I recently spoke with Australian composer Julian Day, one of the winners of our commissioning project. We will be giving the world premiere of his piece

Dan VanHassel: Why don’t you tell me a little bit about your background as a musician?

Julian Day: I came to music from both pop and classical. I’ve always been very interested in pop music, and my father was actually a singer and an electric guitarist in a band, that was his main activity. So I grew up with the idea of pop and rock in the household. There were always keyboards and guitars and that sort of thing lying around. But when I was in my teens I really rebelled against the whole family tradition of rock music and got into classical music unexpectedly and I went off to study composition at university. It wasn’t that I came through studying piano for twelve years or something. It was from just being a big fan of listening to music and also being quite a big fan of radio. Actually that’s one of the other things I do in my career is host a new music radio program this been going on for some years now. We’ve managed to pull quite a few big name composers on the show like Philip Glass and Steve Reich. We even got Elliott Carter on the show 2 months before he sadly passed away.

D: Wow so that was one of his last interviews!

J: Yeah. So I guess all of that adds up to an interest in things like transmission; the idea of how things transmit through the air, amplification and the way things can distort, the differences between hearing things live and hearing them on headphones. You can hear in the piece I wrote for Wild Rumpus [Father] elements of all of those things in that work.

D: You said that Father was in a lineage of other pieces that you have done. Can you talk a bit about that?

J: Well about 10 years ago I started doing my radio show, and being late night in the studio every week, you get to know the technology very well. I’d often be sitting there playing CD, and having to cue them up, and always getting those little snippets of sound at the very beginning of a CD or a record. Often when you’re cueing a CD you get that classic stuttering CD sound, as you’re trying to find the exact point you want. Also, because I was cutting together a lot of interviews and putting together montages of peoples’ pieces and voice, there was a lot of treatment that I was doing to them and their work to put to air. So I started making creative works out of the little off-cuts and the techniques of trying to find the right cue point on a CD. Over the past ten years I’ve been building a body of works where I might take little fragments or a sample of something, it could be a fragment of a classical piece or a hip-hop track, or something a little more obscure, and finding ways to treat that. Whether it’s stammering through using a CD player or treating it through different processes on the computer, and I try to build acoustic relationships to that when put in a live context.

Listen to excerpt from Sextant: 

For instance, Father is not too dissimilar to a recent work that I did for amplified string quartet and soundtrack, where the soundtrack was from the final ten seconds of an unfinished quartet by Schubert. I put that through a bunch of different filters, and the quartet was effectively skipping their way through various elements of the Schubert. This was also evident in a few other pieces in recent years where live musicians are interplaying with this pre-recorded, “damaged” audio.

D: So is Father based on some other piece like the Schubert quartet?

J: Actually, this was a bit of a departure in that sense, because the soundtrack [in Father] is actually my own piece. I wrote the material that you are hearing through the speakers, and I guess “damaged” my own music.

D: These sampling techniques you mention seem related to those used in hip-hop or electronic dance music. Is that an influence on you?

J: Well it comes out of three things. Being interested in that kind of music; I grew up listening to a lot of electronic music, and a lot of sampled stuff. Also it came just out of necessity. When I first started working in radio, and before that, I just didn’t have that much gear and I needed to find some way forward to make my own music, and these low-fi techniques were just what I had in front of me. The third thing is, a bit of a critique on the classical music canon, especially when I’m using snippets from classical music. I’m trying to treat classical music as less of a fixed score or a fixed object in the canon, and more something that has a bit of plasticity that you can play around with. I feel that sometimes in the classical music world that people can get very stuck on trying to either honor the work so much that you have this authoritative Beethoven recording or performance, or you’re trying to get back to this authentic performance practice, and not feeling like you can have any agency as a creator and as a listener. It’s just trying to treat recordings as a way to be very fluid about what’s out there.

D: But in our piece you’re actually doing this to yourself! Is this some sort of snake eating its own tail?

