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NewMusicBox is doing another open call for pitches for content that will be published online in 2023! The deadline to submit is July 1, 2023.
We’re looking for original material that offers significant value and takeaway benefits for the music community. We’re excited to share unique knowledge that will uplift others!
Possible topics include but are not limited to:
Using specific software tools (notation, DAW, etc.);
Writing for specific instruments/voice-types;
Practical matters such as concert production, PR, recording demos, etc.;
Online music presentation/distribution;
We are also very interested in articles that explore specific topics of concern to people’s lives in creating new music, such as balancing artistic pursuits with raising a family and how to maintain a balance between artistic pursuits, earning a living, and having a life. We will consider personal narratives as long as they have take-away value for the community.
We accept the following formats:
Articles
Video essays or short videos
Hybrids of prose, audio, video, and anything else!
All published content will be remunerated between $150 and $400.
Article prices will range depending on length and the level of research.
Video prices range depending on length and level of production work.
Hybrid presentations will be assessed and remunerated on a case–by–case basis.
Submission Guidelines
Send pitches to [email protected] with this subject line: “CONTENT PITCH FOR NewMusicBox” clearly marked. The deadline to submit pitches is July 1, 2023.
Please submit pitches along with 2 samples of previously existing work in the same format as that of the proposal you’re submitting.
We highly recommend reviewing previously published NewMusicBox content here.
Pitches should clearly and concisely convey the idea you plan to write about and why it matters. The best pitches display that you have deep knowledge of the topic, that you have an unmistakable sense of the angle or insight you plan to pursue, and that you can demonstrate all of that in only a couple of paragraphs. Pitches should also be written in the style you expect to approach the topic.
Submissions to NewMusicBox should be topical and relevant to our publication and follow accepted standards of digital communication. All submissions are subject to a moderation process that verifies material is appropriate and topical. The Editorial Team screens all incoming submissions and may reject manuscripts without further review, or review and reject manuscripts at any time in the editing/reviewing process.
Authors are expected to self-submit.
You will be contacted by an editor if your pitch is accepted. We plan to respond on a rolling basis through August 2023 so thank you in advance for your patience as we carefully review submissions. (Please note: if the topic you are pitching to us is time sensitive, please include that in the subject line of the email to expedite our response time.)
For the second in our ongoing NewMusicBox guest editor series, we are collaborating with the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music [GLFCAM]. The series will focus on the intersection of musical creativity and climate commitment. As an introduction, we are reprinting the letter that Ms. Frank sent to all of this year’s participants in Composing Earth. — FJO
An essential component of the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music’s Climate Commitment, Composing Earth is a commissioning program for composers who recognize that climate change — climate disruption — is a bona fide civilizational emergency. Composing Earth asks for a two-year commitment from Composer Alumni of GLFCAM. In the first year, composers receive a study stipend to participate in a monthly discussion group with peers, Gabriela, and renowned scholar/communicator of climate science (and music lover) Dr. Rob Davies. These meetings provide an opportunity to review articles, books, documentaries, and online resources regarding the climate crisis, allowing the composer time to find their own personal stories which inspire their commissioned work in the second year. Along the way, “weekly musings” are sent out every Wednesday by a member of the cohort to the full group. Some of these musings, whether in the form of personal letters and other times developed into soulful essays, are featured in the series below. Inaugurated in 2021, Composing Earth has realized three Cohorts through its program, totaling nearly thirty artists, with a fourth already scheduled to begin in January of 2024. Anyone interested in embarking on the journey to eco-ethics as an artist is invited to sign up for GLFCAM’s weekend online course open to the general public, Climate Intelligence and Action for Artists, on June 3-4, 2023.
Dear Composing Earthers, Cohort I:
Before all else, I want to thank you all for the wonderful meetings and Weekly Musings from the past few months. When I first started scheming up Composing Earth here at GLFCAM, I knew that its success would depend on the willingness of participants to engage personally and intellectually. Truthfully, the sum of all of your thoughts and sharing has far exceeded my hopes, and I’ve learned so much. Thank you for your commitment especially considering your busy lives.
Since we last met, I finished my short orchestral work, Contested Eden, for the Cabrillo Music Festival. As I mentioned, I underestimated the time needed to figure out how to address the CA wildfires. In truth, I had been putting off the work, rusty from COVID disuse, but also apprehensive to tackle the subject. (Backstory: A few months before the deadline, I was caught off guard when Cabrillo admin asked, in a Zoom with my agent, if I’d write something about the wildfires. Without thinking, I blurted out “yes” and instantly regretted it, not because the subject isn’t important, but because time was short.) To help with inspiration, I did find an extraordinary anthology of poems about wildfire by CA natives, mostly ordinary folks who aren’t routinely/professionally creative. But I still struggled.
When I finally rolled up my sleeves to get to work, I first wrote what could best be described as a melodramatic soundtrack for a theoretical documentary on fire. Here’s the fire climbing up a douglas fir: Scurrying violins. There’s the ominous ascending column of smoke over hills before it sinks to the valley floor: Horns in sixths to fifths to fourths to thirds to seconds, harmonized to descending bassoons. A solo flute could be the lonely bird hovering over a burned nest. Windchimes for… well, wind and maybe a charred kite. And riffing Ennio Morricone is always good for a firefighter’s vista shot surveying husks of homes against rising ash.
This went on for a while, a couple of weeks. Ultimately, it was a useful, if mortifying, exorcism of music I’ll never show anyone, leaving behind just one small usable germ: The idea of in extremis as quoted by one of the writers in the fire anthology. Latin for “in extreme circumstances,” this is an apt description for life in my beloved California during the past several apocalyptic seasons, an effort of normalcy while death is constantly imminent. I have been living in near constant terror here in rural Boonville. Yet, something inside, deep in one’s spirit, simply perseveres while surrounded by unimaginable chaos. In Contested Eden, the heart of the piece is a slowly moving violin line that elegiacally descends, over several minutes, moving from the stratospheres down to its lowest register before handing off to the violas, who eventually hand off to the cellos, who hand off to the basses. All the while, against this almost too-long falling arc, brief bits and pieces of earlier pieces I’ve authored come to life in the orchestra and vanish. Nothing coheres or makes sense, like memories that are of little help and comfort. That’s life in extremis.
It’s a bit of an odd work, even disjointed, which is a leap from one that likes balance and a cohesive journey. Knowing me, the piece yet ends on a hopeful note, a hint of the work’s opening and original secular psalm in tribute to the Eden that’s my native state. Perhaps the psalm feels earned by the piece’s end.
In addition to actually creating music at long last, these past months I’ve been renegotiating upcoming commission/residency contracts, attempting to get post-pandemic life on a sure footing. I’m struck again by how few people recognize the coronavirus as an environmental crisis – pandemics are much more likely on a warming planet, after all – and that they have already lost so much because of human-driven climate change. While some understand that I want to work remotely as much as possible (and now, after this pandemic, virtual activity is imaginable), others are amused/irritated at my quixotism. My hope is that I can use these next few years to broadcast my desired lifestyle changes to encourage established peers to ask and plan for the same, which would make it easier for emerging artists to also receive such considerations. And I think that bringing in income from sources other than my freelance work will be key; I am scheming to think big on how GLFCAM could be of more financial benefit to its alums in the coming years.
All this to say – I’m new on this journey and honestly just want to lie back down in a comfortable bed of yesteryear. But the past is there to stay, and forward’s all we’ve got. I’m grateful to be sharing this journey with all of you.
I underestimated the time needed to figure out how to address the CA wildfires. In truth, I had been putting off the work, rusty from COVID disuse, but also apprehensive to tackle the subject.
Gabriela Lena Frank
I have been living in near constant terror here in rural Boonville. Yet, something inside, deep in one’s spirit, simply perseveres while surrounded by unimaginable chaos.
