Orchestra Underground: Adding Fuel to the Fire Composer Spotlight – Composer Peter Fahey

Composer Peter Fahey

As the winner of American Composer Orchestra’s 2012 Underwood Emerging Composer Commission for his composition Impressions, composer Peter Fahey has worked to develop his first commission for a professional orchestra over the past year. His composition A Mirror to Kathleen’s Face will have its world premiere at the season opening ACO concert, Orchestra Underground: Adding Fuel to the Fire, conducted by guest conductor Robert Spano.

American Composers Orchestra: What was the inspiration for your composition?  Can you tell us about your creative process for this piece?

Peter Fahey: The starting point for the piece was a recording, taken from a live television broadcast, of a former resident of an industrial school in Ireland speaking about his experiences in the industrial school system and about how he was treated by the Ryan Commission (as it is commonly referred to in Ireland), a commission set up by the Irish government in 1999 to investigate the extent and effects of abuses that took place in institutions for children in Ireland. Almost all of the musical material in the piece is informed by or derived in some way from this recording: the harmony, rhythm, orchestration, and so on. I began by simply transcribing the recording, mostly by ear, and making a short score of the piece, but later I did a spectral analysis of the recording to find out more about the harmonic structure of the voice. The results I got, using a couple of different computer programmes, gave me some good raw material to work with. I was attracted to the idea of the harmony in the ensemble coming from the recorded voice – corresponding to what is already there in the voice - rather than trying to impose some sort of arbitrary harmonic structure around it. I wanted the harmony to “belong” in a way that it hasn’t in my previous music. I didn’t take a very “scientific” approach in applying the results of the analyses to the music but the results I got informed the harmonic decisions I made.

My approach to the orchestration was largely intuitive; the raw material here was the sound of the voice as I heard it rather than something generated by a computer. Much of the time the role of the ensemble is simply to colour or highlight certain sounds or articulations in the voice, but the orchestration also adds extra layers of meaning – layers of musical meaning – to the voice. It gives the voice musical meaning. The recording itself is part of the piece with chunks of speech triggered by a sampler during the performance. The voice functions almost like a soloist at times; at other times it is less soloistic and more a part of the larger texture. Much of the composing of the piece was a sort of “orchestrating out” of the recording of the voice. The intention was to create a canvas or a space in which the voice could exist and be presented and to create a situation where the recording of the voice itself becomes music - a sort of recontextualising of the recording. The role of the ensemble is to work in tandem with the recording to produce this situation. The result is a sort of musical expression of the recording and of what is being said.

The person speaking in the recording is Michael O’Brien, a former resident of St. Joseph’s Industrial School (“Ferryhouse”) in Clonmel in the southeast of Ireland. (I grew up in Clonmel.) He is speaking from the audience during a panel debate on Irish television on the day the Ryan Report was published in 2009. The Report concludes that there was widespread and systematic abuse and neglect in institutions for children run by the Catholic Church and overseen by the Irish State. (These were institutions that existed to protect the most vulnerable people in society.) Michael spent eight years in Ferryhouse after his mother died; his seven siblings were also sent to Ferryhouse and other similar institutions. What drew me to the recording – and it wasn’t so much the specifics of what he says - were the various themes Michael touches upon. Themes that resonated with me. He says so much and sums up so much about Irish society and the institutions that define it in such a short space of time. There’s a density to it. We hear how Michael was let down by every institution he came in contact with: Church, State, the legal system, political party. In a way he sums up his own life too in expressing the defining effect the industrial school system had on him. It’s a remarkable speech - raw, emotional, and very frank. I knew Michael as the mayor of Clonmel when I was growing up. I went and spoke to him soon after I began working on the piece – still a bit unsure at that point whether or not to write the piece - to talk to him about what I had in mind and to see how he would feel about me using the recording of him speaking. He was very supportive of the project.

The title of the piece, A Mirror to Kathleen’s Face, is taken from a study by a Canadian academic, Donald Akenson, published in 1975 that looks at the Irish education system since the founding of the Irish state up until 1960. It gives a social historical perspective of the Irish educational system in the period we’re talking about, though it is limited in it’s scope because of the secrecy and lack of cooperation of the Church and State at the time in allowing access to information about the system. (The study was ignored by the Irish government.) It’s perhaps a curious title for an academic report, but I was attracted to the metaphor of the title and the potential to apply it in a musical context. “Kathleen” (or Kathleen Ni Houlihan) is a literary symbol for Ireland; it was used by writers such as WB Yeats, Augusta Gregory, James Joyce. 

