In Honor of John Cage

Tension, release, but not release into a nice major chord, but a bursting forth f the built up energy.

Talk about magical wisdom. It's all about how we listen, what we listen for in a conversation. The other quote I grabbed from Ethan Iverson giving a great discussion of why competitions aren't great for art: especially a performance competition of Jazz.

Well it means quote 1 sticks into quote 2. If I listen to all the wrong parts of what I'm being told, it means I compromise the idea of quote 2- I write for a judge. If it gets me an award, then it's worth it." Listen to the part that says "Write the best music you can, get a nice recording, and send it out. So listen to the whole sentence, and work for your love of what you do.

• 8 premieres (yeah, that's right, i wrote one piece that wasn't a commission. go figure. 1 international paper presentation

"work must contain a song from "

I also performed on 4 more pieces during the course of the night. I've been going through the recordings, cleaning them up, etc. It's still pretty stressful hearing your music performed, whether for an audience of 5 or 500. 2 days after the performance, i worked on the recordings a bit. Nick Howell's solo on Hunter Long's "This Self-Imposed Abyss" sounded good to me then, but i was busy counting and playing backgrounds. We play a lot louder in concert and lose some of the dynamic contrast we worked hard on in rehearsal.

4. Some was a nervous, forward pushing energy; some was a relaxed, focused energy. Most performers strive for the focused energy, but something can be said for the nervous pushing energy. LOL. Over the past month or so, I've been slowly updating my website, CV, list of compositions, etc.

I've sat in my fair share of coffee shops. A pleasant conversation would ensue, then we'd part ways. Russell Kirsch.

The first is about the performers relationship to music, especially the process of learning a new piece. It's something I've hit on before (repeatedly, forcibly) in conversation- complex pieces are rewarding endeavors, and there is much to be gained by focusing on learning the piece. The next couple are about listening. Well done, Brian Ferneyhough.

"We need more audience for jazz, and the way to get that audience is not to play jazz correctly. Iverson also tosses in a little dig against competitions in the classical world, at least in sense that they don't work well.

• Kick-off Concert for ArtSounds

So far, I've done well with submitting.

"Only accepting pieces of 1-4 performers"

"No piece over 15 minutes will be accepted"

"Pieces under 10 minutes will be given preference"

Put stuff up as it comes in, even if you're busy.

• A piece "broadcast" as a part of an online edition of a literary magazine

• 5 commissions

• A commission and release by a record label

Took a very long train ride a couple days ago. First was meeting a man named Chris. Ligeti String Quartet 2, Ferneyhough String Quartets 2, 3, and 4. I've always disliked pieces starting with grand pauses. Pitch, rhythm, timbre/orchestration, energy. Man, does Ligeti nail nervous. the rhythm speeds up, the dynamic ebbs and flows, but never above quiet.

After writing two new pieces this summer, I've started up a third. The first two played with new (to me) pitch organization systems. Ferneyhough, Brian and Boros, James. Perspectives of New Music, Vol. 28, No.2 (Summer, 1990) p 6-50.

"works must be influenced by "

So, where's the creativity? Are composers meant to just create pieces for these performance opportunities? I just described a solid 3/4 of the submissions I've seen. Toss in spending a nice chunk of change just to submit, and, well...it's a little depressing.

I've submitted a piece that's mostly improv, and while the call doesn't say "no improvisation," that's one of the subtexts in many calls. And i've spent $30 so far.

If I do that well, I have a better chance of winning. Of course, if you're pushing for your own path, it's hard to find that competition.

I'm playing the game now. I'll keep playing the game, while doing my own thing outside of it (i've got 2 performances lined up in town).

Marvin Hamlisch was a different breed of masterclass presenter. Hamlisch wasn't afraid to state his opinion of a piece, drive right to the heart of the matter. Hamlisch's musical output was prodigious. He was decorated, worked as a pops conductor, and accomplished great things for musical theater. Hamlisch will be missed for his musical works and his conducting. Fare the well Marvin Hamlisch

Rhythm starts slow, speeds up, burst forth. Simplicity- a straight forward idea executed perfectly.

teaching day 1 and opera

So, today was my first day with CITS (Composers In The Schools), a part of the UMKC Academy. Went to a local MS with a undergrad senior from UMKC to work with a 7th grade orchestra. It was an interesting experience.