J: (laughs) A little bit! The word that comes to mind is “autophagia”, it’s when octopuses eat themselves for instance. Even biting your nails is a form of autophagia where you eat yourself.

D: (laughs)

J: It relates a little bit perhaps to the programmatic element to the piece.

D: Right. Can you talk a bit about that?

J: Yeah, I felt a bit naked putting that in the program note, because it’s a fairly personal story. Basically, my father died a long time ago when I was in my mid-teens. It was a very tragic thing – a very haunting thing – that I’ve only really been able to process over time. My father was the person who basically got me into music. He taught me his songs from his band. He bought me a drum kit and a little Casio keyboard. He was very supportive in that. He even bought me albums by Schubert and classical composers, even though that was nothing like his own taste. So I’ve always wanted to try to reflect on my feelings about my father in my music. I guess that side of things came to me while writing this. In a way it is a kind of a tribute to him, or bringing up the memories of my father from years ago. You don’t need to know any of that to listen to the piece, but those were the kind of things going through my head when working on it.

D: Well, the piece is definitely very evocative even if you don’t know the program. But knowing what’s behind it really gives it an added layer of depth.

J: Yeah, it’s kind of like a little requiem movement for my father. I could actually envisage this becoming part of a set of pieces that deal with the memory of my father, and what I owe to him in a way. And I guess the piece has a sort of classic “sadness” to it, it’s a slowly descending passage. We so often associate these descending patterns with sadness, if we think back to Henry Purcell for instance, and all of those slow laments that are built on a ground bass. Basically what happens on the soundtrack is a kind of sequence that’s designed to keep repeating itself but forever keep sinking lower and lower. There’s a little “mistake” in the sequence that keeps transposing it down further, so you could eventually go right down below the registers of all the instruments. But I just decided to let it pool, and let it become a blurry puddle on the floor, and maybe that whole process suggests a sense of lament or sadness.

D: Let me ask you about how you created the soundtrack. You do a lot with analog synthesizers, and you also have the “An Infinity Room” project. What is your relationship to synthesizers?

J: I love synthesizers. As I mentioned earlier, my first instrument was a tiny little ten-note keyboard that my dad gave me. I’ve collected maybe 50 or 60 synthesizers now, maybe even more. I do a lot of installation works with them, as well as performances. What I’m trying to do with the keyboards is to treat them as found objects, it’s kind of in the Marcel Duchamp tradition, where you take something and do with it what you can do and maybe comment on it in some way. I usually compose just playing around on the keyboard. It might emerge into an “Infinity Room” piece, which is usually very immersive and drone based. Or in this case it might emerge as a work with other instruments. I have a very simple approach to playing keyboard and finding little patterns that I like, and in this case it really was just finding a pattern that could eternally regenerate itself. From there on it was a very simple process. I made that into an audio track from the synthesizer, and then “damaged” that through a few different processes, like stretching it out, giving it a bit of a distorted treatment, and so on.

D: Your description of your process reminds me a bit of some of Brian Eno’s work, particularly in Discreet Music and some of the other early ambient works. Is he an influence on you?

J: Yeah, I love Eno’s work. One difference perhaps is that Eno’s ambient idea is to be quite static, staying still in one spot. What I like to do is to use that type of material, but to give it a bit of a journey, going from one state to another. For instance, in Father it’s starting up very high and going very low. In other pieces it might be shifting from one sort of sound to another, so by the end of the piece you’re in a very different state from the beginning.

D: That’s your classical music teenage rebellion! You want to have more of a through-line through the piece.

J: (laughs) Yeah, exactly.

D: You’ve spent some time in the U.S., attending the Bang on a Can festival, and you’ve been commissioned by the MATA festival in New York, but you live in Australia. I wonder what are your impressions of the American new music scene vs. that in Australia?

J: The scene in the States is insane, it’s so active and busy, there’s so many amazing ensembles, composers, and artists. It’s no exaggeration to say that in the last 50 years at least, America has taken over the crown of where most of the new music innovations have been taking place. 100 years ago it was largely Europe, and the last 50 years it has largely been the States. Not exclusively; there’s been some amazing things happening all around the world. But it’s hard to ignore the impact that American music has had on the rest of the world.

