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jeffreynytch

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(no subject)	[Nov. 6th, 2009\|02:40 pm]
The lull in posts since September is hardly indication of a lack of things to say -- quite the opposite! Many exciting things have been going on in the world of the CU Entrepreneurship Center for Music ("ECM") as well as the world of Jeffrey Nytch-composer. At the ECM, I'm happy to say I'm settling into my new position and beginning to shape my priorities for the rest of the academic year. Many hours every week are given over to meeting with colleagues and community leaders, putting myself on the map as well as finding out what various constituencies are seeking from the Center. In every case folks have been receptive and eager to help, which has been gratifying. Meanwhile, a steady stream of students comes to my door, seeking advice on graduate school applications, looking for internships, curious about gigging or promoting themselves in the community, or sometimes just facing their fears of what their future holds for them. Every time I have a day when I wonder if I've really done much good a student will stop by or send me an email letting me know that they got the internship, or had an epiphany about their career, or simply felt better after having talked to me. Feedback like that will keep you going for days! The ECM just completed its first "Keynote Guest" residency, with composer and tech entrepreneur Kieren MacMillan coming into town for a few days. Kieren is a dear friend, and was a terrific choice for our inaugural residency: he has a diverse background in technology and music, and has many insights into how technology and the internet have fundamentally changed the way music is disseminated. His Keynote Address was well-attended, and I got great feedback from both that and the smaller classes he addressed. As an added bonus, Kevin Noe, Executive Artistic Director of Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble and a very close mutual friend, was in town as well. Together he and I and Kieren had some very fruitful discussions about some future projects we hope to bring to CU. Stay tuned... And speaking of future projects, I'm discovering that one of the great things about a large research university like CU is the availability of various grants to support all manner of projects. I'm in the midst of applying for several of these, and if they come through there are some exciting possibilities on the horizon! Somehow in the midst of all this I'm finding some time for creative work (only a little, but it's better than nothing). The setting of text by Joe Brainard (excerpts from his book-length poem, "I Remember") has finally come into focus for me. For reasons I'm not quite sure of, I agreed to work with this text before I'd really looked at it, and once I did I initially despaired for being able to come up with something workable. But the more I read and re-read and pondered and read again, the more I began to see a way in which certain lines could be grouped together in something like a coherent fashion. The trick is to do this in such a way that the somewhat random, stream-of-consciousness style of the text is preserved but some sense of cohesion is accomplished as well. That's easier said than done, but I think I've got it. One thing that tells me this is so is the fact that I now hear music coming out of the text whereas I hadn't before -- and if I hear music in the text then that's usually a good sign. Where I had been dreading starting to put down notes I'm not quite excited to get down the music that has begun to spin in my head. The only remaining trick will be to find time to compose, meet the Jan. 1 deadline, and do all of that with the end of the CU semester rushing toward me at great speed. Terrible timing, but what can you do?
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Crumb Festival, Day Three	[Sep. 11th, 2009\|09:21 am]
Last night's Crumb concert featured two vocal works hot off the presses framing the last of his famous "Makrokosmos" series. The Spanish Song Books, vols. 1 & 2 (dating from 2008 and 2009 and both featuring Crumb's long-time poetic source, Lorca) opened and closed the program, with Celestial Mechanics - Makrokosmos IV (from 1979) in the middle. It was another powerful evening. The first of the Song Books was simply for piano and voice, featuring Crumb's incredibly talented daughter, Ann (who has national credits in television, Broadway, and classical vocal performance!). It was the most straight-up traditional song cycle imaginable (even the piano used relatively little extended techniques, at least by Crumb standards) but the poems were vivid, clear, sparse, and deeply touching. Setting English translations of the poems, there was an immediacy that can get lost when sticking with the original Spanish, because we can really dwell on each word and the incredibly sensitive way in which Crumb sets them. The last song, with the simple text, "If I should die, leave the balcony open," held us riveted for it's full duration. The second book, vol. 2, was a world premiere. "Ghosts of Alhambra" was in Spanish this time, but no less compelling and vivid. Scored for baritone, guitar and percussion, the piece lived up to its name completely: it felt as if we'd been transported back to ancient Spain, with the dust of antiquity still clinging to the music itself. And once again, there was the sparseness, the clarity, the economy that so often accompanies the greatest composers late output. I felt honored to be present at a Crumb world premiere, and the music lived up to the specialness of the occasion. For me, though, the true highlight of the program was Makrokosmos IV. When I was an undergrad and just discovering Crumb's music, my teacher was writing an article on Vols. I & II, and so I studied those in-depth alongside him. I then fell in love with Vol. 3 -- "Music for a Summer Evening" (which remains one of my all-time favorite Crumb works). But for some reason I had only listened to Vol. 4 a few times. I've not listened to it since, and that's unfortunate: I'd forgotten what a full-out, nuclear-powered, blockbuster of a masterpiece that piece is. Scored for piano 4 hands and in four movements (performed last night in a fun "round robin" fashion that was able to utilize the entire piano faculty), the piece explores 4 different constellations. The first and third movements are the most fiery music I've ever heard from Crumb (or perhaps from anyone) -- the music is positively explosive. I half expected the piano to burst into flames from the sheer heat that was being generated; it was like the very core of the star had come down to speak through the instrument. The 2nd and 4th movements are the exact opposite: frozen, timeless, still. The effect of the last movement, though.... I don't think I can find the words for it. Let me try: In space, there is the perception of a great void, motionless and timeless. But in fact space is highly ordered and full -- it just unfolds at a speed/timescale we can't perceive. What I'm trying to get at is the contrast, the apparent conundrum, between what appears to be empty but is not, what appears to be random but is not. How the laws of physics and mathematics and time are expressed in the heavens in a kind of crystalline perfection. And somehow this last movement captures this. There's a form, but it unfolds almost imperceptively slow. There is a soft, slow, punctuated glissando on the harmonics of the lowest strings of the piano, ending in a tone cluster on the strings that comes back at periodic intervals, like the great turning of a celestial cycle, and every time it came back it took my breath away. I felt like I was being drawn deeper and deeper into space, further and further away from Earth and the way we see things here. I have no idea how long the movement was -- 10 minutes? 30 minutes? For me, the constant keeper of time, I was drawn outside of time and into something different altogether. None of this does justice to the experience. It was altogether transcendent, and it's going to be with me for a long time. The festival ends this evening over in the Atlas black box theater.
