www.mirandacuckson.com
Recorded January 2012

By Chris McGovern courtesy of The Glass

Dale Trumbore, originally a “Jersey Girl” but living in L.A. now, is yet another composer I know from the world of Twitter that has been making her mark on the world of new music during what seems like a renaissance of sorts. Along with a new album of art-song cycles titled Snow White Turns Sixty she is also about to have the New York premiere of her work for string quartet titled How It Will Go by ACME (The American Contemporary Music Ensemble). Dale even wrote her own article about the piece that was posted on Sequenza21. Having won numerous awards, grants (among them American Composer’s Forum Subito and USC’s Sadye J. Moss Composition Prize), and academic honors, besides composing, Dale has also been a teaching assistant at USC, and currently provides private piano instruction. She managed to find a window of solitude to talk to us. :)

CM: Can I ask about the beginning? I always ask this of everybody, and the typical aspect of the story is that they grew up in a household where classical music played daily and the person was always interested in it, but the stories vary, and of course even composers’ stories vary from one another. Where and when was it that you were hooked on composing your own music?

DT: I grew up in New Jersey, first in Maplewood, then in Chatham. No one in my family has a background in classical music, but I did grow up in music–and creativity–as a constant force in my life. My mother, an author who has also worked as an editor of children’s and educational books, would regularly play musical theater songs on the piano when I was growing up. My dad, a cartoonist and the Editor-in-Chief of a local NJ paper, played trumpet in high school and spontaneously bursts into song around the house. He actually has a great voice; when I was little, he’d sing me Beach Boys songs as lullabies. Oddly enough, my brother and I turned out to be extremely musical; my brother plays tenor saxophone and electric bass, sings, and has perfect pitch.

Like a lot of composers, I started playing piano at age 7, and I’ve been composing ever since. I recently rediscovered my first book of compositions form around then, and they’re predictably awful. But some of my compositions from when I was 12 or 13–a mock-Bach invention, a wanna-be Chopin etude–foreshadow, in some small way, the harmonic language I use now. That age is also when I wrote my first art-song, setting a text by poet Julie Kane called, not coincidentally, “Thirteen” (Julie is my aunt and godmother, one of the poets whose work is included in Snow White Turns Sixty, and the current Poet-Laureate of Louisiana). Twelve or thirteen is probably the age that I realized I was really drawn towards writing music but it wasn’t until sophomore year of high school that, when I started winning composition contests that led to live performances of my work, that I started thinking about pursuing composition as a career.

CM: Snow White Turns Sixty is both a song cycle and the title of your first recording that features that piece with 2 other song cycles you had written. What was the impetus for the Snow White cycle? Can you also talk about working with soprano Gillian Hollis and the poets that wrote the texts for it?

DT: I’ve been collaborating with Gillian since 2008. She’s an excellent musician who adapts quickly to whatever I give her to learn; she’s a great collaborator, with spot-on suggestions about interpretation and performance, and I think her tone quality is just beautiful. I love writing with her voice in mind.

In 2009 or so, Gillian expressed interest in performing a concert of songs related to fairy tales. When I told poet Julie Kane about the possibility of my writing a set of art-songs for such a concert, Julie put out a call for fairy tale-related poems on a listerv that happened to be for female poets.
That’s how I stumbled into working almost exclusively with contemporary female poets in my recent projects; Julie’s call for poems resulted in a wealth of texts, so much so that the cycle ended up being much longer than I’d originally intended (it’s a 30 minute-long cycle).
I really enjoy working with contemporary poets; if I have any questions about whether they’d approve of the way I’d like to set the text, or if there’s anything I need to know that might inform the way I’m setting these texts, I can simply email the poet and ask what they think. As a result of Julie’s call for poems, too, I now have connections to eight poets whose work I greatly admire, whom I wouldn’t have connected with otherwise: Jeanne Marie Beaumont, Barbara Crooker, Annie Finch, Kathleen Jesme, Eve Rifkah, Katharyn Howd Machan, Eileen Moeller, and Diane Thiel. It’s been a total joy working with every one of them, in fact, I’m hoping to continue working with some of their other poems for the choral commissions I’m working on now. Finding the right text to set for a specific project can be difficult, so it’s wonderful to have in place a network of poets whose work I already know lends itself to lyricism (in every meaning of the word).

CM: Can you talk about the other 2 cycles, Sara Teasdale Songs and This Thirst In My Lungs?

DT: Sara Teasdale Songs was my first exploration for writing specifically for Gillian’s voice. It’s amazing to hear how much her voice and her interpretation of the piece have evolved since the March 2009 premiere. I chose to group these particular poems (by poet Sara Teasdale) as a cycle, even though they were not grouped together by Teasdale herself. I like the way the poets trace the course of a relationship gone wrong with a frankness that seems very modern, even if these poems were written a century ago.

This Thirst In My Lungs was written this summer and completed just before Gillian and I recorded Snow White Turns Sixty. I was still making tiny changes to the music even as we were in the recording studio. We worked on the piece almost daily leading up to making the recording; Gillian would sing through what I had written, we’d make some changes and then I’d write more. The author of those texts, Robin Myers, is actually a childhood friend whom I reconnected with two years ago; she’s a fabulous writer, with the gift of capturing the stunning beauty within ordinary moments. I’m really looking forward to setting more of Robin’s texts to music in the future.

CM: You seem to write more for voice than anything else. Is this for the interest in the text, or do you lean more in that direction because you like to explore the possibilities and push boundaries for it? Hearing how high some of the notes are in the Snow White piece this wouldn’t surprise me. :) And is a full-scale opera something we can look forward to?

DT: I love poetry; what draws me more than anything else to writing so often for voice is likely the desire to set texts I love to music.
In Stephen Sondheim’s book Finishing The Hat, he writes about not wanting to work with texts that he feels are perfectly complete, such as light verse, because he has nothing to contribute to them by adding music. I agree whole-heartedly; there has to be some element of unfolding the text in a particular way, or of opening it up in a way not immediately apparently on the page, that draws me to a set of music. I aim to bring something new to the words and to create a sound world for each piece that honors and is determined by the text itself.
I also just plain love the sound of the voice, which is likely related to the fact that I sang in various choruses, sacred and secular, for 16 years of my life.
Part any “boundary pushing” in these songs is simply taking advantage of Hollis’s incredible register; in writing these songs specifically for her, I know which syllables I can have her sing way up there, how far she can go in that range, and what she needs from me as a composer in order to make it up there comfortably. That said, these songs aren’t easy to sing; Gillian and I are still figuring out whether it’s even possible for her to sing all of the songs on the CD live in a single concert without overworking her voice. We’re doing a modified version of the CD repertoire along with some other art-songs I’ve written, in our upcoming national tour.
As far as opera goes, I’ll be writing a 6-word opera as part of Stephen P. Brown’s project Festival Word 6 Opera. But as far as operas with more than 6 words go, I have no plans to write one at the moment; hopefully that’s something that will happen in the future.

CM: I want to talk about the piano and orchestra piece 10,000 Hours. It seems to have a similar identity to the current work by Leah Kardos, Feather Hammer, where she makes a remarkable expression on her life working with the piano. Was this what you did here or was it more of a general statement?

TD: Like Leah Kardos’s work (which is fantastic, by the way), 10,000 Hours is absolutely an autobiographical piece. I didn’t want to label it as such in the program notes in case that took away from its attempt at universality, too–at tracing the general path of a life at the piano, as opposed to my life in particular.
But every aspect of the piece–even its quirky instrumentation, with harpsichord and tenor saxophone–refects some aspect of my experience growing up playing piano, and my relationship with music growing up. The piece is dedicated to “D.T,, H.T., C.K., and B.A.–my immediate family members and my middle school/high school music teacher Bela Apuzzio.

I wrote 10,000 Hours with my fingers crossed that the USC Thornton Symphony would perform it as part of their annual New Music for Orchestra concert, and they did end up programming it. Writing it for this opportunity, I know that I could write the piece that I wanted to write, slightly strange orchestration and all. Who knows when the piece will get another performance, since most calls for orchestra pieces want standard instrumentations and pieces that aren’t concerti, but I know that the pianist who premiered it, Nic Gerpe, is eager to play it again.

CM: I have now interviewed 4 (You are the 4th at my count) female composers. It’s quite common now, obviously, but we’ve come a long way from the days when the only one that came to mind was Clara Schumann, and there probably were many more unbeknownst to the general public even in her day. Would you say you guys have come a long way?

DT: I think female composers have obviously come a long way. However, the male to female ratio of programmed composers, even within exclusively new-music concerts, still isn’t equal or anywhere close to it (although this also varies from ensemble to ensemble). I recently noticed 2 prominent new-music ensembles initiating concerts of works exclusively by female composers; unfortunately these two particular ensembles have histories of very rarely programming female composers. One women-only program doesn’t cancel out a larger imbalance, especially if this female composer concert is followed by ten more predominantly or exclusively feature works by men. I applaud every effort to redress this imbalance, but I’d much rather see the ensembles in question cancel-out any need for an all-female concert in the first place. It’s not like there’s any shortage of extremely talented female composers to program; they’re out there. There are a lot of them out there.

CM: Any dream projects (or collaborations) for the future you’d like to share?

DT: In addition to having five choral compositions and a piece for the ensemble After Everything in the works, I’m currently in the logistics of figuring out the writing a 40-minute dance piece for new-music ensemble. Alas, this is more in the grant-researching stage than the fun part of the process (actually writing the music!), but I do know that the piece is going to be a more-or-less narrative-driven work exploring the distortion of memory in response to loss. While nothing’s nailed-down yet, it’s going to be a massive project, likely resulting performances of the piece on both coasts and another CD release in 2013. I’m hoping to begin writing the music in either Spring or Summer 2012.

Dale Trumbore.com
Official website
Dale’s Bandcamp page
Buy or download Snow White Turns Sixty

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The Contagious Sounds Series is back, baby.  If you are in New York, go see the show in person at the Gershwin Hotel.  If you are not in New York, watch the live stream here.