Gabriela Lena Frank
I’m struck again by how few people recognize the coronavirus as an environmental crisis – pandemics are much more likely on a warming planet, after all – and that they have already lost so much because of human-driven climate change.
Gabriela Lena Frank
My hope is that I can use these next few years to broadcast my desired lifestyle changes to encourage established peers to ask and plan for the same, which would make it easier for emerging artists to also receive such considerations.
Rhiannon Giddens and Michael Abels have been awarded the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in Music for their jointly composed opera Omar. Omar was commissioned by the Spoleto Festival USA where it received its world premiere performance on May 27, 2022 at the Sottile Theatre in Charleston, S.C. It was subsequently staged by the LA Opera (October 2022), Carolina Performing Arts (February 2023), and Boston Lyric Opera (May 2023), will be done at the San Francisco Opera (November 2023), and has been published by Subito Music. The annually awarded $15,000 prize is for a distinguished musical composition by an American that has had its first performance or recording in the United States during the previous year. This prize is the very first time the award has been given to two creators for a jointly-composed work. Omar is based on the autobiography of Omar ibn Said (1770-1864), an Islamic scholar from what is now Senegal who was adbducted in 1807 and taken aboard one of the last trans-Atlantic slave ships to arrive in the United States where he was enslaved for the remainder of his long life. The Pulitzer citation describes Omar as “an innovative and compelling opera about enslaved people brought to North America from Muslim countries, a musical work that respectfully represents African as well as African American traditions, expanding the language of the operatic form while conveying the humanity of those condemned to bondage.”
Rhiannon Giddens, a 1977 native of Greensboro, North Carolina, first became widely known as a founding member of the Grammy Award-winning Carolina Chocolate Drops, an eclectic old timey country band in which she played fiddle and banjo and was the lead singer. She has since recorded four solo albums, the most recent of which, They’re Calling Me Home, a 2021 collaboration with Francesco Turrisi, received the 2022 Grammy Award for Best Folk Album. In 2017, she was award the MacArthur Foundation’s “Genius” grant. Ms. Giddens serves on New Music USA’s Advisory Council.
Michael Abels, born in 1962 in Phoenix, Arizona, has composed music in a wide variety of genres ranging from the hip-hop influenced film score for the 2019 Jordan Peele film Us to the string quartet At War With Ourselves which was premiered by the Kronos Quartet. He has also produced an album with the late Rev. James Cleveland, who was one of the most significant Black gospel singers and songwriters.
Also nominated as finalists for the 2023 music prize were Monochromatic Light (Afterlife) by Tyshawn Sorey which premiered on February 19, 2022 at the Rothko Chapel, Houston, Texas, and Perspective by Jerrilynn Patton (a.k.a. JLin) which was recorded by Third Coast Percussion on Cedille Records and released on May 13, 2022.
The jury for the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in Music was: John V. Brown, Jr., Vice Provost for the Arts and Professor of the Practice of Music, Duke University (Chair); past Pulitzer Prize-winning composers Raven Chacon and Du Yun; Arturo O’Farrill, Founder/Artistic Director, Afro Latin Jazz Alliance and Professor, Global Jazz Studies, University of California, Los Angeles; and Carol J. Oja, William Powell Mason Professor of Music, Harvard University. It is the first time in the history of the Pulitzer Prize in Music that all three of the works submitted as finalists by the jury, from which the winner is selected by the Pulitzer board, were by Black composers.
The announcement of this year’s Pulitzer Prizes was made online by Pulitzer Administrator Marjorie Miller via a stream posted on the Pulitzer website which can also be streamed on YouTube.
I was speaking with a clarinetist once about the importance of the clarinet in the Klezmer tradition, and she admitted that, as much as she admired the abilities of Klezmer clarinetists, she was hesitant to learn how to play the music because she didn’t want to appropriate a culture that isn’t her own. Her private teacher at the time, however, who was Jewish and a respected clarinet chameleon of many music styles including both classical and Klezmer, actively encouraged his students to learn Klezmer music not only to honor and preserve the clarinet’s role in the tradition but also because of the technical demands it makes on a clarinetist that aren’t typically found in traditional classical or contemporary music.
Is it appropriative to learn the music of a different culture as a classically-trained clarinetist, or is it colonialist to learn strictly Western art music?
The clarinet, like many instruments commonly found in Western music, is actually a part of many music traditions with a rich history of virtuosi around the globe. Yet, in America, clarinet students are most often admitted only to classical training programs, including orchestras and concert bands. Rare is the high school jazz band that features a clarinet, with clarinetists instead having Ticheli’s Blue Shades or Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue as our first foray into the world of glisses and bluesy riffs, in spite of our instrument’s history in that music tradition as well.
Is it appropriative to learn the music of a different culture as a classically-trained clarinetist, or is it colonialist to learn strictly Western art music?
Logan Lambert
This Western European lens is not only problematic for its erasure of clarinetists of historically underrepresented communities in the U.S. but also for the limitations it imposes on our approach to the instrument.
Logan Lambert
We limit ourselves as instrumentalists when we fail to acknowledge the contributions of non-Western classical performers to instrumental technique and music performance.
Logan Lambert
As clarinet students in classical training programs, we are taught the entire history and development of our instrument through a Western European lens. Our studies take us through the history of church music and the Baroque, Classical, and Romantic eras alongside the developments in instrument making in the 17th through 20th centuries. We learn how these components are intricately intertwined and have led us to where we are today, yet we don’t talk about the ways these developments affected and were affected by non-Western music as well. I remember being surprised to learn that the clarinet played a prominent role in Turkish music and that the Albert-system G clarinet is dubbed the “Turkish clarinet”. When learning about Italian opera in the 18th and 19th centuries, nobody had ever mentioned that Donizetti brought the instrument to Turkey. The local scene really took it and ran with it, giving us the distinct style of clarinet playing found in Turkey today.
This Western European lens is not only problematic for its erasure of clarinetists of historically underrepresented communities in the U.S. but also for the limitations it imposes on our approach to the instrument. The siphoning of instrumental music students into specialized training programs happens early on in our studies and careers. If not by the end of high school, then by the time we declare a major in university or enroll in a conservatory, we are labeled as either classical or jazz. This early distinction becomes the foundation upon which we will build our musical practice and career, yet it also defines the narrow view through which we will approach our instrument. For clarinetists starting in classical training programs, we are taught a very specific concept of sound that helps us get through our early studies of Mozart and Beethoven. It continues to serve us through Stravinsky and other works of the early 20th century and even as we are introduced to works by Berio, Carter, or Saariaho. This approach to the clarinet, however, becomes more obviously limiting as we begin to move into music that draws from non-Western traditions.
Oswaldo Golijov’s Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind is a piece composed for string quartet and Klezmer clarinet. The clarinet part comes with a description of a few Klezmer-specific techniques that are explicitly prescribed in the notation, but otherwise the piece is completely legible for the Western classical clarinetist. Without a concept of sound of Klezmer clarinet, it would be relatively easy for any clarinetist from a classical program to get ahold of the part and read it cover-to-cover as though it were a Brahms sonata. If you listen to David Krakauer’s recording with the Kronos Quartet, however, you can hear the nuance in interpretation that he brings to the piece through his own decades of experience in Klezmer clarinet playing.
Reena Esmail’s Clarinet Concerto, premiered in 2017, was written for Shankar Tucker, a musician trained in both Western classical and Hindustani classical music on clarinet. In her own description of the piece, Esmail celebrates Tucker’s dual-training and the possibilities it offered her as a composer. She acknowledges the limitations she would have faced in trying to write the piece in Western classical notation had she not been writing for a clarinetist adept at performing in both styles. Tucker was the perfect fit because of his familiarity with the two traditions and the musical understanding he was able to bring without it being written explicitly on the page. Esmail also acknowledges the different challenges that will likely be faced by clarinetists of different musical trainings, distinguishing between Western classical, jazz/improvisational, and Hindustani clarinetists. For the latter two groups, the main hurdle for the piece would be comfort with reading Western classical notation and working in an orchestral setting. For the former, the hurdle is the actual ability to perform the work, with the consolation, “a version that notates Tucker’s improvisations will be available at a future date.”