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Crumb Festival, Day Two	[Sep. 10th, 2009\|07:54 am]
Last night the George Crumb Festival at CU continued, with performances of Night Music I, Eleven Echoes of Autumn, and a two-piano piece I'd never heard of called Zeitgeist. Though all three pieces were magnificently performed, I confess that the awesomeness of the opening concert was still resonating in my head; I found it difficult to move on and totally connect with Round Two. Night Music was an interesting piece. It's an early work, from Crumb's CU years, and is essentially an instrumental work that nevertheless uses texts by Lorca to provide a sort of interlude between the large sections of the work. This is the converse of the way one would normally encounter a vocal-instrumental work (where there are instrumental interludes between the songs), and while that's an interesting concept I found that it just made the vocal parts seem slightly out of place, almost like they were an intrusion. PNME performed Eleven Echoes of Autumn this summer; at the time it was the first time I'd heard the piece. I confessed that it wasn't my favorite piece of Crumb's, but I was also in the midst of our move and more than a little frazzled and tired; I looked forward to a better context to hear it this week. And while the piece still isn't my favorite Crumb, it definitely wore better on me this time around. Also, the performance was truly magnificent (not that PNME's wasn't; I'm just saying that an extraordinary performance is necessary for one to connect with this music). In my entry yesterday, I wrote about the period in the later 80's and 90's when Crumb's output seemed to drop off and lose its edge, so I was very interested to hear a piece from that period on last night's program. Zeitgeist dates from 1987, and is for two amplified pianos. Here is a piece that is clearly the work of a master composer, with the most polished technique throughout and true moments of brilliance. But overall the piece left me cold; I didn't sense the soul (for lack of a better word) that distinguishes all of Crumb's great music. It felt more detached, abstract. And it's that soul that really does lie at the heart of all his great works, and which I feel is missing to some degree in the lesser ones. In the early works, his style was already more or less fully developed -- but he had not yet embraced the mystical, spiritual and metaphysical aspects of his music that emerges full-steam in the masterworks of the late 60's and 70's. And it's these qualities -- with humor added -- that he has clearly recaptured in the works from the last decade. I'm glad he's found them again. Tonight will be a world premiere, a new Lorca cycle commissioned by one of my colleagues with whom he has had a long association. I'm very much looking forward to that.
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George Crumb Festival, Day One	[Sep. 9th, 2009\|07:02 am]
This week at CU we are hosting an 80th Birthday tribute to George Crumb, one of the great American composers of the last 60 years. He taught at CU way back at the beginning of his career, and has maintained ties with the University over the years. He's here all week, giving a series of lectures and master classes, and supervising performances of his works that span the entire week. Last night was the first of the concerts, and it was a knockout. The program consisted of only two works: <i>Eine Kleine Mitternacht Musik,</i> for solo piano, and the fifth volume of his <i>American Songbook</i> cycle. The first piece was a deconstruction of a tune by Thelonius Monk, the second 10 settings of American folk songs of various types and from various periods. It's always difficult to find words to describe Crumb's music, and I don't have the time to ponder them this morning. But several things struck me right off that are worth mentioning. First, these were both recent works -- the first from 2001, the second from 2007. I hadn't heard any of Crumb's recent music; all his famous works -- the masterpieces of the late 60's and 70's -- have all reached the status of Canon, so established are they in the pantheon of great American music. When his output lagged in the later 80's and 90's, I think it was generally assumed that he was Done. That, in addition to his advancing years, there was simply nowhere else to go with his distinct style -- a style that seemed to so perfectly embody the avante garde of the time in part because it played such a large role in defining it. What became clear to me last night, however, was that whatever was the reason for the absence it wasn't that he'd said all he had to say. These works were as strong as any masterwork of the past, imbued with the confidence and mastery that can only come from a composer late in his career. I was truly stunned by their power and freshness: unmistakably Crumb, but strong and new and vital as if just given birth from the earth itself. That timeless quality that has always lived in Crumb's music remains. The next thing was the presence of humor, which is not a quality one normally associates with Crumb's music. And once again here was humor as could only come from the advanced artist -- the multi-faceted, sometimes dark humor; humor as serious foil; humor as one sees in late Shakespeare. But who would have ever thought they would go to a Crumb concert and smile, and then start to chuckle, and then finally let out the guffaw that has been welling up for several moments? It was as if his music has at last embraced the full range of human emotions, the full spectrum of the heart. And last was the sheer joy of composing that seeped through every note. Somehow there was an effortlessness to these compositions, a carefree sensibility that only comes from great confidence and wisdom and an artist whose powers are at their most seasoned. All of this from the man who is a gentle and congenial as I've always heard; someone who, despite the deep seriousness of his music, never seems to take himself too seriously. One of my colleagues related a story to me from the dress rehearsal of the concert that seems to sum him up. They were in the last song of the cycle, a setting of The Demon Lover, an indescribably haunting account of the song. I can't put it into words, but at the end of an hour-long song cycle of the most intimate sort everyone was on the edge of their seat. The percussion groaned and clanked ominously, the piano droned, and the baritone -- singing in a tone described in score as "Haunting; uncanny," seduced his mistress to come with him to the realm of Hades. We felt we were going there ourselves, so vividly did this sound-world transport us. So they get to the end of the rehearsal, and the players are hushed, and Crumb apparently stood up with a big smile on his face and said, in that country twang of his, "Wow -- that was spooky!" Happy Birthday, George. I look forward to more music this week!