7pm EST : Cellist, Ashley Bathgate will be performing a personal favorite – Michael Gordon’s Industry – as well as music by Andrew Norman, Alvin Lucier, Timo Andres, and Evan Ziporyn.

9pm EST : Bassist, Florent Ghys. ”He creates highly contrapuntal, post-minimalist chamber music showcasing intelligent multi-tracking and inventive use of electronics and sampled speech.” – WQXR radio

Support the Contagious Sounds Series here.
Visit the archive to see past shows.

By Chris McGovern courtesy of The Glass

Australian-born composer Leah Kardos is in the process of taking her place in the already sizeable club of composer/performers, and is another harbinger of the days now where the worlds of new classical and indie music are barely separated by a blurred-over line. Initially a founder of the band Helzuki, she currently has 2 other indie acts: My Lithium & Me and Spider & I. Along with these activities, she also has been writing film scores and occasionally assists other bands with orchestral, choral or chamber arrangements on their songs. Recently the composer decided to make a self-recorded CD of short compositions threaded together as a thematic statement on her life and relationship with her first love, the piano, and this was what became Feather Hammer. Having had Leah as a great acquaintance on Twitter, I realized that I needed to do an interview with her soon before she hired a publicist. ;)

CM: You studied piano, and then stopped to go into composition. What exactly was it that transformed you to the world of composing?

LK: It’s hard to pinpoint the exact moment when I knew, or what the catalyst was exactly. I remember getting to a point in my piano studies when it all became a bit serious – I was practicing 4 to 5 hours a day and the repertoire was really challenging. I had been waiting all my life to play my favourite pieces – Chopin’s “Ballade No. 1″, Ravel’s “Jeux d’eau” – and as I rehearsed these works I overwhelmingly felt both in awe and deeply inadequate. At 19, with no life experience and no real understanding of the world I was bringing nothing to the table and I was deeply dissatisfied by that. Around that time I began writing my own music, and looking back I can see that the motivation was to express myself in an honest way, since trying to do it through performing other people’s music felt like I was faking.

CM: What is the difference that you’ve found between composing for yourself and composing for film scores?

LK: The biggest difference is the presence of a brief and a client to work for. The soundtrack supports the visual image and narrative and, in a way, it is easier to write because you’re aim is clear and you’re usually (happily) limited in terms of style and arrangement and what the director has specifically asked for. When working for myself I find it’s more difficult to be sure of things. It’s easy to get into a strange headspace when working in a vacuum; I’m constantly asking myself “What are you trying to say, here? Are you being honest?”. I usually end up removing half the notes I write.

CM: The album Feather Hammer is quite a great creation from you. Would you say the album is supposed to be a suite or a collection of separate threaded pieces that are the expression of your journey as a pianist?

LK: The original idea was for a “concept album” that used production techniques in a ‘composerly’ way – I suppose that that means I wanted to focus on timbre, texture and sound positions and proximities as the main expressive elements and not so much the actual notes. I remember deciding on making it a piano album while walking to college listening to Aphex Twin’s ‘Nanou 2’ and thinking to myself “I could totally do something like that, why haven’t I done something like that?”… I got home that night and mapped Feather Hammer out on a big sheet of paper – all the things the piano means to me, what my native musical language is, the memories I could articulate and the stories that were worth sharing. I was surprised by how much stuff was in there, how closely entwined my composing today is to my experiences as a performer earlier in life.

As soon as I knew it was going to be a piano record I knew I wanted to build it from muscle memory improvisation. I’m a big fan of Terry Riley’s New Harp of Albion and Bill Evans’ Conversations with Myself, both are albums which were improvised but also contain a sonic twist, and, when I listen to them, I feel close and connected to the composer as a person. I hoped that if I approached the material honestly, Feather Hammer might turn out a similar way. I wouldn’t say the collection represents my journey as a pianist, if anything it’s about how my musical experiences have influenced my creativity up to this point.

CM: Can you talk about some of the pieces on the recording? Starting with:

“The Waiting” and “The Waiting (Reprise)”
LK: These pieces are really just different versions of the same thing. It started out as a idle improvisation that I captured as MIDI – the G minor scale figures are what I was playing while I was ‘waiting’ for the more clever and inventive ideas to flow. A lifetime of practicing scales and 5-finger exercises has left a deep impression on me, so often my fingers reach for those shapes and patterns automatically and it’s a source of composer self-loathing in a way – too simplistic, not original. The first version is the arrangement with the piano part taken out, just a void while we’re waiting for something to arrive. It’s how I felt as a young performer. The reprise is like an acknowledgment and acceptance of the state of things.

“DFACE (Practice this Video)”
It’s about that moment when you start to understand how notes combine to create colour. I remember feeling quite ecstatic when I first understood how you could build beautiful extended chords by stacking up major and minor 3rds. As a student you gobble up the lessons and digest the information, it becomes part of your core.

“Katerina”
This was an old, very Satie-esque, improvisation from a few years ago originally created as an accompaniment to a theatre piece. I decided to revisit it, pin down some of the motifs in a rough score and make the piano act like a ‘band’ and accompany itself. I remember at the time I had been listening to a lot of Sufjan [Stevens] and was trying to play the piano as if it were a banjo.

“Houses”
I just love the sound of pianos through walls. I wanted to record something where two pianos were playing from different locations, but playing together. Turns out achieving the effect is a lot harder than it is to describe! I really like the idea of accidental music, how sound proximities and ambient effects can make the listener want to construct a narrative. You might suspect there’s an interesting story behind what’s happening here, it invites you to listen closely.

“Remnant 1″ and “Remnant 2″
They’re called ‘remnants’ because I made them out of left over parts. Hopefully more than anything they both reflect my sonic fascination with the piano.

In “Remnant 1″ I wanted to use dissonance in a textural way, and make a lighthearted comment about how experimentation doesn’t have to be so serious all the time… but it ended up being all about that groove. Which is fine! This piece has the most “prepared” sounding piano which was actually recorded as a series of separate sound effects, and later made into a sampler instrument.

“Remnant 2″ is a collage of all sorts of bits I collected from the project. I wanted it to sound like an ensemble of players having fun and not a producer tinkering in a studio. The end result, I think, was inspired by Graham Fitkin’s band, who I’ve seen play a few times over the last few years. I’m a bit of a Fitkin fan girl, and although he’ll probably not appreciate this being said, whatI love most about him are those smiley middle-class white guy grooves. This is my version of that, my middle-class white girl music school percussion ensemble jam session. Energetic and a little bit cheesy.

“Apology”
A nod to ‘Opening’ from Glassworks here. The piece is comprised of piano parts recorded at 3 different distances, superimposed as layers which created some really interesting frequency masking effects. In some places it sounds like a humming choir is singing a counter melody inside the oscillating harmonies, at other times the odd higher frequency will break through sharply from behind the notes – somehow making the music feel more emotional for me, as if it were unstable and fragile.
I had always intended for the multitude of voices wishing and apologizing. I wanted it to be a cathartic for the speakers, for me and for the listener. Towards the end of production I made an alternate version of this track without the voices that featured a location recording of a busker that I very nearly used. My PhD supervisor Rob Davidson talked me into keeping the voiced version and now I’m really glad that I did.

CM: You also have My Lithium & Me, and work with other artists and bands with their orchestral arrangements. We’re in the age now where we are in a quandry trying to figure out what “classical music” is or what to call it, plus you also have people like yourself composing this music and have your other projects, plus people like Bryce Dessner and Glenn Kotche are always involved in both indie rock and composition (Even a twitter friend of ours, Nick Norton is doing this as well). If it isn’t already, do you think eventually this is going to be the norm for “the world of music that is composed”? Or am I reading too much into it? :)

LK: I’m not sure. Maybe? I can only speak for myself and say I feel very indifferent to the idea of style boundaries. I just want people to enjoy the music I make, no matter what they’re into. Sometimes I blanch at the labels – whether you’re a composer of classical music, modernist, popular, alt or indie, tonal or atonal, an arranger, producer, experimental sound designer, interactive performer… the label I identify most with is ‘music enthusiast’. Obviously there are certain techniques and styles I’m not as good at, but if the idea or feeling I want to communicate is best expressed through a style-associated reference then I won’t hesitate to use it. Technology obviously helps in granting access to some of these things. I also think engaging in commercial paid work forces you to embrace being versatile and find joy working in different contexts.

CM: Any future and/or dream projects, or dream collaborations you’d like to share with us?

LK: I really hope my next project is a suite for acapella female vocal trio and technology – I’ve been collecting some oddly poetic spam emails for the last 5 years and I’d love to organise them into a text. My dream group to work with on that would be Juice Ensemble. I’d also love to write something for the Piano Circus – that one is on my musical bucket list, along with doing a remix for Nonclassical and dancing on stage in an animal costume at a Flaming Lips gig.
(EDITOR’S NOTE: I will try to get pics once it happens!)

Leah Kardos.com
Official website

Leah’s Soundcloud page
Many more of Leah’s compositions are on this page.

By Chris McGovern courtesy of The Glass

Nick Norton, another fellow Twitter friend of mine (known as “@NickWritesMusic”) is a composer, has 2 indie rock bands, writes material for his website, is a Vice President for a musical therapy organization called Music To Heal, and is also the Music Director of PR firm Pavement Press. Aside from the seemingly-hectic lifestyle he has, Mr. Norton’s studies have taken him all the way to Europe and back again earning him several awards and grants, and has had his works performed and workshopped by various orchestras and ensembles. Thank goodness there was some spare time to do a Q&A!

CM: Nick, after studying guitar you played in punk rock bands before you went to university both in your native California and then Paris to study composition. Were you always thinking of that even during the punk years or did you get swayed by classical music later in life?