In Akenson’s study, Kathleen is a beautiful woman seen from a distance, but if we look closer - much closer - we see her wizened face and we begin to realise that she is, in fact, an old hag (to put it rather bluntly!). Akenson presents the Irish school system as a reflection of modern Irish society – as an indicator of its values and attitudes and problems. This idea of a mirror image informs the structure of my piece on various levels (for example, the harmony at the opening of the second movement is a “mirror image” of the harmony at the beginning of the following section), and the idea of looking into a mirror and seeing things close-up, as they really are, informs, to some extent, the sort of “anatomical” approach I have taken to the orchestration where we hear how the sounds are produced by the instruments – the sounds of the woodwinds and brass blowing through their instruments, bowing and brushing sounds in the strings - as well as left-over, peripheral sounds, the veiled resonance or overtones of a note and not the note itself, and so on.

Orchestra Underground: Adding Fuel to the Fire Composer Spotlight – Composer Christopher Theofanidis

Written for his good friend bassoonist Martin Kuuskmann, composer Christopher Theofanidis’ Bassoon Concerto will be performed by the American Composers Orchestra at the season opening concert, Orchestra Underground: Adding Fuel to the Fire, conducted by Atlanta Symphony Orchestra’s music director Robert Spano, on Friday, October 25. Theofanidis wrote to ACO about his collaboration with Kuuskmann in developing this piece and what it means to him to work with his close friends Kuuskmann and Spano.

American Composers Orchestra: What was the inspiration for your composition?  Can you tell us about your creative process for this piece? 

Christopher Theofanidis: Several of the concerti I have written have taken the idea of the individual alone in some metaphoric battle with her/his self. This for me is one of those works.  Within that broader idea, there were specific things that shaped the way I wrote the individual lines and other aspects of the work, such as Balkan ornamentation in the second movement.

ACO: Did you encounter any unusual challenges in writing this work? If so what were they and how did you resolve them? 

CT: Ironically, the two technically challenging aspects of the work come from suggestions from the solo bassoonist. Martin asked me to write longer passages in which he could circular breathe; he also was keen to play longer stretches in the highest part of the bassoon's range, from high C to high F above that. Finding a way to incorporate these two things in an organic way in the piece was part of my task.

ACO: What are you looking forward to about the performance of your piece at Carnegie Hall by the American Composers Orchestra? 

CT: Working with my longtime collaborators and close personal friends, Robert Spano and Martin Kuuskmann, and also having them meet for the first time.  They are both such exquisite people.

ACO: What should the audience listen for during your piece? 

CT: One thing that I always listen to in a performance of a concerto is the personality of the performer; apart from the music itself, it becomes something of a study in character and that character's decisions.

Orchestra Underground: Adding Fuel to the Fire Composer Spotlight – Composer Fred Lerdahl

Composer Fred Lerdahl will help launch American Composers Orchestra’s new season with his composition Spirals, which will be performed at ACO’s Orchestra Underground: Adding Fuel to the Fire concert on Friday, October 25, 7:30PM at Zankel Hall, Carnegie Hall.  Fred Lerdahl wrote to ACO about the inspiration for his composition and the challenges he faced in creating Spirals.

American Composers Orchestra: What was the inspiration for your composition?  Can you tell us about your creative process for this piece?

Fred Lerdahl: My initial inspiration was a restless flurry of rocking fast notes bouncing off a harmonic progression in search of resolution. This idea evolved into the energetic and brilliant first movement. My second inspiration was to create a piece in which the entire texture and form emerged from a lyrical, expressive, and increasingly urgent melody. This idea grew into the second movement. I developed these ideas using my spiral method of composition, in which a simple idea gradually proliferates into a complex form.

ACO: Did you encounter any unusual challenges in writing this work? If so what were they and how did you resolve them?

FL: Initially I tried to combine the two inspirations within a single movement; but they needed separate development, so Spirals ended up in two movements. It took me awhile to realize that two movements were necessary. I built the melody of the second movement out of the harmonies of the first, so that the two movements exist in a complementary relationship.

A particular challenge was my wish to reverse, a little over halfway through each movement, the outward spiraling process into an inward, collapsing spiral, while at the same time continuing the development of musical material. The great intensity of Spirals is a consequence of these opposing forces.

ACO: What are you looking forward to about the performance of your piece at Carnegie Hall by the American Composers Orchestra?

FL: ACO is a marvelous ensemble, and I have never worked with the distinguished conductor Robert Spano. I am eager to hear Spirals under such excellent conditions.

ACO: What should the audience listen for during your piece?

FL: Spirals is a colorful and expressive piece. Listen attentively and without preconceptions.