I think that Australia and the States have a lot in common with their music scenes. We just have a much smaller one.  There’s 23 million people in Australia, and twelve times that in the States. So whatever scene we have is always going to be smaller. We have an interesting position in the world because we’re buffeted by a few different forces. There’s the Western tradition; we were colonized only a little over 200 years ago by the English, and in the last 50-100 years there’s been a much stronger American influence. So we all speak English, and it’s a very Westernized country. Yet, we’re right next to Papua New Guinea and near Indonesia, and we’re a bit south from Japan and China. We’re basically a Pacific country, so we have this huge Asian influence too. I get the sense that we’re probably not a million miles away from some of the artistic developments that have happened on the West Coast of the States; looking a bit less to Europe all the time and maybe more to our own backyard.

Sophie Huet: Let’s start by asking you to tell me a little about yourself and how you got into music.

Jonathan Russell: Okay. So I started playing clarinet when I was nine. My dad was an amateur clarinetist, my mom’s a pianist and conductor. I grew up around classical music and started composing when I was fourteen. I went to music camp that summer, and they had a student composer concert there. I was like, oh, if my friends can do that, maybe I want to give it a try too. We also sang the Stravinsky Symphony of Psalms that summer, and I went home and listened to the Rite of Spring, and it totally blew my mind.

Oh my God, I bet.

And that’s why I started composing because I was like, I want to do that. I want to write that piece. I had no idea music like that existed before, you know? I knew about Brahms and Mozart and all that, and I knew some pop music but the Rite of Spring really opened things up for me.

What about it was so inspiring?

Just the power of it, and the rhythmic vitality really excited me a lot. The harmonies that I didn’t know what they were, I couldn’t figure them out at all. I tried to imitate them at the piano, and I couldn’t really figure them out either. It was the mystery of it, too. All the orchestral colors, of course.

So then you went to school…

I was basically training as a classical clarinetist all through high school. But also other interests too – I was trying to decide whether to go to conservatory or a liberal arts school. I started playing bass clarinet in college, basically because I was the last chair clarinetist in the orchestra. I got stuck with the bass. The first time I played bass was on Daphnis and Chloe, and it was a disaster. It was on this not-very-well kept up instrument, too. I was just squawking and honking all over the place. I was not very into bass at all, at first. And then I took a class on Jazz music from the 1960s and I heard Eric Dolphy’s bass clarinet playing for the first time. And that was a Rite of Spring moment too, I had no idea the instrument could do that. I still had the school’s bass clarinet so I started improvising on it and fooling around with it and got really excited about bass clarinet from then on. So I finished my undergrad and came out here [San Francisco] to do a Master’s in composition and got much more involved in bass clarinet primarily through meeting Jeff Anderle and playing in Sqwonk and Edmund Welles.

Is that group still around, Edmund Welles?

Sort of. We haven’t played together in over a year, but we are going to ClarinetFest in Italy this summer. Theoretically, the group still exists if the right thing comes along, but I’m on the east coast now, which makes it hard, and Cornelius has gotten interested in other things, and he’s doing a lot of shakuhachi flute playing and more composing for other instruments.

I was in my early 20s, I was writing very Stravinsky/Bartok/Debussy influenced music, influenced by the early 20th century. That’s where my heart was in terms of music I liked and wanted to write. Then when I got out here I started getting more into minimalism and post-minimalism and Steve Reich and Phillip Glass and stuff like that. I was also more into experimental stuff like, I got burned out on classical music for a while and was doing free improvisation and started playing klezmer music and heavy metal bass clarinet quartet music. It was this very exciting period where all these new influences were coming into my consciousness. I really grew up only doing classical music. In my composing I started getting really interested in the idea of crossing genres together, bringing new influences from other genres into my music. Rock or jazz or klezmer music. With Jeff and Ryan we founded Switchboard Music Festival, which was related to that also. Highlighting music that was genre-crossing. San Francisco’s a very exciting place to be for that because there’s a lot of interesting stuff going on in that regard.