NN: I think I discovered what we might call formal composition by accident. I was very, very involved in political and social activism in high school, as was a lot of the music I was listening to and playing. I figured for college I would double major in music and political science, and then either write well-informed sociopolitical music to effect change, or go into politics and be a voice for the underrepresented…I think the interest in that in particular came from seeing punk music as sort of underrepresented and misunderstood by mainstream culture.

I’d always had an interest in classical music, and enjoyed going to hear orchestras, but I think that came from an interest in the arts in general. Going to class in college, early on, I found a lot of the theory and music history boring. I still find the large majority of baroque music that I hear totally boring, and a good bit of the standard canonical repertoire too. It sounds extremely pretentious, but I felt like my (and most of today’s listeners) ears had evolved to listen for color and rhythm and texture, not so much how a theme is developed and modulated in the kind of Germanic tradition. By this time I had moved away from punk a little bit, and into more esoteric types of rock…noise rock, glitch, post-rock, stuff like that. I didn’t find the palette of sounds that traditional classical music used to be capable of holding my attention, since I’d grown up with the complete range of audible sound available to be used musically.

I can pinpoint the exact moment that I suddenly became interested in the whole “classical” world. I took an introduction to composition class with Harvey Sollberger, and our first assignment was to write a piece for flute using only five pitches. Harvey was an incredible flutist, and said he would play our pieces in class the next week. I was kind of always into science and math and engineering and stuff like that, so exploring the permutations and structures of what one could do within a set of parameters like that was really interesting to me. I went home and ended up writing six or seven minutes of music for solo flute. I wasn’t really expecting much when I took it into class the next week, but about twenty seconds into his performance I was on cloud nine. I was like “this is amazing! Those black dots I wrote down on paper are generating actual sound and human activity! I want to do this forever!” And I haven’t really looked back. I didn’t see much of a future in politics, after having studied it, and writing music was a lot more fun, so I applied to some grad schools, got into a summer program in Paris and then King’s College London for my masters, and here I am.

On a side note, that’s right when my music history classes were getting up to the twentieth century, and the leap from the esoteric popular music I was listening to to classical modernism was an easy one from there. Then I just started studying the canon in kind of reverse chronological order. I feel like I’ve still got a lot to learn.

CM: What would you say was the moment your creativity had reached its maturity/breakthrough?

NN: I know the exact moment on that one as well. I was very into coming up with really elaborate structures and arguments for how to write music, after reading some of Boulez’s early essays and his correspondences with John Cage, and hearing about the ideological battles going on in places like Darmstadt. Being a hot-blooded post-teen pseudo-punk-hipster-intellectual, I was like “I can get on board with that! Screw the past! The only music that matters has to invent something at every second! I need total control as a composer!” I think my professors nurtured my passion, but it created some very drab music. I still think what I wrote then was important, because it was indeed inventing new sounds for me, but I was both fifty years late and totally out of touch with most listeners. Most of my friends didn’t like it too much, but were supportive, and said things like “well I don’t get it, but you know what you’re talking about, and maybe you’re just 100 years ahead of us”.

Before I started in Paris I had a talk with who would be my professor in London, a composer named Rob Keeley (who just released a CD, by the way). I was talking about all of the systems in place in a piece I’d just written, and how important they were, and he said “well that’s all well and good, but what does it sound like?” That hit me like a ton of bricks. I’d kind of forgotten about that, and about the fact that whether it’s illuminating some dark aspect of the human psyche or just giving you a beat to dance to, music and art must in some sense be enjoyed by those who are perceiving it. So in Paris, I tried writing a piece with no system, just picking the notes I thought sounded good. It was scary…I think I almost passed out in the spot right after the music stops before the audience claps at the premiere…but the crowd absolutely loved it, and that piece has been performed a whole bunch now. I didn’t feel like I was pandering, because I was writing the music that I wanted to write. And that was the aha moment. I realized that absolutely nothing is off-limits as a composer, and that I could do whatever I damn well please. I still want to create new sounds and move our art forward, but if listeners have no way of connecting with it at all, then it won’t affect them and the whole effort may as well have been in vain. So since then, my guiding principal has more or less been to ask myself “Does this sound good? What do I want to hear?”. I’ve had a lot more success since then than ever before, so someone seems to agree.

CM: Your music does appear to have a significant voice and pattern. There’s an interesting turn of phrase on the 3rd and final movement of the String Quartet #1; The last 40 seconds of the piece, the quartet plucks dissonantly and then dissolves. That’s quite perplexing to me!

NN: Ha, my girlfriend had some questions about that ending too. There’s a piece for four guitars by Leo Brouwer called Cuban Landscape With Rain that is absolutely gorgeous, and then this storm of snap pizzes kind of destroys it. I liked that idea a lot, and love Brouwer’s music…I think his guitar stuff from the sixties and seventies had a lot to do with how I think about blending disparate musical elements. Anyway, that might be me succumbing to a pre-composed structure a bit again. I had wanted to create this sort of meditative, tentative mood in that movement, and then go BANG to it. Might’ve been a young unknown composer begging for attention there a little bit.

When I went to the first rehearsal for the recording, and they got through that movement and got to the last chord before that section, it was like this big beautiful sigh of release and calm. And I was like “man that’s a nice ending. Oh wait, here comes-” and then it explodes. So I was a little bit torn about whether to keep it in there, but the musicians all really enjoyed it, and the producer, Nick Tipp, really liked it, as did my friends who were acting as my second sets of ears for the session, so I kept it. I’m back to liking it a lot now, especially with what Nick did with the presence and reverb on the recording. That moment suddenly feels pretty claustrophobic. I dig it.

CM: The piece titled “Moon Songs” is a really interesting concept and another great example of the worlds of music and literature coming together. Can you talk about how it came about?

NN: That’s my first commission, and I somehow have to indirectly thank Eric Whitacre. Being somewhat outside of the world of classical music I spend a lot of time submitting things to calls for scores, because I don’t have a lot of friends who are conductors. I was about done with that, since nothing ever seemed to come of it, and he had published an article in the American Composers Forum newsletter saying that even if you didn’t get picked calls for scores were a great way to motivate yourself to keep writing, and you never knew when an individual judge might program a non-winning piece later. WomenSing had a call for samples out so that they could commission a young composer from California to write a piece using text from a library of poetry written by children. It was literally the last day of the deadline, and I said, “Fine, Eric Whitacre, I’ll give wasting money on postage one more shot.” I submitted a piece I’d written for a workshop with Exaudi, called Elevation Morceau, that was never actually premiered.

Lo and behold I got the commission, which involved doing a public workshop and a bunch of consultations with the artistic director, Martin Benevenuto, and their composer-in-residence, Libby Larsen. Then a few weeks later Charles Bruffy, the conductor of the Kansas City Chorale, who was on the judging panel for WomenSing, wrote to me to ask if he could premiere Elevation Morceau with Kansas City. Of course I said yes!

Things moved along pretty smoothly from there…instead of picking one poem I picked five, I wrote the music, had the public workshop, improved the music, went back up to the Bay area for the concerts. It was awesome. They were awesome. The whole experience, really. I went to Kansas City too for that concert, and they took me out for dinner and drinks and I felt like some kind of famous guest artist. It was really cool. I think the whole deal has opened up a lot of doors for me. I wrote Eric Whitacre to say thanks, but I don’t think I’ll ever hear back.

CM: I like that in the midst of [Moon Songs] suddenly there is what sounds like a welcome element of pop music when the drums kick in. Would you say that there is (or has been) a tendency for new classical music and other genres like pop and rock (indie rock especially) to start meshing together?

NN: That’s my favorite part of that piece, although the altos are about ready to pass out at that point so I don’t think they like it as much as I do. I think that tendency has always been there…Mahler 1 has klezmer-y sounding folk tunes in it, Where I End and You Begin has Mahler 1 in it. Alex Ross could point out a million examples of this. I mean, listen to Sigur Ros! Or perhaps listen to some Phil Glass, immediately followed by Godspeed You Black Emperor. There’s no difference, save for marketing, and I for one enjoy the concert experience of an early Dillinger Escape Plan show way more than I’ll ever enjoy that of a Brian Ferneyhough recital. The musical meat is not all that different. I think we’re noticing more crossover now for a few reasons though. One is that orchestras are trying to attract younger audiences, and younger audiences tend to like pop and rock and whatever else. I think the bigger reason, though, is that a lot of composers today grew up listening to more pop and rock. Honestly, I don’t think about it too much. I’ve only got one set of ears, it’s all vibrating air molecules that my brain has chosen to interpret as music. Any difference is all in context. That’s why the drum set sounds so out of place or shocking there…it’s not because it doesn’t line up, or isn’t rhythmically expected (it’s 4/4 on the kick and snare, after all), but because we’re trained not to expect a drumset in choral music. Or expect to hear Bartok quartets being performed amplified in a bar before a rock show. I’ve seen that too, and it’s awesome.

CM: Okay, so you are a composer AND you work in not one but two rock bands (Honest Iago and Better Looking People With Superior Ideas; I like that name, btw). When you go back to your fellow bandmates, do they poke fun, or are they much more respectful?

NN: The thing I love about playing in Honest Iago (besides the fact that we’re all close friends) is that the band was formed in order to take rock and and really try to contribute something new to it. Originally we all had a rotating lineup, and would invite a bunch of different instrumentalists to play with us, so that every show was different. One time we played with two guitars, bass, drums, keys, clarinet, assorted percussion, and stand up bass. At a couple of shows we’ve handed out hand percussion to audience members. We’ve had a few visual artists in the lineup too, who would paint onstage, most notably Alex Chiu, who has been getting all kinds of well deserved good attention lately. Since doing our first record and getting out of college, it’s mostly been the four or five of us (I never know which). But everyone is very open minded. Usually it’s a bit of a battle, but a positive one. Matt, our singer, writes the most amazing hooks with simple chords, and then asks me to “Nickify” them. It works for us. We got asked in an interview once what it’s like to be in a band with a composer, and the other guys said “it makes him harder to ignore.” It was a joke, but I think there’s a grain of truth to it that makes our music more than just your run of the mill rock and roll.

