Music Alive: Resources and Curation for a 21st-Century Listener

To continue and answer in part a question from the last post (Baby Mozart), I ask here: If Mozart, Beethoven, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Berio, and Boulez are all outdated, then where is the classical art form? What is happening in the 21st century for performers, composers, and most of all, listeners? There is excellent news: the tradition thrives in a way perhaps unheard of in centuries past. Thousands of composers and tens of thousands of performers, all trained to a professional level, play with ensembles around the world, write, produce, and arrange music in both the concert, film/media, and popular scenes, teach, advocate, and spread ideas through sound. The number of composer training programs, competitions, grant opportunities, music-based residencies, and calls for scores that repeat yearly or every few years numbers over 800, and many organizations see music as an avenue to promote messages of social advocacy for good. The sheer amount of opportunities for composers today is promising, but where is the music? Why do orchestras seem completely unaware of what surrounds them? Why do so many orchestras still carry a museum culture?

Perhaps awareness is difficult because it takes time to seek after great music in the riffraff of so many aspiring artists. Certain musicians do rise to the surface though. For example, an orchestra is looking for music with lots of style and excitement—why not commission Valerie Coleman, James Mobberley, or Christian Asplund? Or something thrilling and virtuosic like a piece based on the idea of video games from Andrew Norman or a percussion concerto from Chen Yi? An atmospheric, otherworldly exploration of sound? George Friedrich Haas or Kaija Saariaho would do. Something passionate, deeply personal, and timely? Lansing McLoskey or Alvin Singleton would be marvelous options. Or something simply beautiful and immediate by Hannah Lash or by recent Pulitzer Prize-winner Mary Ellen Childs (not all their music fits in this category, but orchestras seem to like the very accessible)? Or Stephen Hartke, Silvio Ferraz, Gabriel Bolaños, Augusta Read Thomas, Dave Rakowski, Amy Williams, David Felder, Panayiotis Kokoras, Mark Applebaum, Louis Karchin, or so many others? These are already accomplished composers who have been fortunate enough to get some big-name performances, so imagine how many younger composers also have something to offer if these were the highlights of the concert with young composers as the openers!

How do orchestras currently program their concerts? Let’s take a look at an unnamed symphony orchestra’s concert season for an example:

1. First, “Beethoven for the Generations” features only Beethoven to celebrate the legend’s 250th birthday. Of course, one concert is not enough to celebrate: this season will feature ALL nine symphonies and much more from him.

2. The next concert is titled “Beethoven, Brahms, and Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto.” There are four pieces: Brahms, Mendelssohn, [Vivian Fung], and Beethoven. Oh, there was a piece by a living composer, but our embarrassment of the piece left it out of the concert title and hid it in the middle of a cozy program of pieces heard so much that many in the audience have it memorized.

3. Next, “Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra, Ax performs Beethoven.” This begins with Louis Andriessen’s The nine symphonies of Beethoven. Even invoking the name of Beethoven as a living composer doesn’t make the cut for a concert title…

4. “Zukerman plays Beethoven’s Violin Concerto,” and Beethoven overshadows Janacek (early 1900s) and even our beloved Mozart.

5. “Beethoven’s Mass in C” has a Haydn and Beethoven sandwich with some James MacMillan (living composer) hidden inside.

6. “Schumman’s ‘Rhenish’ and Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto” is the concert title that excludes Samuel Barber, indisputably one of the most popular American composers ever.

7. “Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony and Midori Plays Dvorak” features the two listed and, oops we forgot Anna Clyne (recent Pulitzer Prize winner).

8. The only mention of a post-1945 composer happens in a celebration of a violinist who played a modern piece by Dutilleux, but wait… “Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, and Tree of Dreams.” At least the piece title is catchy enough to hide a composer’s name that some wouldn’t recognize (and during the concert, Dutilleux’s piece is sandwiched between the big shots from on average 150 years ago).

To sum up the entire concert season’s promotion: yikes.