That’s what I was really into for a while, and then I moved back East in 2009 to be with my now-wife, who’s in Washington, DC. A year later, I got into Princeton Composition PhD program, so I’ve been there for 3 years. I’d say my composing in the past several years has evolved in a way going back to my roots, combining some of the more groove-based post-minimal stuff with more narrative dramatic flavor of more traditional classical chamber music. That’s where I’m at right now.

Very cool! I know this might be a little bit awkward, but can you speak at all of what kinds of things influenced you for the piece you’re writing for us?

It’s still evolving, so it might end up going a very different direction from where it is now. My whole idea for the piece all along was, a year ago I took a class on Supercollider, which is this music synthesis programming language. I wrote a little 8 minute piece in supercollider, using these computer-generated sounds. You can make these patterns and set them in motion and record myself improvising with it. It was very difficult for me, I have no computer programming background at all, and there’s no interface for this program, it’s all just typing code. It’s pretty crazy. I hit a wall with it, but I was pretty excited about it for a while, and made this little piece. My whole idea for the Wild Rumpus piece was to basically take that piece and try and arrange or transcribe it for the ensemble. I was working on that for a while, and then, I totally got sick of it, and was like, I don’t want to do this anymore! I was fiddling around and came up with that thing we read the other day. I like that a lot, and now that’s become the impetus for the piece. I have a lot more sketches for the piece that we didn’t look at because they’re sketching out the general harmonic trajectory. That’s where I’m going with it now. It’s hard for me to characterize it at this point because I’m still figuring out where it’s going.

What I like about it is it has this rhythmic groove quality to it, but with these more discordant harmonies and these scratchy more textural tone colors. Alternating with these more aggressive heavy metal stuff. That’s the basic conflict of the piece. It’s almost like a dysfunctional music box, an evil music box. What I’m trying to figure out with the piece right now is how those things are going to play out with each other and interact.

What are some other projects you’re working on right now?

I’ve had a ton of projects going for a while, a lot of little chamber pieces. One of the cool things at Princeton is they have all these different groups you can write for. I signed on for a lot of stuff this year. This is my last one in a big batch of projects. And then things quiet down for a little bit. In terms of long-term projects, I’m going to write a bass clarinet concerto which I’m going to do with the Princeton student orchestra. In over a year, so a longer term project. I’m also working on a clarinet and cello concerto which I’m going to do with the Peninsula Symphony which is in the South Bay.

I’m really excited for both of those projects; it’s a really different process writing for yourself as the performer than writing for others. I like doing both, but I haven’t done that for a while.

How would you characterize the difference?

You can really take advantage of your own idiosyncrasies and strengths. You know exactly how it sounds because you play it yourself. Anytime you’re writing for an instrument that’s not your primary instrument there’s a certain amount of guesswork involved. You try your best to learn as much as you an about how the instrument works, but it’s still really different from being able to play it yourself. The flip side of that is you can almost be constrained by your own technique. It may be harder to come up with things that aren’t totally idiomatic or don’t come naturally to you. When I’m writing for myself, I try to also work at the piano sometimes, or more conceptually.

For my dissertation piece I want to write a big orchestra piece. Like, a symphony.

Good luck! Anything else you’d like to share? Working with Wild Rumpus?

The reading session was really helpful, especially from a harp perspective. I’ve always been kind of intimidated by the harp, and I’ve only ever written for it in an orchestral context. I’ve basically only written glissandos before. That was something I was really excited about with this piece. It was great to get to try out some of the preparations and stuff. It’s nice to meet the performers ahead of time, know who you’re writing for. Wild Rumpus seems really cool.