Better Looking People With Superior Ideas started in a kind of funny way. It’s a duo right now, just Honest Iago’s drummer/my roommate Craig Vermeyen and I. Craig’s very talented and plays a lot of instruments, and seems to like pretty technical music like I do. So with Iago, it would always be he and I trying to complexify things up, while Matt was writing catchy hooks. We one day said “We’ve got to figure out how to write a three minute pop song.” Some people said, “No way, you guys will always be trying to blow people’s minds instead of just writing a melody.” Well turns out they were right, doing this stuff well is really hard! We wrote two or three simple songs that I’m really proud of, just guitar, drums, and lyrics, or organ, drums, and lyrics, but then when we moved in together we started adding stuff and writing electronica and whatever else. So the music is yet again complex. But I think it’s really cool stuff we’ve been doing lately. We’ve almost got enough for a record. Unfortunately there’s nothing I can share publicly just yet, and we haven’t played any shows yet because we have to coordinate quite a lot of instrument switching and loops, but that stuff is definitely on the way.

CM: There’s the 2 bands, your new-classical projects, AND your duties in Music To Heal and Pavement Press, plus you blog in your spare time. Do you sleep??

NN: Not enough. Sometimes things I’d like to be doing get put on the back burner, unfortunately. I’d like to dedicate more time to Music to Heal and Pavement Press and really don’t get to. And I could really use [some] exercise once in a while. I miss that. My other roommate plays basketball once a week, and I was thinking of going with, even though I’m terrible. I actually started specifically scheduling down time about a month ago, where I would swear to myself that I wouldn’t do anything for an evening, and would just have a beer and watch The Wire. I finished the series, but it’s still sort of working. Sort of.

NickWritesMusic.com
Nick’s official website

Nick’s Soundcloud Page

Music To Heal
Organization Nick is VP for that specializes in music therapy.

www.conorhanick.net
Recorded September 2011

Streaming by Ustream
Tonight is the second evening of the 2011-12 Contagious Sounds Series streamed live from the Gershwin Hotel in New York City. 7 & 9pm EST.

Just like Friday’s performance, if you are in New York please go see the show in person (it’s only 10-bucks); if you are not in New York check-out the stream and let us know what you think. You can send all your comments to either me () or vicky () – we would really appreciate your feedback.

7:00pm set: Keir Neuringer, Saxophone
Keir Neuringer composes & improvises acoustic & electronic music, writes socio-political performance texts & essays, & creates interdisciplinary artworks, all with the aim of bringing audiences into a state of emotional & intellectual curiosity that meets the conditions for meaningful dialogue with, & transformation of, the culture at large.

9:00pm set: Saskia Lankhoorn, pianist
Program:
US Premieres of ‘Zomer, Melodrama, and Joy’ by Kate Moore.

Support the Contagious Sounds Series here.
Visit the archive to see the two sets from Friday.

Streaming by Ustream
I am so happy to announce that My Ears Are Open is one of the places where you can see the Contagious Sounds Series streamed live from the Gershwin Hotel in New York City this season!

But, let’s make a deal – if you are in New York: please go see the show in person (it’s only $10);  if you are not in New York: please watch the stream and let us know what you think.  You can send all your comments to either me () or vicky () – we would really appreciate your feedback.

The first set will begin at 7:00pm EST with Mariel Roberts, Cello
Program:
Kaija Saariaho, Pres for cello and electronics
Mauricio Kagel, Seigfreidp’
Anna Clyne, Fits and Starts
Tristan Perich, new work for solo cello and 1-bit electronics (US Premeire)

The second set will begin at 9:00pm EST with Concert Black
(Lisa Dowling, bass; Domenica Fossati, flute; Owen Weaver, drums)
“In our first concert of the 2011/2012 season, we are thrilled to get back on the stage with our old friends, ‘Re: You’ by Brooklyn-based composer Robert Honstein and ‘Gentleman Looser’ by Austin’s own Pierce Gradone. Sharing the bill will be a Kanye West arrangement, a Concert Black original and a Buke & Gass cover!”

www.crossingchoir.com
Recorded September 2011

By Chris McGovern courtesy of The Glass

This Jennifer, Jennifer Jolley, hails from Long Beach, CA. Originally having a specific interest in scoring films (Which explains both her love of film soundbites in some of her sound collages and her interest in writing opera), Jennifer later focused more on straight composing after her graduation from U.S.C. and further studies at Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music in Cincy OH, where she now lives with her librettist and her 2 cats Lindsay Lohan and Coco Chanel. Having been commissioned by many contemporary ensembles and having one of her works presented at MATA’s 2011 Make Music Winter Workshop (“Press Play”), Jennifer writes a blog about her career (Titled “Why Compose When You Can Blog”) and even has time to write several other blogs (Building a Better Opera, MusicX Musings; She also contributes to the official blog for Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music: Center For Computer Music), and she’s also an instructor at University of Cincinnati. I’m just glad there was time for her to take a break and talk to me.

CM: You seem to have different sides to your music; Some of it is minimalist or modern orchestral, and some of it is electronics, tapes or sound collage. Is this a way of saying that you would rather explore and flesh out these styles simultaneously than focus on just one way of composition?

JJ: Maybe I’m accidentally fleshing out my styles simultaneously! Ultimately I want to work with a style that conveys my concept the best. If I need to write minimalist music to get my point across, then I’m going to use it. If I need to use a vocoder, so be it. Over the past two years I’ve changed my approach in my pre-compositional process—I merely thought about harmonies, melodies, and timbre before working on a piece, and now I think about what I’m trying to say with my music and which style would work best. After I figure out my concept, I think about harmonies, melodies, and timbre. Right now I’m working on an opera that’s a retelling of both the Narcissus and Pygmalion myths, and holy cow, I might be writing a neo-classical opera. I’ve already completed a da capo aria, and it looks like I might include secco recitative. Honestly I’ve been a little self-conscious about the style so far (because it may be a little conservative), but I feel that the style fits the story and concept.
(EDITOR’S NOTE: Our discussion of Jennifer’s new opera is coming up shortly. ;))

CM: “Paint My Chopper Pink” is one of the tape pieces, and I really like the direction it takes toward the middle (It gets into a tinny-sounding section that is quite soothing to my ears, just so you know). Can you talk about the subject of this piece and about how this was recorded?

JJ: I wanted to write a motorcycle motet for four voices! Since I loved listening to motets and motorcycles, I wanted to combine the two. So, I found four different sound clips of motorcycles starting online (yes, this is probably cheating) and processed them in a Max/MSP external called PerColate. I was also obsessed with the convolve patch which combines any two sounds you like, and I wanted to combine the agressive sound of motorcycles with gentle bell sounds. On a side note, an art professor suggested I create an acoustic version of this piece, and I might do it! I think it would be great to have a live motorcycle motet. Of course, I don’t know what to do about the exhaust, and I don’t have access to four timbrally-different motorcycles…

CM: “Get Your Ass To Mars” and “More Human Than Human” are collages that feature dialogue from “Total Recall” and “Blade Runner” respectively. Were these pieces meant to direct a different point of view on the films’ stories, or were you just making a whole new statement with each one?

JJ: I was creating a Philip K. Dick triptych of tape pieces that would indeed create a whole new statement with each one. I had to go this route because the films are recent—those who are familiar with the films will instantly visualize scenes from the film, and I didn’t want to fall into the trap of retelling the movie. I mean, I instantly visual Arnold Schwarzenegger every time he speaks!

CM: “All Grief Empty, The Clear Night Passes” is one of your orchestral pieces, and it has a powerful cadenza for percussion (It almost sounds like a brief concerto)

JJ: This piece did not have a master structural plan when I started. I had a general idea that I wanted to start with high pitches then meander to lower ones. Then when I finished the first section, I decided to pick up the tempo a bit and then climax to a big percussion section. That cadenza section was fun to write, although I don’t know if the other sections tempered the fiery percussion duet. That’s okay though—I wrote this piece in 2008, and I’ll have more of a master plan when I write my next orchestra piece.

CM: “Laments By The Sea (III: A Farewell)” is so minimalist and current-sounding to me, yet it has a classical beauty towards the middle.

JJ: This piece grew from a song for mezzo-soprano and chamber ensemble that I wrote in 2001. 2001! And then my conductor friend Nathan Madsen asked me if I would be willing to expand the piece in 2007. The biggest challenge for me was linking the two bookend movements with the original one (“The Three Fishers”), and I thought the best way to do this was to have the text dictate the music. With the third movement, I thought it would be appropriate to compose calm and placid music since the narrator is dying and uttering his last words.

CM: Would you program this piece on the same night as “Paint My Chopper Pink”?

JJ: Absolutely not! The concepts of the pieces are completely different and would not curate well on the same concert. Now, if I wrote an electronic piece that had to do with the sea or death, I would reconsider.

CM: The audience participation piece “Press Play” is basically the Ricercar from Bach’s late work The Musical Offering. The first recording of it sounds like you transcribed the original (And THAT sounds so beautiful to begin with!) for various instruments on tape, but when it came time to do what you set out to do with the recording devices at the concert premiere, it took on a whole different feel altogether as some parts were slightly off kilter and there was what sounded almost like a more jarring orchestration of it. Was this exactly what you were looking for, or is this a randomness that works in your favor?

JJ: Thankfully this randomness worked in my favor. I wanted the audience to experience their childhood again by performing and interacting with a childhood tape recorder (I specifically searched for tape recorders from the 1980s) and listening to a piece of music that was performed on toy instruments. (Granted, the only two toy instruments on this piece were the toy piano and glockenspiel, but most pitched children’s instruments are diatonic, and Bach’s fugal line is chromatic.)

So, what tonal piece would survive a toy orchestration and irregular playback from thirty-year old tape recorders? The Bach Ricercar. I figured it survived a Webern orchestration, so surely it must survive vintage tape playback.

