing the reel of memories… Fast-forward nearly four decades, and hey now? I’m processing eco-anxiety, going on honest-to-God real radio stations, and trying to alert the public with my words and my music.

I feel like Galeano’s old, old man who copies and retraces his childhood drawings.

There are yet more tapes, reminders that I always had much, if not all, the aspiration and alarm I’ll ever need as I consider my future relationship to the earth in this urgent time. After I finish listening to the rest of the tapes in my Mom’s old shoebox – which held a pair of size six Clark’s sandals, apparently – there’s a tape that I would love to make. It would complete the tape I left unfinished when I was ten, unable to recover from the horror of warm water and tuna. Indeed, a tape that finishes with… good news. Good news, as yet undefined and likely to take me to the remainder of my days in fulfillment of a promise made long ago.

For years, I had been nagging my folks to find home audio recordings from my girlhood.

Gabriela Lena Frank

Although those first few years of my life were largely in silence because my hearing loss hadn't yet been diagnosed, music wasn't dependent on a silly thing like, well, audibility.

Gabriela Lena Frank

I headquartered a radio station from my bed with my mini Casio synthesizer on a pillow for jingos. I had my slogan ("Hey hey hey, K-G-A-B, K-GAB/all day all night/don't be wrong/let's be right!")

Gabriela Lena Frank

I cautioned my listeners: "Well, folks, today we have some good news and I'm afraid, some bad news. So first, here's the bad news." ... I never got to the good news; the rest of the tape is blank.

Gabriela Lena Frank

I didn't really want my world to change into a disaster flick, and so, with words and music, I fictionalized an alarmist radio show. ... Fast-forward nearly four decades, and hey now? I'm processing eco-anxiety, going on honest-to-God real radio stations, and trying to alert the public with my words and my music.

Gabriela Lena Frank

There's a tape that I would love to make. It would complete the tape I left unfinished when I was ten--a tape that finishes with... good news. Good news, as yet undefined and likely to take me to the remainder of my days in fulfillment of a promise made long ago.

Gabriela Lena Frank

Traditions and Changes at the 2023 Arts and Letters Ceremonial

Posted on May 25, 2023 by Frank J. Oteri - Field Reports, Headlines

Right before the start of the 2023 Arts and Letters Ceremonial which this year took place at the Church of the Intercession (photo by FJO)

Hundreds of denizens of the music, literary, and visual arts communities gathered together yesterday for the American Academy of Arts and Letters annual Ceremonial yesterday in New York City. The Ceremonial, an annual ritual for well over a century, is a roughly two-hour presentation of awards and inductions (which always takes place on a Wednesday afternoon at 3:00 pm and is immediately followed by a reception at 5:00 pm). Like most longstanding formal ceremonies, it is an extremely tradition-bound event. So much so that anytime there is even the subtlest change in the proceedings, it feels extremely significant (e.g. the size of the program booklet which this year was far less unwieldy). This year’s iteration had more noticeable differences than most despite it marking the 125th anniversary of the institution as well as the centenary of it being based in Harlem at an opulent Beaux-Arts complex of buildings that also houses Boricua College as well as the Hispanic Society Museum and Library.

For starters, due to ongoing renovations taking place in the Academy’s historic auditorium, this year’s ceremonial took place off site. (Apparently the last time that happened was in 1942 although, of course, the in-person Ceremonial was replaced by virtual events over Zoom during the height of the pandemic.) It was nevertheless held in an equally stunning location, the Gothic Revival main sanctuary of the landmarked Episcopal Church of the Intercession, built in 1912-15, which is conveniently located one block south enabling attendees to return to the usual location for the reception, outdoors between the Academy’s two art galleries, although this year they decided not to cover the space with a giant canopy. For some reason, it usually rains on the dates when the Ceremonial is held, so that canopy comes in handy. True to form, it rained again this year, but it was only a slight drizzle toward the very end of the festivities and most people appreciated chatting in the open air.

Crowds of people conversing, drinking and having snacks at an outdoor reception.

Removing the giant canopy definitely gave the post Ceremonial reception on the campus of the Academy a much more open atmosphere (photo by FJO)

But these details are all cosmetic. Of greater significance was the broad range of people who were honored this year in all of the disciplines. Chilean poet and visual artist Cecilia Vicuña and pre-eminent Ukrainian novelist Andrey Kurkov were inducted as Foreign Honorary Members. Only Americans can be elected to full membership, and the Academy also inducts as honorary members Americans whose creative activities fall outside its three officially-recognized disciplines. This year, film director Francis Ford Coppola and actress Frances McDormand were inducted in this category, although neither could attend; they join the ranks of Woody Allen, Bill T. Jones, and Alice Waters, among others. Kurkov later gave the Blashfield Address, an annual oration which in some years has been a struggle to stay awake through, but his impassioned words about the ongoing horrors taking place in his homeland were powerful and deeply moving and resulted in him receiving a standing ovation from the attendees.

