Author: Garrett Schumann

Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, File Under?

Live From Ann Arbor: Chapter 2A

The University of Michigan’s final student composers’ concert of 2010 took place this last Monday, November 29, in Stamps Auditorium, part of the University’s Walgreen Drama Center. This collection of performances was unexpected; so many composers submitted material for November 15’s composers’ concert, a brief third concert of the term was necessary.

Whereas the concert earlier this month was unique with its multiple composer-performers, Monday’s event possessed a more subtle distinction: a strong stylistic dichotomy emerged among the works, essentially pitting modernist and traditional forces in opposition to each other. From a qualitative standpoint, I found this duality inconsequential because all of the evening’s acoustic works had something in common: they expressed their structures with the recurrence of clearly identifiable themes. Although the two electronic pieces on the concert used different formal techniques, they also contained clear and satisfying dramatic lines. As a result, I felt the evening’s music was tied together despite the starkly contrasting musical tastes presented on the program.

First on the concert was Bret Bohman’s she comes back as fire (2010), a three-movement work for string quartet. This piece is the complete version of something I heard, and reviewed, in October at Michigan’s and I was happy to reacquaint myself with the first movement’s unforgettable midsection – an aria where the first violin saunters in its highest register above a placid accompaniment. The rest of the piece explores and culminates material from the first movement, varying the music’s atmosphere little even though new content is introduced. Ultimately, Mr. Bohman references the memorable first violin solo in she comes back as fire’s final movement, but the surrounding music is too chaotic for its reappearance to establish a sense of repose. Mr, Bohman used his themes economically, which illuminated much of the work’s structure on the first listen. I am also sure further interaction with she comes back as fire would, more deeply, reveal a tightly wound and efficient network of musical material.

Next on the program was Patrick Behnke’s viola and violin duet, Miranda at the Edge of the Water (2010). Mr. Behnke currently studies viola at the University of Michigan and delivered a fine performance alongside violinist Jordan Broder. Loosely based on certain Indian rhythmic modes, Miranda at the Edge of the Water proceeded in a pseudo-improvisatory manner from an opening drone through a variety of dance-like passages and finally back to the static beginning, which evoked Mr. Behnke’s South Asian influences. I say “pseudo improvisatory” because the piece progressed like a stream-of-conscientiousness, and the violin and viola alternated the responsibility of leading the duo to its next musical destination, often via imitation. Mr. Behnke’s note explained connections not just to Indian music, but to Bela Bartok and Jimi Hendrix as well; yet, I heard another association – Arvo Pärt’s tintinnabulation. One of the few recurring sections featured a modal melody accompanied by its supporting triad. Particularly at the end of Miranda at the Edge of the Water, this technique gave the music a reverent and meditative quality, fitting Mr. Behnke’s description, “the violin ascends to the heavens. All is over.”

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by Garrett Schumann
Contemporary Classical

Live From Ann Arbor: Chapter 2, A Focus On Composer-Performers

The University of Michigan School of Music, Theater and Dance’s second Student Composers’ concert of the year took place this last Monday, November 15. A hefty buffet of close to two hours of music, I found the evening passed by quickly and satisfactorily because each work was strikingly self-confident and virtually every moment of music was significant such that it never seemed like the pieces were treading water. Beyond this, the concert was particularly remarkable because of the prevalent display of composition students’ performing abilities. Only three of the night’s eight pieces lacked a composer-performer, and two among the other five were doubly notable because the works’ composers delivered solo performances.

Given his enormous contribution to the concert – appearing in three works on cello, and writing another, the chamber concerto Nephelopolis – I must first mention Jeremy Crosmer, a masters student in Music Composition and a doctoral student in Cello Performance. I asked Mr. Crosmer – along with the other three composers who performed Monday evening – to comment on the relationship between his performance and his composition. Interestingly, Mr. Crosmer does not often perform his own music, though he cannot deny the strong influence performing has had on his writing, namely in the area of notation:

I’ve learned to write with the intention of leaving many musical nuances up to the performers, rather than specifying every last detail. I find that this is a very important way to keep the music alive… [by] allowing the performers freedom, I think the music can adapt to the circumstances of any given day and any given audience and concert.