The playback was a little more “off” than I expected, but I loved the results. My main fear was that people would think that this was a pure orchestration of the Bach piece, but instead the different tape speeds produced a new piece. Of course, I wouldn’t mind having the original orchestration performed live.

CM: Your blog “Why Compose When You Can Blog?” (Great title, btw) is such a great read and looks like it can be insightful for budding composers. In it, there are entries you call “Composer Fail” where you talk about your rejections. I love that you can talk about these things that probably make other people embarrassed and shy away from discussing them. Did you always set out to talk about the failures?

JJ: Well, not specifically. My composer FAIL posts began as a catharsis for my turning thirty. As a twenty-nine-year-old composer, you worry that you won’t be successful because thirty is the cutoff year for entering huge young composer competitions. When I was twenty-nine, I had this urge to enter every single “young composer” competition while I could, and I was still receiving rejection letters. So I thought, why not share and talk about my failures? It is my way of dealing with rejection at this point. And now I’m glad I’ve continued this series on my blog because not only does it help me deal with rejection, but I think it also shows other composers that failing is a part of success. Composers (and anyone else, actually) will be rejected more times than they are accepted, but that is part of the process. I’ve learned that competitions aren’t working for me, so I’ve focused more time on establishing my connections and having my music performed. So, I hope to defang composition competition rejection letters and show young composers that you don’t have to rate your success based on your winning a competition.

CM: Okay, about your upcoming opera project–Supposedly it’s about a futuristic society where they practice cosmetic cloning. Can you say anything more about it at this point? Any other opera concepts you have in mind?

JJ: Yes! The opera I mentioned on my blog takes place in the near future, where a woman decides to clone her husband for an upgrade, only to be dismayed when the original starts to fall in love with the copy. Building a Better Joshua, the name of the opera, is a comic retelling of the Narcissus myth, as a vain couple sees their world spiral into chaos.

My librettist and I are also thinking about creating a sitcom opera about Ronald and Nancy Reagan. We’ll see what happens.

CM: What fantasy project/musician would you like to work/commission with? Personally, I would love to hear how you would write concertos of any kind!

JJ: I’m going to cheat here and say that I’d love to work with LA Opera. I was not a fan of opera growing up, but once I saw Billy Budd at the LA Opera, I wanted to write one. If LA Opera ever produced an opera of mine, I would be absolutely thrilled. (I just realized I would have to figure out what director I’d like to work with, but I haven’t done much research on opera directors.)

[As for soloists] I would love to work with Vicki Ray; she’s such a dynamic and skillful pianist. When I was in high school I went to the Piano Spheres concerts in Los Angeles and heard her perform a piece that required her to read Oscar Wilde’s De Profundis while playing the piano. (I wish I remembered the name of the piece.) She made it seem so effortless! Now, what would I write for her? A piano concerto with percussionists? An installment in my Sounds from the Gray Goo Series? Something for toy piano?

JenniferJolley.com Official website
Why Compose When You Can Blog? Jennifer’s blog
Jennifer’s YouTube channel
Jennifer’s Soundcloud page

Leah Kardos’s new work Feather Hammer is a great 40-minute perspective of where the Australian composer is at in her current state of mind. Written, performed, recorded and produced entirely by Kardos herself (with the exception of “Repeater”; CD masterer Matt Roles played the cracking bones on that track), the album is very much like a classical suite (sometimes sounding as if it could have been collaboratively recorded by Massive Attack and Arvo Part) on her first love, the piano, and its mini-movements read like pages of a diary that go from a good day filled with visions of hope to days less inspired and more stressful as a student.

The pieces don’t run into one another as they would in either a suite or some concept albums, but Kardos’s piano is such a consistent voice that it forces you to see the recording as a full-bodied work with the piano in the role of Kardos herself re-telling her story up to now. The varied sounds of the piano (straight piano vs. the flatter prepared-piano) give sort of an artistic timeline between a classical and an experimental sensibility, as if to say that the constructed has now been deconstructed.

The sound of the instruction on “DFACE” (the voice sampled from a YouTube piano tutorial) seems to invoke a statement on tedious studying, but the piece has such a colorful chord progression that I certainly would have wanted to pay attention to that instructor.

One of the most perplexing moments on the CD is “Houses”. Consisting of a very low-volume distant piano with random tapping noise in the foreground and what sounds like a ringtone towards the end, it is not only the shortest piece in the collection but the most atmospheric.

“Katerina” is another gem with a steady-pounding metronome beat and a great prepared keyboard conterpointing the straight piano throughout. “Concentrate, You” is very haunting and perhaps the darkest of these pieces with backward-looped chorus-voiced piano chords.

“Apology” is another spoken-word sampled track, this time taken from art class students at Bedford College. The keyboard has a separate dialogue and sounds disenfranchised from the randomness of the speakers in such a way that it speaks to those of us that never quite fit in. And the CD closes with “The Waiting (Reprise)”, which gives a much more assured version of the opening theme with a more advanced sound and structure.

Leah Kardos is quite a compelling artist that has already made interesting music as the indie act My Lithium & Me, and Feather Hammer definitely sounds like the promising start of a career composer.

By Chris McGovern courtesy of The Glass

Having been both a fan of compositional music and a longtime member of the Twitter and online community in general, I came to know a gentleman by the name of Thomas Deneuville. He goes by the name “tonalfreak” on Twitter, possibly to inform us of the fact that he is a strong practitioner of keeping the melodic element in the world of contemporary music, and this he does very well. Having been invited to come see one of his premieres in NY (This one being of his cantata titled Waiting For Thoreau, programmed in a recital along with some of his other works), I was very humbled to see a quite laid-back presentation of compositions arranged for both classical instruments and those that are more typical of rock like electric guitar and a drum kit. At the end of his Summer Miniatures suite he even has a transcription of Radiohead’s “Paranoid Android”.

CM: Thomas, you taught yourself guitar as a rock musician, and you went from that to studying classical violin a few years later. Was that an easy transition?

TD: It was actually a relief. I remember struggling with theory for a couple of years on my own while I was teaching myself guitar. Going to a music school brought me to another level. I immediately fell in love with solfege and literally ate the violin methods that were put in front of me, tackling second and third positions after a year. On the other hand it was also my first contact with the French music education system that still owed a lot (in spirit) to the 19th century. The same system pushed me to leave France years later.

CM: When did you decide you wanted to compose music?

TD: It was not really a decision. As soon as I was able to play chords and melodies on the guitar it was obvious that the next natural step was to compose, regardless of my technical level. What else was one supposed to do with one’s musical chops? Immediately after, I spent my spare time recording my compositions in my bedroom on a DIY multi-track system made of two boomboxes and using as many instruments as possible: violin, bagpipes, mandolin, snare drum, guitar, zither, recorder, etc. The white noise level on these recordings was unreal. In retrospect, they were very funny too.

CM: Did you ever feel pressured to imitate or write in a certain style? Or did you know what your voice was when the music came?

TD: When I was still interested in indie pop, I used to try to emulate the sound of my favorite bands (The High Llamas, The Divine Comedy, Tahiti 80, etc.) as I wanted to fit the Parisian underground musical scene. Apart from the fact that I actually never got a band together (I left France to study voice in Italy), it felt wrong and contrived, and I learned from this experience.

I am not saying anything new by claiming that the concept of style is outdated. Composers have a vast palette of techniques, tools, aesthetics they can illustrate their (musical) ideas. I believe that very few composers define themselves as “purely” minimalists, serial, spectral, etc. but most of them borrow whatever they need from these “schools” to build their own sound.

The important thing for me is to find an emotional place where I feel honest, that seems to reflect the Zeitgeist and also contains an element of risk for my writing (Just outside of my comfort zone). I don’t really know in advance what the next piece will sound like, but I know that this is the place I want to be in to write it. One would call this a “voice’, but a vibrant, changing evolving voice.

CM: Why Henry David Thoreau as the subject of your cantata?

TD: A year or so ago, I decided to focus on my growing concerns about the prevalence of technology in our society. Years of experience provided me with an insight into I.T.: I took my first programming class at the age of 8, and I currently work as an application trainer, web designer/coder, and social media consultant. These experiences have left me wondering about technology’s impact on our well-being. Are we not experiencing a collective loss of savoir-faire (As craftsmanship, cf. Richard Sennett) and savoir-vivre (Of civic experience)? How can we, as composers, raise awareness of such issues?

The underlying ideas for my cantata came to me when I got acquainted with Thoreau’s philosophy. Even though I had studied French literature extensively in high school and college, the Transcendentalists were unknown to me before I moved to New York (Surprisingly enough, I discovered Thoreau through Gandhi’s writings).

Waiting For Thoreau is a 5-movement cantata whose texts are drawn from Transcendentalist literature, New Thought tenets, and a web-based “bragging generator”. The textual contrast is reflected in the instrumentation: 3 winds (Flute, oboe, Bb clarinet), soprano, baritone, harpsichord, viola da gamba, and drum kit. I was really excited to write for viola da gamba: Ever since my teenage years, I have emotionally associated the sound of the gamba with an age when craftsmanship was valued, long before the advent of the digital era and its consequences on our lives, on the arts, or on cognition (cf. Nicholas Carr).

The title is a tongue-in-cheek reference to [Samuel] Beckett’s play. The ideals that Thoreau believed in could be reached nowadays but at the price of a deep introspection, through a fair critique of technology and faith.

CM: How do you feel about the current and future situation of classical/contemporary classical music and its audience?

TD: There’s never been a worst time to be a musician. There’s never been a better time to be a musician. The industry is not going well but we often don’t really need the industry. I believe in DIY and most tools a musician needs (Recording, promoting, selling, etc.) are largely available for very little money, if not for free.

Like many others, I also witness a shift in {new} classical music to something that’s hipper and appeals to larger audiences. Borders are blurred: Sufjan Stevens, Owen Pallett and Joanna Newsom were recently listed among the 100 Composers Under 40 by Q2 [Online substation to NY's WQXR-FM], while Nico Muhly collaborates with Bjork or Bonnie “Prince” Billy.