Kurkov’s standing ovation following his deeply moving Blashfield Address during the 2023 Arts and Letters Ceremonial at the Church of the Intercession (photo by Michael Spudic)

Also, worth noting here, were the presentation of two Gold Medals plus an Award for Distinguished Service to the Arts, which this year was given to photographer Susan Unterberg, founder of Anonymous Was a Woman, a program that awards unrestricted $25K grants to female-identifying artists over 40. The Gold Medal, the Academy’s highest accolade, is a lifetime achievement award voted on by the full membership of the Academy that is restricted to the Academy’s membership. Literary critic Helen Hennessy Vendler was awarded the Gold Medal for Belles Lettres and Criticism and 92-year-old painter, sculptor, quilter, and performance artist Faith Ringgold, who was there, received the Gold Medal for Painting after which she said she needed to leave soon so she could go create more work, to which the audience responded with resounding applause.

Of course, of greatest concern to the readers of this publication are the music honorees and their range this year was particularly noteworthy. Six composers were newly inducted as members of the Academy by Augusta Read Thomas. We are particularly proud that all six of them have been featured in extensive conversations elsewhere on these pages: Adolphus Hailstork, Carman Moore, Roger Reynolds, Maria Schneider, Wadada Leo Smith, and Pamela Z.

Pamela Z waves her induction certificate as Augusta Read Thomas and others applaud her.

Augusta Read Thomas inducts Pamela Z into the American Academy of Arts and Letters at the 2023 Ceremonial. (Photo by Michael Spudic)

David Sanford presented awards to 16 different composers, 14 of whom were there to receive them. The year’s award recipients were selected by a committee of Academy members: Julia Wolfe (chair), Annea Lockwood, David Sanford, Christopher Theofanidis, Augusta Read Thomas, Chinary Ung, and Melinda Wagner. Eve Beglarian, David Serkin Ludwig, Nicole Mitchell, and Roscoe Mitchell (who could not attend) each received an unrestricted $10,000 Arts and Letters Award which is supplemented by an additional award of $10,000 earmarked specifically for the recording their music and having it presented in a concert at the Academy. Shih-Hui Chen was the recipient of the Walter Hinrichsen Award which covers the cost of the publication of one of her scores by C. F. Peters, and Robert Honstein received the $10,000 Andrew Imbrie Award which honors the work of a mid-career composer. Andy Akiho and Zosha Di Castri each received a Goddard Lieberson Fellowship of $15,000 which is also awarded to mid-career composers. The two recipients of this year’s $15,000 Charles Ives Fellowships were Charles Peck and Peter Shin, and the six recipients of $7,500 Charles Ives Scholarships were Seare Ahmad Farhat, Jordyn Gallinek, Luke Haaksma, Ali Can Puskulcu, Harriet Steinke, and Bethany Younge (in absentia).

John Harbison then presented two awards to two pairs of operatic collaborators. Operas were nominated for these awards by the Academy’s members, and winners chosen by a jury comprised of members John Harbison (chair), Anthony Davis, Tania León, Tobias Picker, and Shulamit Ran, who met in 2022. Composer Missy Mazzoli and librettist Royce Vavrek were each the recipients of a $10,000 Marc Blitzstein Memorial Award in recognition for both the body of operatic work they have created together and the works they have created with others. Harbison remarked that they could not be at the Ceremonial to receive their awards because they are currently at work on a new opera (in Paris). Composer Laura Elise Schwendinger and librettist Ginger Strand were both in attendance to receive the Charles Ives Opera Prize for their 2019 opera Artemisia, which is about the extraordinary life of 17th century Italian painter Artemisia Gentileschi. As composer, Schwendinger received $35,000, and Strand, as librettist, received $15,000.

Finally, Mindi Dickstein presented two Richard Rodgers Awards in Musical Theater (which help to cover the costs of staged readings at non-profit theaters in New York City) to the bluegrass and folk-infused musical Lewis Loves Clark featuring music by Dylan MacAurele and book and lyrics by Mike Ross and to the surreal, post-Apocalyptic Marie in Tomorrow Land featuring music by Erato A. Kremmyda and book and lyrics by Maggie-Kate Coleman. The members of this year’s jury were David Lang (chair), Lynn Ahrens, Kristoffer Diaz, Mindi Dickstein, Amanda Green, Michael R. Jackson, Richard Maltby, Jr., and John Weidman. The Richard Rodgers Awards are the Academy’s only awards for which applications are accepted.

As per always, the post-Ceremonial reception was a joyous see and be seen mingling event for Academy members, award recipients and invited guests spanning the various artistic disciplines honored by the Academy. It is one of the only times that members of each of these communities come together in such a way and as such will always be an event to look forward to each year.

Crowds of people (including Henry Threadgill) talking, drinking, and eating at an outdoor reception.

