Author: Garrett Schumann

Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Festivals, New York

William Zuckerman and his Symphony Z

composer William Zuckerman

In December 2010, as I was still adjusting to the climate change between Houston, Texas and Ann Arbor, Michigan, I heard a piece that has stuck with me ever since. I wrote about it here, along with two others, and called this particular work, which was performed with video and dance, “the most well executed student production of ANY KIND I have seen.” This piece is Music in Pluralism by William Zuckerman, a former University of Michigan composition student who is currently freelancing in New York.

On April 11th at 8 PM, in the Kaufman Center’s Merkin Hall, Music and Pluralism comes to life as part of the opening performance of the 2012 Tribeca New Music Festival. The event is also functioning as a CD release party for a recording of Music Pluralism William has worked on for over two years. Moreover, the April 11th concert is the debut of Mr. Zuckerman’s hand-picked ensemble, “Symphony Z”. I caught up with William and asked him a few questions about Music and Pluralism, Symphony Z and his life as a freelance composer; but, before I get to his eloquent responses, I want to set the stage for what Music in Pluralism has to offer its audience.

In the piece, William handles immense proportions with the deftness far beyond his years, and ties together a diverse cadre of musical influences – everything from Pop Rock to Bach’s Passacaglia in C Minor! – with the compelling and cogent force of his artistic vision. David Bloom, the charismatic busybody behind the group Contemporaneous (who share the stage with Symphony Z on April 11), conducts Symphony Z, and is similarly impressed with Music in Pluralism’s scope, eclecticism and coherence. He told me in an e-mail, “[i]t’s [Music in Pluralism’s] coexistence of unity and variety that makes the piece so compelling.”

When I got the CD of Music in Pluralism in the mail, I must admit I was a little apprehensive. Part of what moved me so much about its December 2010 performance was how beautifully William and his collaborators mixed the media of dance, music and video of the course of the work’s 45-minute duration. Obviously, the audio version lacks these non-musical elements, and I was concerned their profundity may have skewed my initial feelings about William’s music. As I will espouse more verbosely in an upcoming review of the Music in Pluralism CD: I am happy to report the piece stands – more effusively, triumphs – on its own.

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by Garrett Schumann
Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Festivals, Music Events

Wrapping Up “American Mavericks”

By now, the members of the San Francisco Symphony, their director Michael Tilson Thomas, and the rest of the musicians responsible for the orchestra’s magnificent “American Mavericks” Festival have left Ann Arbor for New York and the next stop on their tour: Carnegie Hall. In immediate relection, I’m confident the concerts lived up to the title bestowed upon it by Alex Ross: “the major musical event of the winter/spring season” – though, in Ann Arbor, I argue the “Mavericks” share that spotlight with January’s presentation of Einstein On The Beach.

Immeasurable credit is due the Symphony and MTT for the sheer audacity of their programming and the high level of their performances. The music they shared with us energized Ann Arbor’s concertgoers to a level I’d never before witnessed, and I believe all those who attended feel indebted to the University Musical Society for bringing this once-in-a-generation event to our Midwestern haven.

In the mold of the 17 American composers featured on the tour, the Symphony’s four concerts were blisteringly unapologetic and daring – almost to a fault, in fact. Personally, the composers who shined the most in my ears were (in alphabetical order) Mason Bates, Henry Cowell, Lukas Foss, Meredith Monk and Carl Ruggles, but there was lots of music to go around for every concertgoer’s taste. I was heretofore uninitiated to the work of these last three composers, and, thanks to their pieces Echoi, Realm Variations and Sun-Treader (respectively), I am determined to listen to Mr. Foss, Ms. Monk and Mr. Ruggles’ music more regularly.

Before last week I was also rather unfamiliar with Mason Bates’ work, but my encounter with him, and his new choir/organ/electronics piece Mass Transmission, could not have been more impressive. Mr. Bates is, obviously, one of the most successful living composers in America, but this fact only makes his unfailingly down-to-earth character more endearing. He was very candid when he presented to us students, opening his chat by declaring his near indifference for being dubbed a “Maverick”, and later revealing his desire to achieve more lyricism in his music – something he excels at in Mass Transmission.