I’m not suggesting that we all need to become multi-genre performers and specialists of every music tradition, nor am I tackling the importance of representation in Western classical music repertoire with this. While that is an adjacent and ongoing issue, many other people are already addressing that with more eloquence and nuance than I would bring to that conversation. But perhaps alongside that battle, we should also consider the importance of sharing and celebrating the accomplishments of instrumentalists outside of the Western classical and new music traditions. We limit ourselves as instrumentalists when we fail to acknowledge the contributions of non-Western classical performers to instrumental technique and music performance.
The story of Tina Davidson’s life, which is the basis of her newly published memoir Let Your Heart Be Broken, is extremely intense but also a rewarding reading experience just like the emotional roller coaster rides in so many of her musical compositions make for very compelling listening.
As she told Frank J. Oteri, “When you write about yourself, you really make yourself incredibly vulnerable, and hopefully you can do that without making other people vulnerable in your life.”
Several weeks ago I started reading Let Your Heart Be Broken, a memoir by the composer Tina Davidson. For many years I’ve treasured the two CDs of her intense chamber music which made me immediately intrigued to learn her biographical details. It turns out the story of her life was far more complicated that anything I could have imagined, although I probably should have imagined as much given the emotional roller coaster rides in so many of her extremely compelling musical compositions.
I shouldn’t give it all away just yet, though be forewarned that there are some spoiler alerts in the recording of my talk with her posted above and in the full transcript of it below. So if you’re worried that reading or listening to the giveaways might ruin the experience of reading the book for you, and it is rewarding reading, I’d strongly suggest getting the book and reading it first before engaging further here.
But my conversation with Tina also took a much deeper dive into some of her musical compositions and her writing process than she would have been able to get into in a book aimed at general readers. However, what compelled me to speak with her was a passage from that book in which she explains why she mostly eschews conventional musical development in her output:
In the classical music tradition, development is a process by which a composer uses the musical material of a piece … Many living composers use development as a chief technique in their music. They push the melodies around and rework them by directly transposing or inverting them. My ear pauses. Why do I feel they stand at the river’s edge, beating their musical material with stones until it is thin, weak, and colorless?
“Music, for me, is like bread. I define the ingredients, actively knead the dough. There is an essential part I cannot do–the rising. I provide the right size pan, large enough so the bread can expand to its fullest potential and small enough so it can use the side of a pan as support. I decide when the bread has risen enough without too much poking around. This is a judgment of my eye, heart, and mind acting together. Rising too much, it will be filled with air and collapse. Rising too little, it will be mean and hard, an impenetrable nugget.
For Tina, as she explained to me when I brought up this passage to her, “That’s the risk you take with your work. You don’t always write great music. You have flops. I have pieces where I go, ‘Oh, boy, I hope they don’t see the light of day!’ I don’t know why. It just didn’t happen. I try not to revise a lot of things. If I have a piece that I don’t love I’ll just say, ‘Okay, next piece.'”
In addition to being like bread, a piece of music is also always a journey and Tina’s hope is that she can ultimately bring the audience along with her on the trip.
It’s about me traveling and hopefully you listening with me through the journey of the piece and that wonderful sense that you can’t actually touch music, you know, it’s so ephemeral. You reconstruct that journey through memory. As you get to the end of the piece, it doesn’t make any sense unless you could remember the beginning. So it’s you as an active participant that really creates the pieces as a whole. I think that composers actually collaborate with everyone. They collaborate with the performers as the performers really inhabit your music and it has to be shaped on their body. And then the audience. You kind of collaborate with them as an extension of receiving it. … I’m not telling them; I hope that I’m eliciting from them their own response. … [W]hen I write a piece of music, I try to articulate where I am the most the best that I can. And what I’ve noticed is that when it’s out there, it’s not that people get me, but they get themselves. And that’s what I love. That it’s almost as if something about my music or that experience resonates with something in them and they can experience themselves. And that’s what I’d hope for.
The ability for people to form their own narratives when they listen to an abstract piece of instrumental music is not quite the same as being able to empathize with an author when reading the details of a first person narrative and Tina is very conscious of the difference in these modalities.
“I think in the beginning of my composing journey, as a young person what I loved about it is I could be anonymous, she acknowledged toward the beginning of our discussion. “I think that as I grew through my 30s and then 40s–I’ve been writing for 45 years–I found I resolved a lot of personal issues and had more courage to come forward and be direct, to say, ‘this is what I’m writing about.’ Certainly I suppose that the memoir is the full circle of that. When you write about yourself, you really make yourself incredibly vulnerable, and hopefully you can do that without making other people vulnerable in your life. And I worked really hard at being honest without calling people names or having judgments about their behavior necessarily.”
I think in the beginning of my composing journey, as a young person what I loved about it is I could be anonymous.
Tina Davidson
When you write about yourself, you really make yourself incredibly vulnerable, and hopefully you can do that without making other people vulnerable in your life.
Tina Davidson
I think in music you get the journey, whatever the journey is. And the journey, to me, is always a story. It’s about me traveling and hopefully you listening with me through the journey of the piece and that wonderful sense that you can’t actually touch music, you know, it’s so ephemeral. You reconstruct that journey through memory. As you get to the end of the piece, it doesn’t make any sense unless you could remember the beginning.
Tina Davidson
I think when you go to a place and you say, “music is a universal language,” you might be putting on a little bit of emperor’s clothing.
Tina Davidson
When I write a piece of music, I try to articulate where I am the most the best that I can. And what I’ve noticed is that when it’s out there, it’s not that people get me, but they get themselves. And that’s what I love.
Tina Davidson
I love the idea of collaborating with the listener. I’m not telling them; I hope that I’m eliciting from them their own response.
Tina Davidson
I had never played a woman composer. Nobody said to me, “Oh, you can’t be a composer, you’re a woman.” But, there was no example of it. So it never occurred to me that I could write music, so that was sort of astounding.
Tina Davidson
The music field has developed a story that hasn’t embraced new work.
Tina Davidson
When we make the art form really accessible to everyone, and we say, “You can do this,” they’re going to be more interested listeners because it will be their art form and they identify with it rather than its boxed art form, or classical music art form. The curative is to allow composition to be embraced.
Tina Davidson
I always felt like I came out of an American experience of composing which was Ruggles and Ives and Cowell and Henry Brant, although he’s Canadian, but then I hung out with people like Pauline Oliveros, Terry Riley, and Rzewski. Those composers were really informative to me. They didn’t care about fitting in.
Tina Davidson
You don’t always write great music. You have flops. I have pieces where I go, “Oh, boy, I hope they don’t see the light of day!” I don’t know why. It just didn’t happen. I try not to revise a lot of things. If I have a piece that I don’t love I’ll just say, “Okay, next piece.”
Tina Davidson
When I write I hold the words or the title in my head and I ask the title to inform me as I’m composing.
Tina Davidson
What I think is characteristic of a lot of my music is that breaking open at the end. For me spiritually, at the end of all of your physical limits then you say, "Okay," and your heart just goes up to God. It’s like, "Okay, I’m ready."
Tina Davidson
My job is to do the work and plant the seeds and hope that there will be some outcomes, but I can’t be outcome-driven.
Tina Davidson
What I am really interested in now is what happens to a creative artist when you go through your 60s and you go towards the end of your life. What is creativity? I think we have a lot of fantasies, you know, "Oh, you wrote music until the last dying breath," you know? "He’s dictating the requiem as he’s gasping for air!" But what happens to your creativity as you get older?