Jazz Composers Orchestra Institute Composer Spotlight - Composer Tobin Chodos

Composer Tobin Chodos

Composer, jazz pianist, and University of California, San Diego doctoral student Tobin Chodos took part in American Composers Orchestra’s Jazz Composers Institute Earshot La Jolla Symphony New Music Readings last week at his home campus’ Mandeville Auditorium. His piece Control Flow explored musical control, hierarchies, and stratification within an orchestra. Before the readings, Tobin wrote to us about the possible challenges that could arise in the reading of his work because of the differences between a jazz musician’s and an orchestra’s concept of rhythm and timing, as well as what it means to him to have the opportunity to compose for a symphony orchestra.     

American Composers Orchestra: How did you find out about JCOI and what made you want to apply to the Institute?

Tobin Chodos: I learned about it in a mailing from the Center for Jazz Studies at Columbia University.

ACO: What inspired you to compose the piece that you submitted to JCOI?

TC: Because the orchestra has so many instruments in it, and because it contains so many implicit musical stratifications, when I started writing for it all I could think about was the notion of musical control – the composer's control over the score, the conductor's over the orchestra, the section leader's over his stand mate, as well as the music's control over the listener.  So this piece tries to encourage the contemplation of these hierarchies in various ways.

ACO: After you found out that you were accepted to JCOI, how have you prepared yourself and your piece for the music readings that will take place?

TC: Mainly I studied other orchestral scores, but I also had a huge amount of help from other composers – faculty and peers – with more experience writing for the orchestra than I had.

ACO: What do you hope to work on during JCOI?

TC: I'm just beginning to get situated in the music department here at UCSD, but I'm in the early stages of putting together a collaborative of composer-performers that will, ideally, play and write together regularly for the duration of my time here.

ACO: Do you foresee any challenges during the workshopping and reading of your piece?

TC: There are a handful of passages that are pretty intricate rhythmically, and I'm a little afraid they might not come off convincingly. A big part of what is difficult, I think, for a composer with a jazz background writing for the orchestra is in the different conceptions of rhythm. There are, I think, significant differences between the way an orchestra and a jazz musician conceives of time.

ACO: What do you hope to get out of this experience at JCOI and working with the La Jolla Symphony? Have you worked with a symphony orchestra before? If not, how do you feel about having this opportunity to work with a symphony orchestra through JCOI?

TC: I haven't had the chance to work with an orchestra before, I and am tremendously grateful and honored to have been given the opportunity. I expect that there is a lot of room for improvement in my orchestration, and in my ability to write in a way that is both creative and idiomatic to the instruments (and to the orchestra itself).  I'm sure that after hearing the orchestra play my work, I will see many things I could have done differently, and will probably be eager to try again.

ACO: What does this experience mean to you as a jazz composer? What would you like to say to other jazz composers who may be interested in applying to JCOI?

TC: It's difficult to say what it means to me as a jazz musician. I think it would be a wrong to look at this as a chance to prove to the Euro-American musical establishment that "jazz musicians can do the orchestra too."  That would be a little vindictive, and more importantly it would accept implicitly the idea of the orchestra as the ultimate measuring stick for judging a composer's abilities, which is an idea that I think most people have left behind these days.  Probably what is interesting about these pieces won't have much to do with genre, but with the fact that most of us don't come from the kinds of institutions where orchestral performances are common.

ACO: What do you hope the audience attending the new music readings will get out of hearing your piece?

TC: I hope that the music encourages people to think about the hierarchies that are an inherent part of the orchestra– or at least to see that I was thinking about them while I was writing the music.  These hierarchies come from a particular time and place, and reflect a set of attitudes that, I think, are worth thinking about in the 21st century.

Jazz Composers Orchestra Institute Composer Spotlight – Composer Alan Chan

Composer Alan Chan

Linotype machines, nonsensical phrases, and jazz compositions, composer Alan Chan wrote to us at ACO about how all of these elements came together to help inspire his work “Etaoin Shldru,” which was read at the Jazz Composers Orchestra Institute La Jolla Symphony New Music Readings on September 19 and 20 at University of California, San Diego’s Mandeville Auditorium. 

American Composers Orchestra: How did you find out about JCOI and what made you want to apply to the Institute? 
Alan Chan: I am interested to ACO's program in the past and I read about JCOI via their website. After writing big band music for the last few years I think it is a good time to try to learn more about symphony orchestra and perhaps get a chance to write a new orchestral piece. 