I am both excited and worried about this: I enjoy the new energy and the experiments in new classical music, but I anticipate some empty fads. Nothing new, though. I’m pretty sure that people during the Baroque era, for instance, were facing the same challenges. As long as composers stay honest and never forget that music is intended for an audience, we should be fine. Easy on the synths, though…

Thomas Deneuville.com
Official website

I care if you listen.com
Thomas’s blog

www.ditherquartet.com
Recorded June 2011

Violinist Jennifer Choi, player of an extensive repertoire for the instrument, and interpreter of composers as diverse as Mozart, John Zorn, and Rogers/Hammerstein (I neglected to ask her about her stint as concertmaster for the touring company of South Pacific; next time!) was recently given a boost of profile in the online classical media when she joined the esteemed quartet ETHEL, with whom she plans on giving her strongest efforts as a musician. On a beautiful late summer afternoon in NY, we hung out on an outdoor restaurant patio and had this wonderful interview.

CM: How is your take on your classical and your new music repertoires?

JC: I was trained classically and it was pretty rigorous–hardcore teachers who wanted a certain standard repertoire to be in your fingers and in a certain way, and I was always listening to the great violinists and to great musicians…Nathan Milstein, Henryk Szeryng, that old school…Michael Rabin, Perlman, I listened to Perlman when I was growing up ’cause my mom had these records in the house, and she had symphonies playing all the time. But then, when I started playing new music, I guess I was using the same approach that I had learned with classical music, and you’re using your technique–it is music after all, and there’s a thing called execution, you have to execute it well…It still has to be clean and has to be fiery. the approach is similar, although the music can be so completely different.

CM: What was it that got you started on the violin and classical music?

JC: I think it was a combination of things. My parents were very big classical music lovers, and my mother wanted to play instruments so badly in Korea when she was young, but they didn’t have the opportunity to do that. When she saw that she could have her kid do that–I have 2 sisters so we were all playing music at a very young age. But then I was also involved with the youth symphony–The Portland Youth Philharmonic, and so I saw my friends. I had a lot of friends in that group and they were all doing great things. You know Kenji Bunch? He was in that same orchestra as a violist. And people were taking it seriously, so, it was very encouraging and inspiring that people my age were thinking it was really cool, and it was cool, it was fun! We toured Europe together in this van–My first taste was probably more orchestral music, and that’s how it started.

CM: Where did your contemporary taste formulate?

JC: The Oregon Symphony was already programming modern works, and we’d go to the symphony quite often, actually, and that’s where I heard percussion sounds, brass sounds that kind of blow me away. Actually, my teachers–actually the conductor in our youth orchestra, Jacob Avshalomov, he was a composer himself. We would play his works, and he had friends in Europe and what not, and they’d give us pieces, so we were already playing a lot of new music from the time I was 14 in a professional setting, and we’d perform it in a big hall, make a big deal out of it, and it was a big deal. In fact the year that I soloed with the orchestra on Wienawski concertos, we played a piece by [John] Van Buren.

CM: No relation to the ex-president, right? [both laughing] Martin Van Buren!
Have you ever programmed music from both the old and new worlds of classical music together in one concert?

JC: Oh, yeah, yeah…Actually, I started doing that maybe from the beginning when I started playing a lot of new music. My recital at Carnegie Hall, I won this competition, and I just [programmed] it with a Schumann sonata, a John Corligliano sonata, John Zorn, Gershwin, I mean what a program, a little wild that way, and Prokofiev!

CM: And I love Prokofiev! The thing is, for me, there was a lot of later music that was hard for me to appreciate because I was so used to, like, [speaking in a posh tone] “Everything sounds like the 1700′s!”, you know, you wanted everything to be that inviting, and when I heard music from the 20th century, I was like “Wait a minute, this is a whole ‘nother feeling, this is a whole ‘nother flavor, I need more time to prepare to really kind of get into it”, and, the more you hear it, though, I mean Prokofiev is kind of melodious, he’s just got so much! I love the piano works, and of course the Violin Concertos too!

JC: In his time, though, it took a while for people in those days to get–It was new sounds, new harmonies. And now we’ve just sort of gotten used to it. I feel like it’s just how Mozart was to them, or Beethoven, people got used to that. That’s how I felt programming Zorn ten years ago, I was like “Wow, this is so out there!”, but now when I listen back, I’m like, “Oh, well what he was doing 10 years ago is not so out from music I’m hearing today!”. So, I think it just goes through cycles and the great thing is that people continue–composers, musicians–continue to come up with new material. Isn’t that amazing? That’s like amazing to me, that’s genius, that people can come up with that and then audiences get used to it eventually.

CM: There’s a lot of things you’re doing right now: ETHEL Quartet, which Todd Reynolds is a former member of, the Either/Or Ensemble, the Anti-Depressant Duo…

JC: With Kathleen Supove!

CM: Kathleen Supove! And Classical Jam, Shoko Nagai and The Ephermeral…

JC: All of these groups are great! Right now, primarily I’m doing ETHEL, just because I just got the job in June.

CM: Oh yeah, it was big news, I saw! [both chuckling]

JC: I know, seriously! And so, the other groups I’m still involved with as much as I can be, because it still gives me a variety of music to play, like ETHEL plays a certain kind of new music, and Either/Or does another kind of new music, which is great, and Classical Jam does a mix of lighter fare and classical, deep classical music mixed with lighter new music. So, it’s a variety…

CM: Everything’s a different dynamic and a different perspective…

JC: Everything’s a different dynamic, exactly! And ETHEL, it’s a band, it’s a string quartet you got to be a unit when you play. Classical Jam is a little more amorphous, it could be 5 of us, it could be 3, it could be 2, we play all different combinations of chamber music. And then Either/Or is a little bit the same way, which leads us into that recording…

CM: Oh yes, 2 by Keeril Makan. Let’s talk about 2 because it’s the lead-off of his record “Target”. What I like about it is that it’s a very sonata-like piece, ’cause it’s got all these different sections to it, and, I love the high part, the really fast high part is like my favorite part of it…[After the quiet part] it comes back, and there’s this gigantic explosion at the end which, it just sounds like…It was a lot of roaring and screeching–I think my description was it sounded like “a large building falling on top of a den of lions inside the Grand Canyon if the Grand Canyon were inside the Sistine Chapel!”

JC: Oh my God, that’s awesome! What else sounds like that??

CM: I don’t know! I wasn’t sure, I was convinced that it was electronics and he was saying “No, there’s no electronics on the recording. What that is is a bowed thundersheet”. And you were making that screeching sound…

JC: It was crazy! The set-up! ‘Cause we were in this big hall when we recorded it. I think it was SUNY Purchase. It needed to be because some of that equipment took up a lot of space for Dave [Shively] and then me right here on the violin!

CM: Usually when you record these pieces, is it done in one take?

JC: We were working with Silas Brown, he was our recording engineer, and he’s fantastic for all kinds of music, but he’s just great at picking out the spots that really need work during the day, and so it actually took 2 days just to record that piece. So we went in and did it section by section. And then we may have done a couple of run-throughs, the whole piece as well, to get the flow going on, we built it that way, and Silas did along with Keeril and Dave. The sound they got out of that piece was pretty phenomenal! It’s like striking and clear!

CM: Have you guys ever done it live?

JC: Oh yeah! We played it live a couple of times before we recorded it. We want to bring it back in our repertoire because it’s such a cool piece. Hopefully this year, this season.

CM: There’s another piece you’ve done, Helmut Lachenmann’s Toccatina. It’s very minimalist–I looked up the composer, and essentially they describe him as “musique concrete instrumentale”, which sounds like a very elegant way of saying he’s weird. [both laugh]

JC: Helmut Lachenmann is another genius of sorts. I think he’s become well known because of his originality, and I think that he actually works like how Beethoven may have worked, to that kind of detail, like, where you see the notebooks of Beethoven, there’s like little cels of motives that he used, and then he developed those, well–Lachenmann told me once that it takes him a very long time to build a composition, and I think it’s because he’s so meticulous about what what he’s hearing, and how it’s going to get on the paper so that the musician can do exactly what he wants and what he’s hearing. And those sounds are sometimes really strange–In the Toccatina piece, it’s supposed to be a study in pianissimo. That’s why it’s so quiet.

CM: It is! It’s very, very, very quiet, and yet it’s very punctual. It’s a little bit like that cello piece that Ashley [Bathgate] did [Parisot's Parisonatina al'Dodecafonia], it’s like this very percussive–It’s like it’s almost straight percussion on a stringed instrument. Maybe yours is a little less percussive…

JC: Well, but then, I am using the screw of the bow–col legno, and–nothing normal about that piece, and it's the same with the string quartets too, like "Grido", and that was the same effect, it was all special effects, but somehow when you put it all together, it felt like you were playing Beethoven! That's how intense it is!

CM: In a way it’s almost like that same kind of strength…

JC: Yeah, and structure–detail…

CM: With that same kind of harmonic, except it’s…

JC: Except it’s not harmonic…

CM: It’s more inward than that…

JC: Harmony of sounds! [laughs]

CM: It’s harmony of disharmony!

JC: But now that I’ve played so much of his music and I’ve listened to it, when I listen to it, it doesn’t sound discordant to me at all, it actually sounds very beautiful!

CM: Do you think that that’s the case with a lot of musicians, that after a while everything starts to sound more “musical”? Schoenberg is another thing, because when Hilary Hahn did Schoenberg there were probably a lot of people that were like “Why are you playing this? Why is this a release?”. Didn’t really make sense. It seems like maybe after a while if you’re a musician, everything is kind of “Where’s Waldo?” or it’s like a Rorschach test where you start to see something in there that other people can’t see.

JC: My take on that is…it’s part of history, and you live it through that music. So, whatever Schoenberg was going through at that time…

CM: It’s like there’s added appreciation once you’ve sort of gone through the history.