The ASCAP Foundation has announced the recipients of the 2023 Herb Alpert Young Jazz Composer Awards. Jazz composers up to the age of 30 are eligible to apply to these annual awards, which were established in 2002 and are named in recognition of The Herb Alpert Foundation’s multi-year financial commitment to the program. Additional funding for the program is provided by The ASCAP Foundation Bart Howard Fund. Winners selected through a juried national competition receive cash awards. The ASCAP composer/judges for the 2023 competition were Ayn Inserto, Aruán Ortiz, and Sachal Vasandani.
The 2023 Herb Alpert Young Jazz Composer Award recipients are listed below with their age, current residence and place of origin:
Nicola Caminiti (born 1995 in Messina, Italy; based in New York, NY) Chase Elodia (b. 1994 in Norwalk, CT; based in New York, NY) Samantha Fierke (born 2002 in Columbia, MO; based in Brookline, MA) Dava Giustizia (born 2002 in Surabaya, Indonesia; based in Boston, MA) Yue Han (Moonsita H) (born in Anshun, China; based in Boston, MA, aged 27) Joseph Herbst (born in Easley, SC; based in New York, NY, aged 27) Tammy Huynh (born in Philadelphia, PA; based in New York, NY, aged 27) Jack Lanhardt (born 2000 in Corona, CA; based in Denton, TX) Emiliano Lasansky (born 1993 in Iowa City, Iowa; based in Los Angeles, CA) Shane McCandless (born in State College, PA; based in Rochester, NY, aged 23) Ben Morris (born 1993 in Chatham, NJ; based in Nacogdoches, TX) age 30 Ciara Moser (born in Vienna, Austria; based in Boston, MA, aged 26) Daiki Nakajima (born 2002 in Tokyo, Japan; based in San Jose, CA) Denin Slage-Koch (born 1996 in Richland, WA; based in Greeley, CO) Ben Turner (b. Cherry Hill, NJ; based in East Lansing, MI, aged 25)
In addition, the following composers received Honorable Mention:
Zachary Bornheimer (born 1993 in Margate, FL; based in Tampa, FL) Gabriel Chakarji (born 1993 in Caracas, Venezuela; based in Queens, NY) Ethan Cohn (born and based in New York, NY, age 27) Ariel Sha Glassman (born 1996 in Dublin, OH; based in Denton, TX) Phillip Golub (born 1993 Los Angeles, CA; based in Brooklyn, NY) Jake Hart (born in New City, NY; based in Winston-Salem, NC, aged 26) Anthony Hervey (born in Miami, FL; based in New York, NY, aged 26) David Leon (born in Miami, FL; based in Brooklyn, NY, aged 29) David Mirarchi (born 1996 in Scranton, PA; based in Queens, NY)
Many years ago, when “New Sounds” was still new (and dinosaurs roamed the Earth), I played a few tracks from a Japanese musician named Osamu Kitajima on the show. At that time, WNYC-FM was still largely a classical music station; “New Sounds” was on at 11pm, when all the grownups had left, and I was accustomed to getting mail from older listeners who didn’t care to hear anything after Brahms. But the Kitajima record provoked one elderly gentleman to write in to say that it was the best thing he’d heard since Enrico Caruso, some sixty years earlier.
I’ve been thinking about that listener and that letter recently, as news comes of AI bots developed to do the work of local radio announcers, and algorithms define what many of us listen to. Music can do many things: it can calm you down, rile you up, move you to tears… but sometimes, music can be startling. Those can be some of our most memorable musical experiences – the time when we heard something totally unexpected, something that took us unawares. Look, I understand the utility of a good algorithm. I have discovered any number of musicians and songs that I now love by clicking on something that was sitting on the bottom of the Soundcloud or Bandcamp page, or in the list of videos that runs down the side of YouTube. But I’m willing to bet that no bot or algorithm would take an Enrico Caruso fan to Osamu Kitajima-land.
Music can do many things: it can calm you down, rile you up, move you to tears… but sometimes, music can be startling.
John Schaefer
I’m willing to bet that no bot or algorithm would take an Enrico Caruso fan to Osamu Kitajima-land.
John Schaefer
AI and algorithms work on logic. Music, and discovery, work beyond logic, in the realm of intuition and inspiration and chance.
John Schaefer
“I know what I like” is a perfectly reasonable way of approaching music. For those listeners, a good algorithm will be decent company, and will occasionally throw in related things that offer a little of that sense of discovery. But for more curious listeners, and especially for anyone straying far from the world of pop, that simply won’t do.
John Schaefer
When it comes to the democratization of music in the digital world, the theory differs greatly from the practice.
John Schaefer
The further you get from the musical mainstream, the more important it is to have a guide, if only to get you started.
John Schaefer
Turning on the radio means inviting someone into your home, your office, or your car, and sharing that space with them. Late at night, if you’re alone in your room or your car, this experience is heightened.
John Schaefer
Curiosity is one of humanity’s greatest traits, and perhaps one of its most undervalued. I don’t think there’s an AI program that can recreate that.
John Schaefer
AI and algorithms work on logic. Music, and discovery, work beyond logic, in the realm of intuition and inspiration and chance. I was not trying to convert old opera listeners into Japanese electro-ethno-pop fans. That example was a total fluke – the element of chance at work. Now, with more music available to us that at any time in history, the potential for surprise, for the thrill of discovery, is greater than ever. But when almost everything is available, where do you even start?
This is where the editors, the gatekeepers, come in. They’ve always been there: record companies, record stores, radio programmers, music critics. In theory, all of these people stood between you and your freedom to choose what you’d hear next. Each one essentially said, “you will hear this”; but the subtext was, “and if you want to hear something else, go find it yourself.” And for many folks, that was fine; “I know what I like” is a perfectly reasonable way of approaching music. For those listeners, a good algorithm will be decent company, and will occasionally throw in related things that offer a little of that sense of discovery.
But for more curious listeners, and especially for anyone straying far from the world of pop, that simply won’t do. Back in the day, we were the ones decrying those gatekeepers, lamenting the major labels’ desperate search for the next Thriller, and complaining about (but still watching) the Grammys’ annual parade of commercially safe pop. So instead we took note of the record label that consistently did interesting stuff, the critic who made room for musicians no one else seemed to notice, or the DJ who blew your mind that night when she followed It’s A Beautiful Day with Lothar And The Hand People (and yes, those are real band names). These people were our guides, because even in the analog age, there was already more music than any one person could handle.
People like that are needed now more than ever, because when it comes to the democratization of music in the digital world, the theory differs greatly from the practice. Yes, countless additional artists and recordings from all genres, time periods, and parts of the world have become available to us, but somehow we find the digital system behaving in ways that look suspiciously like the old analog one.
It has always been a challenge to discover experimental music, contemporary classical music, and any other type of music that is unlikely to make much headway in the commercial sector. The further you get from the musical mainstream, the more important it is to have a guide, if only to get you started. That was the idea behind “New Sounds” all those years ago (forty and counting): to open a door to different musical possibilities – for rock fans bored by tight playlists, jazz listeners orphaned by the loss of their music on the radio, even the classical aficionados who’d fallen asleep and forgotten to turn off the radio. I saw it as a door, not to a room, but to a hallway full of more doors, with different sounds and traditions and ideas in each room, many of which revealed themselves to be connected – because that was how it worked for me.
Could an AI program do that? Well, probably, eventually – if someone had the desire and the funding and the time to do it. Of course that someone would have to know that part, or more precisely, those parts, of the music world and so that person would be the gatekeeper and this is making my brain hurt just thinking about it.
