Phenomenal Women - Composer Spotlight: Alex Temple

American Composers Orchestra gives the world premiere of Alex Temple's Three Principles of Noir – featuring singer Meaghan Burke, directed by Amber Treadway, with costumes by Storm Garner – on Friday, November 2, 2018 at 7:30pm at Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall. More information here

Alex Temple is a composer who loves both the Western classical tradition and the world of pop culture. Uncomfortable with stylistic hierarchies and the idea of a pure musical language, she prefers to look for points of connection between things that are not supposed to belong together. Temple's music has been performed by many prominent soloists and ensembles – including Mellissa Hughes, Timo Andres, Mark Dancigers, Chicago Composers Orchestra, Spektral Quartet, Fifth House Ensemble, Cadillac Moon Ensemble, and Ensemble de Sade – and she has appeared at venues such as Roulette, Exapno, the Tank, Monkeytown, Galapagos Art Space, Gallery Cabaret, and Constellation performing her own works for voice and electronics.

We spoke to Temple about her new commission from ACO, Three Principles of Noir, which premieres on ACO's program Phenomenal Women along with works by Valerie Coleman and Joan Tower – Friday, November 2, 2018 at 7:30pm at Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall. More information here

Composer Alex Temple. Photo by Marc Perlish

American Composers Orchestra: Can you talk about your process for coming up with the idea for this piece?

Alex Temple: The idea of the three principles of noir is something I came up with almost a decade ago when I was spending a lot of time on film messageboards.  Each one is based on a particular movie:  the Double Indemnity principle says that it doesn't matter how well you plan it, you won't get away with it;  the Detour principle says that it doesn't matter whether you actually do it or not, you won't get away with it;  and the In a Lonely Place principle says that it doesn't matter whether you actually do it again, cause you're a bad person anyway.

The plot has been floating around in my head for quite a while too.  It was inspired by the moral unease of film noir, of course, but also by my longstanding love of time travel stories, by Erik Larson's account of the 1893 World's Fair in The Devil in the White City, and by the seething wit of Sweeney Todd and the feminist bitterness of Claire Messud's The Woman Upstairs.  I thought about turning the story into a piece of music for years, but I never managed to find the right context for it until I got the commission from ACO.

ACO: How did singer Meaghan Burke, director Amber Treadway, and costume design by Storm Garner become involved?

AT: I've been friends with all three of them for a long time.  Meaghan and I have worked together before, when I wrote Switch: A Science-Fiction Micro-Opera for Cadillac Moon Ensemble in 2013, and the original plan for this project was to write a sequel to that piece.  Eventually I scrapped that idea and brought in this story of murder and time travel instead.  Meaghan's numerous vocal styles — sultry cabaret, melancholy Sprechstimme, dreamy spoken flights of fancy — had a huge influence on how I conceived of the protagonist.

Storm is a polymath:  not only a costume designer but also a singer, composer, photographer and filmmaker.  Her work is always imbued with an experimental spirit — including our one previous collaboration, a polystylistic film called And In Her It Danced: An Inheritance, which included my piece This Changes Everything! in the soundtrack.  Amber, meanwhile, has been doing great work in the queer and feminist opera world, directing shows like Kate Soper's Here Be Sirens and Griffin Candey's Sweets by Kate, the latter at the Stonewall Inn.  I originally know her from Twitter, which she is the official best at.

ACO: Your bio describes your tendency to “look for points of connection between things that are not supposed to belong together” in your work. What are some things that “don’t belong together” in Three Principles of Noir?

AT: There are all kinds of styles and reference points at play in the piece:  tango, Weimar cabaret, atonal counterpoint, the Great American Songbook, Straussian Romanticism, Robert Ashley monotone singing, Andriessenish sound masses.  All of them relate in some way to the story, the mood, or the period(s) that the piece takes place in.  Theatrical music is a particularly good venue for this kind of eclecticism, because you can use the narrative to unite all the disparate elements.

ACO: Can you talk about your relationship with ACO and the path that lead you to receiving this commission?