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Two weeks in...	[Aug. 28th, 2009\|01:55 pm]
Well it's been two weeks since I officially started at CU, so I thought I'd post a little update here on my public blog.... You can't tell by reading this, but most of the time I am walking around without actually touching the ground. You see, I'm floating -- or at least it feels that way. Every day I anxiously look forward to going into school; every time I walk out of the music building and see the Flatirons towering in front of me I stop for a moment and wonder how I got to be so blessed. I suppose at some point I will stop pinching myself, but I haven't gotten there yet. The office is set up - -some tech issues have plagued me, but I think we finally have all those cleared up. knocks on wood I've started to teach, and I feel like we're off to a great start. Colleagues have been stopping by to say Hello, and students are already coming by with questions, ideas, and conundrums. Programs are being scheduled, guests lined up, hopefully a new student entrepreneurship society (or somesuch name) starting up soon. There's that wonderful energy of newness and possibilities, which is like nothing else in the world. It doesn't last forever, but I intend to fuel those flames as long as I can.
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A brief update -- and an excellent article from the Times	[Aug. 10th, 2009\|08:06 am]
For those of you who read this professional blog, I haven't updated in quite a while. That's because I've been absorbed with the move to Boulder and preparations for starting in my new position at The University of Colorado. That is going well -- though we're not quite finished yet! I saw this excellent article about the new Chair of the NEA over the weekend. It sounds like he's a willing warrior in the cause of government support of the arts, and understands the power of art to drive and indeed transform the economy of local communities. I wish him luck. You can view the article here. (You may have to register for the "Times" website, but it's free and you can opt out of any pesky emails.)
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A lot to catch up on!	[Jun. 2nd, 2009\|12:41 pm]
2009 seems to be shaping up as a year for choral music -- which is fine by me. Two weeks back I enjoyed the premiere of "Love Speaks Its Name," three choral songs on texts by Willa Cather, Vita Sackville-West, and The Song of Solomon; then two liturgical works of mine for a capella mixed chorus have launched recently as well -- the "Nunc Dimittis" (premiered back in April in Lancaster, but subsequently taken on tour and then around again to Lancaster) and an Orison for Shadyside Church (where I am Artist-in-Residence). I am especially pleased with how the choral songs turned out: they're the first secular choral pieces I've written in some time, and the first with piano accompaniment. The Renaissance City Choirs did a fine job in presenting them, and I'm looking forward to the works getting more mileage. Recordings of all these coming soon. Speaking of recordings, I'm in the process of deactivating the link on my LISTEN page and replacing it with links to individual MP3 files you can listen to directly. This might take a couple more weeks but it should be happening soon. Once that is done you can simply go the WORKS page and click on any piece listed that has the MP3 icon next to it. A little pop-up window with player controls will appear, and you can listen to the piece in its entirety. One more note about recordings. The Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble has released a new CD entitled "Against the Emptiness." This disk contains works by Pierre Jalbert, Russell Pinkston, Ryan Francis, and Kevin Puts, and is absolutely gorgeous. I strongly urge you to visit CD Baby or iTunes to download today!