But there’s something else at work here, something specific (I believe) to radio. You may understand on an intellectual level that other people are hearing the same thing as you; but emotionally, it feels like it’s just you and this other person who is playing music for you. Turning on the radio means inviting someone into your home, your office, or your car, and sharing that space with them. Late at night, if you’re alone in your room or your car, this experience is heightened. “New Sounds” began as a late night experiment; these days, I know (again, on an intellectual level) that people are listening to it online at many other times of the day, but I have always felt like it’s still a late night show at heart. And anyone who has ever hosted a late night radio show will tell you tales, both horrifying and wonderful, about the connections that individual listeners make with this disembodied but still clearly human presence in their life.
Now we get word that some of the big media corporations that own radio stations across the country, filling them all with programming from one central location, are realizing the importance of sounding local and are experimenting with AI as a way of “localizing” their fare. I have no doubt that this can work, within limits. A simulacrum of a radio announcer can impart local weather info, concert listings, and the like, and at some point I’m sure that simulacrum will sound almost indistinguishable from a human announcer reading the same material. Tellingly, no one is yet talking about an AI bot crafting a music show and acting as a guide/companion for the listeners. That doesn’t mean such things can’t happen, only that they’re probably years away (he said, in a burst of implausible optimism).
I guess it comes down to FOMO. If FOMO means fear of missing out on what everyone else is doing, or listening to, or watching, then algorithms and AI might be just the ticket. But FOMO could also mean fear of missing out on everything else – the new, the distant, the overlooked… you know, the stuff that might make you think, “that’s the best thing I’ve heard in sixty years.” In that case, FOMO is just another term for curiosity. And curiosity is one of humanity’s greatest traits, and perhaps one of its most undervalued. I don’t think there’s an AI program that can recreate that.
I want to mark this year’s International Women’s Day with reflections on what we’ve learnt from the gender equity programs I’ve led in the UK and the US over the past 12 years. I also want to use this opportunity to celebrate the incredible women and gender-expansive creators these initiatives have supported.
Back in 2011 when I launched the UK’s first dedicated fund for women, trans and non-binary music creators, the gender gap in music was not widely recognized. Some people – including composers who wanted to be identified first as artists rather than women – did not welcome a fund which prioritized some gender identities over others. Whilst I acknowledge and understand this point of view, the results of the programs I’ve been a part of demonstrate that intentional, targeted action works for artists seeking support, and this is a fact we can’t overlook.
My colleagues at PRS Foundation celebrated 12 years of Women Make Music (the fund we launched in 2011) with an event and evaluation that demonstrates the ongoing importance of targeted programs for women and gender-expansive artists. This fund has supported a total of 382 creators, with 83% confirming they would not have been able to realize their activities without the fund.98% believe that this form of support is still needed. 45.5% were women of color, highlighting that the fund’s gender equity focus also supported intersectional inclusivity.
The team now driving the Keychange initiative I co-founded with European and Canadian partners in 2017 recently shared evidence of the progress made through the Keychange gender equity pledge and talent development program. In their words, “what gets measured gets done” The pledge has now attracted over 600 signatory organizations committed to dramatically increasing representation of women and gender-expansive artists on their stages or in their organizations, 64% have surpassed their targets and this program has supported over 280 artists and industry professionals with mentoring, showcases and peer learning opportunities.
From the start, I stated that “success” for programs like these is the moment when they are no longer needed. Feedback from the community gathered via the reports I mention above demonstrates that we are not there yet. Until we see widespread structural and cultural change, along with equitable investment and endorsement led by those who currently hold the most power, progress is bound to be limited. We should also pay attention to the UN’s latest forecast that gender equity is 300 years away if we accept that the music industry is a microcosm of broader societal issues. The UN calls for urgent, collective action in the face of “centuries of patriarchy, discrimination and harmful stereotypes.”
Many of the programs we are running at New Music USA have come about because of the way these challenges show up in music.
All aspects of the film industry, including directing and scoring, are heavily dominated by men, with men scoring 95% of the top 250 films at the US box office. Our Reel Change fund, developed with SESAC and composer Christophe Beck, aims to help shift this imbalance.
When we launched our national Next Jazz Legacy apprenticeship program with the Berklee Institute for Jazz and Gender Justice, 58% of the albums in NPR’s jazz critics poll featured no women musicians at all.
Music by women composers still accounts for just 11% of orchestral music commissioned in the US. Our Amplifying Voices program encourages orchestras to collaborate and diversify the range of composers they commission.
In spite of these daunting statistics, the extraordinary talent of the women and gender expansive creators who are finding a way to dedicate their lives to music is something we must celebrate today on International Women’s Day, and every day, just as we do at New Music USA.
Listen today to this exhilarating performance by Next Jazz Legacy artists at New York’s Winter JazzFest (see below), or hear the scores of Reel Change grantees Sultana Isham, Catherine Joy and Emmolei Sankofa at festivals and on major platforms like Hulu and Amazon;
Look out for the increasing number of women who are being commissioned by orchestras, from Pulitzer prize-winning Tania León to Courtney Bryan, Shelley Washington and Nina Shekhar
Let’s give a shout-out to artists like Jen Shyu, Sara Serpa, Ellen Reid, Missy Mazzoli and Terri Lyne Carrington who are investing so much of their time in supporting their peers and the next generation;
Let’s celebrate the younger women and gender expansive people taking part in initiatives like Luna Lab, El Paso Jazz girls, Girls Rock Des Moines and the Afghanistan National Institute of Music.
The success of all these creators gives us a chance to imagine an alternative future for music; music that is relevant and welcoming to more people; music that may sound different, drawing from a broader range of perspectives; music that’s truly reflective of the communities it serves. That’s the future I think we all want to see. Until then, let’s accept that targeted action is still needed and it’s one proven way of addressing the inequities that ultimately hold everyone back.
Increasing diverse representation in our programming with student musicians can be an intimidating bar for those who speak, teach, and make art from a place of privilege. Oftentimes, we run into issues of concern that we are “doing it wrong.” We worry we are not serving the students or the historically underrepresented composers we are trying to include. We worry we are using incorrect terminology in discussions of equity and social justice, where the vocabulary seems to change nearly daily. We worry that our errors will make us seem ignorant, uncaring, or the “bad people.”
To move forward, I have outlined a five-step process that includes what I consider to be several steps to “doing it the least wrong.” I write you now with the privilege of a classically trained, able-bodied, neurotypical, cisgendered, White woman who feels recently redefined in the changing language of the queer community. I acknowledge the inevitability that the terms I use for historical underrepresented identities will expire or have already passed in favor and hope that my openness to discussion and intentions allow for forgiveness of mistakes in terminology. I also challenge those of us speaking and acting from privilege to release the pride that keeps our focus on our own experience. The purpose of this process is not to be seen as “good,” but rather to shift the balance of resources and power in our field and curriculum, seen or unseen.
Let’s get to it.
I challenge those of us speaking and acting from privilege to release the pride that keeps our focus on our own experience. The purpose of this process is not to be seen as "good," but rather to shift the balance of resources and power in our field and curriculum, seen or unseen.
Cayla Bellamy
Foregoing labeling majority groups allows for a focus on representation of marginalized communities, though you are welcome to label all identities, should you wish.
Cayla Bellamy
Use questions of "standard" repertoire, marginalized identity presence, and skill level delineations to IDENTIFY the needs within your curriculum.
Cayla Bellamy
Incorporate processes of peer recommendation, contemporary databases, and targeted online search or algorithm platform strategies to RESEARCH repertoire to fill the gaps in your programming.
Cayla Bellamy
Music that is too easy can cast a light of "simple" on the contributions of historically underrepresented composers. Music that is too hard can do the opposite, painting entire communities of composers as "inaccessible."
Cayla Bellamy
Have you legally purchased the score and parts, and does the composer benefit financially from your purchase? Is there a way to increase that financial contribution by purchasing directly from the composer or their website, rather than through a larger publishing company?
Cayla Bellamy
The point of awareness lies in assumption. I recommend the following inclusions or substitutions in our traditional means of conveying composer information:
Include pronunciation keys for both first and last names.