Academy member Henry Threadgill and others enjoying the canopyless outdoor reception after the Ceremonial. (photo by Michael Spudic)

Augusta Read Thomas, Wadada Leo Smith, and Frank J. Oteri

Personally congratulating Wadada Leo Smith with Augusta Read Thomas during the post-Ceremonial reception (photo by Michael Spudic)

GLFCAM — Reflections on Rockefeller’s Ghosts

Posted on May 24, 2023 by Erika Oba - Articles, Commentary

Banner with multiple photos of Erika Oba plus New Music USA and GLFCAM logos

Back when I was an environmental studies student at Oberlin College in Ohio, many of my colleagues and mentors were involved in activism protesting mountaintop removal coal mining. It is a hugely destructive practice with wide ranging ecological and public health impacts, and the Appalachian mountains have been particularly harmed by it.

I took a week-long trip to the Appalachian mountains with a group of student activists, and that trip was a formative experience that forever changed my perception of our energy systems and their human costs. One of our stops was at a large-scale organized protest event at a mountain site that had been blasted. As I stood on top of the barren remains of a mountaintop, I fell into conversation with an activist photographer who had made it his primary work to document the effects of mountaintop removal coal mining. He asked me a bit about who I was and what I did, and I explained to him that I was a college student studying both jazz piano and environmental studies and felt myself being pulled in two opposing directions. He asked me why I couldn’t pursue both, bringing up that many, many jazz musicians were artist-activists. He explained that he hadn’t always photographed mountaintop removal coal mining, but that he felt compelled to use his skills as an artist in service of this cause, and I have never forgotten that.

Since then, I feel like I’ve tried to navigate my way as an artist with that in mind, admittedly with varying degrees of success. The year of study and discussion that I spent with my Composing Earth cohort was invaluable in reigniting my commitment to exploring what it means to be an artist-citizen. Specifically regarding the climate crisis, one of the reassuring things that I got from all of our readings was the knowledge that we actually already have a lot (if not quite all) of the technological and design solutions to many of our current problems. The biggest hurdle continues to be cultural and political will, which is why our Composing Earth mentor, Dr. Rob Davies, has made it his mission to engage artists so that we may collectively shift the needle on cultural narratives and attitudes.

We actually already have a lot (if not quite all) of the technological and design solutions to many of our current problems. The biggest hurdle continues to be cultural and political will.

Erika Oba

My sincerest wish now is that my current car will be my last car, and that by the time it ceases to run we will be in a car-free society or that we will at least have enough alternative options to not need private cars.

Erika Oba

History is not an inevitable linear trajectory of “progress” but rather a series of decisions, concessions, and happenstance that have created the structures and systems in which we live.

Erika Oba

I titled my Composing Earth piece “Rockefeller’s Ghost” (written for solo bassoon and electronics) and as I worked on it, I thought a lot about what it means to meaningfully use my composing to address something as momentous as the climate crisis.

Erika Oba

It is my belief that any action starts with being present.

Erika Oba

As I worked on my Composing Earth piece, I found myself reflecting on how climate change most saliently impacts my day to day life and I kept coming back to our carbon intensive transit systems. As I worked on my piece, I pondered themes of carbon dependence, urban design, and transit futures.

I have never liked driving, and really dislike living in a car dependent culture. I put off buying a car until I was 26, because I had hoped that I could get by without one. My sincerest wish now is that my current car will be my last car, and that by the time it ceases to run we will be in a car-free society or that we will at least have enough alternative options to not need private cars. I know this is highly unlikely, but one can hope.

I read Crude: The Story of Oil by Sonia Shah back in my undergraduate days, and remembered it having a big impact on how I thought about energy and society, so I reread it as I worked on my Composing Earth piece. The book was published in 2006 so some of it’s a bit out of date now, but Shah writes about the history of oil in a compelling and accessible manner.

Reading it was an important reminder that history is not an inevitable linear trajectory of “progress” but rather a series of decisions, concessions, and happenstance that have created the structures and systems in which we live. One striking historical fact was that most urban centers in the U.S. used to have robust light rail systems that were decimated mid-century to be replaced by infrastructure that favored individual car use.

A society in which the built environment prioritizes individual car ownership is a society built around individual need rather than collective need, and doesn’t serve the needs of the young, elderly, and those who are mobility and vision impaired. The climate impact of a car intensive environment is substantial, not to mention the acute pollution from cars and refineries. Nothing about this current urban reality is inevitable. Historically we have had other models and systems, and many places in the world have robust public transit and urban design that prioritizes walkability and bikeability.

Sonia Shah writes that “Rockefeller’s Ghost” has risen and continues to haunt us through modern day Big Oil. I titled my Composing Earth piece “Rockefeller’s Ghost” (written for solo bassoon and electronics) and as I worked on it, I thought a lot about what it means to meaningfully use my composing to address something as momentous as the climate crisis.

