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Search Results for: "2011-2012 Minnesota Orchestra Composer Institute Blog"
Dress rehearsal! We go in concert order, with Michael Holloway’s lush Rhythm: Theta Beta Theta starting. Michael is, I believe, the youngest composer here this year, having just finished his undergraduate education (which he did in two years). His piece is impressively orchestrated, and does exactly what he described in his speech about it: it opens with slow and more luxuriously paced music, with faster music in the middle like the more active Beta brain-waves, and finally the Theta waves return to close the piece. His music has a breadth that seems beyond his years, and the orchestra really sounds fabulous playing it.
Andreia’s piece, like the geographical place, Xántara, that inspired her, is mysterious, elegant, magical. Her delicate textures and transparent orchestration are impressive. In her score, she uses such adjectives as “Floating” to impart the kind of playing she wants from the musicians. The ending particularly I found really breathtaking: quiet, with the kind of presence that demands a moment or two of silence from the listener before any applause would begin.
My piece is in two movements: the GOD MUSIC movement, and the BUG MUSIC movement. In both, I was pushing canonic writing as far as I could, creating textures that feel to me colorful and exuberant, sometimes sounding statistical, sometimes highly organized. I’m very interested in the idea that my harmonies are organized by horizontal lines; and those lines are designed very carefully so that the harmonies will work out the way I want them to. I like my architecture to be clear, but I always strive for it to arise out of the materials I use: their details and internal directionality.
Shen Yiwen’s music has a certain meticulousness and clarity that are truly admirable. His piece does have a certain “American” sound, featuring broad, open sonorities and lush orchestration. It is brief: only about seven minutes. But one thing I noticed about all the pieces from my colleagues here is that each one is the right length. That’s not always the case—we’ve all sat through pieces that seem to last hours when in fact they’re only ten minutes. Or pieces that seem awkwardly truncated, as if the composer lost patience with his/her material.
Adrian’s piece Manchester is very quiet the whole way through, but incredibly detailed; it is about small things that happen within a broad framework—a framework that invites deep listening, meditation. It involves electronics that blend in and out of the live sound; their presence is never intrusive but rather they serve to expand the palette of sound. Adrian’s harmonies and timbres are inextricably linked in a way that displays real musical intelligence as well as a well-developed concept of what the music is. This is a piece that, despite its low dynamic level, has an extremely well-defined character whose presence commands the listener’s attention, pulls you in with its strong delicacy. It is anything but innocuous in its near silence.
Brian’s Collective Uncommon is almost outrageous in its imaginativeness, but avoids any sensationalism (despite the food instruments and the Tickle-Me-Elmo voice boxes); instead the music is really haunting and beautiful—yes, we are given aural images that are truly bizarre, but they are sensitively used and we come away feeling we’ve experienced something far more meaningful than a freak-show: something human, something beautiful and sad.
After individual mentor meetings all afternoon with Maestro Vänskä, Aaron Jay Kernis, and Steven Stucky, we had a brief break before the concert. Then we all filed into the Green Room to meet with Fred Child from MPR, who would host the event, interviewing each of us briefly on stage before our pieces. Fred is a wonderful interviewer; he had listened to all our speeches online in this blog from the Donor Dinner, so he already had a sense of each of us.
When it came time to go into the hall, we found out that the house was really packed—both on the orchestra level, and at least the first tier. I’ve never had a piece played to such a large audience before. The energy of the crowd felt overwhelmingly positive; there were a lot of different ages of people, and you got the sense that everyone was excited to be there and anxious to hear what was going on in new music for orchestra.
I won’t go through all the pieces again since I’ve already done that from the dress rehearsal, but I will say that the orchestra sounded even better than they had earlier in the day. It really is a thrill to hear such a tremendous force onstage, no matter what the repertoire, but to have them playing your own music is really exhilarating!
There was a brief reception for us in the Green Room during intermission; and the other opportunity we had to interact with the audience directly was in a Q and A session after the concert. It was great to know from people’s questions how interested they were in new music, and how much they wanted to encourage us as relatively newer composers alive today.
[Ed Note: This year the Minnesota Orchestra Composer Institute is taking place in January. Six intrepid composers from around the country have arrived in wintry Minneapolis for an intense week of artistic discovery and bonding. We’ve asked one of the six, Hannah Lash,to provide us with a daily account of their activities.—FJO]
Six of us arrived in Minneapolis yesterday for the Minnesota Orchestra Composers Institute. We all met at 5:00 p.m., scurrying as quickly as we could across the block of chilling Minnesota winter from the hotel to Orchestra Hall, where Institute director Aaron Jay Kernis awaited us along with coordinators Lilly Schwartz and Rick Hanson in the Green Room.