Inquire about preferred pronouns for living composers, using self-written biographies as a reliable indicator.
Indicate birth dates for all living composers, as well as birth and death dates for deceased composers.
List nationality of origin for all composers, distinguishing from location of residence.
Allow for visual representation of race by including photographs or headshots of each composer.
Cayla Bellamy
Treat all works as equally significant, both musically and culturally, and all composers as equally valid, as artists and humans.
Cayla Bellamy
How long will normalization take? In my experience, participants in an ensemble or studio will recognize something as “the usual” when over half of them have adhered to the changes. This usually translates to half the duration of your program’s length.
Cayla Bellamy
Step One: Identify
The identification step of this process reflects upon our concepts of “standard” repertoire for each level of our program. What does our default curriculum look like, and what has led us to those decisions? Is our default fully meeting the requirements of both pedagogical necessity and cultural inclusion? For me, this reflection begins with addressing my rationale for considering certain works “standard” for the field, which have many possible origins, including:
I have personally performed the works as a student at certain levels. Based on my evaluation of my own development and trust in my former teachers, I conclude that those works were appropriate and should remain central in a student’s education.
I have personally taught the works, and my students benefitted noticeably from them. I have been satisfied with that decision in the past and am thankful to have “go-to” works to serve certain purposes in my pedagogy.
My higher education training taught me that certain works are “staples” of the canon, and I repeat them from acceptance of and respect for that training.
Many respected colleagues have programmed the works recently for students of similar ability level as mine, therefore I am willing to accept them as a new standard.
My program already owns or has access to certain works in our library, and access to funding and resources is a very real challenge. I am likely to select a work I already own rather than purchase something new.
From this point, I have my catalog of “standard” repertoire and recommend the simple (though eye-opening and potentially discouraging!) task of categorizing works by representation of marginalized identities. In order to feel like I could maintain control and have a place to start on my own curriculum diversification journey, I chose three historically underrepresented identities to label, though there are many, many to consider. At this point, foregoing labeling majority groups allows for a focus on representation of marginalized communities, though you are welcome to label all identities, should you wish. A very non-exhaustive list may include:
Race: Black, Asian, Indigenous, Pacific Island, Latino/a, and any non-White (majority: White)
Gender Identity: female, trans, nonbinary, genderfluid, and any non-cisgendered male (majority: cisgender male)
Age: younger than 25 or older than 60 (majority: American “working ages” 20s-50s)
Socio-Economic Status: limited access to institutional resources, self-published (majority: middle to upper class, employed)
Formal Training: non-classical music pedigree, self-taught, popular music background (majority: classically experienced, formally trained)
The final component of identifying your curricular options and needs is perhaps the component with which we are most familiar. We must determine exactly the technical and musical parameters of repertoire needed for each level of student in our program. This may be the first and second band in your high school; the sixth, seventh, and eighth graders in your private studio; the chamber and mixed SATB university choirs at your college; or your single string orchestra. For the start of my journey, these levels were for collegiate bassoonists – admission to a university program, sophomore to junior year barrier exam, degree recital, and graduate study. These curricular levels, which I describe by collections of “proficiency skills,” might include requirements for any or all of the following:
Melodic range, frequency, or size of intervallic leaps
Harmonic language, key areas
Rhythmic and/or metric complexity
Physical velocity of finger patterns, articulation, etc.
Stylistic consideration, genre- or era-specific techniques
Use of extended techniques
After all this categorizing, I can place the works from my standard repertoire into curricular levels and easily see where I have diverse representation. I can identify, quickly and without doubt, that most of my library’s collection of underrepresented composers’ works are only pedagogically appropriate for my most advanced ensemble. Or perhaps I am most aware of music by Black composers for beginning levels, but beyond the first year, the students cease to see those voices in their curriculum. Further still, I may have sought music by young composers and collected several that all utilize avantgarde techniques or electronics, creating a false parallel between a particular identity and a specific skill to be learned.
Use questions of “standard” repertoire, marginalized identity presence, and skill level delineations to IDENTIFYthe needs within your curriculum. The key is always to use proficiency level first to guarantee pedagogical responsibility to student then begin the next step to find appropriately leveled diverse repertoire rather than simply any diverse repertoire. Here the identification step ends when you can clearly state your curriculum’s needs.
Step Two: Research
The research step of this process involves evaluating, potentially expanding, and intentionally utilizing a variety of resources to find repertoire to fill the curricular gaps identified in the identification step. Here, I will explore several ways to discover repertoire to potentially add to your programming rotation, recognizing that these resources change daily. Please feel free to reach out and share new resources and approaches to discovering or creating music, both with myself and your colleagues!
Network Recommendations
I like to acknowledge the role of our professional networks in researching curriculum immediately. We know many aware and like-minded colleagues who can provide recommendations for programming.
Featured Ensembles or Evaluation Lists
Check out the programming decisions of featured ensembles at conferences and large group evaluations. What groups like yours are performing at your state music education conference, ASTA clinics, ACDA workshops, or the Midwest Clinic? The leveled large group repertoire for middle and high school ensembles is publicly available for many individual states. Leading into the next point, most of these are summarized and linked directly by publisher JW Pepper.
Publisher Websites
Many music publishers include the ability to sort publications by composer. This may be birthdates or historical eras, gender identity, race, nationality, or more. If this is not visible on their website, don’t hesitate to contact them and ask if you can access that functionality either privately or request it added to their vendor website.
Consortia
Contact your music publisher of choice and see if they are aware of consortium projects to commission new works for a particular level and type of ensemble. This may result in either a brand-new composition that has recently been commissioned and premiered or, excitingly, the potential to buy in and join a consortium for yourself or with your program.
Individual Composer Websites
If you find a composer you like but the ensemble does not seem to fit, try visiting their personal composition website or contacting them directly. They may have works you have not yet discovered or may even be willing to arrange a project you love to fit your ensemble, often for a minimal fee as compared to commissioning a brand-new work.
Internet Search Skills
Finally, but not insignificantly, it’s time to up the Google game. Yes, searching for “BIPOC band composers” will provide results, but it can often be both overwhelming and focused on only the current trends in programming or popularization by organizations or publishers with wide or well-funded and sponsored online reach. At this point, I recommend taking advantage of the algorithms designed by playlist curators such as Spotify, Pandora, and Apple Music. Enter the title or composer of a work you have found intriguing or inspiring for your ensemble and style of choice, and listen through the recommended radio station, playlist, or “users also liked” compilation. If an album arises, consider other works on the album, which are likely to be written by the same composer or their contemporaries or performed by the same or similar ensembles.
While the above seven processes are certainly not exhaustive approaches, I hope they have sparked interest and awareness in the variety of ways to seek out new programming options. Incorporate processes of peer recommendation, contemporary databases, and targeted online search or algorithm platform strategies to RESEARCH repertoire to fill the gaps in your programming.
Step Three: Test
The process of testing repertoire for its inclusion is twofold and arguably the most critical step in ethically diversifying your curriculum. As teachers and performers both, we have many potential missteps here! After finding the repertoire, the final step before introducing it two our students and audiences hinges on two questions:
1. Is this repertoire the next best pedagogical step for our students?
Return to your curriculum map and set of proficiency skills, score in hand. Do the technical elements of melodic range and contour, harmonic language, rhythmic and metric complexity, and incorporations of various stylistic and expressive markers reflect a well-designed scaffolded step in your students’ development? Will they be challenged but not over-challenged? Can you explain why the students need to wrestle with and grow through this music, for reasons other than the composer’s identity?
Music that is too easy can cast a light of “simple” on the contributions of historically underrepresented composers. Music that is too hard can do the opposite, painting entire communities of composers as “inaccessible.” Pedagogically well-placed takes priority over including solely for the act of highlighting a diverse face. Including composers solely for their minority status and not their musical contributions tokenizes them as humans and treats them as the method of representation in the abstract – a statement – rather than a unique individual deserving of representation.