One solution for this serious issue is the concept of curation. The word has popped up lately among composers and performers, and it deserves further investigation. To curate is to borrow the model that art museums use to showcase their works. A museum sets expectations for the experience, organizes its art into logical categories, provides historical context, and includes knowledgeable historians and other specialists to answer questions. Each museum has a different standing collection and rotates through visiting exhibits. One could consider the standing exhibit the pieces that museum uniquely owns. Could this not translate into the musical experience? Let’s try a new concert season:

1. It’s Beethoven’s 250th birthday! Let’s celebrate with “Regards to Beethoven by the Great Masters of Today.” We commission three composers (or find composers who have already written pieces about Beethoven, like Louis Andriessen), and have a night of homages to our historic forefather. To give some context, the first piece is by Beethoven, followed by the three new pieces (none of them are too long because we all have shorter attention spans these days…). Oh, and no more Beethoven after this—this concert will sell out because Beethoven is the visiting exhibit.

2. “20/20 Vision: Looking to the Future.” We can start with some Messiaen piece with a religious looking forward or maybe one of the Futurists from the early 1900s, then go with two pieces about social issues of today such as climate change or a more equal society. Could music be relevant to today by speaking on issues that matter today?

3. “America, the Beautiful.” It is shocking to me how little investment our orchestras have in playing music written by composers within our own country. Do we really need to import so much culture that is alien to our own? Charles Ives, Elliott Carter, Milton Babbitt, Steve Reich, Phillip Glass, John Cage (not 4:33 unless they really want to do it), John Adams, Augusta Read Thomas, and Jennifer Higdon are easy choices that orchestras need not dig deep in their libraries to find. But let’s add some lesser-known yet highly influential voices in there. Most of the composers I listed at the top can showcase craftsmanship in the United States.

4. “The Fast and the Furious: Concerto Night.” One night of some of the most aggressive, hardcore, virtuosic pieces with the top soloists. A world premiere would build the hype if both the composer and the soloist had a reputation for it.

5. “Stealing Styles: Jazz, Rock, and Pop in the Orchestra.” We’ll give them some Gershwin and then switch it up with some more contemporary music that incorporates popular idioms into concert music (and there is lots of this nowadays).

6. “Who We Are.” This concert will consciously represent the diversity of contemporary composers who are of top caliber. This is not an affirmative action-type event but a realistic showcase of American musical identity. We have fantastic composers of many backgrounds writing in many styles, and this concert clearly shows the influence. This could even be a goal for a concert series…

7. “Deep Listening.” For the mindfulness people, John Luther Adams’s Become Ocean could launch a concert that focuses on color. And audience members could be encouraged to really relax and make the experience comfortable and meditative (lie on the floor?).

8. “The Grand Finale.” It’s the end of the season! The ballet and the local chorus join the orchestra for a world premiere closer with two or three epic pieces to lead into the work. This concert is intended to be the shot heard ‘round the world. People will know about this concert on the news and then look back to see that the entire concert season was filled with exciting projects with lots of documentation for publicity. As the next season is prepared, people will plan to travel for miles, donors will be caught in the excitement for doing something different, and music will seem like a living art form much more than a rusting, disorganized museum.

Is this too idealistic? To further support this vision, people need to know what they are getting into. The advertising hits YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and elsewhere with up-to-date advertising. Bite-size musical excerpts float around everywhere with cliffhangers. Members of the orchestra are the ones being interviewed in promotional materials (not the conductor every time) and speak about how exciting it is to be part of something different and bold. Photos of the composers pop up on all visuals, showing the selection of contemporary composers that the listeners will hear. Marketing connects with different demographics than the 70+ by considering popular topics (orchestras so missed a great opportunity several years ago with the zombie craze, for example! We have so much music about the undead and the macabre!!). At concerts, members of the orchestra stand in the concert lobby afterwards to meet the guests and talk about the music experience (again, in addition to the conductor). The pre-concert experience has video footage playing while people get into their seats that shows the promotions that got them there in more depth: interviews with performers, composers, the conductor, etc. (starting a half hour before showtime). The videos are setting the stage for the concert experience, just like a movie theater prepares its viewers by getting them immersed in cinema before the movie begins. People outside the door are trained musicologists and theorists who answer questions about the concert program, with visible identification such as a name badge or even a visitors information booth. And right after intermission, the conductor gets podium time to welcome everyone to the concert, ask how far people have traveled to the concert, and to set the mood for the last piece with some artful prose (not a lecture). Music presented in such a natural context, without apologies before genuinely valuable new art, would change the atmosphere of orchestra life.

