best laid plans
i’m back from a working spring break here in lala land. just finished booking a few shows through may and i’m back to working on the vocal piece i started in the fall (life’s too short). the original version was quickly improvised using the abelton live software program. its a very powerful looping program/sequencer that [...]
because i can't be beethoven
i’m taking a quick break from a very fruitful writing session on my new vocal piece (life’s too short)((yikes, serendipitous irony alert!!)) rehearsal starts tomorrow, more to come later.
okay, quickly i was scanning my newsreader and can’t believe i missed parris patton’s great performance art last weekend at the dangerous curve gallery. link to lovely linda’s review at the losanjealous blog and original the because i can’t be beethoven site.
piano hacks unite! bravo! bravo!
pictures from losanjealous.com
newmusicland
daniel wolf cannily points the limitations and travails about having a blog and dialogue it spawns. Personally, I think that Newmusicland is a microeconomy (or a series of microeconomies within a microeconomy) without much real at stake. Sure, there are prizes to win and teaching gigs to hand out, but in the end, it’s a [...]
the cartesian reunion "school" (a short history of a long tradition 1979-present)
Although I have decided to at least temporarily continue to make my music available, I am entirely finished with the music establishment. No mainstream American music institution will be permitted to perform my work (Not that there’s much chance of it anyway). Why? Because it’s a rigged game and because it’s run by the elite; [...]
after the darkness comes the light
sorry for the long absence. as you can tell i didn’t really feel like posting much for quite some time. some were personal reasons some were professional. overall i needed a break from myself. although the blog has been silent, life goes on. the group is doing fine and we are pretty far into recording [...]
a heathly respect for the job
its my first day back to school tomorrow and i can’t sleep. right now those who are sleeping like babies are probably have no idea what is in store for them or too burnt out to care. someone once told me its the last bit of our animal instinct trying to ‘keep us on our [...]
weddings and funerals
i think i had my 20yr hs reunion last night? i’m still not quite sure how to process it? last night we shared a show with a long forgotten friend (from kansas) that turned out to be much more than i ever expected. you only expect to run into people like this at weddings and [...]
realnewmusic reh mp3's online
rehearsal mp3′s from monday night are now online. i would have posted some from today’s rehearsal, but i forgot to unpause my minidisc. they are both of modular study #1 (11/25/05). this first is a full run. its a little slow and loose at times but has builds to some nice moments. the second is [...]
the freight train theory of history
the results of the my latest compositions are starting to take shape. one of these new pieces (fearless leader) represents a new direction for my music. ligeti’s death got me thinking about his famous quote:
“Now there is no taboo; everything is allowed. But one cannot simply go back to tonality, it’s not the way. We must find a way of neither going back nor continuing the avant-garde. I am in a prison: one wall is the avant-garde, the other wall is the past, and I want to escape.”
i think his point isn’t really about the rejection of tonality or the acceptance of the avant guard, but the idea that once you choose to follow freight train theory of history, to progress you must reject something else to move forward (ernest krenek in the ockeghem bio).
i think there is a third way. innovation for the sake of something new can lead empty art. my new works are influenced by performance considerations than by artistic innovation. not anything i’m doing is new or cutting edge, but the combinations of these ideas are a practical matter and a response to the limitations of performance and rehearsal i have faced for the past three years.
the pieces are written in c score, to be played by an indeterminate size ensemble so that we are able to adjust the orchestration for each group that gets together to play.
these pieces also have an indeterminacy of parts, form and orchestration. they can be realized in a performance in a precomposed fashion in which all the parts are assigned and the piece unfolds in a specific manner.
yet we also can create a version so that in some sections the musicians can choose which lines to play and even change the form and internal repetition structure from show to show.
somehow the idea of opening up the score for future “customization” makes more sense to me these days. i can think of many examples of similar ideas (duke ellington, charles mingus, terry riley, cornelius cardew…) but this is more an solution to a specific problem.
in rehearsal the early realizations of this have been powerful. it changes the power structure of an ensemble; for us to make music you have to go beyond just playing what is on the page. decisions are made and agreed upon with the ensemble that really matter in performance. how do we want this to unfold? what is the best way to get to the center of this music? where is this piece going? so far many of the “happy accidents” have made the music much stronger. there is such a difference when everybody is when they are given freedom to choose and interact than when they are assigned a specific role.
three years ago i created this ensemble with an idea of an specific instrumentation that i was interested in working with. now i have turned around 180 degrees. its all about having a group a people that want to get together and make music on a consistent basis because we have to express ourselves through the communal nature of rehearsal and performance. the size of the ensemble can expand and contract based on our busy schedules, a only moderately balanced quorum is needed to put on a show. in a very early review, i hope these “adjustments” to my process have freed my ensemble to create music in a more creative and collaborative way and perform in far more often in the future. fto!
