Charles Griffin

The Manhattan Choral Ensemble, directed by Tom Cunningham, will premiere my Lux Aeterna as part of a concert featuring Sergei Rachmaninoff’s masterpiece, All-Night Vigil (more commonly known as his Vespers), at Holy Trinity Church (213 West 82nd St.) in New York City on June 6 and 7. Both concerts will take place at 8PM. Ticket are $15, $12 (students and seniors) and can be purchased via Paypal at the MCE website by clicking here. Tickets can also be purchased at the door.

The psalm texts of Vespers, one of the crowning achievements in Russian sacred music, are sung in the ancient Church Slavonic to music rooted in the traditional Znamenny chants of the Russian Orthodox Church, but infused with the transcendent romanticism of Rachmaninoff. This well-loved work features the famous Bogoroditse Devo and the hymn Rachmaninoff wished to have sung at his funeral, Nine otpushchayeshi. My Lux Aeterna, which uses portions of a Znammeny Communion Chant, was commissioned by MCE as part of their ongoing New Music for New York commissioning project, and was written specifically to complement this Vespers program. You can read more about how the piece developed here.

Pianist Ana Cervantes will close the 19th edition of the Raritan River Festival, USA on Saturday 31 May at 7:30PM in the Clinton Presbyterian Church in Clinton, NJ.

Joining her will be Mexican poet Lirio Garduño and New Jersey poet David Herrstrom, for a recital of music of Rumor de Páramo / Murmurs from the Wasteland. Rumor de Páramo is the international commissioning project, homage to landmark Mexican writer and photographer Juan Rulfo (1917-1986) in which Cervantes asked composers — from México, Spain, the USA, Great Britain and Brazil— for a solo piano piece inspired in Rulfo’s work. The result, over 3 years and 2 CDs, says Cervantes, is “a splendid body of 23 new works for the piano.” On the 31st, Garduño and Herrstrom will join the eloquent spoken word with the music it inspired, reading excerpts from Rulfo’s writing.

The concert will include my contribution to the project, Murmuring in Comala, as well as works by Federico Ibarra (México, 1946); Anne LeBaron (EUA, 1953); Arturo Márquez (México, 1950); Ramón Montes de Oca (México, 1953-2006); and Horacio Uribe (México, 1970).

The string quartet members of the Griffin Ensemble will perform my Set fire to have light at the Jazepa Cathedral in Liepāja, Latvia, on May 31 at 4PM as part of a program that will also include works by Haydn and Brahms. The quartet members, all musicians in the Liepāja Symphony Orchestra, are Baiba Lasmane and Ginta Alžāne, Violins; Tatjana Borovika, Viola; and Dina Puķite, cello.

The Cantala Women’s Choir of the Lawrence University Conservatory of Music will perform my The Moon of the Floating World, an a cappella setting for women’s voices in eight parts of a haiku by Ihara Saikaku (1642-1693). Conducted by Phillip A. Swan, the choir will perform in the Lawrence Memorial Chapel at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin on May 30 at 8PM.

My Concerto for Chamber Orchestra will be given its World Premiere performance by the Westchester Chamber Orchestra, Barry Charles Hoffman, founder and Artistic Director, on Saturday, May 3 at 8 PM. The Premiere will be given at Christopher J. Murphy Auditorium in the Murphy Science Building, corner of Summit and North Avenues, on the campus of Iona College in New Rochelle, New York.

The concert will also include the “Composers of the Future” showcase of children’s compositions from WCO’s collaboration with New Rochelle’s Songcatchers after-school program. In addition, the Orchestra will perform Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1 in C Major, op. 21. This concert series is sponsored in part by the Iona College Council on the Arts through the generosity of JoAnn and Joseph M. Murphy and the Baron Lambert Fund.

Tickets for the May 3 concert are $35 for general admission, $30 for seniors (65+) and $15 for students. For more information or tickets, call (914) 654-4WCO (4926), or e-mail info@westchesterchamberorchestra.org

The Westchester Chamber Orchestra is a fully professional orchestra, quickly becoming known in and outside of Westchester County for its first rate and inspiring performances, world class soloists, innovative programming and its World Premieres of meaningful new works it has commissioned. Now beginning its seventh season at Iona College in New Rochelle, New York, the WCO was founded in 1984 by its Artistic Director, Barry Charles Hoffman. For many years the WCO gave its concerts at various sites throughout Westchester County and in 1994 began its association with Iona College.