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Well it's Officially Official!	[Apr. 29th, 2009\|07:27 pm]
JEFFREY NYTCH NAMED DIRECTOR OF CU-BOULDER ENTREPRENEURSHIP CENTER FOR MUSIC UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO AT BOULDER COLLEGE OF MUSIC PRESS RELEASE For Immediate Release April 29, 2009 Jeffrey Nytch has been appointed Director of the Entrepreneurship Center for Music at the University of Colorado at Boulder beginning in August 2009. "Jeffrey Nytch brings a range of experience as a composer, producer and arts presenter that will serve as a rich resource for our students," said Daniel Sher, Dean of the CU-Boulder College of Music. "His strength as a communicator will also help us to reestablish the Entrepreneurship Center for Music as one of the leading programs of its kind in the country." The Director of the Entrepreneurship Center for Music is the chief administrative officer of the Center, accountable for its overall management, working in consultation with the Dean and in collaboration with the faculty. The Director teaches graduate and undergraduate courses, provides individual career counseling and mentoring, as well as the leadership to ensure that the Center achieves its mission and meets its program and activity goals. About Jeffrey Nytch Jeffrey Nytch comes to the Entrepreneurship Center for Music having built a diverse career as a composer, teacher, performer, and arts administrator. For 15 years he has continually created fresh ways to support and nurture that career, whether it be through developing commissioning opportunities, establishing residencies with community organizations, or building relationships with patrons. He has also run a small business, helped found a non-profit service organization in Houston, performed a wide range of repertoire as a vocalist, and served five years as Managing Director of The Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble ("PNME"), one of the nation's premiere new music ensembles. A native of Vestal, New York, Nytch completed a bachelors degree at Franklin and Marshall College and earned Masters and Doctoral degrees in composition from Rice University's Shepherd School of Music. His teachers have included John Carbon, Paul Cooper, and Donald Erb. Hailed by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette as "both impressive and satisfying," Nytch's music comprises a wide range of works that have been performed at venues throughout the United States and Europe, including Lincoln Center, the Soho Arts Festival, the Breckenridge Music Festival, and many others. His compositions have been performed by such artists as Richard Stoltzman, the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, the Ahn Trio, the National Repertory Orchestra, the New York Chamber Symphony, the Seattle Symphony, the Binghamton Philharmonic, and the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra. Nytch has received numerous grants, awards and commissions, and his music has been recorded by the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Seattle Symphony, and the New York Chamber Symphony. During his tenure with The Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, Nytch partnered with visionary Artistic Director Kevin Noe to introduce an innovative new approach to presenting contemporary chamber music, incorporating movement, theatrical lighting, spoken word, video, and costumes to create a unique "theater of music." The new format resulted in a 600% increase in attendance in five years, as well as a doubling of the organization's budget. He still serves on the Board of Directors as Vice President of Artistic Development. Since leaving PNME, Nytch has held a variety of teaching posts, including Artist Instructor at the Carnegie Mellon University School of Music and Visiting Assistant Professor at Franklin & Marshall College. He also serves as Artist-in-Residence at Pittsburgh's historic Shadyside Presbyterian Church. About the CU-Boulder Center for Entrepreneurship in Music The College of Music at the University of Colorado at Boulder opened the Entrepreneurship Center for Music with a grant from the Louis and Harold Price Foundation in 1998. Intending to serve the College's 500+ music students and the national music community, the ECM has a unique program that enhances the College of Music's already exceptional performance based curriculum. As the concept of teaching music entrepreneurship is extremely new and has not been previously formalized, the ECM is in itself an entrepreneurial endeavor. Since its inception, it has evolved to include a wide variety of content. We offer academic courses in music entrepreneurship, a guest lecture series of entrepreneurs in the arts, and a growing list of web tools. The ECM creates internships and mentoring opportunities, as well as counsel students individually about career options. Whether you are a developing performer or a professional musician, the ECM is a place where you can learn about presenting both you and your art to the world. About the CU-Boulder College of Music Since its founding in 1920, the University of Colorado at Boulder College of Music has earned a reputation not only for preparing students for successful careers in music, but also for providing them with an outstanding college education. The College of Music offers seven degree plans and over 23 fields of study, and its programs cover virtually all areas of music. The members of the College of Music's faculty are respected performers, composers, educators, and scholars who take a deep and lasting interest in the students of the College of Music. Internationally renowned artists such as Steven Lord, Marilyn Horne, James Galway, and Wynton Marsalis perform and teach master classes on campus.
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(no subject)	[Mar. 4th, 2009\|07:59 pm]
Today I had the pleasure of hearing some music of mine that has sat on the shelf for nearly 13 years. I rarely write a piece "on spec." Almost always, I write on commission -- which means I almost always get to hear what I write relatively soon after it's written. But this little anthem, a Nunc Dimittis, was written for no other reason than that it came to me one day. Over the years I've showed it to a number of choral directors, but never managed to get it performed (which is something of a puzzle to me: it's not terribly difficult, it's attractive, it concludes with what I think is, if I do say so myself, a beautiful Palestrina-esque "Amen"). Anyway, the Franklin and Marshall College Chamber Singers are going to take it on tour this spring, and are giving the premiere of the piece this Sunday. (They're also doing my "Song of Peace," an anthem that's had more play than any other of my anthems. Interesting extremes.) I can't make it Sunday, so I came to a rehearsal today. I never tire of the experience of hearing something I've written for the first time -- particularly when it's performed well (which it was this afternoon). A nice treat. Next month the F&M Wind Ensemble will be doing a revival of a piece they commissioned the same year the Nunc Dimittis was written. I can't make the performance of my Double Concerto for horn and saxophone, either, but it's nice to get some of my stuff done "back home."