The Festival also gave me an opportunity to meet another top-flight American musician: renowned pianist Jeremy Denk. Charming, witty and articulate, Mr. Denk is as gifted a performer as he is a wordsmith, crafting two spectacular performances, and one stellar presentation to the UM Composition Department, while he was in Ann Arbor. Last Thursday night, Mr. Denk brought Henry Cowell’s Piano Concerto to life, and, yesterday afternoon, took part in performing Lukas Foss’ raucous and virtuosic Echoi – a work he sarcastically described in his master class as, “the hardest piece ever written”.

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by Garrett Schumann
Contemporary Classical

A Visit From San Francisco

Michael Tilson Thomas

Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony are visiting Ann Arbor this week as part of their American Mavericks Festival, a celebration of 17 living and passed American composers ranging from Mason Bates to Charles Ives. The orchestra is giving four concerts starting this Thursday (3/22) and Sunday (3/25) and will be joined along the way by incredible soloists like Jeremy Denk, Jessye Norman, Joan La Barbara, Emmanuel Ax and others.

Ann Arbor is one of three stops in the Symphony’s centennial tour (the others being Chicago and New York), and their residency coincides with the University of Michigan’s second annual American Orchestras Summit, which features presentations by composers, musicologists and leaders in the world of American orchestras.

Sam Richards, a colleague of mine in the Michigan composition department is covering the Summit, and will be live-blogging during its presentations over the next three days. Additionally, I will live-tweet the presentations, performances and the conversations the students here have planned with Mason Bates and Jeremy Denk.

You can find Sam’s first post on the Summit here, and he also created a nifty ‘family tree’ connecting the ‘Maverick’ composers featured in this week’s upcoming concerts.

If you’re interested in reading my tweets regarding the various music and conversations I witness and participate in this week, follow me @garrt.

 

 

by Garrett Schumann
Composers, Contemporary Classical

Down the Rabbit Hole of “Sidereus”

Composer Osvaldo Golijov

Today marks a week since Tom Manoff and Brian McWhorter attended an infamous  performance of the Osvaldo Golijov’s Sidereus by the Eugene Symphony Orchestra in Eugene, Oregon. The duo’s story – that they recognized substantial sections of another piece, Michael Ward-Bergeman’s Barbeich, in Mr. Golijov’s work – has, by now, practically become legend in music circles. Nearly every outlet covering Classical Music in the country, from The New Yorker to various individuals’ twitter feeds, have focused heavily on the ethics of Mr. Golijov’s musical borrowing.

To me, the question of whether what Mr. Golijov did is right or wrong doesn’t matter. We know from Mr. Ward-Bergeman’s well-circulated statement that he and Mr. Golijov have a standing agreement allowing the Argentinean-born composer to use material from Barbeich as he sees fit. Additionally, Mr. Golijov admitted to using Mr. Ward-Bergeman’s melody in a promotional interview leading up to Sidereus‘ first performance by the Memphis Symphony Orchestra in October 2010. The discourse needs to shift its focus from Mr. Golijov’s culpability  and target the implications of this scenario – what does the Sidereus crisis  symbolize?

Superficially, one of the most inflammatory aspects of this story is the fact that Mr. Golijov is an incredibly famous composer and Mr. Ward-Bergeman is not well known. But, what is being overlooked is that the piece Mr. Golijov produced isn’t very good. In my opinion, Sidereus does not fulfill a level of imagination and perspicacity concomitant to the rest of Mr. Golijov’s output. People are saying the orchestras who commissioned Sidereus didn’t get what they paid for because Mr. Golijov borrowed from Mr. Ward-Bergeman. This isn’t true: the orchestras who commissioned Mr. Golijov didn’t get what they paid for because he didn’t write a good piece.

With this said, we shouldn’t dwell on why Sidereus misses the mark – Mr. Golijov is neither the first nor last great composer to put together a stinker. More important is examining the situation that led him to work at a level below his typical creativity. To this day, we know Mr. Golijov struggles with deadlines, and we also know he often juggles multiple projects at once. To my eyes, it is clear what happened: Mr. Golijov felt overwhelmed by his commitments and needed the help of Mr. Ward-Bergeman’s piece to fulfill an obligation.