Composer Charles Griffin and Conductor Barry Hoffman Discuss the New Concerto for Chamber Orchestra:

Barry Hoffman - What makes this a Concerto for Orchestra?

Charles Griffin - When you first approached me about the piece, it was your suggestion that I write a Concerto for Chamber Orchestra. Because the request was not for a solo concerto (traditional association with the term “Concerto” is a Romantic one, evoking soloistic virtuosity and the kind of potential for drama that arises from pitting the soloist against the full orchestra), I was forced to consider other, arguably atypical models. I say arguably, because composers’ conception of the Concerto as a form has in fact gradually evolved over the centuries to allow for something much looser in the 21st Century anyway. Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra of 1943, for example, treats the Orchestra itself as the virtuoso instrument, with each section of instruments featured in a soloistic or virtuosic way. The Concerto as a form originates in the Baroque Era, and at that time, composers more often than not conceived of drama in the Concerto not so much by pitting a soloist against the rest of the orchestra, but rather by contrasting smaller groups of instruments against each other.

In the end, I decided on a blend of Baroque and 20th/21st Century conceptions. There are passages that are virtuosic for the orchestra as an instrument a la Bartok, but I also tried to treat orchestral color as a component of this, striving to create a wide variety of colors over the course of the piece. Every individual wind and brass player, and also the timpanist each gets at least one solo at some point. Individual string players are also given solos, and the various sections of strings have prominent solos or duos. One more note on the solos and the question of virtuosity: I think it’s important to point out that musical virtuosity is expressed by performers not exclusively by the ability to master extraordinarily difficult passages, but rather to bring their full musicality to bear on any passage, whether it’s simple or not.

B.H. - Why did you choose the baroque dance suite form?

C.G. - I was on a Bach kick last year. I was listening, reading about and playing through lots of Bach. For me, as with many composers, Bach is a life-long mentor and sustainer, one of the ones to go back to for subconscious composition lessons from time to time. I started every day for about 6 months by playing through some Chorales. During this period I became interested in Bach’s Suites, and the idea of artistic and intellectual commerce flowing throughout Europe at that time. The Baroque Dance Suite by the time of Bach became a semi-standardized multi-movement work whose non-variable core included the Allemand (a stately German dance in 4/4 time), the Courante (a lively French or Italian dance in 3/4), the Sarabande (a slow Spanish dance in 3/4), and the Gigue (a lively English dance in 6/8). There are many variable additions to the Suite, including Overtures, Minuets, Gavottes, etc. While in the traditional suite, all the pieces are related by key, they are not related thematically.

Since one of my major composerly preoccupations is with non-Western and folk musics, it struck me that the international nature of the Baroque Suite might make an interesting vehicle for the creation of a suite of pieces that explore elements of world and folk musics.

B.H. - In your program notes, you talk about composing the piece, “with a contemporary eye toward the meaning of internationalism today.” Do you feel you accomplished this? If so, how?

C.G. - The original plan was to write a five movement suite, beginning with an Overture. As I was writing, I realized that the piece was getting long. After I’d completed four movements of the planned five, I realized I’d already had approximately 26 minutes of music. You stopped me (for now) from writing a fifth movement, which will eventually be located in the spot between the current 2nd and 3rd movments.

Movement I - Trance Overture. After a muscular opening featuring a big role for the timpani and aggressive writing for the brass and strings, it quickly moves to a hypnotic expansion of the opening ideas that employs (in the winds and strings) some of the rhythmic interlocking characteristic of Indonesian and Balinese music for Gamelan. Download a perusal copy of Movement I here.

Movement II - Pavane. The Pavane, along with the Tombeau, is a French relative of the Allemande, which was typically the first proper movement of the Suite. An Allemande is typically in 2/4 or 4/4, unsyncopated, and builds from smaller fragments into a larger work. Here, I took a 13th Century anonymous Hymn tune called Novus Miles Sequitur, most likely of British origin and similarly build the piece from smaller fragments or phrases. This is the most traditional sounding movement in the piece, with a harmonic and color palate that is a blending of English and French classical styles. Download a perusal copy of Movement II here.

Movement III - Not yet written, but this is where the Courante would occur in the Baroque Dance Suite. I will eventually write something here based on Eastern European traditions.