2. Are you providing direct resources or influence to those with minority status?
The “direct resources” here are often, quite simply, payment. Have you legally purchased the score and parts, and does the composer benefit financially from your purchase? Is there a way to increase that financial contribution by purchasing directly from the composer or their website, rather than through a larger publishing company? Would you consider listing in your program where to buy music by each composer to lower the research bar for other teachers and make it easier to find and continue supporting the composer?
To this end, I wish I could recall where I overheard the following piece of advice regarding performative allyship, as I would provide it for you in citation. If you know, please remind me! The advice was a simple statement to the following effect: if you aren’t shifting resources or power, you are performing. If the primary beneficiary from your diversified program is you, as reflected in your reputation in your field, then there is more research and testing to be done.
With new literature in hand, TEST each work for its best use within the context of a single program, a complete semester or annual concert cycle, and the full course of a student’s curriculum with you or the larger development of your personal artistic projects. If your choices are pedagogically supported in terms of your students’ development and audiences’ experiences AND increase the volume of money directed to minority communities, it’s time to play!
Step Four: Implement
Implementation of diverse curriculum often seems straightforward – present the new music to students, with or without some information about the composers – but there are a few potential pitfalls in this process, and ones I have certainly tripped into in my own teaching. I recommend the following two guiding questions to ensure that we are treating composers as individuals and artists, rather than tokens of their marginalized communities.
1. How do we present repertoire and composer information to students and audiences, and what information is included?
This may include instructional handouts, either as preparation guides for students or listening guides to audiences; spoken introductions to works; printed program notes; brief video interviews with composers; or more. Through these, we have the option to include as much information as we like about the composer’s name, birth and death dates, nationality, race, gender identity, and any personal anecdotes we find interesting or appropriate. The point of awareness in this question lies in assumption. I recommend the following inclusions or substitutions in our traditional means of conveying composer information:
Include pronunciation keys for both first and last names.
Inquire about preferred pronouns for living composers, using self-written biographies as a reliable indicator.
Indicate birth dates for all living composers, as well as birth and death dates for deceased composers.
List nationality of origin for all composers, distinguishing from location of residence.
Allow for visual representation of race by including photographs or headshots of each composer.
Through these, we are able to include a variety of information for students to connect with or be exposed to without directing attention to the diversity of certain identities over others or tokenizing their contributions to a given program or concert cycle.
2. What are the requirements for treating composers ethically when publicly labeling their identities?
The simplest answer to this is to treat all works as equally significant, both musically and culturally, and all composers as equally valid, as artists and humans. This means introducing all the information above for all composers, not simply the living ones or the ones we identify as diverse in some capacity. Equally present and educate students on the historical and cultural context for all works, not only the ones from backgrounds different than what we assume our students to identify with. Create programs that incorporate composer identity, rather than utilizing their identities only as programmatic themes, such as International Women’s Day, Black or Hispanic History Month, or Pride Month.
The core of increasing equity for historically underrepresented composers rests on two principles. First and foremost, all composers must be introduced, discussed, treated, and valued as individual human beings with complex identities and unique artistic voices. Secondly, the resulting financial gain and performance exposure must benefit the composer rather than the director or performer, ensuring that power and resources are directed toward increasing equity. This second point was previously covered in step three, the testing phase.
Students and audiences become aware of historically underrepresented composer identities when we as instructors and performers IMPLEMENT not only the musical works into our programs but also make known composer identities equally – all names, all nationalities, all gender identities, all visible faces to see as distinct humans.
Step Five: Normalize
To fully normalize changes into our curriculum, we must first fully understand the process and timeline by which things become “normal” in a given culture. What are the current normalized elements of your program, and how did they become the norm? How does normalization happen? And, as is at the front of most of our first thoughts, how long does it take?
Normalize, perhaps obviously, is the process of making normal. Normal is that which is standard, usual, typical, and follows expected patterns. We have already created a set of expectations for a variety of techniques, eras, styles, cultures, identities, behaviors, and principles of community in our programs. Normalization of anything new, then, happens when we establish patterns, make our students and audiences aware of them, and adhere to them over time. Continue to return to the proficiency requirements you set in step one of this process as guideposts for what you believe your students need to learn and be exposed to.
An open acknowledgement of intent to change can make a big difference in setting new expectations – “in our program, we now strive to perform at least XX works per year by composers whose identities have been marginalized in the classical music/orchestral/wind band/choral community.” We name our patterns so we can adhere to them in a transparent and quantifiable way. Clarifying your trajectory establishes an expectation, and making public your measurable goals enables accountability. In my studio, this looks like individual student repertoire including at least 25% works by historically underrepresented composers and my own performance and commissioning repertoire at least 50%.
Then, we wait. We wait actively, repeating success of reaching our measurable goals for inclusion, but we wait nonetheless. How long will normalization take? In my experience, participants in an ensemble or studio will recognize something as “the usual” when over half of them have adhered to the changes. This usually translates to half the duration of your program’s length. If you teach at a grades six through eight middle school, at least a year and a half of programming sets a new normal. At most high schools and colleges, this process takes at least two years. We must remember that a minority of time is a minority of experience.
With time, you, your students, your colleagues, and your audiences will acknowledge a conscious dedication to incorporating historically underrepresented identities into your programming and move toward an expectation of hearing those voices. Balanced representation becomes a quantifiable standard practice of your program or career, rather than an abstract goal or temporary special focus.
To NORMALIZE the inclusion of underrepresented composers within your curriculum and program will take time, time that is measured in more than a single themed concert or repeated program of two or three “diverse” works scattered over a student’s time with you. We must publicly state the intention of change and consistently make measurable programming shifts until most of our students and audiences recognize adherence to patterns of inclusivity and diversity.
To combine these five steps, we have a line to draw between preparation and execution of changing curriculum. Before engaging with students, we must IDENTIFY and RESEARCH new repertoire for both its representation of minority communities and composers, but also for its suitability for our program objectives from strictly technical and musical priorities. Once this is complete, we move to TEST, IMPLEMENT, and NORMALIZE changes in our programs as a part of a transparent mission to diversify the collection of music presented to students and audiences, as well as to equitably balance the voices of historically underrepresented communities.
In this way, we have ethically supported composers by recognizing their identities and manually overriding the biases of our classical field to prioritize humans with cultural majority status to acquire their music. We have kept our students at the front of the process in our minds, ensuring that all we bring to them is quality music by a variety of humans.
I hope that these steps and the philosophy behind them are helpful to you and your program. Thank you for your work to move the classical world forward, starting with our young musicians. I welcome you to the messy discussions of ethics and to taking the next best step. Please reach out with your stories, and I am excited to hear your music.
Composer Kevin Puts takes pride in keeping secrets, both by being understated in his interactions with people and by never initially giving away all the goods in his music, preferring, as he explained to me last month when we chatted for a about an hour over Zoom, “to keep something in reserve so that there’s a payoff for the attentive listener.” Nevertheless, during the course of our conversation he revealed some fascinating secrets about many of his compositions including his latest opera The Hours (which received its world premiere on November 22 at the Metropolitan Opera), his first opera Silent Night (for which he received the 2012 Pulitzer Prize in Music), his Symphony No. 3 (which was inspired by Björk), and Contact (his triple concerto for Time for Three which just won the 2023 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition).