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Final Stimulus Bill Retains Funding for the Arts	[Feb. 15th, 2009\|02:19 pm]
Stimulus Bill Retains N.E.A. Funding From The New York Times To the relief of cultural institutions, the economic-stimulus bill approved by Congress on Friday preserved $50 million in financing for the National Endowment for the Arts. While minuscule by comparison with some other allocations in the bill, it is a hefty sum for the endowment, whose annual budget is $145 million. Sixty percent of the new money will go to individual arts projects competing for N.E.A. funds. The remainder will be be distributed to state arts agencies and regional arts organizations for disbursal. Leaders of cultural organizations had been on tenterhooks throughout the week. An earlier House version of the stimulus bill had a $50 million allocation for the arts endowment, but it was excluded from the Senate version approved on Tuesday. And a week ago, Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, had won Senate passage of an amendment he proposed ruling out stimulus money for museums, theaters or art centers. (He lumped them with casinos, golf courses and swimming pools as undeserving.) Under the language approved on Friday, the arts groups were deleted from that portion; the bill does still explicitly rule out money for casinos, golf courses, swimming pools, zoos and aquariums. Arguing for the $50 million in arts money on the House floor on Friday, Representative David R. Obey, Democrat of Wisconsin, said: "You know what? There are five million people who work in the arts industry. And right now they have 12.5 percent unemployment — or are you suggesting that somehow if you work in that field, it isn't real when you lose your job, your mortgage or your health insurance? We're trying to treat people who work in the arts the same way as anybody else." = = = Thanks to starkeee for sending me this article. I had wondered what the final word was on this issue but hadn't tracked down an answer yet. All of us in the arts need to continue to relentlessly make the point that the arts play a vital and significant role in our economy, and are uniquely positioned to have important ripple effects on the local economies they serve. If boneheaded opponents of arts funding can't bring themselves to see the worth of art for its intrinsic value to our society, then they must be made to understand it's also a question of pure economics.
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(no subject)	[Feb. 5th, 2009\|07:06 pm]
Well they're at it again, folks: Republicans in the Senate have now introduced an amendment to the Stimulus bill prohibiting ANY funding from going to museums, performing arts centers, or any other form of arts funding. This follows attempts in the House to block additional funding for the NEA. As if their anti-intellectual, anti-culture, anti-brain mindset weren't maddening enough, their perennial hostility to arts funding ignores an irrefutable economic reality: -Nonprofit arts organizations and their audiences generate $166.2 billion in economic activity every year, support 5.7 million jobs, and return nearly $30 billion in government revenue every year. -Every $1 billion spent by these organizations - and their audiences - results in almost 70,000 full-time equivalent jobs. So once again, please visit the link below and write your Senators. And thanks! http://theperformingartsalliance.org/campaign/VoteNOontheCoburnLimitationonFundsAmendme
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(no subject)	[Jan. 20th, 2009\|11:46 pm]
The past few days have been filled with music in so many ways; there is so much to write about that I am torn between efficient bullet points or paring down my topics to just a few. Maybe I'll try to split the difference.... :) ~ Saturday was spent helping judge Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble's biennial Harvey Gaul Composition Competition. This was the third competition I've participated in, and I can truly say that each time the overall level of submissions has risen considerably. This year it was particularly true: we enjoyed a very rich collection of possibilities. We haven't made the public announcement yet, so all I'll say at this point is that I think we made a terrific choice. I find it interesting what composers decide to submit to competitions, though, and how they go about putting their application together. I would say that easily 90% of the pieces we looked at started slow and quiet, which is just not a good idea: we have over 100 submissions; it's not possible to listen to every piece in its entirety (at least at the beginning). You've got to send something that is going to grab our attention right off the bat. I was also amazed (as I always am) at the number of composers who submit a CD with multiple tracks on it but no labeling; or who will mark excerpts in the score with a post-it note but provide no indication of where to find those excerpts on the CD. There are also always a few who simply send a CD that contains a different piece than the scores. Do these folks stop to think, even for a moment, how their submission is going to be viewed? Composers sure are good at shooting themselves in the foot! ~ Saturday evening it was off to the PSO with guest conductor John Adams conducting Britten's Sinfonia da Requiem and two of his own works, his 9/11 piece On the Transmigration of Souls, and his Doctor Atomic Symphony (utilizing music from the opera). The Britten is, in my view, a grossly underrated masterpiece. While I don't think Adams conducted it particularly well (the opening movement lacked the kind of horizontal tension required to make the climaxes really fire), the bittersweet melodies of the final movement were undiminished. I always felt this piece was an incredibly important step in Britten's development, that through it he was really coming into his own -- you can hear that Peter Grimes is just around the corner. On the Transmigration of Souls was incredibly moving and powerful. Rather than trying to proscribe a road to healing, he simply created a space for the listener to reflect -- a space of contemplation and poignancy. And just when it needed to, it