Succumbing to pressure like this isn’t damnable – though, the disingenuous communications regarding Mr. Golijov’s lifting of Barbeich are quite problematic, as I will discuss later. However, other composers have done similar things with impunity, whether that means orchestrating one piece into another, or – in the case of Matthias Pintscher’s orchestra piece Toward Osiris – fulfilling one commission by throwing together sketches of a different, ongoing project. If we want to be constructive, instances like Sidereus should not indict the composers involved, but, instead, should operate as indicators of broader problems inherent to the system that produces these large commissions.

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by Garrett Schumann
Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music, Music Events

Einstein is Coming

This weekend, Ann Arbor’s University Musical Society is putting on its most ambitious project since I’ve been in town: Philip Glass‘s legendary opera Einstein On The Beach.

The production is directed by Robert Wilson with choreography by Lucinda Childs and includes a stunning cast hand-picked by Mrs. Wilson and Glass for the revival. Performances are this Friday (7 PM), Saturday (7 PM) and Sunday (2 PM) at the downtown Power Center performance space.

Alas, the shows are sold out at this point, but if you are a diehard fan, or just an interested individual in the area, there is always “second-acting” or last-minute availabilities to hope for (I’ve got my fingers crossed!).

For insights on the opera from one of its talented singers, check out Lindsay Kessleman‘s blog, “Inside Einstein on the Beach“.

I hope I can get in for at least some of it and report back on what it is like!

by Garrett Schumann
Composers

My Truth On Getting A Doctorate

I’ve uncharacteristically procrastinated on this post for about a month and a half. In early December (I think), Christian Carey asked me to write a note about applying to doctoral programs in Music Composition after reading my incessant tweets on the subject, and I’ve been sitting on the assignment ever since. Much of the delay owes itself to my Masters Thesis. But, as of Monday afternoon, that project is finished and I have no more excuses.

 

The decision to apply to any program, whether a D.M.A./Ph.D. or a summer festival, is individual; the core motivations for pursuing or abstaining from the activity are absolutely personal. I urge anyone out there considering a graduate track in Music Composition to consider all the options – I have just as many peers who take time in between the stages of their education as those who, as I aspire, follow an unbroken path from their undergraduate studies to their doctorates.

With that said, I believe there is one universal I can offer: DO NOT do this because ‘everyone else’ does it, or you think it is a de facto part of a composer’s life. Although extraneous forces may shade doctoral studies as pro forma for the professional composer, this is not necessarily the case. No one should pursue a doctorate without a heartfelt motivation for staying in school.

My reason for continuing my education is impossible to capture in a pithy catchphrase. Even saying I, “love to learn”, is wholly inadequate because we are always learning no matter where we are and, more importantly, school isn’t the only place to absorb what we need to know. Last year, a doctoral student-friend of mine at UM told me, “don’t let your education get in the way of your learning”, which I think is excellent advice for any creative person in any level of schooling.

Along these lines, I didn’t choose to apply to doctoral programs for any curricular reason. Although there are specific parts of my craft/musicianship I look forward to working on (electronic music, orchestration, for starters), I don’t think I must be in school to meet these goals. In other words, I’m not searching for something in the schools I’ve applied to; rather, I’m looking for a place where I can look inside myself, become more familiar with the forces that drive me and mature into the musician I need to be to do my best in professional life. Perhaps naively, I consider the other responsibilities of a doctoral student ancillary to this process of self-discovery, experimentation and artistic refinement.

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by Garrett Schumann
Composers, Contemporary Classical

I think I overdosed on student composers’ music (part 2)

Early this week I posted my report on the 2011 Midwest Composers Symposium, wherein I mentioned the fact I had heard a lot of students’ music in a short amount of time. Well, the 30+ works I wrote about Thursday were just the beginning of my new music marathon because Midwest was immediately followed by last Monday’s student composers’ concert at the University of Michigan. That composers’ forum, the year’s second, was refreshingly brief in contrast to the preceding weekend’s protracted program, yet it contained delicious variety and a few personal debuts by composers I was not familiar with.