on hiatus
since my college classes are now under control, the past few weeks i have been getting a lot of writing in. i have sketched enough material for probably 5 or 6 new compositions. the material came fast and furious so i’m going on hiatus to get some writing done. recently i have noticed some patterns [...]
minimalist jukebox, part I
this past saturday night i attended what was the first of the five concerts (that i’m going to) in the minimalist jukebox festival taking place here in los angeles. i had mixed feelings for the evening, mostly because the first night featured steve reich. its not that i don’t like his music, but that i like it a great deal. variations for winds, strings and keyboards, and three movements for orchestra were the first two minimalist pieces that was introduced to. having to wait almost 20 years to hear them live is pretty bittersweet and sums up my feelings about much of this festival.
since i’m not a critic i’m not going try and organize my thoughts into a complete narrative and instead share them as they come:
flipping through my program i found it curious that their fearless leader esa-pekka salonen declined to conduct anything in this festival. i know he needs to travel and guest conduct to promote himself, but is conducting beethoven’s 5th one more time that important?
update: its been pointed out to me that essa pekka was premiering a new opera by kaaja sarajaho in paris this week.
overall the performance was transcendent. the tempos of both the variations and three movements were a bit on the slow side for my taste, but the effect in the variations was very similar to watching the sun come up. reich is minimalist with a capital M, giving each section of the orchestra only one job to do. the strings and brass are the sustain, the woodwinds and keyboards are the ostinato machine.
the hall is still not very good match for any amplified music (reich seems to come off the worst), but the amplified keyboards in the first half were the most successful blend that i had heard.
the crowd was pretty light with many of the subscription seats empty and i really despise having to sit in the dark during concerts.
the amplification became most disconcerting during tehillim (although better than the premier performance of you are) the vocalists were amplified through the house and made the orchestra seem weak and feeble. its like listening to your headphones only with only the treble. after a while i got used to it, but the hand percussion(clapping and shakers) couldn’t compete. i would have changed all of the clapping to claves to get a better ictus and tighten up the ensemble on stage.
i think the best solution is to keep all amplification limited to amps or a small pa on the stage. then the sounds at least match and blend with the ensemble. this worked much better with the keyboard and amp grant gershon used to accompany meredith monk and the master chorale on sunday night.
synergy vocals gave a fine performance, especially once the soprano (amy haworth?) voice warmed up, but the opening and closing syncopation counterpoint sounded pretty muddy.
their outfits didn’t quite match the evening, when they came out in spangled tops the first thing i thought was swingle singers. once i read their bio, i understood that is were their founder is from.
the final result? i was under whelmed, but i cannot really fault the performers. if this music hadn’t been a part of my dna i would have probably been thrilled. the memory is usually better than the moment.
sunday night was an infinitely better. it started off with grant gershon’s customary introduction to the evenings music. his descriptions are clear and simple to the point that even my mother would be interested in attending the concert. the mood was more upbeat than saturday, the crowd almost full and the house lights were on just enough to read the program.
both part’s works the beatitudes and by the waters of bablyon we sat and wept accent all the best elements of disney hall. even though i’m basically agnostic, the organ and chorus of the beatitudes probably point to some kind of intelligent design.
i didn’t know what to expect of the meredith monk pieces that followed. i hadn’t seen her perform live before (although i had the chance) and most opinions were that she was a minor minimalist, probably a few rungs below reich, glass and riley. i had listened to some of her music in school and more recently from ubuweb , but you have to see it live to get it.
it was the most human musical performance i have attended, but let me digress a little.
overall i enjoy disney hall for its architecture and great acoustics for “classical” music performances. it is a cathedral of and for music that most of the time overwhelms the performers who cannot quite rise above the building they are performing in. sometimes it even has that tomblike quality of what it must have felt like being buried alive with the pharaoh in the pyramids. “hey this sucks being buried alive, but the architecture is grand”
so with all that being said, meredith’s monks music was the first performance to surpass the architecture (that i have seen). she adapted her movement and music to fit the master chorale vocalists and it came off very well. i usually hate any movement with vocals. peter sellars staging and movement in john adams el nino was not the worst, but was very similar to the choreography you can see with any high school colorguard/flag team in competition. monk’s movement brought out inherent repetitions and patterns and destroyed the high art concept of ensemble. there wasn’t an orchestra or chorus on the stage, only people expressing themselves through movement and voice. i just kick myself for not seeing her live earlier. mea culpa!
after the incredible first half, i knew the second half was the compromise of the evening. i’m sure not many people would consider michael torke a minimalist in any sense, only that his music is rhythmic and toe-tapping. my wife started singing along to magnificent seven during his copeland-esque introduction to the book of proverbs. in terms of orchestration, a maximalist would be a better description (but not a totalist in the definition of kyle gann). my main gripes with torke’s work was the orchestrational blinders he must use while composing. did he want to write an orchestra piece or a sax quartet with string accompaniment? the filigree transitions either are very poorly written or show a lack of interest in the actual performance of the work. it looked like the audience was confused also, there were probably 10-15 walkouts during the piece and yet it received the largest applause and standing ovation with two curtain calls.