opened up in such a way that transported me out of that contemplative place and into a kind of transcendent hope. As the chorus kept repeating Light! Light! Light!, over and over again, I felt my breath literally taken away. I can't remember the last time I was so arrested by a piece of music. As for Doctor Atomic, I ended up feeling the same about it that I did about the opera. With this piece I am presented with two apparently contradictory reactions: on the one hand, the music is clearly the work of a master composer; on the other hand, somehow the individual moments of brilliance don't add up to a satisfying whole. Perhaps I am imposing my own limited notion of symphonic development -- something that I don't think Adams was striving for. Hard to say. But I didn't find it nearly as compelling as the earlier piece, even though it has a big, powerful ending and brought the concert to a forceful conclusion. We did get to meet him afterwards, as Principal Bassist Jeffrey Turner brought us backstage and David Stock introduced us. He seems extremely nice, though he was clearly tired and didn't want to chat much. I would have liked to have spent more time with him. ~ Yesterday I came back to Lancaster, where I'm teaching this semester. The first class got off to a good start today (though I shortened my lesson plan to accommodate a shortened class time: I wanted to be sure everyone had a chance to watch the Inauguration before coming to class). There are 14 people registered, which is going to be large for a composition class. My best line of the day: "Every one of you has a creative process -- though you probably haven't discovered it yet. My goal this semester is help you unlock it." Tomorrow is Theory II, with only 9 students. I wish I had 14 students here and only 9 in composition, but ya gotta go with what ya got! ~ And then there was today, Inauguration Day. And there was Sousa, and "America, the Beautiful" (how I wish that were our National Anthem!), and the Banner (sung, I was glad to hear, without the common breaths in inappropriate places: I can't stand it when we get "Oh say, does that star spangled cavernous breath banner yet wa-ave!"). But above all, there was John Williams' exquisite fantasia on "Simple Gifts." I have long maintained that Williams is one of America's most underrated composers, being dismissed as he often is by the musical establishment as being "only" a film composer. Never mind that he is able to assume virtually any style that is required, and write music that seems to perfectly embody both the moment at hand and the spirit of the film overall. The lovely music we heard this morning was proof that he is truly a master: it was not only perfect for the moment, it was also beautifully wrought. What a treat. ~ As I was walking up to school today to teach, my mind still full of the festivities from Washington, I at first thought about how strange it felt to leave that in order to go stand in the classroom. It seemed like an odd shifting of gears -- I wanted to just stay camped out in front of the television, soaking it all in. But then I decided I was doing precisely what I should be doing: rolling up my sleeves and getting to work helping to mold the future (in this case, the future generation of young people). And I thought of Bernstein's quote -- "This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before" -- and I thought, "Yes. Now more than ever, our struggling world needs beauty, we need art, we need music. So let's sit down together, class, and make our corner of the world a little more beautiful." I quickened my step as I approached the campus.
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Full Circle	[Jan. 14th, 2009\|01:05 pm]
I am in Lancaster (PA) and ready to begin my semester of teaching at Franklin & Marshall College, where I am a Visiting Assistant Professor. I'm filling in for my former composition teacher... ...at the college where I obtained my undergraduate degree... ...in the building that was once a dorm, and in which I lived my Junior year. Life sure is a series of unexpected circles, isn't it?
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(no subject)	[Dec. 31st, 2008\|08:59 am]
For the fourth year in a row, The Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble ("PNME"), which I helped run for five years and where I still serve on the Board, has made the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's Best Concerts of 2008 list. Check out the article here.
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(no subject)	[Dec. 30th, 2008\|12:25 pm]
First chance I've had to post on this.... The second of my Christmas Motets, "Calm on the List'ning Ear of Night," was performed by the Shadyside Chancel Choir Dec. 21st. It was a lovely performance -- and since it did not require the organ, we were spared any last-minute calamities! It's a very strange experience to perform one's own music, because there are two very different parts of the brain operating simultaneously: on the one hand, you're a performer and you simply want to perform the piece as well as you would any other; on the other hand, you're listening to the whole with your "composer ears" at the same time. A bizarre sensation. This isn't such a big deal when it's something like my Three Songs of War, perhaps because it's a solo piece and so the act of listening and performing are much more integrated to begin with. But with choral music it's different -- not that a choral singer doesn't listen, of course, but the listening of a composer is more....broad, for lack of a better word. I always find it a peculiar challenge. With the "Hodie" this took a comical turn: I was paying so much attention to the antiphonal issues and the piano four-hands reduction that I was making simple mistakes in my own part. At one point one of the other altos turned around and said, "It's your own music, for godsake, can't you sing it right?!" The next week I was talking with two of the other altos and the same woman said, "Normally I rely on this one [gesturing to me] to be right-on -- unless it's his own music, of course." So I have a feeling I'm not going to live that one down for some time.... All best wishes to everyone for the New Year!
