Howard Mandel on his Involvement in Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra: Jazz Composers Orchestra Institute

Feedback Session

Spending two days in Buffalo with five jazz composers and their mentors preparing scores for readings by the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra has been an education. The fine-grained detailed critiques of written parts offered to Gregg August, Anita Brown, Joel Harrison, Ole Mathisen and Dave Wilson by the symphony players, conductor Matt Kraemer, and senior composers Anthony Davis, Nicole Mitchell and James Newton -- which had to be corrected in the scores overnight --  seem daunting, even for me, used to processing multiple iterations of articles quickly from manuscript to publication in magazines. The depth of listening of everyone is impressive.

Matthew Kraemer and BPO

This afternoon NewMusicBox Frank J. Oteri and I are to address the composers and most likely students from U of Buffalo's music program about career development issues, especially pertaining to press relations and media usage. What can we say? That composers like everyone else in the arts has to now be their own publicist and promotions/marketing director, on top of everything else? Well yes, and that's no longer news. But what else? I'm thinking about it while observing all the interactions. Right now I'm saved from having to answer. The Buffalo Philharmonc Orchestra is just about to perform.

Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra: Jazz Composers Orchestra Institute - Joel Harrison: Day 1

Joel Harrison in the Hotseat

I'm here in Buffalo getting used to the sound of my orchestra writing. I am not surprised to find that there is much I don't know...YET! It is really clear to me where I can make my piece better, and equally clear to me that I do have some good ideas that need time to gestate. Of course, the main issue, as far as lack of rehearsal time, is rhythm. To get an orchestra to groove is a challenge. Part of it is how you write the rhythms (or rather for whom), but part of it is the fact jazz musicians hear groove as a building block of their sound, often incorporating aspects of "world" music in their sound. Very few orchestras have had any exposure to these types of sounds on an ongoing basis.

That being said, this orchestra is really good, and all of us feel extremely lucky to have this opportunity. I am learning an incredible amount and the program is being run very well. Great to connect with James, Anthony, and Nicole as well as the other composers.

So incredible to hear the difference of the music as it sounds in your head, and the actual sound from the stage.

 

Please visit my composition blog - it's brand new - joelharrison.com/blog-press

Jazz Composers Orchestra Institute Day 4 - Michael Dessen

Jazz Composers Orchestra Institute - Day 4
by Michael Dessen

Today was once again packed with energizing conversations and presentations. 
We had an instrumental session on piano and harp in the morning, including a 
terrific whirlwind demo of many pages of harp technique notations by Anne
LeBaron. She vowed to make us all want to compose for harp by showing the 
wide range of sounds that can be achieved through conventionally-accepted
notations, in addition to demonstrating the fascinating, personal techniques
 she uses in her own music.

 Following that was George Lewis' seminar on new approaches to form, a dense 
overview of this topic with examples from western music spanning the 20th 
century. On One level, George was introducing general trends he sees in
 20th-century composers' explorations in new forms, including "depiction,"
 "indeterminacy/open forms," "repetition" and "noise." But as with any of
 George's talks (my post yesterday included a disclaimer that I studied with 
him closely for years), there were layers within layers of provocative 
questions. One of these was his constant weaving together of examples from
 European and African American music in order to reveal resonances among 
formal innovations in these traditions. In addition, he framed the 
presentation by arguing that the dominant discourses of form in common
practice western art music - especially notions like "coherence," "logic,"
and "continuity" - should not be accepted at face value, but are instead 
"fraught" in profound ways and can often serve as "ideologies and moral
precepts." If you're familiar with George's scholarship, you know that such 
comments are the tip of an iceberg of cultural critique and historiographic 
intervention, but he also spoke to us more directly as composers when he
 brought up the fact that each piece we create involves a choice as to whether or not to use "received forms." He emphasized that rejecting
 received forms forces you to confront the amorphous and difficult question
 of how to deal with form, and to examine the relationship between your forms
 and materials.




Even though everyone here at JCOI is super polite and respectful, this is a 
topic bound to strike some nerves, since it's hard not to sense at least a 
whiff of value judgment in this formulation. One of my favorite moments so
 far in the symposium was in the discussion session after George's talk, when one of the younger participants asked if George thought that it is still possible to find room for innovation within traditional ("received") formal
 approaches. I started thinking that this question can only be approached by 
doubling back on the question itself and asking what we mean by "innovation"
 to begin with, in a potentially endless loop of deconstruction, but at the
 same time I was also thinking about my empty stomach like everyone else in
the room, as we were already very late for lunch and this was the last
 question before the break. George improvised a quick solution, if not a
 resolution: "For now, I'll just say this: Yes and no."