In our Composing Earth meetings we discussed how some of the ways in which this will manifest will be extra-musical; the titles and themes of our pieces, program notes, preconcert talks, and interviews will inevitably be really important ways in which we communicate. It is equally important, though, to make the music itself stand strong or the rest of it won’t amount to much. In one memorable discussion, Gabriela brought up how trite it would be to create a “programmatic” work that was emulating the sounds of fire and say “this piece is about wildfires”!

As I worked on my piece, I found that it was less about making a statement or a narrative about car culture, but more about exploring how petro-culture and the climate crisis make me feel – deep anxiety, despair, and hope for a better path forward. The use of electronics allowed for an exercise in deep listening to be a part of my process. I made field recordings of the incredibly loud, visceral sounds of traffic at three very busy intersections and layered them, stacked them, and highlighted the sounds against a solo bassoon voice. The process of composing became itself a meditation for me, and my wish is for the piece to become a space for reflection and presence for future audiences.

It is my belief that any action starts with being present. My hope is that we may all fully inhabit our environments with open ears, that we refuse to passively accept our current systems as inevitable, and that by being present and aware we may find the agency and courage to change things.

Let’s Take Young Audiences Seriously

Posted on May 18, 2023 by John Liberatore - Articles, Commentary, Toolbox

Who doesn’t love Frog and Toad? One of my favorites is a story where both of the title characters sneak over to the other’s house to rake leaves, hoping to surprise their friend with the kind gesture. On the way home, unbeknownst to either of them, a gust of wind scatters the leaf piles back across both lawns. When each character gets home, they resolve to rake their own leaves the next day, and both Frog and Toad go to sleep that night feeling happy about their act of kindness. Adrianne Lobel, daughter of Frog and Toad author Arnold Lobel, suggests that her father’s famous amphibian duo was the beginning of his own coming out. Toad is such a curmudgeon, but Frog treats him with loving kindness, and together they bring out the best in each other. At its core, the Frog and Toad series is about what it means to love someone—a complicated message, distilled to the vocabulary of a first-grader.

Lobel has been on my mind lately because, for the past few months, I’ve been touring with the American Wild Ensemble, presenting an all-ages program we’re calling “Wild Imagination.” My contribution to this program is a 30-minute monodramatic adaptation of Arnold Lobel’s Owl at Home, a beautifully imaginative, but lesser-known entry in the Lobel treasury. In my piece, called Owl in Five Stories, a narrator recites an animated rendition of the book, acting out Owl’s whimsical adventures with an original musical score.

Children sit and musicians perform as John Liberatore narrates in a performance of his Owl in Five Stories

From a performance of John Liberatore’s Owl in Five Stories. From left to right: Emlyn Johnson, Daniel Ketter, Tiffany Valvo, John Liberatore.
Photo credit: Jeff Burkhead. Photo used with parental permission.

Many times after a performance, an audience member has said to me some variation of the following: “You’re reaching the audience of tomorrow.” I appreciate this sentiment, but internally I push back. I’m reaching the audience of today. “The audience of tomorrow” suggests that, someday, the kids in the audience will grow up and go to a concert, and then they will be real listeners, not just kids. I hope the kids go to another concert someday. I hope the adults do too. But they came today, and that should count.

A room full of five-year-olds, the wisdom goes, can’t distinguish a Jessye Norman from a Florence Foster Jenkins. Their approval doesn’t count for your tenure dossier because no credible record attests that you performed at a high level, outshining your peers. A stigma forms around family programming as a result, as if it’s not worth the attention of someone with serious musical aspirations. But if we want to make our practice more inclusive and reach a broader audience, we need to perform and write music for spaces and people that don’t offer validation in the form of prestige.

Many artists, organizations, and institutions respond to this charge with excellent and innovative family programming. But this stigma still materializes in a certain brand of “family programming,” which I believe still dominates the forum. It leads to lukewarm afternoon programs of unrehearsed Classical Clichés with an itinerant, underpaid assistant conductor. It’s treated more like community service than serious programming, hardly a forum for innovation or real musical expression. It’s like Puffin Rock—it keeps kids busy, and it’s tolerable. This mindset comes to characterize family programming for a lot of us, so we don’t think much about it, or at least I didn’t until recently.

Since at least the 1960s, when children’s literature was just starting to gain recognition as a commercial market, some publishers have enforced a controlled vocabulary[1] on their authors. Today, Lexile scores empirically calculate the exact parameters of a child’s vocabulary, and many publishers expressly limit the words authors can use. Controlled vocabulary has its pedagogical uses, for sure, but not everything directed at kids needs to be pedagogical. In 1977, interviewer Roni Natov asked Arnold Lobel about whether his own work used a controlled vocabulary. He responded:

I wouldn’t dream of it. … I think of trying to express myself in the simplest fashion I can, but I won’t stop and not use a word that is a little longer, if there’s not a simpler word. … I’ve used words like “avalanche,” and “beautiful,” because there just isn’t another word that I could gracefully exchange them for … Once [kids] bite into reading, they’ll read anything. Once they are enjoying it, nothing stops them, even if they come to a word that they have to sort of sound out and fight with a bit.