AT: I first worked with ACO in 2011, when I wrote Liebeslied for Mellissa Hughes to perform with them at the opening concert of the SONiC Festival.  It was a great experience for all involved, so I was excited when we started talking about collaborating again.  It's taken several years to put all the moving parts together, including securing a grant from the MAP Fund, going through several different ideas for what the plot might be, getting collaborators on board, and — if I can be candid — delaying the whole project after Trump's election sent me into one of the worst depressions of my life.  I mention this because I believe that our cultural taboo against discussing mental illness makes it harder for people to find support, and I want to help erase the stigma by being open about my own experiences with it.

For a while I wondered whether I really wanted to write a piece with such a dark ending, under the circumstances.  One thing that helped me was Derek Bermel telling me not to let myself be defeated, and saying that now was my moment to be angry, to be vulnerable, to be subversive.  Three Principles of Noir isn't about modern fascism, but it certainly is about anger and vulnerability and subversiveness.

ACO: What can the audience expect at the world premiere of Three Principles of Noir, and what are you most looking forward to about the concert?

AT: Listeners should come prepared for bloody schemes, feminist rage, moral ambiguity, academic angst, memorable tunes, convoluted rhymes, electronic collages, and more swears than you'd probably expect to hear on stage at Carnegie Hall.  As for me, I'm just looking forward to finally being able to relax into the role of audience!

American Composers Orchestra gives the world premiere of Alex Temple's Three Principles of Noir on Friday, November 2, 2018 at 7:30pm at Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall. More information here

Learn more about Alex Temple at www.alextemplemusic.com
Follow her on Twitter

Phenomenal Women - Composer Spotlight: Valerie Coleman

American Composers Orchestra gives the world premiere of Valerie Coleman's Phenomenal Women – a concerto for wind quintet and orchestra featuring Imani Winds – on Friday, November 2, 2018 at 7:30pm at Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall. More information here

Valerie Coleman is among the world’s most played composers living today. The Boston Globe describes Coleman as a having a “talent for delineating form and emotion with shifts between ingeniously varied instrumental combinations,” and The New York Times has praised her “skillfully wrought, buoyant music.” With works that range from flute sonatas that recount the stories of trafficked humans during Middle Passage and orchestral and chamber works based on nomadic Roma tribes, to scherzos about moonshine in the Mississippi Delta region and motifs based from Morse Code, her body of works has been highly regarded as a deeply relevant contribution to modern music.

We spoke with Valerie about her ACO/Carnegie Hall commission Phenomenal Women. The work is inspired by Maya Angelou's poem and book Phenomenal Women, and honors Angelou, as well as Claressa Shields, Serena Williams, Michelle Obama, Katherine Johnson, and Immigrant Mothers, with solo interludes by members of Imani Winds. The world premiere is Friday, November 2, 2018 at 7:30pm at Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall. More information here

Learn more about Valerie Coleman at www.vcolemanmusic.com
Follow her on Facebook

Past Forward: Composer Spotlight - David Hertzberg

David Hertzberg is currently Composer-in-Residence with Opera Philadelphia and Music Theatre Group and has been honored with the Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, two ASCAP Morton Gould Awards, the Fromm Commission from Harvard University, and the Aaron Copland Award from Copland House. Past residencies include Tanglewood, Yaddo, IC Hong Kong, the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, and Young Concert Artists.

David's Spectre of the Spheres was selected for our 2015 Underwood New Music Readings, where it earned him the $15,000 Underwood Commission to write a new orchestral work. David's Chamber Symphony is this new work, and will be premiered by Maestro George Manahan and the American Composers Orchestra at “Past Forward” on Friday, March 24, 2017 at 7:30pm in Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall. David was kind enough to talk with us about the piece.

Composer David Hertzberg

American Composers Orchestra: Your description of Chamber Symphony, which is very poetic, says, "voices speak to one other across vistas, from different sides of time, finding resonances both sympathetic and volatile." Can you expand upon this? What do you mean by these "voices," "different sides of time," and "resonances both sympathetic and volatile"?