From working with Mr. Crosmer on my piece, Clavdia, the opening work on Monday’s concert, I believe this perspective has informed his playing and helped him become a gifted interpreter of new music. His other performances second my observation, namely David Heetderks’ Stratus, a beautiful duo for cello and piano. Stratus decorated the clear pandiatonicism and modality of its melodies with captivating textures and a friendly, yet unpredictable, form. Mr. Crosmer and his companion, pianist Justin Snyder, presented Stratus in a light and charming manner, perfectly manifesting the program note’s claim that the work “reaches for the sky”.

Mr. Crosmer’s final performance came on the last piece of the first half: Roger Zare’s string quartet Road Trip. Explained in detail in its program note, Road Trip is a musical depiction of a cross-country vacation from Mr. Zare’s youth. The work was cinematic in its portrayal of the journey, beginning with ostinati to capture the forward-moving monotony of car travel and – in the second movement – using references to jazz and mariachi music to more clearly state the distance covered in the piece’s narrative backdrop. Contained within the demands of the quartet, Mr. Crosmer’s virtuosity emerged most prominently in the final movement – Pacific Coast Highway – which featured the cello as a soloist against cloudy figures in the rest of the quartet, meant to represent fog.

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by Garrett Schumann
Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, Music Events

ONCE (again)

From left to right: Donald Scavarda, Gordon Mumma, Robert Ashley and Roger Reynolds take the stage after Thurday's ONCE. NOW. concert. Photo courtesy of Subaram Raman.

Although Ann Arbor’s ONCE. MORE. festival, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the ONCE Group composers, does not end until tonight, the events with the surviving founders of the groundbreaking concert series – Roger Reynolds, Robert Ashley, Gordon Mumma and Donald Scavarda – concluded Thursday evening. That night’s ONCE. NOW. concert featured more recent works by these four composers.

Robert Ashley’s Van Cao’s Meditation (1991), for piano, opened the evening. The piece was resonant, repetitive, and reminded me of Satie’s Ogives in spirit. Essentially, Van Cao’s Meditation milled about one confined group of a few notes which covered all registers of the piano and, at the end of each phrase, settled on an octave which was not part of this more prevalent pitch collection. The piece was over half and hour long, so the music’s motion through time was made interesting by altering the dynamics and lengths of phrases.

More importantly, the performance is meant to be intensely physical – as Ashley said before the piece, the player must have the music, “in their body” – and Pianist Ming-Hsiu Yen succeeded in delivering the work in a beautifully corporeal way. Most profound was the flowing of Ming-Hsu’s arms as she ascended and descended the arpeggiated figure at the heart of the piece. Perhaps because the work’s musical landscape is so static, Ashley placed a higher premium on the physical aspects of Thursday’s performance, even going so far as to request Ming-Hsiu wear a sleeveless top in the concert. These inferences notwithstanding, Ashley’s piece, despite its epic length, was a wild success on Thursday and many people I talked to after the concert said their reaction to Van Cao’s Meditation was profoundly visceral.

Gordon Mumma’s Than Particle (1985) was next on the program and featured one of the most well-received performances of this week’s concerts. University of Michigan Associate Professor of Percussion Joseph Gramley dazzled in this duet between a percussion soloist and electronic sounds. The synthesized part is from a long-obsolete Yamaha computer program, but Mumma insists on using this version of the electronics because, “some of the synthesized percussion sounds are absurd”. Mr. Gramley’s performance was commandingly athletic and lyrical, particularly when he abandoned his mallets for his fingertips. The percussion part at these moments was unbelievably delicate and juxtaposed humorously with the clumsy timbre of the electronics. Deservedly, Mr. Gramley earned the evening’s first curtain call.

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by Garrett Schumann
Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music, File Under?

ONCE (during)

From left to right, Roger Reynolds, Donald Scavarda, Gordon Mumma and Robert Ashley. Photo courtesy of Subaram Raman.

Last night, Rackham Auditorium on Washington Street in Ann Arbor, MI became a sort of communal time machine. Complete with a vintage magnetic tape reel, electronic synthesizer and “public disturbance”, performed by students from the University of Michigan School of Music’s Composition Department, the hall carried its occupants back to the revolutionary decade of the 1960s when a group of young, local composers called the ONCE Group started a groundbreaking and historic contemporary music festival. These composers were Roger Reynolds, Robert Ashley, Gordon Mumma, Donald Scavarda (pictured to the right) and the late George Cacioppo, and the music they created for the ONCE festivals was on display last night to reenact the sounds of the original events.