The Classical Cliché approach to family programming subscribes to a belief that kids only grasp easily-singable melodies and stock emotions, a tepid controlled vocabulary of musical meanings. Like Lobel, I’m suggesting that we move beyond this mindset, and recognize youth programming as a serious and energizing forum for creativity.

Writing in The Atlantic, George Saunders suggested that when a piece of writing moves you, the author “imagined you generously, and you rose to the occasion.” Saunders uses Tolstoy as an example, but the same could be said about Lobel. It’s often said that a work speaks to the “inner child” within an adult. But some work speaks to the “inner grownup” within the child. Lobel imagined kids generously. He created characters with quirks and foibles and emotions, and he told stories with complicated messages. And kids rise to the occasion.

Contrary to popular wisdom, I do believe that kids can discern a truly special performance from a mediocre one. I think kids know when they’re being talked down to. They just don’t express their feelings through the same channels as adults. In writing Owl, I never felt like I was dumbing anything down. I was preoccupied with all the same challenges and obsessions that interest me when writing any piece of music. The piece even has some of those new music bonafides like multiphonics, whistle-tones, and metric modulations. It’s a demanding score written for invested performers. The challenge of writing the piece was not so much about limiting my vocabulary, but rather one of clarity. Like Lobel said, I tried to find the simplest, most direct way of speaking in the moment. I found it hugely rewarding, and I realized that family programming is full of opportunities for composers and performers.

Five such opportunities come to mind:

One: Youth programming has a built-in and deeply appreciative audience. As a musician and university professor, I have to pick and choose what events I go to, attending to my work-life balance and various obligations. As the father of school-age children, I face the opposite challenge. I want my children to have memorable experiences, and, well… I don’t want to deal with bored children on weekends. So while I am reluctantly turning down concert invitations as a professional, I am actively seeking them as a parent. If a family-friendly event also caters to my musical interests, you can bet that I’ll be there, and I’ll bring three kids in tow. That’s four people in the audience, instead of one. Or zero. This also addresses issues of inclusion for parents in New Music, which Emily Doolittle called attention to (from the perspective of motherhood) in her much-recommended 2017 article on NewMusicBox. Furthermore, parenthood is a much more cross-cultural experience than mine as a composer and professor. Which brings me to my next point.

Two: It’s inclusive. Much has been said about the unwelcoming atmosphere at Classical Music concerts. “No clapping between movements” is a favorite bugaboo for such editorials. Really, though, sitting in your chair with the lights dimmed, program in hand, while someone plays a piece, and then clapping while the person bows—that in itself is a set of cultural conventions that some people find alienating.[2] Regardless, any preconceived notions of concert etiquette go out the window when kids are involved. Kids have episodes, they run around, they crinkle candy wrappers and juice-box straws… and it’s okay. The music is still wholly appreciated, even by seasoned concertgoers, and maybe a little less ossified in the process. This kind of environment goes a long way toward breaking down cultural barriers to entry in music performance. Especially when such events are offered for free, or by optional donation, family programming has far greater potential for cross-cultural and socioeconomic inclusion than traditional programming.

Three: It invests in community. It’s not just outreach or community building. The experience of the music by those present matters. But it’s also not just a concert. It’s an impression, potentially a very lasting one, upon people less inured to live performance than most listeners who hear my music. Such programming builds awareness about contemporary music among unlikely supporters, so that maybe our next underground new music festival might be a little less removed from public awareness, and a little more welcoming. More importantly, it’s an investment in the kids who see it, many of whom might otherwise never see a professional flutist up close, or learn that there’s such a thing as a bass clarinet, or that a cello is different from a violin. Who knows what impact these encounters might have? In what other context are we so poised to make such a profound impact on even one of our listeners?

Four: Reaching young audiences promotes (and requires) creative approaches to curation as well as composition. As an example, the Danish experimental music ensemble Scenatat developed a series of Concert Walks with support from the now-defunct European agency New:Aud, an organization once dedicated to connecting Europe’s premiere new-music ensembles with young audiences. Such events don’t need to be child-centric to be child-friendly.[3] In all sectors of the New Music world right now, people are engaged with the question: what can a concert be? Bringing youth and families into this discussion is a major catalyst for creativity.

For my fifth and final point, I defer to the wisdom of Frog and Toad. In “The Dream,” the last story in Frog and Toad Together, Toad dreams himself on a stage in a huge auditorium where only Frog sits in the audience.[4] A strange voice announces “THE GREATEST TOAD IN ALL THE WORLD.”

Toad took a deep bow.
Frog looked smaller as he shouted,
‘Hooray for Toad!’
‘TOAD WILL NOW
PLAY THE PIANO VERY WELL,’
said the strange voice.

