The end of the aughts
It is a new decade. Which is really just a point on a circle – more accurately – a tightly wound spiral. One that we attribute significance solely for the purpose of historical analysis. Not to mention the idea of the New Year. It's just a procession of energies and time. It seems we like to think we can stop it for a moment and take stock; and that the stopping has significance. Of course, if we could truly stop time...well, that would be interesting (ever let go of a spinning merry-go-round?).
10 years ago I was in my fourth year at Ithaca College. When I think back, it's sort of a black hole. In January of '99 I was in London for the semester; in January of '01 I was finishing my final year at IC. So that middle ground seems rather uninteresting, or unmarked in my memory. It was the first time I had a lead role in an opera; the Vicar in Britten's Albert Herring. The story here is that I spent the entire rehearsal process as the Vicar's cover/understudy. And then a week before the show opened, I found out I would do the entire run, due to the original singer's required vocal rest. Had that not occurred, I probably wouldn't have been bit by the opera bug and my current dreams and desires would be rather different.
That was a time when the music that I thought was most effective required some sort of theatrical bent, or some other performing art in its rendering. From an audience perspective, I've always found chamber music concerts and orchestra concerts somewhat boring, even though I absolutely love the music. Whenever I "check in" with the other audience members, it seems their focus is lacking and when there's some story or images or dance the focus seems much deeper. I often wonder if audiences are more penetrated by multimedia than simple singular focus events. As a sometime meditator and lover of simple things, I'm clearly torn on this subject. I think of fewer powerful images than a pianist and grand piano occupying a stage and performing. Or similarly, a string quartet or smaller ensemble. But as soon as the number reaches 10 or so, I'm distracted by the rather un-unified front. Especially with orchestral music: I arrive, find my seat, and close my eyes...then I'm in heaven. But the problem with this way of experiencing music is that it denies half the elements of performance. So, what to do...?
The following year, while in London, I became obsessed with music-theater. This could be anything from simple blocking (a la theatre), or dramatic lighting, or some form of language taking place in music... and the continuum extends all the way to opera. My memory of the concerts during that time are plastered with strong imagery, and the music seems to envelop the imagery as I recall them. It seems, due to the theatrical presentation, my mind is hooked in from more than one angle. It's not just music, it's also a relationship to space, and costumes, or blocking and I actually recall the music itself with more depth and clarity than other concerts that lacked this sort of presentation. Again, what to do...?
I continued to pursue this bent as a composer, and tried to hang on as long as possible upon pursuing my Masters degree at the University of Michigan. Due to my newness in Ann Arbor, I had little time to make the connections with actors and directors and other schools to pursue this sort of musical experimentation. And I had also fallen in love and completed my degree in 1 year so that I could join with my beloved at the time. I just couldn't hack school anymore. UM was incredible, and in retrospect, I wish I had stayed longer, but my life's energy wouldn't allow me much more time with the intellectual pursuit of music within an institution. There was one piece, from Basho, which I composed for a a harpist friend at UM. She had a keen kinesthetic sense and I composed the work around her quality of movement with the instrument. Her recoil after striking a chord and other such things. The piece was successful at UM and that summer I composed Michiyuki for Naoko Takada using her quality of movement as a continual focus of the piece. (I desperately need videos of these pieces).
The story goes on... Upon leaving Michigan, I moved to Massachusetts, lived on a haunted horse farm; moved to Taos, NM, waited tables, began playing jazz piano for a living, wrote my first orchestra piece; moved back to MA, worked as a stone mason/gardener; returned to Taos, gigged all over NM; and for several years I took a spotty hiatus from composing. A few projects came along, but it wasn't until about 3 years ago that a bit of momentum struck and I began writing a tad more. Now, finally, I am in a position to truly delve into my compositional language again. I've composed mostly vocal music in the past few years, and it's as though I'm starting again at 15, back when my interface with music was as a singer. And instead of going to college, I'm teaching college; and instead of composing instrumental works with a theatrical bent, I'm writing vocal music which is theatrical by its nature; and most significantly, I'm hungry for an opera.
I'm not sure if any of this makes sense, but there's a certain timely architecture that I'm seeing in my mind. And as I said at the beginning, it's really not that significant, but in stopping the spiral for just a moment, I feel like I'm at a new jumping point. The aughts were pretty much the antithesis of the nineties for me. The nineties were about school, rigidity, focus, incredible amounts of learning, trying anything anyone suggested, etc. The aughts were about freedom, lack of focus, slowing down, understanding life without the structure of school, aloneness, and seeking a true sense of direction and desire. And now that we're in the tens, it's about integrating those 2 decades as a composer/performer, and moving into life with a balance between structure and space.