Later in the day, Anthony Davis discussed his recent opera Wakonda's Dream,
which I don't have time to cover here, but was another wide-ranging view
 into Anthony's long relationship with operatic writing, building on his 
presentation of Amistad that I discussed in yesterday's post. Derek Bermel 
then gave a presentation on his  music and background that was very 
inspiring and helpful for me, and tackled some of the same questions George 
raised about form but through a different lens. Among other works, Derek 
played an excerpt from a concerto for clarinet that he wrote for himself to
 perform with the ACO years ago, one of his first major commissions. He
 explained that when he wrote it, he had been deeply immersed in listening to
 "What Love" performed by Charles Mingus and Eric Dolphy on a live recording
 at Antibes (1960), and that he was fascinated with the musical conversation 
between the two, the sense of characters personified through sound. He
 recalled that he tried to capture something of the spirit of that music in
 the concerto, but was worried at the first rehearsal that the orchestra 
wouldn't be able to play his piece, since the parts involved new kinds of 
performance techniques. The conductor urged him to simply start out by 
playing his own part, rather than try to explain the techniques first, and 
Derek said that once the orchestra heard how he begin to play, they simply
 got it and everything worked. This story struck me in connection to the 
questions about new performance practices and orchestral culture that I mentioned in yesterday's post. At least in the context of that specific 
piece, it seems like Derek found a solution that allowed him to bring
 something powerful to the orchestra that was formed through his own
 relationship with improvisatory music.



He also spoke at length being immersed in hip hop and other forms of black
 music as a white kid growing up in a predominantly black neighborhood in New
 Rochelle during the 1970s and 80s. He mentioned being especially influenced
by Eric B. and Rakim's albums when they were first coming out in the late
 1980s, and I loved hearing that in this context because I share a deep 
respect for Eric B. and Rakim's albums from that time, even though I'm not
 very knowledgeable about hip hop. As Derek talked about what this music
 meant to him, I was impressed by how well he navigated this tricky subject.
 He didn't over simplify the questions around race that it brought up, but he
 didn't exploit them in a shallow way either. He discussed formal aspects of
 the music and his explorations into analyzing it, rather than just making
 vague references to hip hop in order to color his profile as a composer.
 He's written about these and other topics in online essays found here, and this talk intrigued me to check out his writing more in the
 future.



Another intense panel today included three conductors, Carl St. Clair, Steve 
Shick and Christopher Rountree. In addition to some useful information about
 the mechanics of dealing with orchestras (how much advance time do they need
 to get bowing markings into the parts? how should you interact with a 
conductor during rehearsals? how big should the score be?), the panel also
 moved eventually into some rich questions around improvisation and the
 potential for transforming the orchestra and moving away from the assumption 
that every orchestra has to be modeled on the great institutions of the
 past. Carl St. Clair described his vision for leading the Pacific Symphony to
 be "the new orchestra of the 21st century," and he and Steve Shick, as 
orchestral conductors, passionately encouraged us to be part of that larger
 process of change, echoing the comments Derek Bermel made about orchestral 
evolution in the opening session that I reported in my first post. Steve 
made a great point that the best mind set for us to bring to our interactions 
with an orchestra is to think of them like a big group of fellow musicians.
 It seems simple when I put it this way, but Steve captured this idea
 brilliantly in the conversation. But it was also refreshing to hear Carl St.
 Clair's brutal honesty on the pressures and challenges facing even a
 conductor such as himself who is already committed to championing new music.
 His jaw nearly hit the floor when Christopher Rountree reported that for 
tomorrow night's closing concert of chamber music, they had 25 hours of 
rehearsal, exponentially more than the PSO ever has for any single concert.
 And Carl also gave some powerful insight into how the current paradigm of
 orchestral programming is shaped at a fundamental level by marketing. For
 example, he explained that his programming decisions have to take into
 account the "data" he's given on the ticket sales that will be generated by
 a choice to program Beethoven's 5th compared with the 4th, and he commented
 that he can't program as much new music during the weeks when they are
 marketing season ticket renewals. For all this darkness, though, there was
 still plenty of enthusiasm and a feeling among everyone in the discussion 
that such circumstances make it all the more urgent that we work together
 now to envision new directions for the orchestra of the future. Citing the 
statistic that the average age of the season ticket holder is 65, Carl 
eloquently connected JCOI's aims to the economic crisis facing the orchestra
 today, stating that the orchestra "must find new relevance, and that new 
relevance is going to be a new identity."

