I’m off to Ann Arbor this weekend to work with violinist Danielle Belén for a recording session. Danielle is one of the newest faculty members in the School of Music at the University of Michigan. We have been collaborating since 2008, when she first contacted me about recording a disk of my music for Naxos. The experience of working with Danielle on that disk gave me tremendous respect for her … [Read more...]
Archives for 2015
Master Teacher
I’ve long been accustomed to using the word “master” in relation to music. I’ve driven myself to master certain aspects of my craft, I’ve recognized the hours required to attain mastery, I’ve encouraged my students to do the same. And, of course, I’ve ushered many a student toward a Master’s degree in the 30+ years since I received my own. Living in North Carolina, though, brought to my … [Read more...]
Politics and music
Some art engages the politics of its day. This happens when artists have both strong reactions to political environments and the freedom to express those reactions. It can also happen when artists feel discouraged by the limitations of art, the sense that art is inessential, a feeling they compensate for by tying their art to a larger political fabric. Both of these engagements between art … [Read more...]
Dirges and Dances
A lot of my work from the 1990s referenced my relationship with my father, who died of a brain tumor when I was two years old. His youthful death could easily lead many to assume I had no relationship with him, but even no relationship is a kind of relationship, with repercussions and ramifications. Certainly the tangled emotions that occupied my home at a time when I could scarcely be expected … [Read more...]
Another Happy New Year
We had the first gathering of our Composition Department here at UNC School of the Arts yesterday. Twenty-two of us in the room, ready to get started, full of aspirations and enthusiasm. We went around the room introducing ourselves, and saying a word or two about what we had been working on over the summer. As I heard the wide range of answers (MAX-MSP, cello concerto, songs with banjo), I … [Read more...]
The discipline of the green bar
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...]
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...]
Music as Thought
Music is sound, of course, and that is an enormous universe to occupy. But for me, music is also thought, a way of thinking. Just as we can think of a flower, or a mathematical equation, or a relationship we have with someone, we can also – to coin a verb – music about those things. Not everyone will relate to what we are musicing about, but that’s okay: not everyone shares our way of thinking. In … [Read more...]