The concert kicked off ONCE. MORE., an interdisciplinary celebration of ONCE and its related cultural period in American history, by presenting over three hours of music by the founding composers. After remarks by the co-directors of the concert series, University of Michigan School of Music Professor of Composition Michael Daugherty and Professor of Performing Arts and Technology Mary Simoni, the music began with Roger Reynolds’ Mosaic (1962) for flute and piano. Notably vibrant in its use of instrumental colors, many of which were produced via extended techniques, Mosaic seemed too introverted to be a concert opener. Nevertheless, University of Michigan Professor of Flute Amy Porter and Professor of Piano Performance John Ellis succeeded to draw me in to a complex musical world wherein the limits of acoustic instrumental sound were well traversed. I was left with the impression that the flute and piano behaved as one sound producing body, yielding an aural landscape that both yearned for and hinted at electronic music.

Next on the program was Robert Ashley’s in memoriam…Crazy Horse (symphony) (1963), which hands an ensemble of 32 players a series of graphic scores and lets them interpret the symbols as they wish. Crazy Horse and its companion piece on the second part of the concert, in memoriam…Esteban Gomez (quartet) (1963) epitomize the experimental and avant-garde sentiments that spawned the original ONCE concerts. As you would expect, these two improvised pieces were very different, but I felt like Crazy Horse was delivered more successfully.  Mark Kirschenmann’s Creative Arts Orchestra presented in memoriam…Crazy Horse cohesively, developing specific sound ideas (i.e. verbal/oral noise, sustained tones/harmonies, dense polyphony, etc.) and passing them among the different instrumental forces on stage. In contrast, the University of Michigan’s Digital Music Ensemble’s performance of in memoriam…Esteban Gomez was unfortunately static and I was chagrined by their heavy use of modern sound manipulation technologies. However, it speaks to the flexibility of graphic notation that a piece like in memoriam…Esteban Gomez can be realized so differently at separate points in history and still fulfill the composer’s intention.

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by Garrett Schumann
Chamber Music, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music, File Under?, Music Events

ONCE (before)

Tomorrow and Thursday are two special nights for contemporary music in Ann Arbor, Michigan. This week, the University Musical Society is celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the ONCE composers, a group of University of Michigan student composers whose 1960s new music festivals gained worldwide acclaim. The surviving members of the group, which was founded by Roger Reynolds, Robert Ashley, Donald Scavarda, Gordon Mumma, and the late George Cacioppo, have come back to Ann Arbor to revisit the revolutionary spirit that inspired them and recognize what they’ve achieved in the years since they left Michigan.

The local media here in southeast Michigan have previewed this week’s event with great success, so head the to following links if you’d like to read what annarbor.com, the metrotimes and the Detroit Free Press have to say about the history of the ONCE group. I will be Sequenza 21’s eyes and ears observing the rehearsals and other behind-the-scenes activities that will make these concerts happen. Additionally, I will review both performances and talk to each of the composers at Wednesday’s “Conversation with the ONCE Composers”.

For now, I have the pleasure of watching the ONCE composers in rehearsal, which is a beautiful experience. First of all, they are clearly thrilled to be in Ann Arbor; this is clear in their smiles, the enthusiasm with which they interact with their performers and, most poignantly, in the playful anecdotes the ONCE members have shared with each other between rehearsal times. Robert Ashley and Gordon Mumma have been warm and enthusiastic to their performers, the former even joked with Dr. John Ellis – chair of piano performance at Michigan – earlier today, quipping, “that last phrase is one I never got right,” in reference to his solo piano piece Large Size Mograph.

Roger Reynolds’ professionalism is admirable: he understands how to get exactly what he wants from his players without being curt or overbearing. Thursday night’s concert, which features recently written works by the ONCE composers, includes Reynolds’ Ariadne’s Thread for string quartet and electronics. He has handled the quartet masterfully so far, explaining to them the vision he had beyond his complex musical language and guiding them with generalities towards the affect he desires.

If you are in the Ann Arbor area tomorrow or Thursday at 8 PM, head to Rackham Auditorium on the University of Michigan’s Central Campus to share in the past and present of this important movement in American music (tickets are also $2!). If not, stay tuned to Sequenza 21 for updates on this event all week long. The programs for the concerts and a description of the rest of the ONCE MORE festival is available here.

