Orchestra Underground: Lines On A Point Composer Spotlight – Amy Beth Kirsten

Composer Amy Beth Kirsten

Beginning with a poem, composer Amy Beth Kirsten has transformed it into her composition, strange pilgrims, which 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. Along with music, strange pilgrims, will also feature a video by Mark DeChiazza. In this interview, find out how this collaboration came about and the journey that Amy Beth has taken in composing her work strange pilgrims.

American Composers Orchestra: What inspired your composition strange pilgrims? How would you describe your composition process? 

Amy Beth Kirsten: Actually, reflecting on the idea of composing inspired the poem and the music for the piece. I wrote the poem when I was just finishing up an evening length theater piece for the chamber group, eighth blackbird, that was incredibly challenging to compose; it was a process that was more collaborative than anything I'd done before and it required making many sketches and rewrites (over the course of a few years) as well as composing about forty minutes of music that, in the end, I decided not to use in the final piece. I pushed myself harder and further than ever before and, in the end, made something I'm super satisfied with. During this three-year long journey I often felt a very strong spiritual pull and meditated quite a lot throughout. The poem for strange pilgrims is a reflection on this process. I sent the poem to Mark DeChiazza (whose stage direction was an essential part of making the eighth blackbird piece) and we started talking about the possibility of working together (again!) - the idea for the music/video project blossomed from there. I decided to dedicate strange pilgrims to my beloved, Christopher Theofanidis, who is also a composer, because we often talk together about making new art and what it means to us personally and spiritually. 

Credit: Mark DeChiazza

ACO: Did incorporating the video have any impact on your piece? 

ABK: One of most challenging things was that the text and the music for the piece came first (before I knew what the images looked like). Mark and I intuit each other’s imaginations very easily so that helped a lot; he described the images that he was thinking of and how the video might interact with the music. Because I've never incorporated video before, it was a leap of faith that I'd be able to compose music that left enough room for the images to have a definitive presence in the piece. We aimed to structure the music and the video to have a kind of symbiotic relationship. I'll be seeing the final piece a few hours before the audience does, and that's pretty thrilling to me! 

ACO: As this upcoming performance will be the world premiere of strange pilgrims is there anything you are most looking forward to in hearing it performed lived by American Composers Orchestra and The Crossing chamber choir? 

ABK: I'm really curious to hear what several sections of the music sound like; these are sections that use an interpretive kind of music notation and so far I've only been able to approximate the sound for myself. I'm also looking forward to the rest of Mark Andrew's (director of photography) incredibly moving images and to see what Mark DeChiazza created with them. It's especially rewarding to be an alumna of the ACO Readings and come back and work with this fine orchestra on something new, as well as to work with The Crossing for the first time. I feel incredibly honored to be included on a concert that features David Lang, Steve Reich, and Ted Hearne; these are composers whose music I'm crazy about and who have long influenced my musical thinking. I'll also be cheering for Lisa Coons who has a world premiere that evening as well. So all in all, it'll be a pretty exciting night!

Orchestra Underground: Lines On A Point Composer Spotlight – David Lang

Composer David Lang  Photo: Peter Serling

statement to the court, composed by David Lang, co-founder of Bang on a Can and Carnegie Hall’s Debs Composers’ Chair for 2013-2014, will be performed by The Crossing chamber choir and American Composers Orchestra at ACO’s Orchestra Underground: Lines On A Point concert on Thursday, February 20 at Zankel Hall, Carnegie Hall. In this interview, David Lang sheds light on the challenges he faced in composing statement to the court, the dedication of his work to Frances Richards, ASCAP, and what he is most looking forward to at the upcoming performance! 

ACO: What was your composition process for your piece statement to the court? 

David Lang: The text is from a famous political speech, delivered by the American socialist Eugene Debs, upon his conviction for sedition, for advocating that the United States stay out of the first World War.  I wanted to capture the rhythm of the speech, the power of it, but also something of the direct 4/4 agit-protest march rhythm appropriate to its world. I listened to a bunch of labor and protest songs before I wrote it, and I still can almost hear them in the background.