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Technology & art collide in premiere of my "Hodie"	[Dec. 15th, 2008\|04:45 pm]
We like to assume that technology always makes things better. Take pipe organs, for instance: in Bach's day, a team of assistants (called "calcants") were required to work a set of large bellows in order to maintain air pressure for the pipes. The system definitely had its drawbacks: consistent pressure was a challenge, the bellows were probably made from materials that weren't very durable, and what did they do if one of the calcants called in sick (proverbially speaking)? Today, on the other hand, pipe organs maintain their pressure with high-precision electric motors that maintain the exact pressure consistently throughout the system. Still, Bach's system was self-contained: it wasn't dependent on any external power to maintain air pressure (other than the calcants, of course). And on Sunday, that would have come in handy. Some time between the completion of the morning service and our afternoon rehearsal, the electric motor that runs the blower for Shadyside's glorious Reuter organ failed. No electric motor => no blower => no pressure => no sound. Fortunately, most all of that afternoon's program worked just fine on the 9-foot concert grand that lives in Sanctuary -- except my piece, naturally. I had written a part that would really show off the instrument, and that would end the program with something of a roof-raising roar. It was not meant to be -- the best we could do was for the organist and his assistant to play a piano 4-hands rendition on the piano. So while the choirs sang well and managed the antiphonal aspects largely without mishap (there is just enough acoustic delay to cause mischief), it was akin to pulling a tractor trailer with a lawnmower (hand-pushed) instead of a Mack truck: the power factor was seriously lacking. Ah well, nothing to do but be philosophical about it: these things happen, and I've had worse trainwrecks at a premiere. The congregation and choir members seemed to truly enjoy the piece, and the good thing about Christmas music is this: you can always do it again next year!
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Current Projects	[Dec. 2nd, 2008\|09:30 am]
~ Received a recording of the recent performance of my Three Songs of War up at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. I am once again stunned by Zach Collins's fantastic playing; the guy is awesome. As both composer and performer I am of course picky over various aspects of my performance, but overall it's the best rendition of this piece to-date (and this is a piece that's been played by some terrific folks both here and in Europe). I'll do some ProTools clean-up and get it posted soon. ~ Speaking of posting audio files, there are some problems getting the whole catalogue up at the American Music Center site where I post MP3s of my works. I'm working with AMC to figure out what's going on, but my apologies if there's something you're looking for that isn't there. Hopefully we'll get it sorted out soon. ~ My "Hodie," for antiphonal chorus and organ, will premiere at Shadyside Presbyterian Church (where I am Artist-in-Residence) on Sunday, December 14, at 4:00 p.m. If you're local, come get in the holiday spirit and check out my new piece! ~ Back to composing this week -- working now in earnest on a set of three anthems for the Renaissance City Choirs. It's off to a good start, which is good news because the finished work is due by the end of the year. How did it get to be December so quickly?
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Thoughts on Doctor Atomic live from the Met	[Nov. 10th, 2008\|09:54 am]
Saturday afternoon I went to the Live HD broadcast of the Met's new production of Doctor Atomic. As I've written elsewhere, I am totally sold on these broadcasts ("transmissions" the Met folks call them). For 24 bucks you can have an authentic operatic experience from one of the world's great opera houses, often seeing repertoire you wouldn't otherwise have the chance to see, and all in the comfort of your favorite jeans-and-sweatshirt combo while enjoying a nice tub of movie theater popcorn (extra butter for me, please). The Met is not only building its own audience, it's building a new audience for opera in general -- and that's a very good thing. I went to the theater this afternoon having heard mixed reviews of the premiere but being intrigued by the subject and a great admirer of John Adams in general. I left the theater moved by the experience but also oddly unsatisfied, unsure whether I liked the whole more than the sum of the parts, or the parts more than the whole. As I overheard an elderly woman state on the way out, "It was a powerful work but there was something missing...." Indeed. But what? I've been pondering what, exactly, that "something" was ever since. I decided it has to do with the notion of what makes drama compelling (or not). For drama to grab us, pull us along in its wake, it has to set up and play out tensions that speak to the human condition. But in this case Peter Sellars' libretto seemed like a long string of beautifully poetic soliloquies that nevertheless take place in an emotional vacuum. The most striking example of this is in the second scene of Act I, where Oppenheimer and his wife are in their bedroom alone. Both the music and the poetry is positively ravishing, but in the end it's 20 minutes of them reciting these poems with no interaction whatsoever. At the end of the scene, after Oppenheimer has put on his hat and exited without words or explanation, his wife, inexplicably, hurls her shoe across the stage. Wait a minute: did they just have a fight? If so I missed it because I sensed no tension at all. Maybe she wanted him to stay but he had to pull himself away to go back to his work? If so that wasn't set up at all. Maybe there's some other issue and he wanted to leave before things heated up? We have no idea, because the previous scene was 20 minutes of two people reciting love poetry to what might as well have been a picture on the wall as another actual person. We leave behind all that beautiful music with no clearer picture of who either of these people really are, what their motivations are, or what is the state of their relationship with each other. In a sense it was 20 minutes beautifully spent -- and perhaps that was its sole point -- but it was not very useful in terms of the drama. What really was most fascinating to me, though, was the fact that, despite there being no appreciable action or interpersonal tension & development, there absolutely was tension in the experience; I left the theater exhausted and thoughtful, which is one way I gauge a successful theatrical experience. I tried to figure out how this could be, when I was finding nothing in the libretto, the staging, or even the music, to suggest an unfolding of dramatic tension. I could point to some lengthy scenes that seemed pointless and brought things to a sleep-inducing halt, but that doesn't really get to the root of the issue, doesn't get at that "something" that was missing. In the end I decided that the tension was there because I knew what the subject matter was, and that the impending test explosion of the first atomic bomb -- and feeling like you were there, in the middle of it -- was enough to create plenty of tension on its own. In other words, I brought my tension with me; I imposed it on the experience from within myself. Had I been completely ignorant of the atomic bomb and its consequences I don't think I would find anything to connect with whatsoever. (In contrast, one doesn't need to be aware of early 19th century fishing villages to be drawn into the experience of Peter Grimes -- the human drama that unfolds there is universal.) And that was the "something" that was missing: the drama did not, ultimately, pull me in its wake. Instead, it presented me with a situation, a poetic framework on which I could hang my own emotions surrounding that situation. If I didn't have my own set of emotions and associations to bring to the equation, I was out of luck. And yet, as I say, the experience was not without its compelling aspects. Much of the music is positively gorgeous, sometimes arrestingly powerful (the finale to Act I was spellbinding -- and, tellingly, it is the only time we really get a window into the soul of who Oppenheimer is). It was brilliantly scored to remain rich with color while never overwhelming the singers. The staging was fantastic, and the cast was magnificent both vocally and in terms of their acting. And as we approached the long-awaited detonation of the bomb, I was on the edge of my seat. But then the actual flash of the explosion seemed weak, anticlimactic, and so the end fizzled. And that's what I ended up feeling about the opera: never quite living up to the power of its subject.