In an age that prizes the new, orchestras would have something to offer. Listeners, performers, donors, academics, and composers would all thrive off the energy of this new concert experience. There is no catch; this is all reasonable. The technology is easy, the resources are waiting, and, most importantly, an eager audience can be reached that would genuinely love this concert experience. Yes, not every piece would be loved by the audience. But with so much context and preparation, they will at least appreciate the vision of the artist. Nevertheless, chances are that as orchestras redefine the concert experience, listeners will redefine theirs. They will broaden their idea of what music is. It is more than notes on a page or structures in major and minor. It is the fingerprint of one human experience, the embodiment of a time, place, and culture, the study of sound in time, the expression of humanity, the vision of something more, the dream of something that was or could have been. It is a deep connection to the spiritual and subconscious, sometimes seeking in sound the deepest of mental and emotional states. It is vulnerability and severity at times, and though uncomfortable at first, the most beautiful experience can be had in sailing in the imaginations of the artists who live the same digital-age life as the listener and share or differ in the perspectives and problems of the current age. Music of this caliber has worth, more than any previous age’s artwork can. Let museum orchestras handle the 19th-century Germans. Bold orchestras will accept a true challenge to upgrade to the 21st century listening experience.

Baby Mozart

In an effort to legitimize music education through “facts,” scientists set out to prove the intellectual, emotional, and even physical benefits of participation in music experiences. Rather than trust that the organized sound that accompanied humankind from the beginning had in it some inherent strengths, figures and statistics assuage policy makers. And once numbers get involved, we get interpretations of data and initiatives that lead to a plethora of potential truths and obvious misconceptions about what music is and what it does for the everyday person.

And thus Baby Mozart was born.

Infants who listen to classical music may become smarter and more emotionally mature. This would be a wonderful result of the sonic art form that has intrigued our forebears for countless generations. But when do children listen to Baby Mozart? Parents often use the music to put their children to bed. And if not, the music is administered in doses as if a supplement to the anxiety-ridden broccoli-feeding and diaper change. In my family, Baby Mozart was the new age music from the early 1990s. I later learned that my father used them because he believed they were so boring they would put anyone to sleep. Does this translate over to the treatment of classical music at-large?

I had two completely different experiences with classical music as a child. The first were recordings of Bernstein conducting Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet, Marche Slav, and the 1812 Overture. Also in the room was a CD of Mozart’s Symphonies 40 and 41. These energized me, akin to the Sound Test options on Super Nintendo videos games, which conveniently played atmospheric or intense music on endless loop. These experiences likely drew me towards music-making.

Then, there were the dreaded CDs titled “Meditations.” Six volumes of the most bland moments of classical music history were obviously intended to knock one out or at least nullify the mind. And then that famous CD Chant . I tried many times, even as a child, to survive that CD to secure some form of personal musical depth. As cited by Wikipedia, “it was strongly marketed as an antidote to the stress of modern life.” I actively work against achieving this Meditation CD status.

How do the majority of people perceive classical music today? Is the orchestral hall a place of liveliness or is it an extension of the fuzzy reclining chair in the living room? And if it is a place that people envision falling asleep, why would the average person spend money and time to attend? To many, the perception of classical music is that it is simply boring. And concert programmers have a knack of feeding into this stereotype without realizing it.

To gain young audiences at concert halls, the concert experience should feel lively. The real Mozart felt this excitement in his day as he traveled from place to place. The 1780s were an unusually active time for music throughout Europe and especially in Vienna. He marveled to his father about amazing performances and complained about dull ones. Mozart especially loved the new technologies in music. The piano was relatively new technology, and instrument makers continued to finesse its sound during his lifetime. Mozart also loved the inventive basset horn, which soon after became the clarinet. The time also saw an increase in size and accessibility of performing groups. The orchestras, typically reserved for the court, entered the public square as part of the Enlightenment. The Mannheim Orchestra specialized in creating magnificent rushes through intense, long crescendos. And Mozart did not only involve himself in music but collaborated with theater, poetry, and visual arts through his operas. Though opera was already a longstanding tradition, Mozart revolutionized the art form by bringing the energy of his time into something that had become stiff on the one end or cheesy on the other. He also merged the musics of Italy, France, and Germany into his sound to form a cosmopolitan vibe. These circumstances and activities came together to create an exciting atmosphere from which the famous Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven rose to prominence and bore out a lasting legacy.