Jazz Composers Orchestra Institute Day 2 & 3 - Samantha Boshnack

Jazz Composers Orchestra Institute - Day 2 & 3

by Samantha Boshnack

Back again, Jazz Composers Orchestra Institute continues on at full speed.  Again, there are so many ideas circulating, so much exposure to music, theory, and information that is all very new to me.  I’m going to give a run down of some things I thought particularly interesting.  Again, my words are gross over-simplifications of the topics and I am unable to cover everything without writing all night.    

Day 2 started off with a lecture from Anne LeBaron on the 20^th Century orchestra.  It was a fascinating look at how composers came from what was before while codifying their own ideas - something I think we are all striving trying to do.  We analyzed scores from Stravinsky, Varese, Messaien, and Takemitsu, examining who influenced them and what they developed that was new.

Nicole Mitchell presented on her work and experience.  She is an incredible flautist and composer.  She has a deep improvising background (she is the co-president of AACM in Chicago) and has begun to tackle the world of contemporary classical music composition with great success.  Nicole spoke about how she puts her own flute techniques onto the paper.  There is such a rich oral tradition in jazz; it is a challenge to try to notate all of the crazy techniques and rhythms that an improviser will play naturally.  She spoke on directions in African American Art; outlining that artists can be present focused, past focused, and future focused.  By being visionary and future focused African American musicians have created new worlds and new opportunities for themselves.  I thought to myself (as someone who thinks about gender roles in the music world a lot) that the same is true for women.  I am excited that there are many other female jazz composers at this institute and have enjoyed learning their experiences and stories.

Alvin Singleton gave us a fascinating look at his solo works.  He began writing solo pieces when he learned that it is easier to “write for your friends” (so true).  As one can imagine solo writing is very hard to pull off - Singleton had us all enthralled by these pieces.  I loved the refreshing emphasis he put on following one’s intuition in composing.  This may be because I rely on it so heavily, but I also think music is so spiritual and on another plane, that it’s nice to think not every composer needs to know a ton of technique and theory to write something important. 

Anthony Davis presented his opera “Amistad” to us.  It was amazing.  I’ve always been a fan of opera.  He showed us how composing an opera let’s you create a whole world unto itself.  When asked if he knows as he’s writing where the opera is leading to musically, he said, “I’d rather discover it.”  Apparently, Wagner always wrote the climax first and then wrote the rest.  An interesting image he created was of Ellington writing opera for instruments – each member of his band was a character in the story.  It may be a new way I try to look at the members of my bands - except hopefully with less drama then an opera. 

Today, George Lewis presented some of his beautiful compositions employing new music techniques (quarter tones, etc.), improvisation and electronics.  I loved when he said that music comes from communities.  If you want to do something weird and new the first thing you have to do is go and find people to do it with you.  I feel so fortunate to be at this institute and feel I have so much I will bring back to my community in Seattle.     

Jazz Composers Orchestra Institute Days 2 & 3 - Michael Dessen

Jazz Composers Orchestra Institute - Days 2 & 3

by Michael Dessen

Reading Samantha's wonderfully detailed account of day one, I realized that I didn't introduce myself at all in my first blog entry. I'm a trombonist and composer, and you can find out more about me here. But I should offer a full disclosure here that I came here already knowing a number of the JCOI faculty artists, especially George Lewis and Anthony Davis, who have been important mentors for me since graduate school. Nicole Mitchell is also my colleague at the University of California, Irvine, where we're both core faculty in an MFA program in Integrated Composition, Improvisation and Technology, and I know several
other members of the JCOI faculty, so I may not be the most impartial observer.

Last night we had a second marathon session in which the participants each shared a short recording or performance to introduce themselves. As with a similar session the previous night, I was impressed with how many people stayed late for this, including many of the faculty. Given how balkanized music worlds can often be, it was also encouraging to see everyone listening intently and respectfully for three hours to such a wide aesthetic range of
works.

While building on the positive energy of day one, the plot has definitely thickened over days two and three as more complicated questions emerged. There is always plenty of practical information to deal with, such as in the instrumental classes offered by members of wild Up, but on a deeper level, it's now clear that JCOI is about much more than learning orchestration techniques. Over the past two days, we've heard presentations by many of the
composition faculty - Alvin Singleton, Nicole Mitchell, Anthony Davis, James Newton, Paul Chihara, Anne LeBaron and George Lewis - and this has enlivened the conversations happening both inside and outside the classroom. The threads are still coming into focus for me, but I'll try to sort out a few below.

Anthony Davis gave a presentation yesterday on his opera Amistad, and it seemed that many participants who weren't familiar with his music were knocked out by it, especially his command of the orchestral medium. Anthony described how he now hears the orchestra naturally when he writes at the piano, telling us "I don't even hear the piano anymore." He related this to Duke Ellington, pointing out that Ellington honed his orchestra over the years like a very personal kind of instrument, and he pushed us to each consider what it would mean to do the same, to use the orchestra to realize our individual music, rather than to simply take a "generic," safe approach.