10 years ago I was in my fourth year at Ithaca College. When I think back, it's sort of a black hole. In January of '99 I was in London for the semester; in January of '01 I was finishing my final year at IC. So that middle ground seems rather uninteresting, or unmarked in my memory. It was the first time I had a lead role in an opera; the Vicar in Britten's Albert Herring. The story here is that I spent the entire rehearsal process as the Vicar's cover/understudy. And then a week before the show opened, I found out I would do the entire run, due to the original singer's required vocal rest. Had that not occurred, I probably wouldn't have been bit by the opera bug and my current dreams and desires would be rather different.
That was a time when the music that I thought was most effective required some sort of theatrical bent, or some other performing art in its rendering. From an audience perspective, I've always found chamber music concerts and orchestra concerts somewhat boring, even though I absolutely love the music. Whenever I "check in" with the other audience members, it seems their focus is lacking and when there's some story or images or dance the focus seems much deeper. I often wonder if audiences are more penetrated by multimedia than simple singular focus events. As a sometime meditator and lover of simple things, I'm clearly torn on this subject. I think of fewer powerful images than a pianist and grand piano occupying a stage and performing. Or similarly, a string quartet or smaller ensemble. But as soon as the number reaches 10 or so, I'm distracted by the rather un-unified front. Especially with orchestral music: I arrive, find my seat, and close my eyes...then I'm in heaven. But the problem with this way of experiencing music is that it denies half the elements of performance. So, what to do...?
The following year, while in London, I became obsessed with music-theater. This could be anything from simple blocking (a la theatre), or dramatic lighting, or some form of language taking place in music... and the continuum extends all the way to opera. My memory of the concerts during that time are plastered with strong imagery, and the music seems to envelop the imagery as I recall them. It seems, due to the theatrical presentation, my mind is hooked in from more than one angle. It's not just music, it's also a relationship to space, and costumes, or blocking and I actually recall the music itself with more depth and clarity than other concerts that lacked this sort of presentation. Again, what to do...?
I continued to pursue this bent as a composer, and tried to hang on as long as possible upon pursuing my Masters degree at the University of Michigan. Due to my newness in Ann Arbor, I had little time to make the connections with actors and directors and other schools to pursue this sort of musical experimentation. And I had also fallen in love and completed my degree in 1 year so that I could join with my beloved at the time. I just couldn't hack school anymore. UM was incredible, and in retrospect, I wish I had stayed longer, but my life's energy wouldn't allow me much more time with the intellectual pursuit of music within an institution. There was one piece, from Basho, which I composed for a a harpist friend at UM. She had a keen kinesthetic sense and I composed the work around her quality of movement with the instrument. Her recoil after striking a chord and other such things. The piece was successful at UM and that summer I composed Michiyuki for Naoko Takada using her quality of movement as a continual focus of the piece. (I desperately need videos of these pieces).
The story goes on... Upon leaving Michigan, I moved to Massachusetts, lived on a haunted horse farm; moved to Taos, NM, waited tables, began playing jazz piano for a living, wrote my first orchestra piece; moved back to MA, worked as a stone mason/gardener; returned to Taos, gigged all over NM; and for several years I took a spotty hiatus from composing. A few projects came along, but it wasn't until about 3 years ago that a bit of momentum struck and I began writing a tad more. Now, finally, I am in a position to truly delve into my compositional language again. I've composed mostly vocal music in the past few years, and it's as though I'm starting again at 15, back when my interface with music was as a singer. And instead of going to college, I'm teaching college; and instead of composing instrumental works with a theatrical bent, I'm writing vocal music which is theatrical by its nature; and most significantly, I'm hungry for an opera.
I'm not sure if any of this makes sense, but there's a certain timely architecture that I'm seeing in my mind. And as I said at the beginning, it's really not that significant, but in stopping the spiral for just a moment, I feel like I'm at a new jumping point. The aughts were pretty much the antithesis of the nineties for me. The nineties were about school, rigidity, focus, incredible amounts of learning, trying anything anyone suggested, etc. The aughts were about freedom, lack of focus, slowing down, understanding life without the structure of school, aloneness, and seeking a true sense of direction and desire. And now that we're in the tens, it's about integrating those 2 decades as a composer/performer, and moving into life with a balance between structure and space.