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

Last Weekend in Cincinnati

The University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music (CCM) proudly hosted last weekend’s meeting of the MidWest Composers Symposium, a consortium currently made up of the composition departments from CCM, Indiana University and the Universities of Iowa and Michigan.

The Symposium dates back to the 1960s, and, according to University of Michigan Professor of Composition Evan Chambers, arose dually from the prevailing sentiment that American contemporary music was not respected globally and the fact that, at that time, it was exceptionally challenging for student composers to get their works performed. “Each of the [charter] schools was known for different kinds of composition,” Professor Chambers explained in a phone interview, “there was no other way to find out what was happening between these institutions.”

Because I was unable to attend last weekend’s festival, I checked in with the event’s student co-director Jennifer Jolley, a current doctoral candidate in composition at CCM. Jennifer received her undergraduate degree from the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music and then took time off to teach, perform and accompany in Vermont. She began studying at CCM in 2007 and organized this year’s MidWest Composers Symposium with fellow graduate composition student Angelique Poteat.

S21: What were the greatest organization challenges you faced in pulling together this year’s MidWest Composers Symposium?

CCM is unfortunately on the quarter system, which meant that our classes started on September 22; therefore we only had a month to plan everything. Angelique Poteat (my co-director) and I gave our composers two weeks to assemble their pieces and performers, and that left us a mere two weeks to put everything together. We couldn’t figure out the concert order until CCM submitted their contribution, and we wanted to give the new CCM students a chance to submit a piece for the symposium.

S21: At its founding, each member of the MidWest Composers Symposium possessed unique musical tendencies; for example, the University of Iowa was know for preferring experimental compositional techniques. Do similar musical identities still exist from one member institution to another? If so, what were the weekend’s most remarkable examples of this diversity?

I believe they do, although this year UI did not submit as many electronic/experimental pieces as they have in the past! In fact, Angelique Poteat’s “Cyclic Complement” for bass clarinet and fixed format (CCM), Melody Eötvös‘s “Die hohle Höhle” for 5.1 surround playback (IU), Jerod Sommerfeldt‘s video “Linear” used sounds constructed in Pd (CCM), and Zach Zubow‘s “Fugitive Yellow Shirt” for violin and electronics (UI) were highlights from the experimental end; Mr. Zubow’s piece being one of the few electronic submissions from UI.

On this note, I believe CCM likes to take subtle risks in their music (Paul Schuette‘s “Complete Fragments” was installed in the lobby of Werner Recital Hall, for example), UM’s Daugherty influence makes their pieces agressive (David Biedenbender‘s “you’ve been talking in your sleep” and William Zuckerman‘s “Ajax” come to mind), and IU writes conservative but solid, well-constructed pieces (like Timothy Miller‘s “Sketches on Scars.”)

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by Garrett Schumann
Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, File Under?

Live From Ann Arbor: Chapter 1

The first University of Michigan Composers’ Forum concert of the 2010-2011 season took place in the evening on Monday, October 11. Earmarked by the department as a preview for the upcoming Midwest Composers Symposium in Cincinnati, I had been looking forward to this event for over a month as my first opportunity to experience the creativity of my colleagues here in Michigan. Like most music schools, our Composers’ Forum is organized and performed by students and viewed as an arena in which the composers studying here may test concepts and solidify their ideas before moving on to a more professional setting.

Anyone who has pursued a degree in music composition has most likely experienced a similar concert; they can be long and inconsistent in terms of the overall quality. While the composers here at Michigan proffered thirteen works spanning nearly two and a half hours, there were no stinkers on the program. Every piece displayed the strength of its creator in a different way and each composition brought something unique to the table, producing an aural narrative full of twists and turns and leaving a delightfully heterogeneous resonance in my mind’s ear.

The first piece on the program was Will Pertz’ philosophy, rhetoric, anarchy, nostalgia, klang!! for solo violin. Mr. Pertz’s product on Monday was dazzlingly brief insofar as it contained a single pizzicato note. It took more time to read the title of this work than hear it, which disarmed me because Emily Graber, the soloist, returned backstage before I could look up from the program. Initially, I found the piece off-putting, and reasoned it was a poor attempt at hyper-intellectual slop, but I was wrong. As pointed out to me by Professor Erik Santos, Mr. Pertz’ title is an anagram for “prank”, which gives philosophy, rhetoric, anarchy, nostalgia, klang!! a completely different character. Like Erik Satie’s Furniture Music, Mr. Pertz’s composition is playful mockery of music’s high academia and I salute Mr. Pertz’s cleverness even though I am embarrassed I didn’t pick up on it by myself.