But both in that session and in later conversations, several people shared a feeling that this challenge is more daunting than it might seem. We all know that orchestras are hardly hotbeds of innovation in performance practice; pieces get very limited rehearsal time, and most professional orchestra players are far less open to working on new approaches to performance than musicians in new music chamber ensembles. Anthony's insistence that we should be cultivating individuality and using our writing to "set new standards" that future orchestral players will have to meet was inspiring, but I'm pretty sure he'd also be quick to admit how difficult it is to get the culture of orchestra or opera worlds to open up to new ideas or methods (the innovative projects of the ACO notwithstanding). Just get Anthony
started on this topic and I promise you'll be in for a lot of stories! So as one participant put it to me later, if barriers in that sense still exist for someone of Anthony's stature, imagine how an orchestra would react to less established composers like us arriving with parts that involve cultivating new performance practices or sensibilities. This isn't to dismiss Anthony's message, but to clarify that JCOI represents a more complex, long-term, and fundamentally cultural project than it might seem on the surface.

The instrumental demo sessions we've had with wild Up members reflect this same creative tension in a different way. On the one hand, it's exciting to engage with these performers; they're part of a generation of virtuosic musicians who are dedicated to collaborating closely with composers on new methods. Naturally our discussions in these sessions often go into questions of extended techniques, since they're as eager to talk about those topics as we are. But then, suddenly, someone will shift gears and remind us that in the case of orchestras, we need to be a lot more careful about what we try. In one session, wild Up's director Christopher Rountree even pointed out that some orchestral musicians have contracts specifying that they will not be required to perform certain extended techniques like multiphonics.

I don't mean to be overly negative, since I think the possibilities we're all pointing towards are genuinely thrilling, if still embryonic. But it's still a very loaded set of questions for me and many others here. Today, for example, a fellow participant expressed to me a deep concern that in moving into a more conventional model of notated composition, we risk stripping something essential from the musical value system that is bound up with collective, improvisatory performance traditions.  How we can bring to orchestral composition something genuine and powerful from our experiences as improvisers, and what are the different challenges - logistical, economic, technical, aesthetic, cultural - that come with this process?

Both James Newton and Nicole Mitchell gave inspiring, positive talks yesterday on this topic, and each spoke about seeking ways to compose fully-notated or orchestral music while drawing on what we value from our experiences as improvisers. James' stance hit me hard when he spoke of the decades of collaborative and individual practice that improvisers go through in order to access a very special kind of musical, even spiritual experience "on the bandstand." He seemed to be saying that having cultivated this feeling through years of hard work now enables him to step back study it analytically, and to explore techniques for translating it into new forms via notated composition. Nicole also spoke eloquently about this exploration in terms of "expansion" rather than giving anything up, pointing out that you don't have to stop being an improviser as you move into studying new forms of composing. Both Nicole and James brought out the importance of envisioning alternate future realities in our work as composers, and played moving examples of their own recent compositions while humbly pointing out that this is a long, ongoing project for them that in some sense is just beginning.

The other composers' presentations were equally inspiring for me, though each in a distinct way. Alvin Singleton played several of his pieces and talked about not only the music, but also his personal pathway to becoming a successful independent composer, from growing up in Bed-Stuy in Brooklyn and sneaking out of his parents' house in high school to go hear Ornette Coleman's first band in NYC, through various schools and many years establishing himself in Europe to finally make his return back to the states. One of the younger participants commented that she appreciated his story as a reminder that finding one's way as a composer is not necessarily a straight line from point A to B, as formal schooling systems would have us believe. This resonated with me because I teach grad students who often express a similar feeling of being overwhelmed by pressures - both real and self-created - to codify their artistic identity and broadcast it at every online corner before they hit their mid-twenties. Hearing someone as experienced as Alvin talk about composing in the broader context of his life is always a very memorable part of these encounters. This was also true for Paul Chihara's energetic presentation this morning, which was hysterically
funny - he could easily work as a standup comic. But underneath the humor, Paul's talk was also filled with provocative ideas and reflections on his long career in film music, including fascinating asides on Los Angeles music history, Hollywood, Takemitsu and many other subjects that seemed to burst out unexpectedly in every moment.

To close out today, we had intense sessions with Anne LeBaron and George Lewis, each sharing some of their recent works. While totally different from one another, Anne and George both presented music and ideas that I think pushed some new envelopes we haven't encountered yet this week. Their session was powerful for me personally, and set a perfect stage for tomorrow, but I'm out of time so I'll have to return to that in a future post. I look forward to more dialogues with everyone!