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 - Dave Wilson: Day 1

Dave Wilson in the Hotseat

I'm sitting here in our meeting room at the Buffalo Philharmonic, waiting for the beginning of the readings in forty-five minutes. In about ten minutes, I'll have my final meeting with the conductor (which will last about five minutes), to go over any last minute notes or changes. Hearing my piece played for the first time yesterday was an incredible learning experience--from the first moment I began to understand even better how to clearly communicate my musical ideas in a way translatable to a symphony orchestra. Yesterday, musicians from each section met with us and gave us some immensely helpful input on how to make our parts even more easy to read. Throughout my music career I've usually worked as a player in situations like this, so hearing players communicate about issues of concern to orchestral musicians was refreshing and helped me connect even more to compositional and notation strategies for more effective communication of my musical ideas. I'm looking forward to the reading, and I'm sure I'll continue to learn even more in the next few days.