Puts’s opera The Hours received an extraordinary lavish production that most composers can only dream of. It featured a huge cast headlined by three top operatic stars–Renée Fleming, Joyce DiDonato, and Kelli O’Hara–plus a gargantuan chorus which frequently takes center stage. When the production was announced it seemed to come out of nowhere, but it was in the works for five years. It grew directly out of Puts’s previous collaboration with Fleming, Letters From Georgia, a five moment song cycle based on letters that the painter Georgia O’Keeffe wrote to her husband, photographer Alfred Stieglitz. After Fleming announced she was no longer focusing on standard operatic repertoire and wanted to devote her energies to singing new roles, Puts casually asked her if she’d be amenable to singing in an opera if he wrote one for her. Within weeks she suggested an opera based on The Hours, a complex narrative that interweaves stories of women in three different time periods which had been a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel as well as a successful Hollywood film. Puts, who had read the book and saw the movie and loved them both, said that he instantly “could imagine the kinds of things that you could do on the operatic stage that are not possible in a book or in a film.” Soon thereafter she mentioned the idea to Peter Gelb who was immediately excited about a work that could star three major box office draws. Curiously, these three women don’t actually sing together until the very end of the opera. Even though the entire opera is building toward that moment, Puts admitted that he didn’t compose that material until very late in the game. As he explained, “What I used to do is I would compose where I’m going before I got there, and actually that’s something I don’t do anymore. … Getting there was something I had to earn as a composer.”
Gelb was amenable to Fleming’s suggestion of commissioning Kevin Puts after listening to a recording of Puts’s first opera Silent Night, a work which also juxtaposing three different story lines involving groups of soldiers from Scotland, France, and Germany who come to a brief truce in 1914 during First World War. Based on the screenplay for the multilingual film Joyeux Noël which in turn was based on real life events, it was an ideal opportunity for Puts to demonstrate his skills in setting words in multiple languages and, since one of the German soldiers is an operatic tenor, it also gave Puts an opportunity to show off his ability to compose music that evokes the lush sound world of late Romantic operas.
The other two operas that Puts has composed thus far are based on The Manchurian Candidate, a fascinating political thriller written in 1959 that has been adapted twice for the screen and seems extremely relevant to our current zeitgeist, and Elizabeth Cree based on a Victorian-themed whodunit by Peter Ackroyd, which also allowed Puts to create music that enhances the impact of surprise through introducing new sonic elements. While Puts’s compositional approach is well suited to the operatic stage, it is also how he constructs his extremely effective concertos and symphonies which for him can also be narrative despite being abstract instrumental works. In fact, his first two symphonies were both cast in a single movement so that they would have the same impact as a motion picture which is a continuous experience from start to finish.
“As has been noted many times, there’s a cinematic quality to my music,” Puts acknowledged. “In fact, I love film, and not just film music, but I love film itself. I think with those single-movement pieces, I thought, ‘I want to make an unbroken narrative arc like a film.’ Why should we have to stop?”
But Puts changed his approach with his Third Symphony, a three movement work that was inspired by hearing Björk’s 2001 album Vespertine although it does not use any of her music and is completely original. He got the idea for the piece while he was a fellow at the American Academy in Rome and an art historian also in residence there was watching a music video of Björk on television.
“I’m not up-to-date on a lot of things that are going on, like pop music,” he admitted. “But this is gorgeous! So beautiful timbrally, gorgeous string textures and choral textures. And I really liked the shapes of her voice, the melodic quality of her singing in relation to the oddness and the transparency and the fragility of her singing, and sometimes power as well in relation to this sonic world around her. So I want to do something with it. I want to react to this in my own way. I was interested in making this kind of swirling sound world circling around the melodic ideas of the piece and to have the melodic ideas just in some sense be an imitation of her vocal style, and that’s really all it is. I wasn’t really interested in using melodies. … More just reacting to the sound world of that album.”
Puts just received the Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition for Contact, a triple concerto he wrote for Time for Three, a string trio that blurs the lines between classical music, Americana, and pop. “Most of the writing of the concerto for Time for Three was done before we went into isolation,” he recalled. “Then we just continued to work on it. We edited, we revised, we tried things out, we added and subtracted and I reorchestrated quite a bit.”
But despite being composed for a group whose usual fare is rooted in the here and now, Puts took the group on a very different musical journey even though it could not been conceived in any other time but in our own.
As he explained, “You probably know this quote from Rachmaninoff. He said, ‘I tried to embrace the music of my time and I feel like a ghost walking among the living.’ I just feel like I sort of do what I do. The sort of things I do as a musician and a composer are so deeply ingrained. They’re such a huge part of who I am. They’re the things that really excite me, and often, the very, very simple things, as you can hear in the music … It’s just truly what I find most exciting about the music I love, these simple, beautiful moments that probably end up being almost nothing on the page, but what they do to me emotionally is fantastic.”
Not worrying about whether your music fits in with the current moment and being true to who you are is also the advice he gives other composers, both as a composition teacher at the Peabody Institute and as the director of the Minnesota Orchestra Composer Institute.
“I just feel like what’s going on right now in this moment, of course you should be open to whatever’s going on, the zeitgeist, but I would just look at all of music that you’ve heard, that meant something to you from the very beginning, and feel like it’s okay to incorporate all of that and to sort of build a voice from all of it and have that be the part of you that remains inviolate to all these pressures that exist right now in the world, all the transparency that exists through social media, that feels like there’s no private space now. I would make your music your private space and the place you can do the things you believe fervently in and that you’re most emotionally connected to. That’s certainly been my approach to things over the how many years I’ve been doing this.”
I could imagine the kinds of things that you could do on the operatic stage that are not possible in a book or in a film.
Kevin Puts
When someone asks me to write a five-minute piece, I don't know what to do. I need to have more time to set things up and let them go where they have to go.
Kevin Puts
I want the audience to understand. .... I actually don't want the audience to be confused. I want them to be with me.
Kevin Puts
Performers, like the ones I've written concertos for, expect things to arrive in a satisfying way. They're not so interested in enigmatic things. They're used to music that goes to a place successfully and effectively and lets them do what they are used to doing on their instruments and gives the entire structure a satisfying arc and a satisfying shape.
Kevin Puts
We're in an age where timbre is such an area of exploration for so many of my contemporaries. I'm just dazzled by these scores and dazzled by what they do and the kind of care given to the beginning, the middle, and end of every note and the kinds of effects that are experimented with. For some reason I just can't. Well, you probably know this quote from Rachmaninoff. He said "I tried to embrace the music of my time and I feel like a ghost walking among the living." I just feel like I sort of do what I do. The sort of things I do as a musician and a composer are so deeply ingrained. ... They're the things that really excite me.
Kevin Puts
Over the years I've gotten better at finding really practical ways to do very complex things with the orchestra.
Kevin Puts
Even thinking about my four symphonies, it feels like I've tried to do something significant. But I didn't just know what else to call an orchestra piece that's about 25 minutes long.
Kevin Puts
There's a cinematic quality to my music and in fact, I love film, and not just film music, but I love film itself. ... We were very excited that The Hours, the HD broadcast, was like #8 in the box office gross, so I feel like that's the closest I've come to film composing.
Kevin Puts
Even though the quality of the music isn't Mozart, Mozart is always in the back of my mind. ... I feel like Mozart is my model for everything in a certain way.
Kevin Puts
I'm not someone who likes to pretend about my music or twist words about it either.
Kevin Puts
I'm not up-to-date on a lot of things that are going on, like pop music.
Kevin Puts
My colleagues are very respectful, we all are of each other, and we're very polite to one another, but whether or not my colleagues like my music is not of any importance to me.
Kevin Puts
I'm really only interested in listeners, or the public, whoever that is, engaging with my music on its own. I'm not interested in telling my story a whole lot or having a big internet presence.
Frank J. Oteri is an ASCAP-award winning composer and music journalist. Among his compositions are Already Yesterday or Still Tomorrow for orchestra, the "performance oratorio" MACHUNAS, the 1/4-tone sax quartet Fair and Balanced?, and the 1/6-tone rock band suite Imagined Overtures. His compositions are represented by Black Tea Music. Oteri is the Vice President of the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) and is Composer Advocate at New Music USA where he has been the Editor of its web magazine, NewMusicBox.org, since its founding in 1999.