Monday’s concert began with an electro-acoustic work by Robert Alexander, an accomplished, technologically oriented composer/sound artist who I saw perform with the MiND Ensemble last Spring. Mr. Alexander’s piece, a line between two spaces (turning and turning and resting), featured composer David Biedenbender at the piano and a host of live electronic devices. As I gathered, the work was mainly improvised, though it seemed like the overall structure – mostly in terms of energy level – had been agreed on beforehand. Most remarkable about the piece is the way in which Mr. Alexander’s electronics interacted with the piano.  At first, the piano’s sound is undistorted, with the first synthesized sounds regurgitating the piano’s music and then shifting the pitch ever so slightly. However, the electronics increasingly gain power over the piano, achieving a beautiful and stunning summit whereby the electronic part actually subsumes the acoustic space of the piano, and the instrument is no longer audible.

The next two pieces were beautiful songs performed by composers David Wolff (tenor) and Michael Schachter (pianist). First came Mr. Wolff’s “Of Mere Being”, an impressionistic setting of Wallace Stevens. With its impulsive musical moods, “Of Mere Being” reflects the text impeccably and expressively without being obvious. Moreover, Mr, Wolff’s performance, for both songs, was fantastic and demonstrative of his impressive musicianship. Mr. Schachter’s Pierrot (Heart), followed and didn’t shy away from the mantle of excellent vocal writing introduced carried by “Of Mere Being”. Pierrot sets a poem by Langston Hughes, and opens simply to establish a somber, contemplative space from which the narrator will tell his story. Like “Of Mere Being”, Pierrot merges the piano and singer into a single dramatic force that illustrates the text without being to transparent. Particularly important to the drama in Mr. Schachter’s work is the aforementioned simplicity of the opening material. This idea’s expressivity grows slowly, only to explode rather gloriously in the song’s captivating climax.

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by Garrett Schumann
Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Festivals, Music Events

I think I overdosed on student composers’ music (part 1)

The positive aspect of having too much of a good thing is that you’ve consumed something good. For me in the last week, the object of my over-consumption has been new works by student composers, not only created by colleagues of mine at the University of Michigan, but the representatives of the University of Iowa, Indiana University and the University of Cincinnati who attended the 2011 Midwest Composers Symposium. Topping off the weekend-long buffet of freshly baked music was Monday evening’s second student composers’ concert of the year here at Michigan (which I will cover in the next installment in this pair of reviews). Suffice it to say, I heard a lot of music in those four days, so I will do my best to cover what passed by my ears.

Midwest (as the event will be dubbed from now on) is an annually occurring conference of student composers held at one of the four member institutions (UM, UI, IU and CCM) on a rotating basis. For more background information check out last year’s post on the symposium. I participated in the Michigan delegation this year and traveled to Bloomington, Indiana (IU was the host this time ’round) with my work for two marimbas “Dark Spiral” (here’s a video). There were four concerts altogether, one Friday evening and three on Saturday offering over 30 individual works to an audience of composers, performers and professors. Intervening between the morning and afternoon concert Saturday was a very thought-provoking discussion session wherein each school elected students to give a brief presentation on a musical topic of their choice. I really enjoyed the interactions spawned by this feature of the event and I hope it is retained and, perhaps, expanded in the future.

I apologize in advance to all those performers and composers I am unable to devote much time to in the forthcoming paragraphs. The extreme volume of music presented to me forces me – understandably I hope – to be uncomfortably brief. Before getting specific I want to emphasize that every school represented themselves extremely well, in my opinion. Each offered a variety of styles and ensembles making the slate of proffered works as diverse as it was ample.

Now to the music.