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

DL: The greatest challenge I had to deal with was how to use the text to model the relationships between the chorus and the orchestra.  Choirs and orchestras are hierarchical - there are rules and relationships about how the music is normally made, and I wondered if I could change some of them, so that the relationships would be more in the spirit of the text.  So I came up with what I thought would be a more democratic way to define all the society of musicians - everyone sings almost everything together, the strings double almost everything the singers sing, so they feel like equals, and there are many short vocal solos that are supposed to be divided equally among the voices, so that everyone can be valued as a community member and as an individual as well. 

ACO: Your composition is dedicated to Frances Richard, ASCAP, who is also being honored at this Orchestra Underground performance. Can you tell us more about this dedication and the impact that Frances has had in her work with ASCAP? 

DL: I love Fran, and I have loved Fran for as long as I have known her.  She is one of the most passionate, opinionated, fire-breathingly political people that I know.  It seemed right to dedicate this piece to her.

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

DL: I am very excited about this concert.  My piece uses music to explore a moment in American political history.  What more fitting group should play it than the American Composers Orchestra?

Berkeley Symphony EarShot Under Construction New Music Readings Composer Spotlight – Composer Nicholas Omiccioli

Composer Nicholas Omiccioli 

Tapping into his roots in performing in heavy metal bands, composer Nicholas Omiccioli gives us a glimpse into his composition process for his latest work, burning, and also what he is most looking forward to in participating in this weekend’s Berkeley Symphony EarShot Under Construction New Music Readings! 

American Composers Orchestra: What was the inspiration for your composition? How would you describe your composition process? 

Nicholas Omiccioli: My original goal was to write a piece inspired by my early musical roots playing guitar in heavy metal bands. As the piece developed, the literal translation of what I was going for turned more abstract. While I chose to forgo adding a drum kit and metal-style riffs, the tempo of the piece is still extremely fast and has an aggressive edge. Alternatively, moments of repose and atmospheric-like textures made their way into the work, offering more of a relaxed feel.

In a nutshell, my compositional process begins with improvisation, score study, and a considerable amount of time thinking before I write any music. Most of the time, I know what I want so my improvisations are guided to fine-tuning the raw material. After arriving at a handful of motives, melodies, chords, pitch content, and a formal outline, I jot ideas down and work out more substantial sections. While I try to always start at the beginning of a piece, it is not always the case. I plan extensively about where I want to go with the material and set up a number of processes to help accomplish those goals. By this time, I have probably discovered something new about the piece, or I change a parameter—such as a motive, theme, or pitch content—and typically start the entire process over again. This step takes the longest to figure out because I find myself at a fork in the road with just about everything I write. What path do I want to take? Do I have enough time and/or technique to take this path or should I go with what I know works? Once I have decided on a direction, the music essentially writes itself. After I notate the piece, I print it and re-notate it all again. This is when I fine-tune and hopefully correct all of my mistakes.
For burning, rather than deciding on which path to take, I took both of them.

ACO: Since the selection of your work for the Berkeley Symphony EarShot Under Construction New Music Readings, how have you further developed your piece in preparation for the readings? 

NO: I chose to write a new piece for the Berkeley Symphony. All the material is fresh and has not been recycled from other works. The two-and-a-half months I had to arrive at a draft was spent frantically writing as much material as I could. Because the tempo of my piece is insanely fast, there are a ridiculous number of notes. This reading, therefore, will be the deciding factor in how the work develops over the next few months in preparing for the May run-through.  

ACO: What do you hope to get out of this experience of having your piece read by the Berkeley Symphony and in working with the mentor-composers? 