David Hertzberg: When I was awarded the Underwood Commission I knew that I wanted to write something for Maestro Manahan and the ACO that was different from, more rhetorically involved than my other orchestra pieces. I had this vague idea that I wanted it to be a symphony of sorts, whatever that means. The orchestra pieces that I have written up to this point all have flowing, organic forms, in which listeners are brought into a space in which they coexist with a musical organism, breathing and acting of its own accord. My Chamber Symphony, I think, shares this quality, but I feel there is more rhetorical depth in its argument, a gradual unraveling and coalescing of musical dualities - maybe that’s what made me feel the need to call it a symphony.

ACO: Chamber Symphony is your Underwood Commission which you won after participating in the Underwood New Music Readings and Workshops in 2015. Can you talk about anything you learned in the readings and workshops that you applied when composing your commission?

DH: The Underwood readings and the opportunity to work with Mo. Manahan and the ACO have served as an invaluable tool for me as an orchestral composer. In addition to the more pragmatic insights about instrumentation and the orchestra world, hearing them interpret my Spectre of the Spheres in 2015 helped me arrive at the musical conclusions described above, to dig deeper into my own orchestral ethos, and to find the place there wherein a more dynamic musical grammar can blossom.

David at the 2015 Underwood New Music Readings, rehearsing his piece Spectre of the Spheres with Maestro Manahan and the ACO

ACO: Can you talk about your composing process for Chamber Symphony? How long have you been working on it? What have been the milestones and challenges throughout the process?

DH: I generally compose by letting the music gestate internally for a long (or not so long) time. When ideas start to congeal, the actual writing part comes quickly, as was the case with this piece, though I had been living with the material for quite some time. I also feel this piece bears the influence of an opera I was (and still am) writing for Opera Philadelphia, freely inspired by the work of the British occultist Aleister Crowley, as well as the poetry of Wallace Stevens, whose deeply human voice has always been a wellspring of inspiration for me. 

ACO: How do you hope the audience will feel, and what do you hope they'll notice while listening to Chamber Symphony at its premiere?

DH: It is my hope that listeners will let themselves live in the metaphysical space of this music, and perhaps, feel a certain wholeness, oneness, in the arc of its form.

ACO: What are you most looking forward to at the premiere?

DH: Hearing these notes and sounds that I’ve dreamed up in these past months come to life, and be interpreted in the hands of such sensitive and intrepid (!) artists.

Follow David on Twitter and Soundcloud

www.davidhertzbergmusic.com

Hear the world premiere of David’s Chamber Symphony at “Past Forward” on Friday, March 24, 2017 at 7:30pm in Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall.

Orchestra Underground: Monk's Sphere Composer Spotlight – Loren Loiacono

Loren Loiacono, a young composer of extraordinary talent, synthesizes her childhood experience playing with Barbie’s Dream House and her later discovery of Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloe in the NYC premiere of Stalks, Hounds at Orchestra Underground: Monk's Sphere on November 21 at Zankel Hall, Carnegie Hall. Loren was kind enough to answer a few questions about the creative process behind Stalks, Hounds.

Composer Loren Loiacono

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

Loren Loiacono: As goofy as it may sound, the inspiration for Stalks, Hounds was a computer game I played as a kid, where whenever you clicked on various things, it would be accompanied by this harp-flourish sound effect.  Years later, as a teenager, I heard Maurice Ravel's Daphnis et Chloe for the first time, and was stunned to realize that the harp "sound effect" was, verbatim, taken from a gesture in that piece.  It struck me as odd how that particular phrase had been completely isolated from its original musical context, and had been turned into something completely, for lack of a better word, inane.  (I think I'm probably not alone in this experience – there is plenty of music that I heard as part of cartoons or games re-contextualized as used for a different purpose.)  In particular, I wanted to explore the idea of that gesture, not as an organic part of its original musical whole, but as a stock sound, that could be summoned with a click.

ACO: Are any of the musical gestures you decontextualize in this piece borrowed from anything a listener could recognize?

