Got to hear a seminar presented by Armando Bayolo last month at the Charlotte New Music Festival. Armando is one of those composers who travel in circles I travel in (as I wryly told him, “circling the same drains”), but somehow we had never met before. I really appreciate what he has accomplished in his music, which is vivid, precise and engaging. One of the students asked if he composed on … [Read more...]
Archives for July 2015
creation and destruction
All of us create and destroy on a daily basis, for the most part unwittingly. It’s not possible for us to get through a day without having a thought pop into our heads, which on a very basic level is a moment of creation. Similarly, it’s not possible to get through a day without performing an act that puts an end to something, if only on a molecular level. At the other end of the spectrum … [Read more...]
Three Stages
I experience three distinct stages to the process of creating each composition, which I think of as head, body, tail: Head – initial ideas, which may consist of pitch material, structure, extra-musical impetus, rhythms, instrumentation, or any combination of those and other elements. In this initial stage, I have to have an open, accepting mindset, uncritical, willing to try anything. Body – … [Read more...]
Alignment
In my last post, I said that music is thought. First and foremost, of course, music is made of sound, but the way it is embedded in our consciousness and our being connects it readily with everything else that goes through our minds. Although music can connect with anything, many people experience strong connections with specific nonmusical corollaries. For some, music is a sonic embodiment of … [Read more...]