ACO: What inspired you to compose the piece that you submitted to JCOI? 
AC: The idea came when I watched the documentary about Linotype machines. The nonsensical phrase "etaoin shldru" is used by Linotype operators to fill up the line when a typo is made. The letters of “etaoin shldru” are the most frequently used letters in the English language, and they are arranged on the 2 far left rows of Linotype machines, which provides an easy way for operators to just run the keys to fill up the line. So much of this is a trial piece for orchestra, thus I used this phrase as the title. 

ACO: After you found out that you were accepted to JCOI, how have you prepared yourself and your piece for the music readings that will take place? 
AC: I prepared about one minute of the piece in October for the submission, and when I was accepted in December, I have another few months to complete the piece. Of course ideas changed quite a bit in those months, as I get more ideas what I want to say in the music. During the course of composing, I did revisit of some of the best orchestral works by composers such as Mahler, Stravinsky and some contemporary works. 

ACO: What do you hope to work on during JCOI? 
AC: To work with music director Steven Schick, as well as members of La Jolla Symphony to explore possibilities of the score that I composed. 

ACO: Do you foresee any challenges during the workshopping and reading of your piece? 
AC: So much notes and information has already put on the score, the ultimate goal is to hear the music. Since it is a brand new piece, I imagine there will be a lot of brainwork for all musicians, to bring the work alive. To me, it would be a great challenge to communicate well with the orchestral members to see if they could be bring the music close to my imagination. 

ACO: What do you hope to get out of this experience at JCOI and working with the La Jolla Symphony? Have you worked with a symphony orchestra before? If not, how do you feel about having this opportunity to work with a symphony orchestra through JCOI? 
AC: This is my first time writing a piece for a professional orchestra, so this is a wonderful opportunity. This is after all a great exchange between jazz composers and classical musicians, often a rare opportunity. I believe there will be a lot of fun to get to know each other and share our love of music. 

ACO: What does this experience mean to you as a jazz composer? What would you like to say to other jazz composers who may be interested in applying to JCOI? 
AC: JCOI is a great platform for collaboration between classical musicians and jazz composers. 

ACO: What do you hope the audience attending the new music readings will get out of hearing your piece? 
AC: Some fun moments, unexpected sounds and Brazilian Samba!

Jazz Composers Orchestra Institute Composer Spotlight – Composer Miya Masaoka

Miya Masaoka and Koto (with bow and electronics)

Miya Masaoka’s composition Other Mountain was read at Jazz Composers Orchestra Institute La Jolla Symphony New Music Readings on September 19 and 20 at the University of California San Diego’s Mandeville Auditorium. In response to our questions, Miya wrote back to us about not only the challenges of writing for a symphony orchestra but also the opportunity that it affords her as a composer.
 

American Composers Orchestra: How did you find out about JCOI and what made you want to apply to the Institute?  
Miya Masaoka: A few years ago, I was interviewed by Vijay Iyer under the auspices of JCOI.

ACO: What inspired you to compose the piece that you submitted to JCOI? 
MM: Working with the large forces of an orchestra has always been a dream of mine, and it has proved to be enormously challenging and already rewarding, even without hearing the piece. Writing for a symphony orchestra, I had to think differently about instruments, and rethink texture and density of sound, and quality, timbre of sound, what is possible and what isn’t. In other words, everything I knew was WRONG, and I had to turn my brain and soul inside out. I feel like I have been through a wrecking ball tunnel, but have survived and come out the other end. 

ACO: After you found out that you were accepted to JCOI, how have you prepared yourself and your piece for the music readings that will take place?
MM: I have been answering a few email questions from the conductor and some of the orchestra section leaders. 

ACO: What do you hope to work on during JCOI? 
MM: I can’t wait I think I will learn about a real practical side to writing for an orchestra.  And hearing my ideas being realized is such an honor, such a fabulous, life-changing opportunity. 

ACO: Do you foresee any challenges during the work shopping and reading of your piece? 
MM: I’m more familiar writing for smaller ensembles, of course, so the challenges have to do with the element of rehearsal time.  There is very little rehearsal time with an orchestra, so any confusion or questions about the score must hopefully be resolved before hand via email.   But on the other hand, why write a piece, if it’s not going to be interesting, and it’s not going to be something different and new?  But it can’t be THAT DIFFERENT and THAT new so that there would be too much to explain to the orchestra players, since there is so little rehearsal time.  A real balance has to be struck.  A chamber musician and an orchestral musician can be as different as apples and oranges. 

ACO: What do you hope to get out of this experience at JCOI and working with the La Jolla Symphony? Have you worked with a symphony orchestra before? 
MM: I have only worked with a symphony as a guest performer on the Japanese koto, notably with the Berkeley Symphony, and two other symphonies on the West Coast. 