NO: For me, having the chance to hear a work in progress live is an incredible advantage when writing a new piece. I hope that this opportunity for me to experiment outside of my comfort zone will help me grow as a composer and affect future decisions I make. These can include taking more—or even less—risks and having a better grasp on what works and what does not. The feedback from the mentor-composers, as well as comments from the other composition participants, musicians, and conductor will have a significant impact on how I make final preparations

ACO: What are you most looking forward to in participating in these New Music Readings? 

NO: I'm looking forward to the entire overall experience! I'm excited to get to know Joana Carneiro and the musicians of the Berkeley Symphony. It is incredible that they've offered their time to help out so many young composers in developing pieces over the years, and I'm humbled to be a part of it. I'm also looking forward to meeting the other composers and hearing their music, as well as working with mentor-composers Robert Beaser and Edmund Campion. It also goes without saying that I can't wait to hear these two excerpts from my piece, which have all but taken over my life since October!

ACO: What would you like to say to other composers who may be interested in applying to future New Music Readings? 

NO: As I tell all of my students, apply, apply, apply! This program promises to be a great experience for developing a new orchestral work, especially if you have not had much experience writing for orchestra or the opportunity. 

Berkeley Symphony EarShot Under Construction Readings Composer Spotlight – Composer Ruben Naeff

Composer Ruben Naeff   Photo: Elsbeth Tijssen

In this interview with composer Ruben Naeff, find out how a great literary work inspired his latest composition, Danse Macabre, which will be read at the Berkeley Symphony EarShot Under Construction New Music Readings this weekend.

American Composers Orchestra: What was the inspiration for your composition? How would you describe your composition process? 

Ruben Naeff: Moby Dick! This year I worked with my friends from West 4th New Music on an oratorio about Moby Dick that will be performed by Contemporaneous during the MATA Interval Series on February 21st in New York. I decided to select a few passages from my movements and develop the material into a larger, unified work for orchestra. The composition process is always a mysterious activity: I am changing musical fragments that I already have into as many variations as I can come up with and then I select the ones that get me tick. I am basically chasing the most beautiful or exciting musical moments. It remains very abstract what beautiful or exciting actually means. It happens very often that my initial starting point -- Moby Dick in this case -- is not present anymore at a later stage. That doesn't matter: I care about the notes, and the rest is secondary. In this case I ended up with something that reminded me most to a dance with death, or a Danse Macabre, as it is called.

ACO: Since the selection of your work for the Berkeley Symphony EarShot Under Construction New Music Readings, how have you further developed your piece in preparation for the readings? 

RN: Ask a composer for an existing piece and he will give you a new one -- that is what composers do, right, compose new music. So my piece wasn't selected as it did not exist at that time yet. But as I wrote above, it was based on another piece that I recently wrote.

ACO:  What do you hope to get out of this experience of having your piece read by the Berkeley Symphony and in working with the mentor-composers? 

RN: As much advice as possible, on every possible concept of composing. Obviously technical things on orchestration, or practical things on score preparation, but also artistic comments on the musical material, its development, its form -- everything.

ACO: What are you most looking forward to in participating in these New Music Readings? 

RN: Getting to know great musicians, both performers and composers, both my peers and my mentors, and talking about music as long as we can. That, and of course hearing my new piece performed by this stellar orchestra, and learning about the million things I could have done better. And the best part is: those are the million things that I actually will do better, since there is time to improve my piece for the second reading. That opportunity is in one word amazing, and in two words extremely rare.

ACO: What would you like to say to other composers who may be interested in applying to future New Music Readings? 

RN: Don't hesitate, apply!

Berkeley Symphony EarShot Under Construction Readings Composer Spotlight – Composer Sivan Eldar

Composer Sivan Eldar    Photo: Mathieu Desruisseaux 

In the past year, composer Sivan Eldar has been travelling around the world, inspiring her latest composition, A Thousand Tongues, which will be read at the Berkeley Symphony EarShot Under Construction Readings. Find out how yoga, letter writing, and reading all played a role in Sivan’s composition process!