LL: The most obvious gesture is the Daphnis quote. The opening of the piece very closely replicates the experience I had of that flourish accompanying every computer click (including, if one were to click too quickly, the gesture becoming truncated).  Other than that, the materials I used were all very simple, even cliche (descending scales, circle of fifth harmonic progressions, etc.), but used in a way in which things are slightly askew.

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

LL: Everything! Hearing an orchestra play your music is always an exhilarating experience to begin with, but this time is particularly exciting.  What I'm most excited about, though, is to hear how ACO is going to interpret the piece.  The piece has only been played by one orchestra (it was premiered by the Yale Philharmonia in 2011), and so for the last couple of years, the way I think about the piece has been completely tied up with how they played it.  This piece is particularly close to my heart, as well, so hearing another orchestra play the piece, and particularly one as well-attuned to the nuances of contemporary music as ACO, will be like discovering a whole new side of Stalks, Hounds.

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

LL: I'd say the best things to listen for are how each of the gestures introduced is derailed: the harp flourishes that keep getting overtaken by strings and percussion, the descending scales that get stuck on the way down, and, most notably, the piano/vibraphone groove that can't quite seem to find its footing.

Follow Loren on Facebook, Twitter

www.lorenloiacono.com
www.americancomposers.org

Orchestra Underground: Monk's Sphere Composer Spotlight – Meredith Monk

Meredith Monk, 2014-2015 Richard and Barbara Debs Composer’s Chair holder at Carnegie Hall, is a composer, singer, and creator of new opera and music-theater works. A pioneer in extended vocal technique, Monk has been called "at once fearless, unique, [and] uncompromising" by The Washington Post and "one of contemporary music's great innovators" by The Classical Review. Monk kindly shared with us the creative process behind Night, a rare orchestral work which will be performed at ACO's Orchestra Underground: Monk's Sphere on November 21 at Zankel Hall, Carnegie Hall.

Meredith Monk

American Composers Orchestra: What was the inspiration for your original composition, Night, for ten voices, two keyboards, violin and French horn? Can you tell us about your creative process for this piece?

Meredith Monk: My daily practice is working at the piano. Sometimes I like to explore different scales. One day in the early ‘90s I started playing with one that turned out to be a Hungarian minor scale, and I began developing material inspired by the particular dissonance inherent in those sounds.

At that time, the former Yugoslavia was in the midst of a bloody war. I had been on tour there a few years before and was struck by the natural beauty of the region in contrast to what was now going on. At the same time I began thinking about suffering in the broader sense.

As with most of my work, I begin from an intuitive place and try to access something both timeless and contemporary. Night was one of those works that came to me as a full fabric. While I think of it as an elegy, it also evokes the sturdiness and resilience of life.

ACO: What prompted you to re-orchestrate Night for a larger ensemble? Can you talk about any of the specific choices you made in selecting the new instrumentation?

MM: I think of myself primarily as a vocal composer and have always thought of the voice as an instrument. As the years go on, I have become more and more interested in the idea of instruments as voices, and in combining voices and instruments to find new sounds. I recognized that for Night to have its full power, it needed the richer colors and textures of an orchestra. Using unusual instruments such as shakuhachi, bowed psaltry and harp played with a guitar pick allowed me to explore new timbres and to think of the group of instrumentalists as somewhere between an orchestra and a band.

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

MM: I’m hopeful that people will engage with it on different levels. I try to create an open space for each member of the audience to experience the work in his or her own way, affirming the power and uniqueness of each person’s imagination.

Follow Meredith on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube

www.meredithmonk.org
www.americancomposers.org

Orchestra Underground: Monk's Sphere Composer Spotlight – A.J. McCaffrey

Motormouth, a world premiere by rising-star composer and ACO’s 2013 Underwood Commission winner A.J. McCaffrey, will be performed at Orchestra Underground: Monk's Sphere on November 21 at Zankel Hall, Carnegie Hall. A.J. has kindly shared with us the personal story that has inspired his work and some of the strategies he used in the writing process.