ACO: What does this experience mean to you as a jazz composer? What would you like to say to other jazz composers who may be interested in applying to JCOI?

MM: For me, this is the greatest opportunity that any composer, jazz or otherwise could ever have.  I cannot stress that enough. 

ACO: What would you like to say to other jazz composers who may be interested in applying to JCOI? 
MM: Please apply, because if you don’t apply, you won’t have any chance of winning. IF you apply, even if you don’t get it, you might get inspired to enter other competitions for readings. 

ACO: What do you hope the audience attending the new music readings will get out of hearing your piece? 
MM: I hope they find it interesting and different, and that they would want to hear more of what this composer does.

Jazz Composers Orchestra Institute Spotlight – Composer Michael Dessen - Part Two

"But my dream for the future is to create pieces for, and in a sense, with orchestras that I call "scorestreams," which are dynamically generated scores displayed on networked screens." - Michael Dessen

Find out from composer Michael Dessen what participating in Jazz Composers Orchestra Institute La Jolla Symphony New Music Readings means to him as a jazz composer and about his dream of creating dynamically generated scores displayed on networked screens called “scorestreams.” Here is Part Two of our Q&A with Michael Dessen.   

American Composers Orchestra: What does this experience mean to you as a jazz composer? What would you like to say to other jazz composers who may be interested in applying to JCOI?

Michael Dessen: I'm not sure what it even means to be a "jazz composer" these days, and I'll leave it to others to decide whether the label fits me since I don't really care, but it is true that jazz traditions are one of the core inspirations for my music. But it's not just the sonic vocabulary or musical forms in jazz that are important for me. I'm also referring to the methods that jazz musicians developed for creating their music, the way their work embodied particular values, ideas, ways of being together in the world. Jazz musicians throughout the last century established a sophisticated set of new compositional techniques, but they also moved in very fluid ways across conventional boundaries between composer and performer. 

Of course plenty of composers throughout history have also been performers, but I'm referring to something more. Performing in jazz goes way beyond interpreting a composer's ideas - it requires you to make choices that are also compositional ones, and the context in which this takes place is also a community affair, since musicians move frequently among different roles and power relationships, being a sideperson one day and a bandleader the next, and learning from all these collaborative experiences. So for me, the legacies of jazz really unsettle this whole idea of single authorship in a fundamental way, while still retaining certain benefits of that tradition such as working with complex, precomposed musical structures. 

Even an early, iconic jazz composer like Duke Ellington had a deeply collaborative notion of composition, and depended on his performers to bring their personal voices to the music. This contrasts with what you usually find in the world of orchestral music, where musicians expect extremely precise instructions from composers, and where the size of the ensemble typically precludes the extensive rehearsal time required to bring the players' individual sounds and identities more fully into the creative process itself. But I can also imagine a future for the orchestra that embraces new ways of working, and does so without throwing tradition out the window. I also know that orchestral musicians do think of their own sound in very personal terms, and that most would enjoy opportunities to work collaboratively with composers, the way that contemporary music chamber ensembles are doing more and more today.

So to answer your first question, I have to confess that this JCOI experience is part of a longer-range plan for me. For this first piece, I'm focused on improving my skills writing for orchestra, so I decided not to include improvisation, technology or anything too outside the box in terms of method. But my dream for the future is to create pieces for, and in a sense, with orchestras that I call "scorestreams," which are dynamically generated scores displayed on networked screens. I've created several of these for small ensembles in the past few years. My scorestreams are basically custom software applications that contain a kind of logic for navigating a collection of musical notations. This gives each piece a recurring identity across performances, but each performance is also different because both the software and the musicians can make different choices. It'll be a challenge to find an orchestra willing to take the time to really experiment with me on this, but I'm optimistic it could happen. The Brussels Philharmonic recently started using Samsung tablets to read music, and clearly our future is increasingly paperless, so pretty soon one of my biggest logistical hurdles - how to get access to that many tablet screens - will disappear. And when that happens, orchestras will eventually discover that in addition to being a cost-effective substitute for sheet music, touch screens and computer software open up many new possibilities for extending the ways we create music together.

About the 2nd question, I would just say that if the orchestra is a resource that could be useful to you in expanding your own music, don't be afraid to just dive in, pay some dues through study, and most of all imagine your own relationship to the orchestra and seek ways of putting that into practice. And right now JCOI is one of the best ways, maybe one of the only ways, for jazz composers to go through this process, so I hope they keep the program going. Also, orchestras carry a huge organizational apparatus and can be quite rigid about notation and other conventions, all of which can seem like obstacles for those of us used to working in looser, small group contexts, but Steve Schick made a comment on this at JCOI last summer that was especially inspiring to me: He suggested that despite all of those constraints, we should remember that the orchestra is basically huge group of musicians eager to work with you to make music together, ultimately not that different than any other band. I realized that this is how I felt intuitively about orchestras when I first started playing in them as a teenager, and that this spirit of cooperative music making is still what makes it exciting for me to return to the orchestra now as a composer coming from improvisatory traditions.