Neither of us had taught there, and our only contact was a short e-mail over the weekend. So, it was really a "wing it" kind of day. We weren't sure what they had been doing, or what the teacher wanted to do this semester. So, what do you start with?

"Hi, my name is ___" of course. from there, it was easy...

kind of...

I went a route (and the other teacher went along for the improv ride quite well!) of finding what interests the students musically, then writing something. The primary teacher, of course, already had an outlined idea of the project. I had a feeling he might have. He jumped in, and, i whispered to the other teacher from UMKC "always trust their teacher to jump in and know exactly what they need. you start the lesson, he'll direct it where it might need to go to fit his plans."

Ah, i miss working in this situation. I spent a lot of time doing it in undergrad. It's...kinda nice

So, i planted the seed of working from music YOU like. As i told them, any composer has to write what s/he likes, otherwise the piece will NEVER get done. and that's the truth. if you don't like it, don't want to do the project, it won't happen...until, maybe, the last minute, if its an assignment of commission. Which leads me to the "never take a commission you don't want." lol.

They're assignment is to come up with an 8 bar sketch of a melody. They had previously worked on melody, harmony, some part-writing, and what makes up music, so it was a good step. I was thinking more along the lines of two or three 4 bar sketches, but that's because i still think too motivically. lol.

In other news, i finally watched this 1983 production of Die Tote Stadt. Honestly, the music was amazing, Korngold is a fantastic composer, but the staging was...well...

It was amazing. absolutely mind boggling. Completely surrealist. which, made some sense, as 90% of the opera is a vision by the main character...however...

it was too disjointed. I actually couldn't follow what was happening. I'm no novice to the stage nor to opera. I was raised a theater brat, know my way around designing just about everything (some things much better than others. sets, not my forte, but i know a good one when i see one). This...well...I really couldn't follow what was happening.

The characterizations were quite wild. First, Paul (the lead) is portrayed as a sociopathic schizophrenic. He has incredible mood swings, attempts suicide to begin the second tableau, kills his best friend, has sex with a woman in what appears to be a coffin he fashioned into the floor with a normal wooden door that holds his dead wife, turns a pious processional into a macabre display of half-death, and in the end, commits suicide...

now, i'm all for artistic interpretation, but, yeah...that's about 160 degrees off from how i'm reading the character. in the original, he gets in a fight with his friend, but doesn't come to blows, the sex definitely happens but there is no mention of a cellar style mausoleum, and he doesn't commit suicide, instead leaves Bruge with his friend.

Oh my, and his friend Frank. For some reason, he is portrayed first as a priest. then he is portrayed as a devil/vampire image, then as a bishop (still with his died red beard and thigh length red braid of hair). it is this bishop image he sees at the end as his friend asks him to leave the city...

To me, the entire ending is a 180 from the libretto. I read it as a man who has finally let go of the past through these violent visions. He's finally able to let his wife die and leaves the city with his friend, Frank, to see the world. Regain himself

Not kill himself. Paul is quite insane during the visions, there is no doubt, but it's a not a suicidal/homicidal insane. It's the crazy we all go through when we lose someone dear to us. yeah, there's a lot of "i can't go one" and "i don't want to live" but it's not like it was portrayed here. His manic. He is schizo, even in reality, completely off his rocker. He wants to die. he seeks death. and he seeks penance for looking at a woman, even at the end, when, in the original story, he finds redemption and the ability to live on his own.

That's the rub to me. they changed the end of the story. They changed it enough that it's just not Die Tote Stadt to me anymore. Now, it's about a crazy dude, seeing crazy shit, and killing himself, not a man working through all his problems, the loss of his wife, and finding a way to live. That's a pretty huge difference. big enough that i can't understand the artistic choices. so, you wanted to make it darker? the visions are already pretty terrifying (not quite Salome terrifying, but pretty bad).

I could go on and on about this, cause there are a lot of points of deviation that, to me, actually change the original meaning.

Let's say it this way. A lot of people complain about movies made from books, that things were changed, blah blah blah, and that it should be "a movie based upon the book" not just "the book as a movie." Well, this is an opera based on the opera Die Tote Stadt. By itself, as a work, it's remarkable. but it's not Die Tote Stadt.

oh, btw, they left out lines that didnt fit the mood. to me, that's telling. "Oh, i need to make this super dark, so, this portion of the opera, i'm gonna take it out." There's a point where artistic interpretation is a bit too far from what was meant. you lose the story. I lost this story entirely