Next down the line was Donia Jarrar’s composition for two pianos, Cairo, Bahibik (Cairo, I love you). The first of several programmatic works that evening, Cairo Bahibik opened with a contemplative piano sound along the lines of Federico Mompou’s Musica Callada and quickly departed to a upbeat world of hocketed ostinati, mixed meter and free-flowing, folk-like melodies flying from one pianist’s hands to the other’s. After filling the hall with high energy, Ms. Jarrar led her listeners back to the reflective opening mood, which was transformed both literally in her score and figuratively as a result of the preceding activity. Cairo, Bahibik succeeded at both creating a portrait of Ms. Jarrar’s programmatic subject and refracting this image through the prism of her musical intuition. In other words, she discarded potentially trite surface details to focus on base impressions, aromas, echoes and shadows of her experience in Egypt, producing in my mind the flickering sensation that I had been to Cairo, as well.

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by Garrett Schumann
Chamber Music, Concerts, Contemporary Classical

A Closer Look at “Contemporary” Music

When Christopher James Lees (pictured to the right), conductor of the University of Michigan Contemporary Directions Ensemble (CDE), challenged the literal meaning of “contemporary” before the group’s concert last Wednesday, he imbued the performance with special significance. The concert, dubbed “homage to the masters”, aimed to explore certain works’ and composers’ relevance, chronology notwithstanding, and featured Morton Feldman’s Madame Press Died Last Week at 90 (1970), Toru Takemitsu’s Air (1995), George Perle’s Six Celebratory Inventions (1995), Benjamin Lees’s Piano Trio no. 2 (1998) and Gyorgy Ligeti’s Chamber Concerto (1970) (additionally, Elliott Carter’s Gra (1975) was supposed to be played but the soloist was indisposed by illness).

I was surprised by the unwitting timeliness of Maestro Lees’ comments in relation to the faculty recital I attended the night before, a performance by Stephen Rush of a handful of works for piano and drum set. Rush is the director of the University of Michigan’s Digital Media Ensemble, and an acclaimed composer, jazz pianist and music author. Though he has worked with traditional genres, Rush’s music is decidedly unconventional and avant-garde, epitomized Tuesday night by a free-flowing mixture of improvised and composed-out materials. For this reason, I cannot tell you exactly what he played that night because the program was determined on the spot.

The music on both concerts was certainly modern, but which pieces were more contemporary? Pure chronology is a dangerous guide in this argument because “recent” and “contemporary” are not perfect synonyms. Rather, contemporariness springs from how an item or individual fits within the present, a distinction noted by Maestro Lees when he insisted that composers should not lose their cultural relevance once they die. The degree to which a piece of music represents the time in which is was written is hard to gauge in an era of music history without strict stylistic rigor. My opinion here is, of course, limited by my personal knowledge, but the most clearly outdated work between these two concerts was Ligeti’s Chamber Concerto. The work’s pervasive sound mass textures are representative of when it was written; further, the momentum of Ligeti’s musical development leaves little doubt that the Chamber Concerto is an ascending step along his career path, not its culmination.

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by Garrett Schumann
Band Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical

Three Evenings With John Mackey

Last week at the University of Michigan School of Music, Theater and Dance saw a visit from renowned band composer John Mackey. Accurately described as a young hotshot, Mackey’s transformation from an unknown dance-music composer in New York to a wildly successful creator of band music began with the 2004 wind ensemble arrangement of his orchestral work, Redline Tango. Since then he has received countless performances from high school, college and professional groups and has earned stunning national popularity best illustrated by his estimable total of 5,000 Facebook friends.  Though he came to Michigan for the October 1 performance of his trombone concerto, Harvest, Mackey’s interaction with the composition department took place over three evenings, starting with a casual outing to a local Ann Arbor bar on Wednesday, September 29.

I was immediately struck by Mackey’s affability, which exceeded any estimate I could have made prior to meeting him. As the night wore on, I realized – via Mackey’s own admissions – that appearing “cool” to the young people who so often perform his music is a critical part of his image as a professional musician. Armed with an electrifying personality, Mackey knows how to fill a room and endear himself to strangers. He is self-deprecating and open, and these qualities were probably the mot valuable elements I drew from his visit, given how closely they tie into his marketing success.