Jazz Composers Orchestra Spotlight - Composer Michael Dessen - Part One

Composer Michael Dessen Photo: Bill Douthart

Composer Michael Dessen’s Slippages will be read at American Composers Orchestra’s Jazz Composers Orchestra Institute La Jolla Symphony New Music Readings, which will take place this week in San Diego, California. The following is Part One of Michael’s Q&A with ACO. We will bring you Part Two of this Q&A tomorrow with Michael’s wonderful response to what this experience means to him as a jazz composer and his advice for other composers interested in applying to JCOI!   

ACO: How did you find out about JCOI and what made you want to apply to the Institute?

Michael Dessen: I know composers who were involved with the first JCOI program, some as participants and others as faculty. I applied because it seemed like an excellent way to gain some experience with orchestra writing through working with wonderful, creative people that I really trust, and also because of the ACO's reputation for supporting new and diverse approaches to the orchestra. To be honest, at first I didn't know precisely what I would do with the opportunity if I were accepted, but it seemed like too great a chance to pass up.

ACO: What inspired you to compose the piece that you submitted to JCOI?

MD: My composition, Slippages, was inspired in part by watching people slowly fade out (as in dementia) or even fade back in (as in coma recovery). I've watched family members go through both of those experiences, but the piece isn't really about trying to depict that process literally. It's more of a sonic meditation on the grayer areas of our experience of consciousness, and on the dialectic tension that always exists between integration and disintegration.

ACO: After you found out that you were accepted to JCOI, how have you prepared yourself and your piece for the music readings that will take place?

MD: To apply for the JCOI readings, you don't have to submit the full piece, just a section. So the main work I faced once it was accepted was actually finishing the rest of the piece. I had finished 3 minutes for the application, but after that, I was very busy with other deadlines for about 6 months, so when returned to it there had been a long gap. This isn't the way I usually work on a composition, but it turned out to be fascinating because of course I heard things differently later. Then, as with any orchestra piece, after the composing is done, there is a lot of editing to make sure all the parts are formatted and printed according to the orchestra's standards, which are a lot stricter than what I'm used to dealing with when composing for improvisers - to put it mildly.

ACO: What do you hope to work on during JCOI?

MD: I'm of course very curious to find out which parts sound like I imagined they would, and which don't, since that kind of trial and error is crucial for improving one's orchestration skills. It will also be interesting to see how the conductor and musicians relate to the music, since this is a composition, not just an orchestration exercise. I'm eager to get constructive feedback from the fantastic JCOI mentor composers as well as the musicians themselves.

ACO: Do you foresee any challenges during the workshopping and reading of your piece?

MD: Most of the things I'm worried about have to do with instrumental balance, that is, whether an idea comes across as intended or whether certain instruments or sections cover up other instruments that you're supposed to hear more clearly. When you're dealing with an ensemble the size of the orchestra, it's easy to miscalculate and lose a particular effect you intended.

ACO: What do you hope to get out of this experience at JCOI and working with the La Jolla Symphony? Have you worked with a symphony orchestra before? If not, how do you feel about having this opportunity to work with a symphony orchestra through JCOI?

MD: I play trombone, and much of my early formal training as a performer was in the orchestra world. I even went to a conservatory and did a classical performance degree, so I spent tons of time in orchestras growing up. But I have never composed for an orchestra, and for the past 25 years or so, I haven't focused much on classical performance at all. During that time, my work as a composer and performer has been almost entirely with small and medium sized ensembles in more jazz and improvised music contexts. So for me, JCOI has been sort of like going back to a place I grew up in but haven't visited often since, and bringing a very different perspective gained from all these other experiences I've had. I'm also looking forward to working with conductor Steve Schick, a tremendous musician and all around great person who I first met in graduate school and who I've enjoyed performing with several times in improvisatory contexts.

Jazz Composers Orchestra Institute Spotlight - Composer Dan Marschak

Composer Dan Marschak

American Composers Orchestra's Jazz Composers Orchestra Institute La Jolla Symphony New Music Readings are only days away! JCOI participant and composer Dan Marschak's composition Two Rivers will be one of the pieces workshopped and read during JCOI, culminating in an open rehearsal on Thursday, September 19 at 7PM and the run-through of the work on Friday, September 20 at 7:30PM. Dan was kind enough to take the time to answer some questions from us at ACO, sharing with us the inspiration for Two Rivers and how he has been preparing for the reading of his piece at JCOI!  