JC: Definitely, and language. Language has a big part of it too. I’m pretty sure Hilary Hahn has studied German and French. When you get into that, you’re getting into these cultures too, and it becomes fascinating, and the same with me and Zorn for instance–when he writes these pieces he’s got these stories in mind that have to do with, sometimes, mysticism, some religions but maybe are not so apparent in the here and now. And for me that’s interesting, to play this music that has meaning behind it. And then finding that meaning is interesting for a musician.

CM: In other words, he probably knows things that other people don’t, like in a supernatural way?

JC: Absolutely, not that he maybe believes in that, but like that he knows about it. And like Schoenberg probably knew about a lot of different things.

CM: Like tennis? [both laughing]

JC: Exactly!

CM: “Violectrica” is your solo project, and it’s a feast for the ears. It’s a little like a Todd Reynolds “Outerborough” kind of thing, sample elements, electronics, hip-hop elements here and there, particularly on the Randall Woolf piece. Any thoughts on this record?

JC: These are all composers that I have worked with really closely within the last–My gosh it’s almost 10 years, but within the last decade, and I wanted to document it because I have performed these pieces so many times in New York, and a little bit outside of New York as well. And I know that some of them are surprising to listen to a little bit, and “Oh, that’s different!”. I wouldn’t say it’s easy listening–I wanted to do an album with violin and electronics, so, ’cause I don’t think there’s too many out there, there’s a few right now but not a whole lot, and I just felt like these composers needed to be recorded, heard, and I thought this was a perfect opportunity. And the mix of composers is primarily New York-based–There’s Susie Ibarra, there’s Annie Gosfield, and Randall Woolf–Alexandra Gardiner is from DC, originally, and Padma Newsome is originally from Australia, but I had done a lot of work with him, and he is actually touring with The National now!

CM: Wow! Is there more than one composer in that band?

JC: There’s a lot, I think!

CM: ‘Cause Bryce Dessner is another one, right?

JC: Yeah, he’s great! Bryce is good! So, anyway, I thought it’d be neat to put all those together, because they’re all way different pieces too. It’s definitely an album of contrasts if you ask me. And how neat is that that you get to see so many aspects of what different composers can do?
I want to explore more of that repertoire going forward, but right now I do have to focus on ETHEL.

CM: So ETHEL is your #1 priority. That’s kind of your main act.

JC: Yes, right now, exactly. I just learned 4 programs with them this summer, and I’m about to learn the 5th. They have a great amount of repertoire right now, seriously great, and I
just want to give 100% to that at the moment. Our other violinist Cornelius Dufallo also does a lot of pieces with violin & electronics, and works with some really great composers in the area.

CM: So, pretty much everybody that works in ETHEL and everybody that works in all of your ensembles, they’re all very like-minded, there’s hardly anybody that goes “That’s a little over-the-top for me! I don’t know if I can handle that!”.

JC: You mean the music?

CM: Yeah, the music or anything you guys are going to play, everybody gets it, they get what’s happening?

JC: Actually, there’s a fair amount of pick and choose, though, ’cause we do get offers to play certain pieces, or pieces come in, and we have to decide “Can we really take this on?”, and sometimes there is over-the-top, too! [laughs]
Sometimes we’ll play pieces, and sometimes we’re like “You know what? This piece just isn’t doing anything for me anymore.” Then you know “Ok, it’s time to drop it!”. Or if it doesn’t affect us as performers, how is it supposed to affect the audience? We can’t deliver that. So there is a little bit of picking and choosing sometimes.

CM: Do you think that musicians or artists should share more of themselves? Like tell funny stories, have a journal, and talk about their life on the road, and would that be more helpful for the audience to chime in and possibly there would be more people plugging into it? Besides Hilary, there are probably more people that show this really funny or interesting side of themselves.

JC: That’s a big question, and I think a lot of people are trying to answer that right now…

CM: Because people are trying to find–”How can we market this? How can we do it in a different way?”. I don’t know other than I think that maybe what I’d like to see is more people sort of bringing out a part of their lives that you don’t really see very much.

JC: In the concert?

CM: In the concert, maybe, too, but not just in the concert, in any way that they can online, in the media.

JC: I think social media, and YouTube and Facebook, I think that’s actually probably helped, maybe you don’t see it right away–Personally I did see good results when I started posting that I’m going to play a concert here on Facebook or on YouTube, and people were coming out more, so I think social media definitely is a good thing. It’s not that hard for classical musicians to do that.

CM: The crossover thing works to some extent. It works to have people like Simone Dinnerstein and Tift Merritt playing together. The fans of each one might not see the other one so much, but it’s another thing.

JC: I think people are definitely doing that. ETHEL is going to be playing with Todd Rundgren!
I think managers and agents definitely look at that as sort of the big sell for these groups, and you know, why not? Why not? We can do it! We can play with these people, it’s fun for us, and at the same time we’re getting our music across, too!

CM: The younger audiences are probably much, much easier with the idea of this than, say, the ones with the blue hair that people joke about, because they’re all “We don’t want to change anything!”, but I think younger people like the idea of everything sort of coming together.

JC: I think so, and people are used to playing their iPods in shuffle mode, so they’re used to going back from this genre to that genre, from this group to that group, so…

CM: So it’s not so cut-and-dry anymore, really, it’s sort of skirting the line.

JC: It’s a multi-tasking nation now, we’re kind of schizo that way, our generation! That’s all good! I just like to go with the flow. That’s what my career’s been about, mainly. I think it’s hard for anyone just to do classical these days. Like Hilary Hahn, you’d think she’d just do classical, but why should she?

CM: She knows that there’s other ways of doing it, there’s other dynamics, and I think that it’s nice that other classical musicians recognize that, too.

ETHEL Central
Official website for ETHEL
Jennifer Choi.com
Jennifer’s official solo site

“…Time is your canvas and sound is your paint…”

Though these words were spoken by just one of many teachers composer Keeril Makan had in his musical upbringing, their continuing effect is obvious. His distinct brand of controlled cacophonous music is receiving wonderful press (The New Yorker, Newsday, Sequenza21, and even yours truly ); His works have been performed by great ensembles such as the Kronos Quartet, Bang On a Can All-Stars and Either/Or; His music has been featured in numerous festivals throughout the world (MATA Festival, Other Minds Festival, Gaudeamus Festival, Voix Nouvelles), and he is the recipient of several awards including the 2008 Rome Prize (American Academy in Rome), as well as awards from Meet The Composer and ASCAP. Even with such massive buzz as a composer, Keeril is also handling the position of Assistant Professor of Music at MIT. He managed to take some time and talk to us about his composer beginnings as well as his current CD Target, and a little about his life as well

CM: When you studied violin, were you thinking of a career as a violinist with any kind of soloist aspirations?

KM: I enjoyed playing violin, but I realized at a certain point that I wasn’t really a performer. I have tremendous respect for musicians who can both master their instrument and connect with an audience. I actually stopped playing violin for a number of years during college. When I came back to it in graduate school, it changed my composing. I suddenly reawakened my physical connection to sound. Ever since then, I try to play the instruments that I’m writing for if I have the opportunity. This is how I wrote both Zones d’accord and Resonance Alloy. My physical exploration of the instruments connects the music with the idiosyncrasies of my body. It makes the music more personal, and I think more unique.

CM: What was it that led you to start composing?

KM: I started composing when I was in high school at the Interlochen Arts Camp. I went as a violinist, but I took classes in conducting and composition, and found that I spent most of my time composing during those summers. I like to tell the story of the first day of that composition class. The conductor said to all of us that composing is like painting, except time is your canvas and sound is your paint. Now go compose. There wasn’t any instruction given, or models put forth. I think this had a profound impact on my life as a composer–you just compose with what you have. There is no correct way, there’s nothing you need to know before you start. As you compose, you create your own tools and teach yourself what you need to know. It’s a continual, changing process, and there are no guidelines other than your own search for self-knowledge.

CM: Who is your biggest influence?

KM: There are too many influences to name–many teachers, many colleagues and many friends. I’ve had some great teachers, but none of them were domineering figures. When I was younger, that made things difficult because I had to find my own way. As I’ve grown older, I’m thankful for the space that those early teachers gave me. All of them contributed to my growth, but none of them are towering over my shoulder as I’m composing.

CM: The piece titled Target you had written as a song cycle with poet Jena Osman. How did the idea for this piece come about, and was it your idea to collaborate with Jena?

KM: I was selected to participate within a workshop at Carnegie Hall on writing for the voice with John Harbison and Dawn Upshaw. When I was notified that I was selected, I was only given a week to find a text that I wanted to set to music, and get it cleared by Carnegie. I had met Jena at the Djerassi artist residency program, and I liked her work very much. I asked her if she had any texts that might be suitable, and she gave me a few different options. The texts were meant for performance, although in her case as spoken word. She gave me a lot of freedom to rearrange the texts as I needed. I don’t quite remember now, but I think there were two main texts that I rearranged into the five songs of Target.

CM: I must say, with the top-range notes and the dramatic weight of it in general, the piece was very powerfully sung by Laurie Rubin. What was it like to go through the process of working with her on this piece?

KM: I was assigned Laurie as the singer that I would work with by Dawn and John. I quickly searched her on the internet and learned she is blind. I talked to Laurie on the phone about her voice as well as by email, and she sent me recordings of her singing, but she never mentioned to me that she was blind. I figured that since she didn’t mention it, and she was having professional success as a singer, that I didn’t need to take her blindness into account in my composing. It’s actually a difficult part, with a lot of detail in terms of vocal inflection and rhythm. Her process for learning a piece is to have the text put into braille and have her accompanist teach her the melody by ear. But once she learned it, she’s had a string of remarkable performances with the piece.

CM: There is this incredible collapse/explosion at the end of the violin/percussion duet 2. By the way, the piece itself employs such a great use of the sonata form, but how was that last part done? Did the acoustics or production play a role, or did Jennifer [Choi] and David [Shively] slam everything they had into it? I really thought there was a third musician handling electronics on the recording (I even checked)!