Mackey’s business sense is truly admirable. He takes advantage of social networking and other online resources to get his name out into the market and self-publishes his works, allowing him to control the distribution of his intellectual property and pursue copyright infringements when necessary. Though primarily known for his compositional achievements, he recently partnered with a marketing agency to produce a guide to new online casino platforms in Canada, further showcasing his entrepreneurial reach. For these reasons, I think Mackey epitomizes much of what the modern composer should be. Instead of submitting to the esoteric proclivities of our profession, he has found a way to update the social potential of composers within a given network. While I have met other composers with strong local presences, I have not met one with a following as strong and widespread as Mackey’s.

Of course, Mackey’s music is at the center of his success, and it serves him excellently given the market he targets. Highly rhythmic, laden with percussion and infused with progressive rock and other popular influences, his compositions are ideally suited for collegiate bands who are attracted to strong grooves and loud dynamics. In our composition seminar on Thursday, he explained that his non-band compositions sound the same, so it would seem wind ensemble is a perfect setting for the kind of music that comes easily to him. Interestingly, the night before this Mackey admitted he is a poor composition teacher, and the next day he told our seminar that he usually does not write without a commission. Thus, I did not find Mackey’s visit to Michigan a very informative experience on an artistic level. Nevertheless, hisprestige is undeniable seeing that his expansive popularity makes him a critical connection between thousands of musicians and the world of American contemporary music.

As I mentioned before, Mackey’s residency culminated in the Michigan Symphony Band’s performance on his trombone concerto, Harvest. Unfortunately for us composers, the previous day’s seminar included the most recent recording of Harvest, which had been played by at the University of Texas with New York Philharmonic Principal Trombonist Joseph Alessi only a few days earlier. I call this “unfortunate” because Alessi’s performance was super human, and it made the Symphony Band’s delivery on Friday underwhelming. David Jackson, Friday’s soloist, played valiantly, but the score was stacked against him. At moments when Alessi’s power penetrated clearly on the recording, Jackson was buried by the supporting sound. Perhaps further spoiled by the recording, I found the texture static and dull, and I yearned for a moment when the trombone would have acoustic space in which to saunter, liberated from the weight of the backing ensemble. In spite of these factors, the Symphony Band’s performance was definitely a success, and I left Hill Auditorium entranced by all the works I heard. The rest of the program featured an arrangement of Leornard Bernstein’s Overture to Candide (1956), Vittorio Gianni’s haunting Variations and Fugue (1964), Ricardo Lorenz’s El Muro (2008) and Florent Schmitt’s Dionysiaques (1913).

Both Mackey’s music and presence left me with the impression that wind ensemble and band music is the music of the future, and these other compositions did not change my mind. Capable of high energy and subtle sensuality, wind ensembles are a perfect platform for the diversity and dynamism of contemporary music, as consummated by his works from Harvest to Asphalt Cocktail. Moreover, while orchestral genres came of age at the pen of European masters, writing for wind ensemble gives living composer a direct conduit to oft-forgotten American stalwarts such as Vincent Persechetti and William Schuman.

Above everything else, Mackey was very matter-of-fact during his visit to Michigan, and in no other area was he clearer than in describing the advantages of writing for band. In a world where composers struggle to get any attention from orchestral conductors, band directors receive contemporary works for wind ensemble with great enthusiasm and often perform the pieces more than once.  Mackey’s personal success is emblematic of how much bands and wind ensembles can afford composers both in terms of finances and notoriety. As refreshing as it was to experience his humorous, sociable and pragmatic qualities, I was equally awed by the momentum of his cultural relevance. If nothing else, I learned from him the value of self-promotion and generating enthusiasm for your musical product. Regardless how much I integrate these concepts into my career, my standard bearer for how a composer should be his own advocate and spokesperson will always be John Mackey.

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

Field Reporting from Ann Arbor, MI

There are few institutions in America with a richer history than the University of Michigan School of Music, Theater and Dance and the composition department there has a particularly impressive tradition. With past and present faculty and students including Michael Daugherty, Bright Sheng, William Bolcom and George Crumb, UM composers have had a hand in much of contemporary American music history including the homegrown Once Festival and other movements such as Bang on a Can.  Moreover, with alumni currently holding faculty positions at premiere music schools across the country (including  UM), it seems safe to say that – despite the impossibility of pinpointing the best composition department in the country – Michigan’s legacy is gilded with rare prestige.