Toad played the piano,
and he did not miss a note.
‘Frog,’ cried Toad,
‘can you play the piano like this?’
‘No,’ said Frog.
It seemed to Toad
that Frog looked even smaller.

As the story goes on, Toad shows off a number of astounding feats, while Frog grows smaller and smaller, until he eventually disappears. The more Toad boasts and shows off, the more he (literally) belittles Frog, and the more he distances himself from what matters, until he loses it completely. Talk about a complex message for young readers.

I’m guessing anybody trying to make a go at a career in the performing arts understands the exhaustion of perpetual one-upmanship. We are all under such pressure to “count”—to add to those dreary lists of names, venues, awards, and commissions that, if we’re lucky, render our professional bios unreadable. Yes, this is a terribly unhealthy fallacy, which I know to be irrational and destructive, but which I confess remains lodged somewhere in my composer id. The thing is, kids don’t care about any of that, and it’s just so wonderfully refreshing. They don’t care if you’re the greatest toad in all the world. They do care about sincerity, directness, and honesty. They know when someone is taking them seriously. It’s a very healthy exercise as an individual and as a community to pause and take stock of how we might try to communicate something important to children.

Many other reasons to invest in family-friendly New Music could be added to this list, some of which I have touched upon, and others which deserve their own articles: accessibility, cultural impact, activism, and even economic reasons come to mind. Fundamentally, though, each of these reasons comes back to the same point: Music, and New Music especially, is about community. Obviously, not all events, aesthetics, and messages are suitable for children. My next few projects are not expressly written for young audiences. But having spent so much creative energy over the last year with young audiences in mind, I believe I have grown as a composer and a person. I believe our community will grow stronger if we take young audiences more seriously.[5]

A room full of five-year-olds, the wisdom goes, can’t distinguish a Jessye Norman from a Florence Foster Jenkins. Their approval doesn’t count for your tenure dossier because no credible record attests that you performed at a high level, outshining your peers. A stigma forms around family programming as a result.

John Liberatore

A certain brand of “family programming” still dominates the forum. It leads to lukewarm afternoon programs of unrehearsed Classical Clichés with an itinerant, underpaid assistant conductor. It’s treated more like community service than serious programming, hardly a forum for innovation or real musical expression.

John Liberatore

Contrary to popular wisdom, I do believe that kids can discern a truly special performance from a mediocre one. I think kids know when they’re being talked down to. They just don’t express their feelings through the same channels as adults.

John Liberatore

Youth programming has a built-in and deeply appreciative audience.

John Liberatore

Kids have episodes, they run around, they crinkle candy wrappers and juice-box straws… and it’s okay. The music is still wholly appreciated, even by seasoned concertgoers, and maybe a little less ossified in the process.

John Liberatore

Youth programming invests in community. It’s not just outreach or community building. The experience of the music by those present matters. But it’s also not just a concert. It’s an impression, potentially a very lasting one, upon people less inured to live performance. Such programming builds awareness about contemporary music among unlikely supporters, so that maybe our next underground new music festival might be a little less removed from public awareness, and a little more welcoming.

John Liberatore

Reaching young audiences promotes and requires creative approaches to curation as well as composition.

John Liberatore

It's a very healthy exercise as an individual and as a community to pause and take stock of how we might try to communicate something important to children.

John Liberatore

I believe our community will grow stronger if we take young audiences more seriously.

John Liberatore

[1] I apologize for the irony of linking to JSTOR here, since I realize that not everyone has access to it. Still, the concept of Controlled Vocabulary is fairly ubiquitous and easily investigated through search engines.

[2] Whether or not Classical Music describes what we do, many of the readers of this blog will surely participate in events that share at least some of these conventions. It’s fine—I love these kinds of concerts! But the experience is far from universal.

[3] Quite a bit of what makes an event family-friendly has to do with presentation, and not repertoire per se. I thank Emily Doolittle for making this point, both in her aforementioned article, and in personal correspondence. In this article, I am primarily talking about the creation and performance of kid-friendly repertoire, leaving suggestions for presentation to other writers. Though as projects like Concert Walks demonstrate, content and presentation are not always separable, and family-centric programming encourages us to think this way.

[4] I sympathize with Toad’s low turnout in proportion to the size of the venue.

[5] I’d like to thank Emlyn Johnson, Daniel Ketter, and Tiffany Valvo for bringing Wild Imagination to life, and for our conversations that led to this article.

GLFCAM — Is it alright to make joyful art while the world burns?

Posted on May 17, 2023 by Nicolás Lell Benavides - Articles, Commentary

Multiple images of Nicolás Lell Benavides with NMUSA and GLFCAM logos

As the parent of a toddler, I love watching him learn about the world. He seems to be happiest when he’s outside. He runs his hands through soil, holds up leaves to the sky, rolls in grass, and loves to eat fruit straight off the tree. He loves silly music, and finds trash and street cleaning days thrilling, running to the window to watch the trucks. He can’t speak in full sentences yet, but we understand that he has lots of questions, and the list of things he wants to know about is only growing. He loves to help and be helped, and he doesn’t have a concept for what it means to be talented, accomplished, or even proficient. He just asks, then tries.