After a quick orientation and very welcome dinner of Indian food, Aaron and the six of us participants sat down to listen to each other’s music. Most of us had not been acquainted with one another prior to this evening. I must say that the experience of critiquing and receiving criticism for something so intimate as a creative act is probably one of the most intense and speedy ways to get to know others.
I felt the group begin to bond over this listening session. I’m sure this is mainly a reflection of Aaron’s warmth and generosity towards us, which sets the tone of mutual support: all of us working together but separately to clarify and hone our own music.
I sensed this care from Aaron when he called to talk about my score and parts a few months prior to the Institute. I was so impressed by his exhaustive perusal of my music and his meticulous and thoughtful comments and suggestions for notational clarification for anything from the layout of parts to a better way to beam a complex rhythm.
This generosity, thoroughness, and support seem to be the guiding principles of the entire institute. As I look over the week’s schedule that has been printed for me, I am impressed and even a little overwhelmed anticipating such a huge volume of seminars, feedback sessions, and rehearsals. This, I can tell, is going to be a truly unforgettable week: one of the most intense learning sessions one could hope for.
Thursday was the first day of rehearsals with the orchestra. This is something I had been anticipating with great excitement! Right before rehearsal began, we had another opportunity to practice our public speaking in the Green Room, to the handful of auditors who were there, and Diane Odash.
Then the first three pieces, Michael’s, Andreia’s, and mine, were rehearsed from 10 a.m. until 12:30 p.m. The orchestra sounds extraordinary, of course—this is something you know before you hear them, but you don’t really understand the thrill of it until you actually are there in the house with your score in your hands, tensed up with the excitement of hearing your piece come to life.
My piece is a premiere, so I’ve never heard it before now. I have a pretty good aural imagination, but not even the most fabulous sound I can envision in my head can compare to the actual experience of having some hundred people on the stage doing exactly what I have asked them to do. It is, as Steven Stucky said in his orchestration seminar, one of life’s greatest thrills, but also a great responsibility, and a humbling experience.
My personal perspective about writing music and having it played feels addictive: those first rehearsal glitches, where your piece is still unknown to the players cause a certain amount of terror in a composer, but once you start to hear them smooth out, and the piece start to assemble itself into the entity you created, you get a burst of energy like nothing else—a surge of power, a sigh of relief. (This is assuming your piece lives up to your hopes for it—that you did your job as a composer the way you meant to!)
It’s almost like the thrill you get from riding a roller coaster: as the coaster creeps up the rails to the highpoint from which the real ride begins, you can’t help feeling terrified; the ride begins and your body thinks that it is headed for destruction, pumping adrenaline through you at an alarming rate—but then, your mind wins as you tell your body that you’re not going to die, you’re just on a thrilling ride. This feeling of having conquered your fears and proved them to be groundless is exhilarating: you can’t help wanting to ride the roller coaster again and again, and somehow it never loses its power to deliver this jag.
Maestro Osmo Vänskä brought each of our pieces into being, consulting with us to fine-tune the details: revisions of any tempi or dynamic markings, changes to any articulations, etc. I can’t wait to hear the dress rehearsal tomorrow, when the pieces will have come to life even more vividly.
(Maestro Vänskä talking about the Minnesota Orchestra Composer Institute and his commitment to performing the music of our time.)
Following the afternoon rehearsals, we all filed into the Green Room for a session with Steven Stucky, Stephen Paulus, Frank J. Oteri, and Alex Shapiro moderated by Aaron Jay Kernis about becoming a part of your community as a composer, increasing your potential audience and helping them feel welcomed into experiencing new music as opposed to feeling alienated by it.
Finally we all walked over to The King and I, a Thai restaurant where we all unwound together over some fabulous Pad Thai, spring rolls, calamari, and many more yummy dishes that I’m currently too tired to remember. I’m almost ready to call it a night and close my computer, sinking into the comfortable bed at the Hotel Ivy.
I’m here with my husband and my one-month-old baby girl, Beatrice. More about that tomorrow—it has been a bit of a juggling act to be a new mother and attend such an intensely packed event, but I feel strongly that both roles can be balanced, and that we (especially women) should not sacrifice one for the other. I say especially women because it’s a little less complicated for men, I think (especially in the case of breastfed babies); I have several male colleagues who have had children at the same point in their lives as I have, but very few female colleagues who have. Although it’s a challenge, I feel I am being political in my choice to have a family and a career simultaneously.