KM: The ending of the piece is a structured improvisation for violin and bowed thunder sheet. David had showed me the marvels of the bowed thunder sheet when we were at college together at Oberlin, and I had been waiting for the right moment to use it. There are no electronics on this CD at all. The violin utilizes some techniques used in Zones d’accord which helped it blend with the bowed thunder sheet.

It’s funny that you should mention sonata form. When I was writing this piece, I was consciously trying to avoid any references to forms that I know. Every section explores its idea, and then never returns. I think Morton Feldman said something like if a composer succeeds in realizing his intentions when he starts a piece, then the piece will fail. Hopefully 2 is a success as a piece, so my intentions regarding the form are secondary.

CM: Zones d’accord is the unaccompanied piece for cello. Again, I thought there was an electronic element somewhere in the performance (or if it was an electric or a regular cello w/pickup) only to realize there wasn’t, and the soloist [Alex Waterman] made such a harmonic drone that sounded like guitar feedback (and the whole piece is wonderful, btw). Probably a dumb question, but do you have these instructions marked down in the score to make the musicians go to this extreme?

KM: Because I had been playing the cello as I was writing the piece, I was able to figure out how to very efficiently tell the cellist how to get the sounds I that wanted. It’s a combination of bow pressure and location, and placing the fingers of the left hand between nodal points to get some of the multiphonic-like sounds. There are short written instructions to indicate how to do the various techniques.

CM: Resonance Alloy is the percussion solo that closes the “Target” CD. You probably saw me say this in the review, but some of the structure of this piece reminds me of something a jazz group would play where the band plays the theme, takes turns playing solos, and then returns to the theme. Are you a fan of jazz and if so, did this have anything to do with the inspiration for Resonance?

KM: There’s a lot of jazz I enjoy and have a great respect for, but it’s never been a major influence on me. For me, this piece comes out of the experimental tradition, composers like [Alvin] Lucier, [James] Tenney and Reich. I certainly wasn’t composing it with a theme in mind; rather there is a continual timbral transfiguration in the piece, and an underlying rhythmic process where the rhythm simplifies, and this usually announces a new section of the piece. I’m guessing that it’s these moments of articulation that you’re hearing as points of return in the piece, which is my intention. Without these moments, I think the listener would get lost in the continual sound/noise transformation.

CM: Are there any future plans or fantasy projects you have for any specific artists on the drawing board?

KM: There are two big projects that I’m working on. The first is an operatic adaption of Ingmar Bergman’s classic film Persona, with a libretto by Jay Scheib. It is being written for Alarm Will Sound. We are still looking for commissioners and presenters for this project. I’ve written a piano/vocal score over the past year that I’m very excited about. It’s the first vocal music that I’ve written since Target. The second is an evening-length chamber piece for Either/Or for 2 clarinets/bass clarinets, percussion and string trio. We just received a Meet The Composer commission for that, which will be premiered in 2014.

Keeril Makan.com
Offcial website

www.prismquartet.com
Recorded June 2011

www.sentieriselvaggi.org
Recorded June 2011

www.jenniferchoi.com
www.ethelcentral.com
Recorded July 2011

www.carriehennemanshaw.com
Recorded June 2011

www.ensemble61.com
Recorded June 2011

www.myearsareopen.net
Recorded July 2011

www.juicevocalensemble.net
Recorded March 2011

www.jamesmooreguitar.com
www.ditherquartet.com
Recorded March 2011

www.urbanfluteproject.com
Recorded February 2011

www.natachapop.com
www.ensemblepamplemousse.org
Recorded March 2011

www.jessicaschmitz.com
www.asphaltorchestra.com
www.bangonacan.org
Recorded March 2011

www.mattmarksmusic.com
www.alarmwillsound.com
www.newamsterdamrecords.com
Recorded February 2011

www.toddreynolds.com
www.twitter.com/digifiddler
Recorded February 2011

www.fulcrumpoint.org
Recorded February 2011

www.andiespringer.com
www.transitnewmusic.com
www.redshiftensemble.com
www.redhooker.com
www.aeeb.bandcamp.com
Recorded February 2011

www.chiaraquartet.net
Recorded December 2010

www.cypressquartet.com
Recorded November 2010

It’s the 2-year anniversary of the podcast and you can support the show (purely out of the kindness of your heart) by going to myearsareopen.net and clicking on donate.  Visit www.myearsareopen.net/recordings for a list of available thank-you CD’s featuring musicians from the show.

You can also:
- “Like” us on Facebook: facebook.com/myearsareopen
- Follow me on Twitter: twitter.com/myearsareopen
- Join the email list: myearsareopen.net

www.myearsareopen.net
Recorded January 2011

www.satanspearlhorses.com
Recorded September 2010

find him on www.facebook.com
Recorded September 2010

The full program is below and features two world premieres, one of which is by Ryan Brown.  I was able to talk with Ryan and Paul separately on the phone about this new piece.  You can listen to a recording of their phone calls spliced together here:

Gangbusters  – Ryan Brown (world premiere)
For Joe Z – Bruce Pennycook (world premiere)
Chromatic Quadrachord – Paul Dresher (concert music premiere)
Glimpsed From Afar  – Paul Dresher (2006) duo for invented instruments
New Work – Paul Dresher; a preview of work-in-progress for the new Hurdy Grande

Kathy also wanted to make sure we included this which she sent in an email after recording:  “I thought of a piece that I wanted to mention. I think it’s really interesting, cleverly done, and I like the materials. It’s downright ingenious, and maybe people should know about it.  The piece is a set of 4 Etudes by Jason Freeman.  The public, visitors to the site, can create their own pieces out of the materials he gives, following a few simple rules. It’s really ingeniously done; I know, I’ve played a few realizations of them.  He has also written a New York Times blog about it; I’m sure you can find it in their archive.”

www.supove.com
www.doctornerve.org
www.twistedtutu.com
Recorded September 2010

www.vickychow.com
www.bangonacan.org
Recorded August 2010

www.ashleybathgate.com
www.bangonacan.org
Recorded September 2010

www.alarmwillsound.com
www.signalensemble.org
Recorded August 2009

www.alarmwillsound.com
www.crashensemble.com
Recorded July 2010

www.orenfader.com
Recorded July 2010

www.mayatrio.com
www.duoclockwise.com
Recorded July 2010

www.slagwerkdenhaag.nl
Recorded June 2010

www.moritzeggert.de
Recorded June 2010

www.quartetnewgeneration.com
Recorded June 2010

www.musikfabrik.eu
www.carlrosman.com
Recorded May 2010

www.musikfabrik.eu
Recorded May 2010

www.robpaterson.com
www.americanmodernensemble.org
Recorded July 2009

www.eileenmack.net
www.newspeakmusic.org
www.myspace.com/victoiremusic
www.redlightnewmusic.org
Recorded April 2010

www.newspeakmusic.org
www.fireworksensemble.org
Recorded January 2010 in a noisy place (sorry)

www.myspace.com/mellissahughessoprano
Recorded January 2010

www.jessicarivera.com
Recorded March 2010

www.screecher.com
Recorded February 2010

www.myspace.com/littlevina
Recorded February 2010

www.seattlechamberplayers.org
www.cornish.edu
Recorded June 2009

www.bmop.org
www.callithumpian.org
www.firebirdensemble.com
Recorded October 2009

www.bmop.org
Recorded October 2009

www.robertblack.org
www.bangonacan.org
Recorded May 2009

www.iceorg.org
Recorded November 2009

web.me.com/richardehaynes
www.elision.org.au
Recorded July 2009

www.carolmcgonnell.com
www.argentomusic.org
Recorded September 2009

www.sarahcahill.com
Recorded October 2009

www.earunit.org
www.pianospheres.org
Recorded August 2009

www.dalniente.com
www.shannagutierrez.com
Recorded June 2009

www.dalniente.com
www.austinwulliman.com
Recorded June 2009

www.eighthblackbird.com
Recorded August 2009

contempo.uchicago.edu
www.cso.org/musicnow
www.iceorg.org
Recorded June 2009

www.myspace.com/williamdavidlane
www.grenzenlosfoundation.com
Recorded March 2009

www.paulhillier.net
Recorded May 2009

www.ethelcentral.com
www.myspace.com/maryrowell
Recorded May 2009

www.ethelcentral.com
Recorded May 2009

www.ethelcentral.com
www.ralphfarris.com
Recorded May 2009

www.ethelcentral.com
www.corneliusdufallo.com
Recorded May 2009

www.signalensemble.org
Recorded May 2009

www.sedaroeder.com
Recorded May 2009

www.jackquartet.com
www.alarmwillsound.com
Recorded April 2009

www.nadiasirota.com
Recorded April 2009

www.ioquartet.com
Recorded March 2009

www.alexlipowski.com
www.taleaensemble.org
www.timetablepercussion.com
Recorded February 2009

www.ziporyn.com
www.bangonacan.org
www.galaktika.org
Recorded March 2009

www.blairmcmillen.com
Recorded March 2009

www.ericaward.com
www.fiveonemusic.org
Recorded January 2009

www.yarnwire.org
www.myspace.com/laurabargerpiano
Recorded February 2009

www.satomoughalian.com
www.quintet.org
www.mayatrio.com
www.perspectivesensemble.com
www.americanmodernensemble.org
Recorded February 2009

www.fluxquartet.com
www.myspace.com/flux4tet
Recorded February 2009 at the WXOU Radio Bar, 558 Hudson Street, New York, NY
Sorry for all the background noise!

www.jeffanderle.com
www.sqwonk.org
www.edmundwelles.com
www.redshiftensemble.com
www.adornoensemble.org
www.switchboardmusic.com
Recorded January 2009

www.myspace.com/derekjohnsoncomposer
www.myspace.com/basilicaproject
Recorded January 2009

www.delsolquartet.com
Recorded January 2009

www.rosebellini.com
www.redshiftensemble.com
Recorded January 2009