For composers, a dissertation project is a musical composition that represents the culmination of nine or more years of intensive learning and training. The Story of Our Journey acted as such in more ways than I could have imagined while pushing me far beyond the typical composition experience. I share these thoughts both as a reflection and as a vision for my artistic aspirations.

Collaboration

Music is a collaborative art by nature. Composers share their music with performers who bring that music to the public. Music also has a long-standing tradition to reach across disciplines, as in dance, theater, film, and other media. The Story of Our Journey took collaboration to another level. I partnered with clarinetist Csaba Jevtic-Somlai, who enthusiastically worked as an equal partner in securing funds and connections with the people and resources we needed. We received a commission from the City of Phoenix Office of Arts and Culture, which has been a delightful opportunity. They opened up the city to us for venues and continue to support our endeavors. Csaba also got us in contact with Their Story Is Our Story, a refugee advocacy organization, to use their footage for the work. They also have Esther Michela making video to go along with the piece. This project opened my eyes to how willing people are to do something outside of their normal efforts when enlivened by strong vision.

Concept

My typical composition process has relied on extramusical ideas to varying degrees. Some projects have used outside sources as a structural map, and others have not had a program until after the piece is complete. Yet I have never achieved the level of intimacy between concept and product found in The Story of Our Journey. Suggested by my dissertation chair Paul Rudy, I centralized every creative and technical aspect with one unifying concept, which was “to reveal the individual behind the refugee label.” Bold ideas flowed freely out of the concept, and it gave me confidence early on in the writing process. Since this project, I am finding my vision for my composing and my career to be clearer. I have also found a brainstormed concept is exciting to everyone involved or potentially involved. After almost a decade dedicated to strengthening my perceived weaknesses in craft, I find it so refreshing to be motivated by what I hope is communicated in the music.

Connection

The words from the footage provided by Their Story Is Our Story opened up a trove of semantic associations from which the music springs. I have recently felt unsatisfied when working with text, and I found myself freed from this problem for the first time through the centralized concept. Within the words, I found pitch, rhythm, color, textures, structure, and drama that unfolded naturally through the concept-first approach. And in a symbiotic relationship, I learned I could delete phrases of text and let the music carry meaning in its absence, limiting the text to fragments (in what feels more artistically subtle to me). The video will further carry associations to complement the text and music.

Computer

Although I have ample experience in Max, Pure Data, and ProTools, Ableton Live was relatively new to me. As mentioned in my previous post, I found Ableton to be a user-friendly software that did exactly what I needed. In fact, my first musical work on this piece consisted of open experimentation in the software, and it opened up my eyes to countless possibilities. Because Max is so labor-intensive compared to the digital audio workstation environment, I found my writing process accelerated and refined. I am eager to take on more projects with an electronic component to them.

Culmination

The above ideas touch on what I pulled from this experience and will do in the future, and The Story of Our Journey also satisfies many of my dreams and goals I have carried with me since the beginning of my composition career. I found this project to be a culminating event in the following ways:

It’s really long. I always wanted to write a concert-length piece, and this one is 51 minutes long, filled with drama and meaning.
It plays with recorded text. Ever since high school, I have been fascinated with language and the nuance of the human voice. I recall my first desire to write music to text was in hearing the seminal “I Have a Dream” speech by Martin Luther King Jr. Expressing text in song has never come naturally for me, but my narrated text in Romance Sonámbulo and in Connect/Disconnect pulled some of the best music from me. The Story of Our Journey takes those earlier projects to a new level while treating me to one of my great passions. No wonder why Berio’s Sinfonia pulled me into academic music-making…
It deals with an issue that seeks to make a difference. Music-making for me did not come out of Mozart symphonies nor did it come from The Rite of Spring. My desire to write music came from the rhetoric behind charity stunts such as Live 8 (and a Google search later to Live Aid). I was mesmerized by this idea that music could impact people for good, and I looked up to songwriters, most notably Peter Gabriel, as role models. As my understanding of the world evolved, my belief in this role of music diminished considerably, although several sacred works carry deep meaning to me. The concept-driven approach revealed ways I could tackle meaningful topics in an artful and mature way that I believe is pivotal in fulfilling my musical dreams.
It uses clarinet. I cannot escape my own instrument. I have written more pieces for clarinet than any other piece, largely because I have befriended many clarinetists over the years. It is only fitting that such an important work be inaugurated with the instrument I know intimately.
It uses synth sounds. As hinted earlier, my background in music does not square well with my contemporaries. I immersed myself in 80’s synth music in high school and constantly wrote songs on my Korg Triton LE, including one performed at the high school talent show with singing and beat boxing included. The synthesizer sounds in The Story of Our Journey unabashedly uses synthetic sounds while avoiding the follies of mainstream synth pop.
It involved longstanding friendship. Most of my best opportunities have come when friends have reached out to me or I reached out to them. Csaba and I first played together in 2014, and it was a pleasant surprise when he initiated this project. Working with friends is better every time.

As I look forward to post-graduation life, I see an exciting future. I have never felt freer and more optimistic about my composition career than I do now, both for the academic job market and for freelancing. The pandemic poses some problems while stirring creative impulses to find a solution. I recognize The Story of Our Journey as a turning point as I draw from the past and leap towards the future.