American Composers Orchestra: How did you find out about JCOI and what made you want to apply to the Institute?  
Dan Marschak: I found out about JCOI through Professors Paul Chihara and James Newton, two of my teachers at UCLA who were also mentor composers for JCOI. The more research I did about JCOI, the more it seemed as though it was created specifically for a musician like me: A composer who has feet planted in both the jazz and concert music worlds and is looking to embrace and explore that double-identity. At the time, I was just finishing my master’s thesis at UCLA – a large orchestral piece called Sprawl – which incorporates many aspects of the jazz language, and even calls for an additional electric bass and tenor saxophone, so JCOI seemed like the perfect stepping stone for further insight when it comes to blending traditions. 

ACO: What inspired you to compose the piece that you submitted to JCOI? 
DM: Every summer since I was 3, my family has spent a couple of weeks at a wonderfully funky cabin resort nestled next to Silver Lake in the Sierras called Kit Carson Lodge. It’s a peaceful and reflective time of year, and that’s where I decided I wanted to write a piece that was deeply personal, and that rejected the precise planning of my last major work Sprawl. So I settled on using my own family as a source of inspiration.

My late grandfather Jacob is a towering figure in my family, whose life has always fascinated and intrigued me. I had read memoirs about his early life a couple of months earlier, and the narrative was really like something out of an epic old movie. Essentially, his is a story of a very challenging upbringing with turbulent circumstances that were completely out of his control. Born as a Jew in Kiev, he kept moving west throughout his life: To Germany, then to England just in the nick of time, and finally to the U.S. (New York, Chicago and lastly L.A.).

One line struck a chord with me and gave me both a title and a structure for the piece. Jacob describes his hometown of Kiev as a city of two rivers: “The river Dnieper overflows the lowlands every spring, and the Slobodka, on the opposite side, is completely flooded”. Something about the image of these two rivers coexisting in the same city, each with its own path and character, reminded me of the trajectory of his life, and also seemed like an elegant structure for a piece. I decided that what I wanted to do as I wrote the music was to attempt to connect with him even though I never had the fortune to meet him. Surprisingly, this proved possible if I worked while in a kind of meditative and open state.  

ACO: After you found out that you were accepted to JCOI, how have you prepared yourself and your piece for the music readings that will take place? 
DM: It’s an extremely intense and wonderful occasion when a professional orchestra plays your music and I’m still kind of shocked that this is happening. So I’m just trying to go with the flow and be as professional and respectful as I can. All I can do until I get to La Jolla is make sure that my parts and score look professional and contain as few errors as possible. I’ve spent countless hours triple-checking them. If you show musicians that you put time into your parts, you’re likely to get better performances from them. Other than that, I’m just trying not to get too nervous about it, or at least channel that nervous energy into productivity. 

ACO: What do you hope to work on during JCOI? 
DM: During JCOI, I’m hoping to work on my ability to communicate with musicians who don’t share my background. If there are moments in the piece that don’t seem to flow, I want to work on constructive ways to make it work. I also want to try being open to new ways of hearing and interpreting my own music. In the past, my concert music has often left me feeling like I didn’t get the best performances. But I think a large part of that is becoming too attached to my own sense of right and wrong. This time I plan on trying a more Zen approach, because ultimately the La Jolla Symphony and Steven Schick have considerably more experience with the orchestra and concert music in general than I do. Of course the piece is my baby, but I would like to function as a team with the orchestra in bringing it out into the world. 

ACO: Do you foresee any challenges during the workshopping and reading of your piece?   
DM: For me, composition is a pursuit of trial and error. In this piece there are moments where I really feel like I’m gambling. I tried some unusual orchestrations, difficult rhythmic ideas, and odd harmonies, and I’m not 100% sure if they will work once these musicians get their hands on them. So we’ll see. Either I strike gold or I don’t. But either way I’ll learn some extremely valuable information for future compositions.

ACO: What do you hope to get out of this experience at JCOI and working with the La Jolla Symphony? Have you worked with a symphony orchestra before? If not, how do you feel about having this opportunity to work with a symphony orchestra through JCOI?  
DM: I have had small pieces read by the UCLA Philharmonia on several occasions as a UCLA student, but they were much shorter than Two Rivers and the musicians were sight-reading. They were wonderful experiences for me, because I could experiment in a safe environment, and I learned some very practical skills in the process. But the larger orchestra piece I wrote for my master’s thesis at UCLA has never been performed. I probably spent hundreds of hours writing this music, and I may never know if it works as a piece. So I know I’m extremely lucky to have this piece played by a professional orchestra led by a great conductor. Yes it’s nerve-wracking, but it’s also a dream come true.