Composer A.J. McCaffrey

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

A.J. McCaffrey: Just around the time that the ACO commissioned me to write this piece, my then-four-year-old son began telling jokes. He would start off by telling the jokes the way he had heard them. Then, excited and emboldened by the laughter they generated, he would look for ways to make the jokes bigger and better, repeating them over and over and adding his own variations. The jokes would become these manic, absurdist, free-association epics, with tigers and fire hydrants invading jokes about astronauts (and vice-versa). I’m a sucker for this type of humor, and I would egg him on during car rides, passing mutations on various knock-knock jokes back-and-forth with him until the punch lines were as far away from the set-ups as possible and we were both laughing our heads off.

When I sat down to compose, I very much wanted to convey this hyperactive, overjoyed (and exhausting) energy in the music I was writing. I saw this piece as an opportunity to write “about” or “for” my son, although I also recognized that this was not the first time that I had been drawn to this type of playfulness with language and momentum. I love taking rhetorical musical devices (like certain phrases or melodies) and ratcheting up their intensity until the frenetic emotional state of the music seems completely at odds with its grammar or logic. I feel that there is similarly mischievous, slapstick, or satirical quality to the music of some of my favorite composers, like György Ligeti and Gerald Barry, and I often find myself paying homage to them in my own works. In Motormouth, a few melodic lines are taken through a myriad array of moods and levels of activities – from giddy to frustrated, from manic to calm – that one might experience in a typical day as the parent of young children.

ACO: You say that Motormouth is inspired by your experiences as a new father. Can you describe any specific moments with your child that have found their way into the piece?

AM: The first image I began composing with was that of “coloring outside the lines.” I tried to convey this concept through a melody in which the intervals kept getting farther apart, like widening scribbles, but I was unhappy with the actual sound of it. I kept paring the melody down until it was just a rising and falling major third (which is heard all throughout the piece). It was my wife who pointed out that this sounded exactly like a fire truck siren, or at least a boy’s imitation of a fire truck siren – one that will be very familiar to anyone who has visited our house in the last two years.

Perhaps more consciously, there is a section about nine minutes into the piece in which I most overtly tried to channel my son’s joke-telling: a repeated series of herky-jerky, falling-down-the-stairs melodies that are routinely punctuated by what I thought of as two loud “ta-DA!” chords.

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

AM: Given the level of skill, talent and devotion to new music exhibited by Maestro Manahan and the ACO, and the history and prestige of the venue, it is extremely difficult for me to narrow down what I’m looking forward to. I am absolutely thrilled and honored to be part of this concert.

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

AM: Although I think it can be helpful for an audience to hear how composers approach their own works, I never want to impose my own agenda on someone else’s listening experience. When writing, I try to make sure that the concept never overwhelms the music, and I hope listeners can enjoy the sounds for their own sake without feeling beholden to any particular narrative.

Follow A.J. on Facebook, Twitter

www.ajmccaffrey.com
www.americancomposers.org

Orchestra Underground: Monk's Sphere Composer Spotlight – Theo Bleckmann

Composer Theo Bleckmann's My Brightest Garment will have its world premiere at American Composers Orchestra's Orchestra Underground: Monk's Sphere concert on November 21 at Zankel Hall, Carnegie Hall. Theo has kindly shared with us the personal story that has inspired his work and some of the strategies he used in the writing process.

Vocalist and Composer Theo Bleckmann

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

Theo Bleckmann: The inspiration behind this piece was the recent death of two close friends. The idea that we exist one day and are completely gone the next really hit me hard. Whatever one believes in, the mere fact of dying on earth suddenly seemed like a magic trick to me. How could we be so present and real one moment, and irrevocably gone the next? I found there to be a strange beauty. I wanted to write an exuberant piece of celebration, not a dirge.

The piece started out with a 5-bar, repeated harp-and-piano counterpoint sketch, that very quickly evolved into a full form with some orchestration. The real work began then: I amended, changed, tweaked, switched, refined, obsessed, went back, filled in for months and months, a seemingly infinite process. I wanted to have something that was static while shifting colors, sometimes abruptly, sometimes with a sleight of hand.