I am not here to sell the UM to Sequenza 21 readers, but Michigan’s reputation in composition is a quietly held secret, becoming increasingly obscured in recent decades as the landscape of American music education gained more parity. The test of time proves Michigan is neither an aging dinosaur nor a flash in the pan, and my experience here – though a brief three weeks – has evinced further proof that the UM’s prowess in music is no accident.

With all this pomp, you may think the UM has cast a spell on me, but that is not the case. Just like any other music school, Michigan has limitations and specialties, but its environment is very special. Ann Arbor is extraordinarily supportive of the arts, particularly in relation to its population (114, 024), and in the last week I have gone to four remarkably well-attended concerts, namely because three featured contemporary compositions.

The first concert offered a selection of French organ and harpsichord music from the late 17th and early 18th century, which was followed later that evening by the Michigan Chamber Players’ performance of two homegrown compositions: Andrew Bishop’s The Juke Joints in Burgundy (Blues in Burgundy) and Paul Schoenfield’s Ghetto Songs. The former was an exercise in timbre (scored for flute, harp and contrabass) and merging diverse influences. As Bishop explained in his program note, Juke Joints alludes to various French musical sources, but has a clear jazz orientation and climaxes with an extended jam between the three players. Ghetto Songs was decidedly more serious in tone, setting holocaust-era Yiddish poetry in a tastefully versatile musical landscape, which was at once evocative, suspenseful and somber.

To have Schoenfield and Bishop’s compositions featured on a Michigan Chamber Players concert is not unusual because both are faculty members at the UM School of Music. More remarkable is that Juke Joints and Ghetto Songs shared the stage with Charles Martin Loeffler’s Two Rhapsodies for Oboe, Viola and Piano (1905) and Johannes Brahms’ Trio for Clarinet, Cello and Piano (1891). Perhaps in larger cities, classic repertoire is frequently juxtaposed with contemporary music, but one can’t forget we are in Ann Arbor, MI with just over 100,000 residents. Moreover, two orchestra concerts from this last weekend also programmed recent compositions along side more standard pieces. Coming from my undergraduate in Houston, a city of more than 2,000,000 with an orchestra whose 2010-2011 season’s most recently written offering is Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky, I am stunned in the best way possible that the Ann Arbor community so enthusiastically receives modern music.

Of course, cultural centers like Boston, New York, Los Angeles and Chicago can provide similar experiences for young, learning composers. But, there is one thing Ann Arbor has that most other places don’t: pride in their own. As cheesy as this sounds, I think it lies at the heart of the community’s receptive attitude towards a repertoire other audiences would scoff at. As evidence I give you Sunday’s Ann Arbor Symphony concert so-called “Made in Michigan”. Here, Shostakovich and Saint-Saens sat second fiddle to Bill Bolcom, William Albright and Michael Daugherty and – with the help of command performances like flautist Amy Porter’s delivery of Daugherty’s concerto, Trail of Tears – the audience received their music with respectful avidity. Two nights prior, I witnessed an astounding display of the Ann Arbor community’s musical perspicacity as they recognized the high quality with which the University Symphony Orchestra performed Chen Yi’s Percussion Concerto and were not fooled by the familiarity of Berlioz’s Roman Carnival and Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances, both of which were not performed as well, and the audience’s reaction reflected the difference.

I am sure, by now, you are all wondering why this makes Ann Arbor a special place. The University of Michigan is like a jewel to the state, and its products, whether football or composers are always treated with respect by the Michigan community. The ability to hear a wide range of music on a regular basis is, by itself, no special quality, but when paired with the intimacy of Ann Arbor, the cultural environment of the University of Michigan becomes rather extraordinary. At worst, Ann Arbor is a close second to the country’s brightest cultural hotspots, but I imagine these locales don’t deliver the same nourishment of a tight-knit and supportive intellectual ecosystem. Again, I do not think this makes Michigan any better than the other places a composer can get an education these days, but it provides a rare platform for any young musicians burgeoning talents. I look forward to reporting more about his exceptional dot on the American musical map as my time here progresses.

by Garrett Schumann