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A terrific performance	[Oct. 24th, 2008\|10:23 am]
Last night was the performance of my Three Songs of War, for tuba and countertenor, up at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania (there's also a California University of Pennsylvania...seems they ran out of names or something). This is a piece with a long history -- probably one of my most-performed pieces. That might seem strange given the odd combination, but it's the combination that actually has given it as much play as it's had: there's nothing else for it. :) The performance went very well. Zach Collins is an absolutely fantastic player. His rendition rivals even the ones I enjoyed with Dave Kirk (Principal of the Houston Symphony) back in Houston way-back-when. And there's no doubt my voice has deepened in terms of its color since then; put a little age on your vocal cords and you get a more burnished sound that works well for this piece. Add in a room with a very resonant acoustic and I thought we made a great sound. There was a good crowd, too. Zach was saying that there's not a whole heckuva lot to do in the evenings there (Indiana, PA is a charming town but it's...isolated) and so recitals tend to be well-attended. That and the fact that anybody taking a course in music is required to attend a bunch of recitals during the semester. The students were appreciative -- many were standing when we finished -- but I daresay some of them were more than a little taken aback when they first heard the sound coming out of my mouth: I don't think many (if any) of them had ever heard a countertenor before. You could read it in their expressions, which went from, "Whoa! That dude is singing like WAY high..." to something like wide-eyed awe when I reached the first big climax at the end of the first movement and was taking the paint off the walls, to rapt attention as the seriousness of it all started to sink in. Afterwards, as we were on our way back to the car, we overheard some students outside the music building enthusiastically talking about the piece, how it was the coolest thing on the program, and I smiled. The highest compliment a composer can receive: that people are talking about the piece afterwards. We're hoping to find some more opportunities to do this again. The piece is so bloody hard that there's always something that doesn't quite click, and nags the performer to do it again. "Maybe next time...." I have some ideas for a performance in Pittsburgh.... = = = When Zach asked for some program notes I decided to write some new ones. Here they are, for all who might be interested: When my friend and grad-school colleague Jim Court asked me to write him a piece for tuba and the instrument of my choosing, it didn’t immediately occur to me to write for countertenor. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought the rich, dark quality of the tuba might work very nicely combined with the other-worldly quality of the countertenor. Also, I had been on the look-out for an opportunity to write something for myself to sing. And so the project was born. As I began the task of selecting a text for these songs, the first thing I realized was that they would have to be very serious indeed: I did not want to go anywhere near the potential slapstick -- intentional or otherwise -- that might arise from such a strange combination. It being right around the time of the first Gulf War, I immediately thought of Wilfred Owen -- the poet used by Benjamin Britten in his famous War Requiem. Though I feared that Britten might have already used all the good war poems in Owen’s fairly modest output, it proved not to be true: I selected two poems (cutting the second one into two parts) to create a three-movement work lasting about 15 minutes. One of the things that deeply moves me about Owen’s war poems is that they do not attempt to make a direct moral statement about war, but rather to depict its tragedy, “the pity war distilled,” to quote a poem used by Britten, and allow us to draw our own conclusions about it. Some wars are necessary, others are not, but all of them are tragic; Owen cuts to the heart of this paradox in a powerful way. Likewise, most of the music in these songs is not intentionally “ugly” or “violent,” but rather lyrical and bittersweet; austere and elegiac. I found Owen’s poetry to be the perfect vehicle for my own feelings about not just war, but the world in general: humanity’s penchant for destroying innocence and beauty can never triumph over those things -- they survive not in opposition to evil and death, but in spite of them.
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Performance this Thursday	[Oct. 20th, 2008\|03:26 pm]
For all you folks in the southwestern PA region, just a reminder that I will be performing my Three Songs of War for tuba and countertenor (texts by Wilfred Owen) with Zach Collins at Indiana University of Pennsylvania this Thursday, 8:00 p.m., at the IUP recital hall. It's a bit of a haul out there, I know, but if anybody is interested maybe we can carpool: should be a nice day to see the fall foliage on the way, with some great music waiting for you when you arrive!
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