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

TB: This is my first commission for large orchestra, so I had to really familiarize myself with instruments I had never written for before. Some of them came easier to me, like the tuba e.g., others I had to research quite extensively and really figure out what is feasible and what is too ambitious. Composer and orchestrator Kirk Nurock was very helpful in this process, as I went to take lessons with him, especially for this piece. I also talked to friends who are virtuosos on their instruments. I consulted with them about all kinds of details and asked them to play sections for me to hear - it was very tempting to write endless extended techniques, especially considering the high caliber of players in ACO, but somehow the piece wanted to be much simpler and less oblique - more like a dance - so I followed that.

ACO: You describe My Brightest Garment as “an orchestral song about death as a vanishing act, a magic trick of sorts; pondering the ‘now you see it - now you don’t’ aspect, while wearing the most beautiful, brightest garment to pull it off.” How will your use of live electronic processing help achieve this concept in your piece?

TB: The live electronic looping I do is very simple and direct, technically speaking. There is no laptop or hidden hardware anywhere. I push a button, sing into the machines and out comes the music. I want there to be very little worry in the listener’s mind as to what is going on. I want them to see and hear that what is being created is happening right now and that it is not pre-recorded or hidden from them behind a screen. 

When we die, not much is left of us except for the people we affected and the things we owned or made. I came to realize that audio recordings are an eerie residue of a person’s soul. With the live looping I’ll be doing, I am capturing the now to be re-lived later, which is very much like looking at a photo of someone you lost.

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

TB: There is no homework or checklist for this piece. I hope for the listener to enjoy it and relax into the music, be surrounded and immersed by the sounds and words.

Follow Theo on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube

www.theobleckman.com
www.americancomposers.org

Orchestra Underground: Lines On A Point Composer Spotlight – Lisa Renée Coons

Composer Lisa Renée Coons

Composer Lisa Renée Coons’ composition Vera’s Ghosts will have its world premiere at American Composers Orchestra’s Orchestra Underground: Lines On A Point concert on February 20 at Zankel Hall, Carnegie Hall. Lisa has kindly shared with us the personal story that has inspired her work and how she hopes the audience will respond to Vera’s Ghosts.

American Composers Orchestra: What inspired your composition Vera's Ghosts? 

Lisa Renée Coons: My once vibrant and passionate grandmother, Vera, has slowly been losing the battle with dementia—there is now almost nothing of her previous ‘self’ left. This piece tries to capture the pain and fear of that trajectory, both hers and my mother’s as she cared for her. Or perhaps, more honestly, it is even more inspired by my own fear of that disease. The conductor acts as protagonist, surrounded by the musicians who are placed around him in a sparse U-formation. He often loses control of the gestures and becomes submerged in noise as ideas are passed quickly around the space between individual players, like an infection spreading. Moments of beauty deteriorate into angry episodes of confusion and frustration, but the end is a sort of 'hymn' - it is a quiet acceptance of someone who no longer communicates, but rather lives alone with her ghosts.

ACO: How would you describe your composition process for Vera's Ghosts? Did you face any challenges that you had to resolve during the composition?

LRC: Notation for the spatialized gestures - especially those based on the reactions of the musicians rather than the motion of the conductor - represented a new challenge for me. I have never written anything so physical for a large ensemble like string orchestra and I am excited to hear it realized.

ACO: What are you most looking forward to in having your work performed by American Composers Orchestra in its World Premiere at Carnegie Hall? 

LRC: I am grateful to have the opportunity to collaborate with these amazing musicians.  This piece is new and challenging in many ways, and I am eager to have it realized by the musicians of ACO.  But I am also quite touched to be included with the other composers on the concert. I look forward to this concert as both a composer and an audience member.

ACO: Is there anything that you hope the audience will get out of listening to your work? Is there anything they should listen for?  

LRC: I would like for the audience to focus on the movement of textures and gestures - to let themselves be immersed in sound rather than listening for motivic development or themes.  My hope would be for them to have visceral responses to the sound, and that this piece will provide an engaging experience as much as it acts as music.