So, shall we bring back more music from Mozart’s time period and recreate this fervor? Surely Mozart would roll in his grave at such a suggestion! While the great composer looked back to find inspiration, he and his contemporaries did not believe in preservation projects. But we can certainly learn from him. Four major focal points came together in that day that also seem to be the best received in our day as well. First, technology cannot be ignored. Electronics do things that purely acoustic instruments cannot. Even with one microphone channeling an instrument’s sound, a new sonic world can be explored. One of the greatest trends in contemporary classical music is the use of software, especially interactive digital technology to create music. Second, theatricality and interdisciplinary work takes music to a higher plane. Opera is in the process of a major revival because it provides a multi-sensory experience. Important new music ensembles, such as Eighth Blackbird, include a visual or staged component to their work. Dance collaborations are particularly welcome. Third, genre plurality and diversity create a more relevant and comprehensible music. To completely ignore the access we have to music throughout the world and to dismiss the popular idioms of today as points of dialogue in classical music ignores the almost constant strain of external influences that fuel the art form. The most important artists had a way of bringing many forms and styles together to create a new path. And fourth, a recontextualization of past styles; in other words, an acknowledgement and play on tradition, seemed to be essential to the First Viennese School. Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven all have a sense of humor in their music as they look to the past, and we have so much more history to deal with.

This last point brings the great caveat: we recontextualize the past, and we do not live there. The current state of music is, in effect, proof of its death. Orchestras that play 90% repertoire from before 1900 are like the rare stumbling on a live website last updated in the 1990s. It is fascinating, curious, and nostalgic, but the average person will not visit the site ever again. Music written hundreds of years ago does not carry the same relevance as music written today. A living art form would include 90% repertoire from after 1990, and museums would take in the rest. The museum orchestra would play Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven. It would also play Rimsky-Korsakov, Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Xenakis, Cage, Takemitsu, Berio, La Monte Young, Milton Babbitt, and Pierre Boulez as pieces of a distant history. What then is there to listen to—even the edgy avant-garde music is irrelevant?! That is the serious discussion to be had to maintain a living, thriving, and relevant art form. More next time…

Guilty by Association (Something to Say, Pt. IV)

A big topic in recent music inquiry is that of cultural appropriation. The viewpoint is that when a composer borrows musical elements that do not belong to their culture, especially when displaying them as exotic, then the result is a sort of cultural imperialism. The classical tradition has taken music from its original context and taken advantage of its merits, in a way deeming it subservient to some Austro-Germanic heritage we keep perpetuating. The claims of this argument perhaps have merit when we look at infamous examples such as Paul Simon’s use of African musicians who were basically paid nickels of the millions of dollars earned on his record Graceland. But to condemn musical borrowing is to condemn most if not all traditions in music, for it is the great melting pot and dialogue of world culture. It is very possible to assert that most music traditions of today were influenced by other cultures and that many explicitly borrowed from others, whether it be violins in India, timpani in Western Europe, African drumming styles in Steve Reich’s music, didgeridoos in electronic music, and so on. The issue becomes much more complex when we realize that the bagpipe is not only a Scottish instrument, the harp not only of the Irish, and the fiddle the “national” sound of many countries of Europe and the United States. Then we find that music in Latin America often includes at least three influences in all its music: European music, African music, and pre-Columbian music (in that order). And to ignore that fact that most popular music styles today take elements of folk, jazz, blues, R&B, and so forth (which have been blending, mixing, and matching throughout the last century) is untenable. We would especially have to condemn hip hop and its offshoots for taking and remixing actual samples of music, including some from classical music in addition to early jazz and contemporary artists. Some say that everything is a remix, and this means that everything is so-called cultural appropriation.