although my wife was pretty upset after the second half (this is the first concert she ever left burning mad, mostly because of the second half music was not anywhere as good at what preceded it), i’m not sure why anybody would walkout during the torke, especially after the sitting through the part or monk? maybe they are the same people who leave the dodger games after the 7th inning to beat traffic?
next: tonight i’m off to see my guitarist dave kurutz perform the glenn branca
purcell's bitch
anyway, what do you think of the title. i overheard somebody talking a little shit about me the other day. mumbled something that my music was bad purcell. i took it as a compliment. now i want to write something to make it official.
its my friday and i already got a good start on my weekend by skipping my train this morning to get a few hours of writing before i drove into work at the last minute. its funny but i know its”writing time” where i’m a little pissed off about it. my good friend ryan kelly used to say it best. “my day job is getting in the way of my personal life”
that all being said, losing yourself in teaching classes is a good thing. i’m really happy with teaching this semester. i think i’ve made some good adjustments and there is much less stress than fall. next week my music ed students will be finishing up teaching 4 weeks of 4th grade music. you probably wouldn’t think it, but 4th grade is the ultimate music teaching experience. they are at the perfect place to be introduced to music performance (remember the recorder?). they also are a lot more honest and open (concrete stage of development) to good and bad teaching sequences and strategies. they will really let you know if they don’t think you are doing a good job. its a really great experience (and somewhat painful) for the pre-credential teachers. i’m really proud how the kept their heads up and took their first steps at teaching. it wasn’t always pretty, but now they have a sense of what the future is so now they can start focusing what the first years of teaching will really be like.
the women’s music festival last week was very interesting. it was fun to see ethel perform some great music and swap some stories in the world’s worst hotel bar afterwards. marc swed evidently liked it, although i’m not sure if he ever has aesthetically criticized much. its great that he is such a supporter and good writer about new music, but sometimes i wonder if we are at the same concert. my luck i’ll be the first one to really feel his wrath. oh well, what do they say… any press is good press. btw… it was mentioned in swed’s review that our vocal department doesn’t want meredith monk to give a clinic. wtf??? kinda too late, i think they can already hear her on tv.
i also just found another good one here
(click on the watch button after the flash introduction)
Retrace Our Steps (2005), Background and Influences
i started assembling the librettro for retrace our steps at the end of my grad school experience sometime in spring of 03. i had never written any vocal music and was encouraged by vocalist nicole baker (who is on the faculty at csuf) to write her a piece.
background
i not really a “word” guy and have never been able to remember lyrics from any song, but writing for how the voice sounds was of course really appealing… duh.
influences
at the time i was writing retrace i was coming out of my grad school experience and had been studying major large scale works that represented composers at the top of their game. after studying monteverdi’s coronation of poppea, bach’s goldberg variations, and glass’s einstein on the beach i had been blown away by the amazing artistic and contemplative music that each had written. these pieces really make it for me as a listening experience, but to dissect them and understand how they are organized and the logic used to create them was very humbling. did i feel that my first vocal piece attain those goals? not really, but after writing large amounts of consumable music i really wanted to play in a different sandbox.
during this time i was also very taken with my friend and mental collaborator sean ferguson’s great piece society of the spectacle (2000?). watching its first performance was an electrifying experience and really motivated me to get off my ass and write. there are many similarities to both pieces (that should be discussed further) and we have had some great nights discussing my “plagiarism” of his work (the penultimate line in both of our pieces is plagiarism is necessary). the best thing of sean’s spectacle that i stole was the way he used levels of obliqueness to create meaning in his text . although i think philip glass’s non-narrative work einstein on the beach is the most important work written in the last 50 years, i do have one conceptual gripe with him and a few others. the non-narrative obliqueness of the text for three+ hours is a little much for my friends to endure. (i know… mtv generation) sean solved this problem beautifully by creating a non-narrative composition whose subject is vague and oblique (consumerism/alienation) and used levels of obliqueness to delay the first direct statement to the audience 3/4 of the way through his piece. he then retreats back into a more oblique setting of his libretto, leaving through the same rabbit hole he entered.
this was going to be my solution also… i could present a subject drama (oratorio) that contained a politically aggressive message by setting the text using various levels of obliqueness to obscure my “message”. as the piece unfolded it would i would come out of the rabbit hole and “get to my point” and then immediately retreat into the symbols and layers of the assembled text.
in short, i had a strong message to convey, but didn’t want to the performance to become “preachy” by dealing with the libretto in a direct fashion.