This year I formally finished my DMA at USC, something I’m incredibly proud of. I’m more educated than I ever have been in my life, yet it frustrates me that the more accomplished I’ve become, the more questions I have about the world. I’m approaching middle age (depending on your definition I may have already arrived) and I have to say: I miss the naivety of youth. Like Pandora’s Box, there is no undoing what I’ve learned about the world, but how I sometimes wish I could find the old creative bliss of ignorance.

At the conclusion of GLFCAM’s Composing Earth, I set out to write about the gravity of the climate crisis, focusing on the drought in the Southwest for my commission, sponsored by GLFCAM, with Edwin Outwater and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music Orchestra (premiere in fall of 2024). My work, titled Acequia, will explore the ancient means of irrigating and sharing water over an ancient floodplain diverted from the Rio Grande, a system I grew up using in New Mexico. This type of irrigation on a modern floodplain gives refuge to migratory birds, fills the aquifer, and benefits native species that rely on periodic flooding. I have also, through GLFCAM, written a string quartet for the Fry Street Quartet about the threatened Sage Grouse and Sharp-Tailed Grouse, whose beautiful mating calls I recorded in Utah.

I love finding joy in my music, yet I feel an incredible anger because of the ways in which human created climate change affects the acequias and the Sage Grouse. The snow melt is unpredictable, and the irrigation season is shorter than ever. Fracking and drilling not only warm the planet but destroy habitats that the birds rely on. What is beautiful or joyful about not knowing how to fix this with my music?

Last summer my family moved to Long Beach, and for the first time since I was a kid I was living in a house. It came with a beautiful lawn in the front yard just like every other house on the block and I swore I would rip it out and plant a native garden. I grew up helping my dad with his vineyard, field, and landscaping, but in truth I’m terrible at identifying anything but the most common house plants.

I found out there is a grant through the state to convert your lawn to a low water garden. It’s a modest amount, but I must admit I was as excited about this as any commission I’ve ever received when I found out I was accepted – I haven’t stopped dreaming about bees and butterflies, and how excited my kid will be to see them. Before I knew it, I was looking forward to my new hobby each day, something I was objectively novice at.

Small as our yard is, I’m finding it’s back breaking work to dig, remove invasive plants, and put in native ones. It’s slow going, but a square foot by square foot it is transforming, and it’s made for great conversation with my neighbors as they walk over to see what wild thing I’m up to with a shovel. Every time I get to work a neighbor inevitably wanders over to chat, and I’ve come to look forward to it. Recently a neighbor saw me digging up invasive grasses and she walked over to bring me lunch, commenting that she saw me working day after day and really loves watching the transformation. Much to my surprise, my joy, despite all my mistakes and the plants I’ve accidentally killed, has been an inadvertent beacon to my neighbors, friends, and family.

I frequently stand in the front yard, practicing naming the plants, knowing I’d see them “in the wild” one day. The sad thing is… most yards in this state have nothing but invasive plants, and I rarely know what they are.

I defended my dissertation on the last day of summer, Sept 21. Outside the music building as I was going over my score in preparation for my defense I looked up and saw a native plant I could name: California Fuchsia, epilobium canum. Right next to it was a Western Redbud, and then California Sagebrush, Bladder Pod, Deer Grass, California Buckwheat, Desert Globemallow, Ceanothus, and Common Yarrow! I jumped to my feet and ran to each one to be sure. They were invisible to me my entire doctorate, just living their lives, and in a flash they all revealed themselves to me, like they were just waiting for somebody, anybody to ask the question: what are you?

I don’t know how these plants will fold into my music, if ever, but they certainly nourish my soul, and seeing them for the first time after living in California since 2006 was a life changing moment, like being a kid again. I have so many more questions now, and the list grows daily. I’ve realized one thing this summer as I wield my rusty shovel and chat with my neighbors:

The burden of hard work is lightened by the joy of learning.

I used to think my kid is happy because he is oblivious to the problems of the world, but I’m learning that he’s happy because he enjoys the challenges of the world. He isn’t motivated by answers, he is driven by questions. We should be compelled by the abundance of questions in the world and be grateful that we are here to ask them.

Making joyful art while the world burns is a necessity, especially when that joy comes through deep questioning. My neighbors don’t care that my yard is in disarray while I work on it; they are intrigued by the story of its transformation. My orchestra piece and string quartet are in progress, scores due in a few months with premieres slated for May, but thanks to my kid and my new hobby I am learning to be comfortable with finding joy in the process, not the result. If I’m lucky, a curious neighbor or concertgoer will bring me lunch and ask me a question I won’t have the answer to, and we can bond over the privilege of being able to so much as ask.