Nevertheless, for the conscious composer, borrowing of any nature carries associative baggage, for better or for worse. When a listener hears a melody or rhythm from another artist, style, or tradition, their mind will conjure up some image (be it aural, visual, or a Wikipedia entry on the topic) that paints their perception. For example, every augmented second emphasized in a piece will conjure up some association, which might be Spanish, or Jewish, or Egyptian, or Middle-Eastern, or Eastern European or… (you get the point). Pentatonic-based music makes for an even wider catch of associations, with the most subtle nuances moving one’s mind from China to Bali to Native American to Morocco (the Peer Gynt Suite’s “Morning Mood” is about Morocco!). A composer with a courageous ear—having heard the world over (popular, classical, world, experimental, etc.)—will know the connotations of their music and be sensitive to how they either jump all in or keep cultural shading subtle. With great talent, the fusion of disparate musical elements creates a synthesis that further empowers the virtues of the individual styles in a whole that transcends the parts. While the idea of cultural appropriation might be taboo (and I am all for respecting cultures that are not my own and have quite a bit of experience with wonderful friends from around the world and from very different circumstances than mine), I happily express my guilt by association. I steal (or have stolen) from the following (with subtlety or overtly): Stravinsky, rock, prog. rock, some Classical aesthetics, some Romantic aesthetics, jazz, Debussy, electronic pop music, new wave, Medieval and Renaissance motets, Berio, Latin dance musics (including African drumming patterns), Tom-and-Jerry type music, church hymn music, Kodaly, Mongolian folk music, minimalism (only a little bit), every teacher I have studied with, experimental trends, Haydn (especially in wit and silence), and so on. May we all continue a fruitful musical dialogue built on the shoulders of the rich cultural associations across the globe.

Pacing Pt. I

One of the trickiest aspects of writing music is pacing. Good pacing happens when the sounds do the perfect thing at the perfect moment. Because musicians often practice and perfect minute details of surface rhythms, melodies, harmony, motifs, and so on, they must be careful to not overlook the big picture events. I struggle with this as well in my composing--after finessing ten seconds of music for over an hour, I tend to view everything at a microscopic level. But when I take a day to step back and precisely place the sounds where they need to be, it is magical.

I'll be back with my thoughts and methods in pacing my music another day, but today I want to simply reflect on good pacing. Great orchestration is often the result of pacing. Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy, both excellent and visionary orchestrators, knew the right time to bring an instrument in or take an instrument out. They also knew how to bring a new sound in or out: Should the performer play suddenly or should they softly enter in from the texture? And they knew which sound should come in or drop out at the perfect time: I recall in particular the celestial violin note in La mer that backs the last iteration of the melody before the the exhilarating lunge to the finish. It is the right sound that enters the right way at the right time. The good performer will take the opportunity and run with it, and the good composer will not miss an opportunity to make as many of these special moments as possible.

More thoughts on this later, but if you're in the Phoenix area, be sure to come hear Julia Lougheed's concert that includes my piece Stone in Hand, performed by her, Charlotte Ethington, and Andrew Lineweaver!

Writing Notes

When writers have an idea, they jot their thoughts down in a notebook or in a Word document. From those first words, they formulate sentences, paragraphs, and eventually articles and books, some spanning hundreds of pages with millions of words. When music composers have an idea, they write some type of pattern of notes or rhythms on a paper. Or scribble some weird shape or texture that only they understand... or rush to a private place to record themselves singing some type of disjunct squeals (in the mind they are violins!)... They soon  find the nearest piano, only to realize that their idea is a lot more complicated than they anticipated. The rhythm is somewhere between a quintuplet and a sextuplet and the imagined colors seem impossible to render with an orchestra, let alone a woodwind trio or piano. Instead of writing in a well-understood language, composers must translate expansive ideas into something that their performer will understand and interpret well. 

Why is communicating with music notation so much harder than writing in a language? While words have a specific, distinguishable, and clear-ish meaning, the palette of existent sounds in the universe is endless (in fact, all words in every language are simply a subset of possible sounds). Music notation focuses on pitch, rhythm, and meter, and with less clarity it includes abbreviations and symbols for dynamics, articulation, and phrasing. While helpful, information is lost in the process of notation. There are twelve notes to somehow represent every frequency between a given pitch and double its frequency. Rhythms are only divisible by two and must be written as a tuplet to be more specific (except for the first subdivision in compound time, which happens to trip performers up constantly). Dynamics are represented by only 6 reasonable levels (pp-ff). And articulations are often entirely dependent on context and are to be interpreted from a combination of dots, lines, carrots, and curves above notes.