ACO: What was the inspiration for your composition? How would you describe your composition process? 

Sivan Eldar: I had just moved back to San Francisco when I got the call from ACO in October. Life was moving very quickly until then. The months before I was in Prague, Tel Aviv, Hong Kong, Berlin, NYC, DC. For some people that is normal, maybe they travel a lot for work or as part of an ensemble. But I’m used to spending a lot of time at home, doing things very slowly. Having only a few days in each place, to spend with people who are very special to me, was a very intense and strange experience. But also a very beautiful one. When I moved back to SF I knew that I would be living inside those memories for a while. So after I got off the phone with Greg at ACO I decided that through this piece I would spend time with these people and places. During the month I was composing I turned off the internet from 9am-8pm. I read a lot. I wrote letters. I spent time on my yoga mat at home. That was my process – slowing down time, and also giving time. I think one can hear it in the composition.

ACO:  Since the selection of your work for the Berkeley Symphony EarShot Under Construction New Music Readings, how have you further developed your piece in preparation for the readings? 

SE: My piece for the Berkeley Symphony is brand new! I’ve been working on it since late November 2013.

ACO: What do you hope to get out of this experience of having your piece read by the Berkeley Symphony and in working with the mentor-composers? 

SE: I revise my music often. When I work collaboratively with a performer revising becomes part of the compositional process – we discuss sketches, we improvise, we make changes. Having multiple readings with the Berkeley Symphony, and getting immediate feedback from the conductor, the players, and the mentor-composers, is probably the closest I’ll ever get to really collaborating with an orchestra. It’s a very unique opportunity. I am thrilled about that.

ACO:  What would you like to say to other composers who may be interested in applying to future New Music Readings? 

SE: As I said, this is really a unique opportunity. It is a commissioning program that gives you enough time to develop a new work, but also enough feedback to realize it in the best way you can. Any composer who is drawn to the colors of the orchestra should definitely apply!

Berkeley Symphony EarShot Under Construction Readings Composer Spotlight – Composer B.P. Herrington

Composer B. P. Herrington

Composer B.P. Herrington, who will be participating in the Berkeley Symphony EarShot Under Construction Readings in February, takes us through his composition process and the impact of  being chosen for the Readings has had on his piece, A Region Lovelier Far. 

ACO: What was the inspiration for your composition? How would you describe your composition process?

B.P. Herrington:  My compositional materials tend to be very humble, drawn from the rural culture of East Texas, and my music is intuitively filled with the rich ornamentation and rhythmic character of that music.   However, my treatment and development of these materials often involves a tremendous amount of rigor: post-tonal processes such as serial organization, rotational arrays, various games.  Hopefully this coexistence of intuition and rigor translates into a rich listening experience.

I compose by hand on a full orchestral score.  I sketch out basic ideas on a separate sheet of manuscript paper then flesh it out on the full score, making every line as unique for each instrument as possible.   

ACO: Since the selection of your work for the Berkeley Symphony EarShot Under Construction New Music Readings, how have you further developed your piece in preparation for the readings?

B.P.H.: Before I received this opportunity, my piece was just a frustrating, unrealized dream.  After I heard I’d been accepted, the piece took on a new life.  There is nothing in the world like writing a piece for a guaranteed performance.  Having the piece read in-progress also removes the mortal dread of miscalculation.   

 

ACO:  What do you hope to get out of this experience of having your piece read by the Berkeley Symphony and in working with the mentor-composers?

B.P.H.: This piece explores ideas I’ve only thus far pursued in a chamber music setting.  I’m eager to absorb and incorporate all the advice and feedback I receive.    

ACO:  What are you most looking forward to in participating in these New Music Readings?

B.P.H.: Hearing the music come alive under the direction of Joana Carneiro and the fantastic musicians!

ACO:  What would you like to say to other composers who may be interested in applying to future New Music Readings?

B.P.H.: This opportunity is one-of-a-kind.

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.