This year I formally finished my DMA at USC, something I’m incredibly proud of. I’m more educated than I ever have been in my life, yet it frustrates me that the more accomplished I’ve become, the more questions I have about the world.

Nicolás Lell Benavides

I love finding joy in my music, yet I feel an incredible anger because of the ways in which human created climate change affects the acequias and the Sage Grouse. The snow melt is unpredictable, and the irrigation season is shorter than ever. Fracking and drilling not only warm the planet but destroy habitats that the birds rely on. What is beautiful or joyful about not knowing how to fix this with my music?

Nicolás Lell Benavides

I found out there is a grant through the state to convert your lawn to a low water garden. It's a modest amount, but I must admit I was as excited about this as any commission I've ever received when I found out I was accepted

Nicolás Lell Benavides

We should be compelled by the abundance of questions in the world and be grateful that we are here to ask them.

Nicolás Lell Benavides

My orchestra piece and string quartet are in progress, scores due in a few months with premieres slated for May, but thanks to my kid and my new hobby I am learning to be comfortable with finding joy in the process, not the result.

Nicolás Lell Benavides

2023 BMI Composer Award Winners Announced

Posted on May 16, 2023 by Frank J. Oteri - Headlines

Deirdre Chadwick welcomes guests to the 2023 BMI Composer Awards celebration at Chelsea Table and Stage in New York City

BMI (Broadcast Music, Inc.) and BMI Foundation, Inc. celebrated the honorees of the 71st annual BMI Composer Awards at a private ceremony held on May 15 at Chelsea Table and Stage in New York City. BMI Foundation President and BMI Executive Director of Classical Deirdre Chadwick, composer and chair Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, and BMI Senior Vice President of Licensing David Levin presented the awards to six emerging composers for excellence in composition as well as one honorable mention.

The BMI Composer Awards recognize superior ability in music composition by composers aged 27 or younger with annual awards totaling $20,000. As David Levin acknowledged in his remarks, this year over 500 applications were submitted to the competition from young composers around the world. As in all previous years, all works were judged anonymously by two panels of judges who are all BMI-affiliate composers. This year’s preliminary judges were David Schober, Alyssa Weinberg, and Trevor Weston. The final judges were George Lewis, Kevin Puts, and Elena Ruehr. BMI, in collaboration with the BMI Foundation, has awarded over 600 grants to young composers throughout the history of the competition.

As BMI Foundation President Deirdre Chadwick explained in her opening remarks, as part of BMI’s ongoing efforts to make these accolades more inclusive, there is no longer a requirement for applicants to be currently studying composition formally and, as a result, the word “student” has been removed from the name of these awards. In addition, one of the two special prizes given to the honorees, a prize for the composer of the work deemed by the judges to be the most outstanding in the competition, has been renamed in honor of BMI Composer Awards Chair Ellen Taaffe Zwilich. This award was formerly named in honor of the founder of these awards, William Schuman, after his death in 1992 and awards in his name were given for 30 years. It is a particularly rare honor for an award to be named after someone who is still very much with us and Ellen Taaffe Zwilich’s joy and honor in following William Schuman, a composer she greatly admires, was palpable. The special award for the youngest winner of the competition continues to be named after Carlos Surinach (1915-1997). Maxwell Lu, aged 21, received both the Carlos Surinach Award and the inaugural Ellen Taaffe Zwilich Award.

Ellen Taaffe Zwilich announcing the recipients of the 2023 BMI Composer Awards

The 2023 BMI Composer Award winners and their award-winning works are as follows:

Christian-Frédéric Bloquert (b. 1997): Métropole for orchestra

Christopher John Michael Enloe (b. 1997): Frika for orchestra

Seare Ahmad Farhat (b. 1996): …ka spoojmsi shwa poh hāla ke… (Like the halo around the moon) for string quartet

Natasha Frank (b. 1998): Riven for Cello and electronics

Maxwell Lu (b. 2002): arboreal for orchestra

Sofia Jen Ouyang (b. 2001): As if sharing a joke with nothingness for Orchestra

In addition, an Honorable Mention citation was given to 16-year-old Charlie Zhong for his composition Illusions of Tranquility for orchestra

Before the awards were announced, flutist Julianna Eidle performed Sadie’s Story for multiple flutes (alto flute, flute, and piccolo) and fixed media, a 2022 BMI Composer Award winning work by Ábel M.G.E.. The piece incorporates recordings of Eidle’s Eastern European Jewish family who fled persecution in Ukraine in 1920 and emigrated to the USA.

You can read more about the 2023 BMI Composer Award-winning compositions here.

A group photo of the 2023 BMI Composer Award winners (pictured left to right): Christian-Frédéric Bloquert; Natasha Frank; Seare Ahmad Farhat; Chair of the Composer Awards Ellen Taaffe Zwilich; Christopher John Michael Enloe; and Maxwell Lu. (Sofia Jen Ouyang, who was unable to attend the ceremony, is not pictured.) Photo courtesy BMI