There are creative ways to expand the ability of the music notation, but performers will attest that even with these basic limitations, it is challenging to render a sophisticated piece of music well! Unlike the languages we speak that use a limited number of sounds and largely ignore pitch (at least for denotation), music may involve any possible combination of pitches and rhythms in each short gesture, which results in millions of possible combinations when only using a few notes (which is why performers are often hidden in practice rooms for several hours a day). In essence, notation cannot capture the nuanced nature of sound, but even in its limited capacity, the human mind must work tirelessly for years to communicate through it.

So what is the benefit of written music when so many cultures and notable people have created stunning artistry through an oral tradition? Perhaps all the stress about notes is because we forget they are indeed notes. However detailed or planned out by the composer,  notes do little more than give the performer instructions to enact, recalling information to complete the task. But how can a performer recall something in music they have never read before? The answer to this question is: Western music is also an oral tradition, as is all music (and all languages first and foremost)! Deeper than notes is the essence of the music itself, and musicians who expose themselves to a large and diverse selection of sounds will understand and accurately interpret this essence.

As our world becomes more interconnected, the expectations for musicians will increase, for Charlie Parker, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Sting, and the Beatles all had something to say that Mozart's style did not (and we can't ignore it!). It is the job of the composer, and always has been, to communicate what they envision in the clearest manner possible, despite the limitations of the notes. Then, with whatever intelligible scribbles are on the music stand, the performer pulls from thousands of years of culture acquired by ear and a lifetime of practice  and continues that oral tradition all musicians preserve. The reasons why composers and performers would specialize in their respective roles and not cross over is a topic for another day (and it's honestly a mystery to me), but in the end, music is much more than the notes. But I'll toil away to get them on the page anyway because, while unclear and somewhat vague, they allow performers, audiences, and me to share in the communal experience they represent--the experience we have from our cultures, life events, and perhaps from things deeper and more eternally rooted in essence than we can comprehend.

Resolutions and Rhythm

Even if, as a few cynical memes assert, the new year is an arbitrary division of time, why not take a moment to renew former efforts and plan out the future? Dividing time into chunks is hardly arbitrary; without doing so, we are forced to contemplate the eternities and its overwhelming grandeur and uncertainty (in regards to our time on Earth). To make time comprehensible to our finite minds, we have to slice and dice it. Though New Year's Day is arbitrary, it is simple to see how the passing of the sun and moon across the sky led to divisions of days (to be divided into hours and minutes) and how the repetition of larger phenomena (including length of days, change of seasons, position of stars in the sky, etc.) could divide into years (to be divided into or built from months and weeks). These divisions allow for reference points in the past from which a length of time can be measured, and they allow for projecting into the future. If divisions of time allow for projecting into the future, then why not take advantage of it and use it for planning? If still cynical about the need for these yearly resolutions, start with daily, weekly, or monthly resolutions--goal setting sessions with plans for real results. How can one plan for years if one cannot even maintain day-to-day projection? Most musicians know that playing in tempo requires consistent subdividing of the meter.

But to the disheartened, there are other ways to conceptualize time. Our Greek "logical" way of thinking supports the aforementioned time divisions because everything fits nicely into a box, but other cultures have not viewed time the same way. In other languages, including Hebrew, the tense constructions for past, present, and future are blurred to better allow for the truthfulness of time's eternal nature. Events are still identified, but they are in relation to each other and affect each other. Like a rhythm, a current event can normalize what may have seemed like a disruption in the flow of former events. In other words, while our Greek-dominated logic puts time events as absolutes, Hebrew thinking (and I assume in other cultures) sees time events as unresolved and ever-changing. This means that a mistake in the past does not leave a permanent scar if we play the corrective rhythm. Failures of years before will become the stepping stones of success in your future, if the right groove is found.