Movement IV - Tierra de luz, Cielo de Tierra. This is where the Sarabande, a dance of Spanish origin, would occur in the Suite. I based this movement on the Siguiriya, one of the Flamenco dance forms. A ritornello based on flamenco guitar styles occurs three times in the movement, contrasted by solo sections and flights toward non-flamenco tonalities, though the Andalusian scale dominates the piece at various transpositions. Download a perusal copy of Movement IV (identified as Mvt III in the score) here.

Movement V - Weaving Olden Dances. This is where the Gigue would occur in the Suite. This movement is a blend of Irish traditional music and its American stepchild in Appalachia. Download a perusal copy of Movement V (identified as Mvt IV in the score) here.

Do I feel I accomplished this? Well, it’s an experiment. The Overture movement cannot stand on its own, but the others all can, I believe, which was a secondary or possibly tertiary goal for me. I’ll let others judge how they hang together in sequence. That being said, and to be quite honest, the piece won’t be fully complete for me until that remaining movement is written and placed together with the others. I think the missing movement will help to deepen the sense of stylistic contrast that already exists from movement to movement.

The women’s chamber choir, The Lorelei Ensemble, directed by Beth Willer, will give the U.S. premiere of my El Paso de la Seguiriya, a flamenco-inflected setting of the poetry of Federico Garcia Lorca, as part of a program of music of the Spanish Renaissance and new works on Spanish and English texts, at Brookline Parish in Brookline, Massachusetts on May 3rd at 4PM. The program includes Selections from Guerrero’s Canciones y Villanescas Espirituales, Victoria’s Duo Seraphim, and the premieres of Daniel Schlosberg’s El Sueno and
Haralabos Stafylakis’s Ubi Sunt. They will repeat the program at First Church in Wenham, Massachusetts on May 4th at 3PM.

The women’s vocal ensemble Putni will perform my El Paso de la Seguiriya, a flamenco-inflected setting of the poetry of Federico Garcia Lorca, on Sunday, April 27 at 4PM at The Museum of Decorative Arts & Design, located at 10/20 Skārņu iela in Riga, and again at St. John’s Lutheran Church in Piņķi on May 3 at 6PM, as part of their program “Spanish Hour”.

The London-based Ivory Duo (Natalie Tsaldarakis and Panayotis Archontides) will perform my From the Faraway Nearby, a suite of six pieces inspired by paintings by the American painter Georgia O’Keeffe, at 12:30 on Saturday, April 26, at the Historic Waltham Abbey Church in Essex, just 16 miles north of London.

I haven’t written a pure blog entry in a long time… It’s been mostly concert announcements and the like. But it’s Academic Job Season again. Which makes me think of the Abbott and Costello “Who’s On First?” variation from the old Bugs Bunny cartoon where Elmer Fudd (who is hunting rabbits specifically) has both Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck cornered with his gun, and Bugs gets Daffy to insist on getting himself shot.

Bugs: It’s true, Doc; I’m a rabbit alright. Would you like to shoot me now or wait ’til you get home?
Daffy: Shoot him now! Shoot him now!
Bugs: You keep outta this! He doesn’t have to shoot you now!
Daffy: He does so have to shoot me now! [to Elmer] I demand that you shoot me now!
[Elmer raises his gun. As Daffy sticks his tongue out at Bugs, he is shot. Daffy walks back over to Bugs, gunsmoke pouring out of his nostrils]
Daffy: [to Bugs] Let’s run through that again.
Bugs: Okay.
Bugs: [deadpan] Would you like to shoot me now or wait till you get home.
Daffy:[similarly] Shoot him now, shoot him now.
Bugs: [as before] You keep outta this, he doesn’t have to shoot you now.
Daffy Duck: [re-animated] Hah! That’s it! Hold it right there! [to audience] Pronoun trouble. [to Bugs] It’s not “he doesn’t have to shoot you now”, it’s “he doesn’t have to shoot me now”
[Pause]
Daffy: [angrily] Well, I say he does have to shoot me now!! [to Elmer] So shoot me now!
[Elmer shoots Daffy again]

Anyway. That’s close to how I feel about applying for academic positions. But I just retooled my Curriculum Vitae, and created a teaching philosophy statement. I would very much appreciate constructive feedback on either one. I hope the Teaching Philosophy doesn’t come across as the same old, same old pablum.

