Jay C. Batzner (b. 1974) is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Central Florida where he teaches music composition and technology courses as well as coordinates the composition program. In his first year, Jay received two prestigious grants: one to create collaborative works with visual artist Carla Poindexter and the second to initiate electroacoustic music concerts in Orlando. Prior to this position, Jay was an active adjunct professor at several colleges in the Kansas City area while he completed his D.M.A. in Composition at the University of Missouri – Kansas City Conservatory. While at UMKC, Jay received honors including a Distinguished Dissertation Fellowship and a Dean's Doctoral Scholar Fellowship.
Jay's music ranges from instrumental chamber works to electroacoustic compositions. He has participated in numerous national and international festivals including the Wellesley Composers Conference and the International Young Composers' Meeting in the Netherlands. His music is published by Unsafe Bull Music and has been recorded on the Capstone and Vox Novus labels. Jay is a frequent contributor to the new music website Sequenza21.com and a founding member of the composers organization The Collected.
Jay is a sci-fi geek, an amateur banjoist, a home brewer, and juggler.
I was in quite a mood on Friday. Exhausted in the morning, but revitalized by teaching (it usually does that). I get excited when I teach. On Friday, my freshmen almost uniformly misidentified a tonic 6/4 chord as a dominant chord in dictation. I was ecstatic. We've been talking about how the tonic 6/4 is not really a tonic functioning chord in most contexts but rather functions as a dominant. They didn't believe me, of course, because why should they? My students are skeptics. I kind of like that because it keeps me on my toes. But anyway, I LOVED that they all heard this tonic 6/4 as dominant. It proved that their ears know things that their brains do not. I didn't scold them about it, far from it. I pretty much congratulated them on biting down hard on a "wrong" answer.
The truth of it is, I'm a human being. I have passions and emotions and I share them with my students. I try to maintain appropriate boundaries, which is what got me thinking today. How far do those boundaries go? Can I not include a certain video on YouTube as a favorite because some of the content is less than professional? Must I be erudite and scholarly all the damned time? Can I not get psyched that I made a compositional breakthrough today? Sometimes I feel that, in order to be a composer in these parts, Thou Shalt Not Have Fun. Everything must be Serious Art and coated in layers of Professionalism.
The thing is, I used to be one of those Serious Ones. It has taken me a while to get comfortable with my compositional self and now I'm just, as we say, lettin' it snap.
posted by Jay C. Batzner
1/18/2008
Another review
But this time, a truly important one:
Jay, I finally tried the Mocha Stout tonight and it was amazing. It reminds me of a stout I loved at a local brew-pub/restaurant in Bloomington; Lenny's. Thank you so much for sharing!! Have a great weekend. Jeremy
Not to be egotistical, but this mocha stout is probably the best beer I've ever made. I'm going to go have one.
Beer brewing and composition are a lot alike. The creation of the product takes a while, things have to sit and ferment for a while, and you never know if what you made is truly successful until you consume it a few times.
Whoa, deep thoughts. I should have a beer...
posted by Jay C. Batzner
1/11/2008
Still get excited
You know what? I still get excited when things go my way. That might sound like the most obvious statement I could make, but it is really true. The rejection letters don't bother me so much (depending on the letter some are more troublesome than others) but when something clicks, I'm flyin' high.
For example, yesterday I got a phone call from Shawn Galvin who is the principle timpanist for the Navy Band. He is going to play the solo part of my Concerto for Timpani at the CMS SuperRegional Conferense at LSU next month and needed the part to practice. Well, I haven't heard anything official from CMS yet, but I'm really stoked about it. A performer contacts me out of the blue and wants my music? That is still squarely in the "awesome" column of my book.
I know some composers who don't get that excited about performances of their pieces in certain venues. Or others that grow tired of having so many performances of certain works of theirs. I must say that I hope I never feel that way. While I'm no superstar getting performances every other day, I am getting some cool opportunities and exciting performances on an almost regular basis. And they always fire me up. I hope they always do.
posted by Jay C. Batzner
1/07/2008
Ludwig Van
Okay droogs, confession time. I'm having a bit of a falling out with Beethoven. Don't get me wrong, I'm not casting aspersions on Beethoven or his music. Beethoven's music just sounds so frustrated to me lately that I haven't wanted to listen to it.
I used to be the same way: constantly frustrated musically. I was a real pain in the ass to be around, as some composers will tell you. In recent months, though, things have really lightened up for me personally and musically. I've stopped taking myself so damned seriously and it is affecting how I process things. Beethoven's music sounds like an angry creature trapped in a cage that is doing everything in its power to escape. That mood has been tough for me to be around.
The solution? Heavy doses of Schubert. To my ears, Schubert was able to work around some of the same struggles that Beethoven was having without such a high body count. Schubert sounds very Classical to me, instead of Romantic, as does Beethoven. And the music is gorgeous. As I've told my students, "You can't go wrong with pretty."
In other words, Beethoven sounds like weight lifting. Schubert sounds like yoga. Both are good for you, but people generally prefer one over the other.
If time travel ever becomes a viable option, I'd like to show Beethoven some early Berg (the op. 3, for example). I bet Ludwig Van would love it.
posted by Jay C. Batzner
1/02/2008
Resolutions
I really don't have any. Is that bad? I have some goals, but when don't I? I know one resolution: to stop saying that I'm going to orchestrate/arrange a piece of mine for another ensemble. I've been saying that about my piano quartet, my concerto for 2 pianos, my wind ensemble piece, my work for tenor and orchestra, my wind quintet, and my piano trio on and off for the last 3 years. Does it ever get done? No. Should I do it? Maybe. Am I going to? Probably not.
I need to leave those things well enough alone in their respective crypts and, when I jones to write a large ensemble piece (which is rare these days), just write a new piece. That suits me better than the "old wine into new bottles" crap that I think will work. Orchestration is challenging work and I'd rather do it to material that really resonates with me instead of trying to bring back the embers of fires long dead.
Especially for that piano quartet. The thing is, as the Bene Gesserit would say, abomination. Even though there is some good music in that thing, there is a lot of stuff that I think would need to be fixed before it ever saw the light of day again.
posted by Jay C. Batzner