Friday’s concert featured the “large ensemble” works, including performances by the Indiana University Chamber Orchestra, Contemporary Vocal Ensemble and New Music Ensemble. There were many remarkably beautiful moments in the first two works, Natalie Williams‘ Les Chant du Malador (2011) and Stas Omelchenko‘s Musings… (2011), particularly the third movement of Ms. Williams’ piece, which alludes to tonality in a very refracted way that is convincing and engaging without being too on-the-nose. These chamber orchestra works were followed by two very well-received (at least with my crew) choral pieces: Lindsey Jacob‘s Continue to Exist (2006) and Ji Young Kim‘s Reflections on Waiting for Mama (2011). Ms. Kim’s work is particularly striking in how it uses onomatopoeia to imitate the native language of her text’s subject, Korean. The piece balances the choir’s texture wonderfully, using precisely located solos to convey and magnify the work’s narrative backbone. The final two works on the evening’s program were Paul Dooley‘s Point Blank (which I already reviewed) and Justin Grossman‘s At Last the Secret is Out (2010), pairing very nicely together to conclude the first evening and set the bar very high for Saturday’s music.

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by Garrett Schumann
Chamber Music, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Music Events

Brave New Works Comes to Town

For those of you in the area, the highly-lauded chamber ensemble Brave New Works is returning to their old stomping grounds in Ann Arbor for two performances this weekend.

The first is at Ann Arbor’s beloved Kerrytown Concert House on Friday November 18, at 8 PM. The program will feature works by Joseph Schwantner, Chen Yi and UM’s own Evan Chambers and Bright Sheng. Tickets are $5 for students, $10-25 general admission

The second concert is the following evening (Nov. 19) at 8 PM in the McIntosh theater at the UM School of Music, and features an all-Michigan program of Erik Santos, Michael Daugherty, Kristin Kuster and Paul Schoenfield. This concert is free.

by Garrett Schumann
Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music

Composers in the Wild

The Kerrytown Concert House

As those of you who regularly read my reports from Ann Arbor know, most of the new music I cover is related to the University of Michigan, usually in the form of a student composer concert, a performance by the resident Contemporary Directions Ensemble or the appearance of a contemporary work or two on a Symphony Band concert. Beyond these highly active groups at the Michigan School of Music, our town is gifted with two wonderful concert presenting organizations who regularly feature contemporary music on their programs: the University Musical Society and the Kerrytown Concert House.  Last year I attended several UMS events, but hadn’t stepped inside KCH as an audience member until last week when composer Ezra Donner invited me to hear the Aurea Silva Trio premiere his work Variations for Flute, Bassoon and Piano.

More so than UMS, the Kerrytown Concert House focuses on experimental programming and intimate presentations, garnering recognition from the Nation Endowment of the Arts for their important role in the music community of Southeastern Michigan and, frankly, the whole country. Unbeknownst to me, KCH has hosted a new music/jazz festival called “Edgefest” for fifteen years, which wrapped up last month. Although, I missed out on an opportunity to report on that concert series, I was able to catch a bit of new music there last week with the aforementioned recital by the Aurea Silva Trio.

Commissioned for the Trio, Variations reflects a consistent theme in Mr. Donner’s music: the influence of his upbringing in the Rust Belt of western Pennsylvania. To my ears, the connection was apparent in the first, expansive sonority of the piece, which ascends from the rumbling depths of the bassoon’s lowest register to the higher ranges of the flute and the piano. This section is the theme of what Mr. Donner called a, “classically oriented theme and variations” in pre-concert remarks, and does more than establish the root of all the subsequent music, it introduces bassoonist Gareth Thomas as a very prominent figure in the narrative of the work. Beyond the structure, the only stylistic allusion to classical tradition occurs with one variation I noted as a, “demented waltz”. I found the link impossible to ignore thanks to the section’s typifying meter and accompanimental pattern in the piano, though the passage’s melodic material is more of a grotesque caricature of than a respectful homage to traditional waltz music. As the variations continue, the ‘waltz’ music returns in a decayed form while the bassoon maintains its status as the principle melodic figure in the work – until the theme comes back. With the bassoon relegated to its lowest range, pianist David Gililand and flutist Brandy Hudelson are given an opportunity to expand on what we’ve heard before, leading to a rousing conclusion that caused one attendee – luminary America composer William Bolcom – to call out “good!” before the Trio could take its first bow.

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by Garrett Schumann