While I’m at it, I wonder if anyone out there who has been or chaired a search committee might care to illuminate the process by commenting on their experience(s)? I have only taught adjunct, so I’ve never been on one. In the last three years, I have made it to the interview stage three times. The first time, someone with a choral conducting qualification got the job over me, because conducting was entailed. The second time, they broke the position into multiple adjunct posts in the end. The third time I was painfully nervous during the sample lessons I gave, and they gave the position to an internal adjunct candidate.

But I would love to know a few things, the most obvious being:
• What makes one person’s CV float to the top of the candidate pile?

But also random things about the process that sometimes contribute to it feeling like a hassle, like:
• Why do committees ask for things that will make the entire applicant pool spend money on something like official transcripts, videos of teaching, CDs or scores, etc., rather than waiting to reduce the pool to, say, 10 candidates?
• After just reducing the size of my CV from 8 pages to 5 (primarily by winnowing my complete list of works down to commissioned works only), I see a vacancy announcement specifying a desire to see a complete list of works. Why?
• As for letters of recommendation, which is more important, the content of the recommendation or the name-recognition of the referee?
• How important is it to see a cover letter truly tailored to the school to which it’s sent?

Teaching philosophy

As a classroom educator, I model myself on a combination of several professors whom I have been fortunate to know. Teaching effectively requires flexibility, patience, humility, inquisitiveness, humor and creativity. I strive to be clear and methodical in my presentation, to keep the path between the specific and the general visible, and to individualize the learning experience as much as possible. Mistakes should be embraced as instructional opportunities. I strive to bring into the conversation about music ideas from other disciplines such as history, the sciences or psychology, in order to create multiple inroads to understanding for my students, but also to introduce them to the notion that an embracing open-mindedness to disciplines outside of music will help them become better musicians and critical thinkers. As much as possible, I try to treat the classroom as a laboratory environment for my students, where they learn by doing, by being active rather than passive.

When giving composition instruction (in addition to listening, score study, and reading), I follow an excellent model for discussion I learned when participating in a workshop at New Dramatists in New York City, led by Ben Krywosz. He learned it originally from the field of dance, but applied it here to an intensive workshop on collaboration between composers and playwrights/lyricists. There were five composers and five lyricists (and five singers plus an accompanist). We had to produce a lot of collaborative work, and every other day, we would come together and the performers would read through the pieces. When it was time to critique each other’s work, we followed a very specific five-step model for the discussions:

1. Say something positive. This forces us out of our typical reflex reaction, which is to find faults or something we would change had we been one of the authors. A lot of good-faith effort went into the attempt to create something artistic. It shouldn’t be too hard to find something positive to say.
2. You can ask them questions about the work, but not one that couches a negative opinion (like “How dare you?”). An example might be “What inspired you to evoke that image in the text?” or “What was the mood you were hoping to achieve?”
3. The author(s) can ask us questions. They might ask “Did that tempo work for you?” or “Could you understand the text in that vocal register?” etc. Truthfully, we as creators tend to have a sense about what is working well and what isn’t, and this provides an opportunity for the creator(s) to voice their own concerns. This can also preempt some of the content in the next step.
4. Opinion. This is the time we can present the negative aspects of our larger reception of the work. Here, whatever remaining technical or aesthetic issues can be addressed. All creative artists feel a certain emotional vulnerability that accompanies putting one’s work before other people. After steps one through three, that vulnerability has diminished, and leads to an ability to receive these opinions rationally and constructively.
5. Big picture. Here we examine the issues brought up in the discussion and determine if any are relevant to the discipline as a whole.

Perhaps one of the most important reasons I appreciate this model is the respect it accords people in their artistic efforts. I have found it useful when speaking with composition students, performers, or colleagues alike.

The Long Island Composers Alliance hosts a performance by the Italian flutist Andrea Ceccomori and Bulgarian pianist Elitza Harbova on Tuesday, September 25 at 7:00 PM at the Hewlett-Woodmere Library (1125 Broadway in Hewlett - Tel: 516-374-1667).

After Andrea gave the Italian premiere of my Fragmentary Rondo at the Goethe Institute in Rome, I connected him to the Long Island Composers Alliance, and this concert is the result of that collaboration. In addition to performing my solo work on this concert, other works for solo flute or flute with piano accompaniment will be included by LICA composers Jay Anthony Gach, Julie Mandel, Dana Richardson, Herbert Rothgarber and Margaret Collins Stoop.