dusk in nyc
nyc1 038,originally uploaded by pbe. its been a great week in nyc. its great how a forced break from lesson plans and composing puts things in perspective. things that seemed like big problems now seem much smaller now. its probably because i spent most of the break working on the new cd. many of our [...]
winter break
the semester is over, but i still have final papers to grade and a lot lesson planning to do before over the break. i’m teaching an advanced fundamentals class and its been pretty long since i thought about what “advanced fundamentals” is. the department has some general guidelines of where they should be able to [...]
back to school
the last couple weeks i have been gearing up for my return to teaching, although this year is much different. class starts in 2 weeks and usually time of the year is all stress. part of it is worrying about the simple things, did they screw up my schedule? how many of my best students [...]
florida or germany
i’ll be spending the next six days in one of those places…. not by choice, but by family. by the way… why do people choose to leave there friends and family behind, move to a warmer climate where they don’t have to pay property taxes and ignore everything they did for the last 30 years. [...]
composer camp
just finished my composer camp victory lap with my pitbull pal javi. we took a very scenic walk through the hills above my house where you can see the jpl campus, mt. baldi, the hollywood sign, downtown los angeles skyline and catalina(on a clear day which today was!). victory laps are reserved for sunday nights [...]
belated meme
thanks devin for the nudge…. Total Volume of Music on your computer?studio pc-1198 songs, 7.5gbstudio mac, 2791, 18.6gb Last CD you bought?gimmie fiction, spoon Songs/Albums/Podcasts currently playing? i usually alternate between listening to pop music, art music, and my audible subscriptions of this american life. now that a cheaper version is available (podcasting) i have [...]
stale dogma
in kyle gann’s continuing description of the uptown/downtown aesthetic differences in new york i realize that these circumstances defined my early career as a musician and more recently as a composer. he sets the groundwork of what choices a young composer in training at a university must face. There is a kind of student who [...]
where have you been paul bailey?
that is a good question, my blog posts have been few and far between for the last few months. (thanks to the fredosphere for nudging me out of my van down by the river) . After reading Ayelet Waldman’s article in today’s Salon i realized that i also fit a similar pattern (although without the [...]
not your mother's string quartet
kyle gann introduces the west coast to ethel (ny based string quartet). they are playing at the Southern California Institute of Architecture this saturday feb 26th at 3pm . mikel rouse’s new piece music for minorities is coming to ucla live/royce hall march 16-19 (kyle, are you writing his feature also?) CLASSICAL MUSIC A bold [...]
this is a composer's blog
this is a composer’s blog, so i guess i should be writing about composing. on the other hand, i’m a pretty lucky guy. it’s very important to write music and be able to have it played immediately in rehearsal. the feedback of the group (nonverbal and verbal) gives me confirmation on the level of success [...]
Music from Summerland, part 1
this is the first in the series of blogs about pieces we are currently performing. think of this of a more friendly style of program notes for our next show at the cerritos center for the performing arts on wed, jan 19th.
music from summerland-2002
this piece was started in the fall of 2001 and was completed summer 2002. it was the first piece written specifically for my group (pbe) and is heavily influenced by movie scores, pop/rock music, and the composers michael nyman/steve reich/philip glass. i wanted to create music that combined simple rock/pop harmonies with one- and two-part forms. all of the movements in music for summerland are monogestural (they all express one thing, and in a way each piece is its own self-contained universe). the process for creating these was pretty much the same: work out a few chord progressions and musical gestures, decide where i wanted to take the piece (mostly through form and overall length of each movement), and orchestrate it based on the instruments i had available.
as the piece was completed, rehearsals and the recording session were scheduled, and the pbe was formed. the first recording was completed with eight hours of rehearsal and two recording sessions in which the strings were recorded separately from the rest of the ensemble (electric guitar, electric bass, keyboard, vibes, trombone and bari sax) because of time limitations.
the pieces were originally not named. naming things is a strange thing for me. i originally wanted listeners to project their own values onto the music. for a while i thought about giving them very generic names and i originally assigned them roman numerals I-VII. after too many questions about the numbers, i caved into requests and gave them “proper” names.
the title “summerland” comes from a set of writings by peter lamborn wilson, an anarchist/situationist writer who writes under the pseudonym hakim bey. after reading some of his writings, the term summerland came to have a new meaning, especially regarding the creation of this ensemble. wilson talks a lot about a TAZ, or tong. he describes the TAZ (temporary autonomous zone) as a place where people come together outside of society to create and share without engaging in commerce. he feels that this is the first step to living outside consumer culture. creating summerland was like starting a temporary anarchist training camp. the idea of getting nine musicians together and rehearsing and recording outside of the commercial music world (with limited or no pay) is very uncommon, and this was my first step at both writing a large composition and bringing together a collective of musicians to make music without commercial constraints.
next post:
summerland mvts 1-3, overcoming tourism, the palimpsest, boundary violations.