ACO: What does this experience mean to you as a jazz composer? What would you like to say to other jazz composers who may be interested in applying to JCOI? 
DM: The term “jazz composer” doesn’t really describe what I do on a regular basis anymore. It used to when I was much younger. I got my musical start as a jazz pianist and composer in high school in the Bay Area. And I still occasionally perform my original music with various ensembles. I love jazz and I love the freedom you get as an improviser. But these days it’s only a part of what I do. I’m working on film music with my good friend Miles Senzaki and our company Well Versed Productions, and I’m teaching a lot. However, my jazz roots are still pretty evident in all my music. Whether it’s film or concert music, people can tell that I’m employing a jazz sensibility to some degree. To me, jazz is mainly about a free and improvisatory approach to music rather than any specific notes, chords, or rhythms.

So what I would say to jazz composers out there is this: If you are interested at all in working with musicians who come from the concert world and you aren’t afraid of doing some seriously hard work, definitely apply to JCOI. It’s a rich and rewarding experience that will leave an indelible mark on you as a composer. You’ll gain insight into the ins and outs of the orchestra, learn new approaches to composition and orchestration, and perhaps most importantly, you’ll meet a ton of really cool and extremely talented people who are doing a wide array of interesting things in the music world. The group who attended JCOI were some of the smartest and most interesting musicians I’ve ever met, and they continue to inspire me. 

ACO: What do you hope the audience attending the new music readings will get out of hearing your piece? 
DM: The audience is going to hear 5 wide-ranging pieces that are very different from music they’d hear at a “traditional” orchestra concert. As composers coming from a jazz mentality, we’re improvisers at heart, so I for one am very excited to hear what my colleagues have come up with. The orchestra is such a limitless vehicle for expression, that I can almost guarantee no two pieces on the concert will sound the same. As far as my own piece goes, I can’t say what others will get out of it. Hopefully they’ll hear some new textures, harmonies, and orchestrational gambles that they wouldn’t normally hear come out of the ensemble. It could be a total disaster or it could end up being really hip.  It’s really going to be the unknown for most us, so I think that excitement will creep into the performance. 

Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra: Jazz Composers Orchestra Institute - Joel Harrison: Day 2/Wrap up

20 lessons concerning the orchestra from the perspective of a jazz composer

1. Strauss said “what sounds good at a slow tempo will sound good at a fast tempo.”
2. A true pianissimo is hard to achieve.
3. Don’t over use percussion to drive rhythm. This over use of percussion derives from a jazz mentality where the drums are charged (perhaps too often) with driving drama.
4. Anthony Davis: “make the orchestra your band.”
5. Woodwinds are the most difficult section to deal with. They are all different, and can easily be subsumed by other families. Jazz composers don’t deal with them as much as they deal with brass, perc., and strings.
6. Transitions are a challenge. You can be a very good composer and still have faulty transitions.
7. Beware of over-use of unisons
8. Clear away instruments to allow your core idea to shine through.
9. Fast 16th note passages, esp. unisons, should be used very sparingly. They don’t provide nearly the excitement you might expect.
10. Strings are your friend! Use them as the core of the piece as often as possible, including as rhythmic drivers.
11. Subtlety and nuance are achieved through the sophistication of your orchestral choices. What we jazz composers know well is melody, rhythm, and harmony. But innovative orchestration is a high art, learned through experience.
12. Rhythm is our strong point, but you must be judicious in how you designate your rhythms into the orchestra so as to achieve the drive/ funk/ syncopation you desire. Things get muddy, blurry, cumbersome fast. Question previous strategies!
13. All the sections do NOT need to share the same dynamic. Consider foreground/ background, crossfades in sections.
14. Embellish repeating rhythms, consider shape.
15. Color comes from what you don’t do.
16. Energy can come from dissonance, harmony as much as a fortissimo.
17. Avoid too much block sound- use counterpoint.
18. Use space, let things sit, use pauses to prevent the feeling of things bumping into each other. It’s like a truck making a wide turn as opposed to a sports car.
19. Orchestration defines space and shape.
20. Think in 3 dimensions. An orchestra’s hall is not a small jazz club.

What are ways that you, as a composer, neglect orchestration as a primary tool?
Thanks to the great experience that the JCOI afforded me!