When I was at Harvard I lived for a semester with Jill Lepore and her family. (Jill is a staff writer for The New Yorker.) Jill used to say that the greatest act of feminism these days is to have both a career and a family; we are told too often that in order to keep up with our male colleagues that we can’t have children. This simply isn’t true. It’s hard, yes, but very important to be able to have this if we want.
Anyway, I’ll get off my soapbox and get into bed for tonight.
Wednesday started off with another public speaking workshop; this time our coach Diane Odash had us practice our pre-concert speeches on the orchestra stage. This was helpful for working out any kinks that might occur, and I felt much more comfortable with my little talk after receiving Diane’s feedback.
Following this were two seminars by James Kendrick, an attorney and the head of Schott Publishing. These were in-depth explanations of copyrights, licensing, commissioning contracts, and negotiating. Mr. Kendrick is an extraordinary resource, and the amount of information he has is truly impressive. Something we can all take away from these sessions is that as composers, we can’t just know our own craft; we also have to be familiar with those legal and business matters that protect our livelihoods and make our survival as working artists possible.
Bill Holab’s session on music engraving and copying was equally packed with important points, and was geared specifically to address matters that had come up in each of our orchestra parts. After feeling pretty good that the orchestra players yesterday had found no issues with my parts, I was taken down a few notches by Mr. Holab, who very helpfully pointed out several engraving issues that I should address in order to make my parts clearer and better from a music copying standpoint.
The highpoint of the harp seminar that followed was when Principal harpist Kathy Keinzle played Salzedo’s Song in the Night for us, (I think that was the piece, if my harp knowledge serves!) demonstrating various extended techniques on her lovely Salvi harp. As a harpist myself, I had a lot of fun hearing her thoughts on orchestral harp writing, and found her approach to the instrument in the orchestral context wonderful.
Finally, we had a short break to get ourselves ready for the Donor Dinner at the home of Gloria and Fred Sewall. This was a lovely event; the house was truly a work of art, having been designed about a decade ago by the eminent architect Charles R. Stinson. As you approached the front entrance, there was a graceful and life-like statue of a leopard looking out onto the side lawn, poised as if to stalk its prey.
Inside the house, the floors were light finish hardwood, playing into the light and airy impression of the interior structure of the home. The large living room featured angular and colorful art, arranged beautifully as if in a museum. To one side of the room was a large black grand piano. (I didn’t get a look at the brand, but it was quite a lovely matte finish.)
After meeting and mingling with the donors, board members, and the commissioning club who were all in attendance, our hostess Gloria gathered us together so that Michael Hensen, Aaron Jay Kernis, Osmo Vänskä, and finally the six of us participants, could say a few words about the institute and give thanks for the support of these many people.
So when it came time for the six of us to speak, we got a chance to practice our newly sharpened public speaking skills. Michael Holloway started us off, graciously thanking the donors and expressing his appreciation for the virtuosity of the orchestra before describing his piece, Rhythm: Theta Beta Theta, which is based upon brain waves (apparently he was having some work done on his brain and had an EEG which showed him his own Theta and Beta waves, which inspired the piece).
Portuguese-born Andreia Pinto-Correia followed Michael, sharing her very personal and dynamic story about how she came to be a composer. Her piece, Xántara, is about a place in Portugal near Lisbon, whose natural beauty has made it notorious.
I went next, describing a little about my background and then saying a few words about my piece, GOD MUSIC BUG MUSIC, whose rather flamboyant and irreverent title demands an explanation.
Shen Yiwen was next; his piece First Orchestral Essay, draws some inspiration from Samual Barber. His piece, like mine, is based on a five-note motive; his motive, unlike mine, is an ascending one. He told us that some people have described his piece as an “Americana piece” despite his Chinese roots.
Adrian Knight gave a thoughtful and characteristically insightful introduction to his work, Manchester, a title for which he hopes the audience will find its own meaning.
Finally, Brian Ciach spoke about his Collective Uncommon: Seven Orchestral Studies on Medical Oddities, a piece inspired by the Mütter Museum, a museum of medical oddities in Philadelphia. Apparently as you enter the museum, you see a 30-foot colon immediately in front of you, then a woman with a nine-inch horn growing out of her forehead, and many other strange medical relics. Brian depicts these oddities sonically with the help of what he describes as “food instruments” amplified macaroni and cheese and cabbage heads. He also uses the voice boxes from Tickle-Me-Elmo dolls to represent the shrunken heads in the museum. These “food instruments” are particularly intriguing because Brian, in addition to being a composer, is a professional chef.
The evening ended with a lovely dinner and lively conversation.