This conceptualization of time, while not useful in predicting yearly weather patterns and other repetition-based phenomena, is incredibly useful for humans who want to improve in life. We are not trapped in orbit like the moon or a satellite; we have the ability to chart our own path travel beyond the monotony of a set daily schedule.  Also unlike the moon, we are bound to be broken from our repetition, despite our choices, and understanding the inevitability of variability braces ourselves for the best and worst life has to offer.

Goal-setting and planning then gains two more dimensions (among others): risk assessment and preparation. The variables in life all present risks, so why not embrace this as a fact? Some goals will not be achieved until we are willing to take risks, but with planning, many of these risks may turn out to be smaller than previously thought. But what of other risks that may have a downfall? What about the risks that are out of our control? We prepare for the worst while striving for the best. Many residents of Miami will have hurricane shutters in storage and most Midwesterners have a basement, cellar, or evacuation route to avoid cyclones, yet they do not live in constant dread. If one is prepared to land on the beat through practice, they will not be too lost in the music to play it correctly, even if momentarily distracted.

So, the takeaways should be: 1.) Confidently plan in time chunks you can manage. 2.) Remember that the past does not permanently affect your future--unless you allow it to. 3.) The future is unpredictable, so be prepared. 4.) You might need to leave your comfort zone and take risks, but often those risks present much less danger than you anticipate, if well assessed and prepared for. Musically speaking: 1.) Subdivide. 2.) Don't dwell on a missed beat. 3.) Practice your part. 4.) Be vulnerable and make real, bold music.

Musicking and Improvisation

I was reminded of the concept of "musicking" yesterday, which is the late Christopher Small's term to help people think of music as an action rather than a thing (though adding a "k" to a word makes it feel archaic so I use the term warily). Thus, listening to music is musicking, performing music is musicking, and creating music is musicking. Sheet music or recordings themselves are not music until someone engages with them. While he goes in depth on this topic in his book Musicking: The Meanings of Performing and Listening, I would rather talk about how musicking as brought life to the music around me.

I recently joined UMKC's Imp Ensemble, a free (not necessarily jazz) improvisation ensemble. Several years ago at BYU I was part of a similar group called GEM (Group for Experimental Music). Both these ensembles provide a creative outlet where I am invigorated to musick without the restrictions of societal convention. I believe that we should strive to engage with our culture by putting forth our best contributions to the art, I also believe in what Ned Rorem termed "the distortion of Genius." It helps to step outside the bounds of classical concert music culture to reassess one's work and musical purpose. Next month, the Imp Ensemble will be performing at West Bottoms as part of the West Bottoms Reborn initiative. More details here.

This upcoming Tuesday, my work Improvisations VI: Just, Plane, Natural will be performed by Gabbi Roderer, an amazing flutist (see the event details here). This is the third in a series of improvisation pieces for soloist and live electronics that I originally wrote for myself as a way I could continue improvising outside of a group. But now they have become a fascinating means of collaborating with performers as musicians, tapping into fellow performers' intuitive abilities to musick, not according to the societal norms of their repertoire but according to the dictates of their ear in response to the electronics (which are wholly dependent on the performer's playing).

These improvisations are free for the performer, but while this sounds liberating, it actually invites the performer to solve their own compositional puzzle. The piece only progresses with a tap of a pedal that initiates a change in the electronics. These changes provide the overall structure of the piece while leaving pacing up to the performer. The puzzle for performers is to effectively navigate these changes to achieve their artistic vision. In this manner, the performer also becomes a creator and sculptor of sound in time. The performer also must engage carefully in listening. It is a perfect example of musicking to a composed work without the strings attached.

This work is a joint effort, a true collaboration. Rather than the composer acting as dictator or even as visionary, the composer becomes the facilitator and architect, providing a space and flow to accentuate the performer's work. While the composer is not active on stage (though I can easily code in my own laptop part and devise the form in real-time), the contribution of the electronics provides a unique mark that, while at times sounding very different in each iteration, infallibly remains. The contributions of composer and performer are equal; the electronics can only be engaged by the performer's input and the performer must engage with the electronics to play out the work. Through this partnership, the new work is born every time, and I love this sort of relationship. 

If you are a musician and want to musick with these Improvisations or have insights or comments on these concepts, I'd love to hear from you. Feel free to comment below.