Composer Dan VanHassel’s piece Incite will be premiered by Wild Rumpus as part of our concert May 11, 2013 at Salle Pianos in San Francisco.  Dan is a co-director of Wild Rumpus, and performs in the ensemble on electric guitar.  Below, conductor and fellow Rumpusian Nat Berman talks to Dan about instrumentation, improvisation, stratification, and Van Halen.

Dan, you’re a member of Wild Rumpus as a performer as well as a resident composer.  With us, you play electric guitar, which is one of the instruments featured in your new piece.  Can you talk about your background as a guitarist?

So, I’ve never actually taken a guitar lesson–never in my life.

You’re fired.

I know.  The truth is coming out.  I’m self-taught on guitar.  I played piano and cello when I was in high school and studied them formally, but I came up playing guitar in rock bands.  I worked on reading and technique with cello and piano, but I taught myself guitar basically by downloading tablature from the internet.

So your experience in those days with guitar was just in rock bands?  Did you play jazz as well?

I played in rock bands, pretty much.  I played some jazz piano, but never jazz on guitar.  Then, when I was getting my Master’s degree at New England Conservatory, I started getting interested in free improvisation, and at that time, it was a way back into performance for me.  For many years I had stopped performing while I was focused on composition, but then, both as a pianist and guitarist, I started playing regularly again through free improvisation, and discovered that I really liked performing–both my own works and others’.  I’m still primarily a composer, and mostly play my own compositions, but I love getting the opportunity to perform other composers’ music in Wild Rumpus.

Well, as a guitarist, let me get your perspective: most people think of electric guitar as a rock instrument, or maybe jazz, but what do you think is its role in new music, and how do you see it fitting into an ensemble of acoustic instruments?  Do you think of it as a melodic instrument?  It can be percussive as well…

I think electric guitar is starting to become more common in contemporary music.  In my case, as a player, I was never really into flashy virtuoso playing; it just wasn’t the kind of thing I wanted to listen to or play.

No Van Halen for VanHassel?

(Laughs.) That’s right.  The way I treat the guitar in my own works is more as a tool for creating textures.  There are tremendous possibilities for creating sounds and timbres, and generally that aspect is what I tend to like in the rock that I listen to.  Even for heavy metal virtuosos like Van Halen, I think the soloistic aspect is secondary to the guitar’s potential for just creating…sound.

So, with Incite, the new piece you’ve written for Wild Rumpus, you’ve paired electric guitar with acoustic piano.  Why this particular ensemble?

Well, partly because they are the two instruments that I play, and feel most comfortable with, and I always have wanted to create something for the two of them.  The way I conceived of the piece was, like I said before, using the guitar to create texture, and using the piano more as a percussion instrument.  So you can almost think about it as electric guitar and drums, which might make more sense in the rock context we were discussing.  The piano is like the drum set, with the additional capability of playing pitches…so it’s a very flexible drum set.

Listen to excerpt from Incite: 

We just played your piece Revealing, Unraveling in a past concert.  I noticed a relationship between the two pieces: in Revealing, Unraveling, an ostinato figure is introduced, and then some melodic and textural figures begin to appear above it, sometimes fully notated and other times semi-improvised.  On a smaller scale, this is happening in Incite, and so I wondered if one piece kind of grew out of the other, or if this is larger direction in your music right now.

I guess the latter–it’s something I’ve been exploring a lot in my recent music.  I’m interested in the idea of stratification, or layers, where one player or group is doing something harmonic or static, and the other is more active and noisy.

Listen to excerpt from Revealing, Unraveling: 

On the “noisy” side of the equation, the figures and sounds for guitar in Incite are carefully notated, but come across as improvisational and conversational.  How do you work them out?  Does that element come first, or alongside the ostinato?

In both of these pieces, and music of my recent music, the way I’m working is by transcribing improvisations that I’ve done.  So, for Revealing, Unraveling, I improvised all the parts…in non-real time.  Generally the harmonic underpinning layer comes first, followed by the noisy stuff that is on top.  I try to make them appear as interactive as possible, as though, ideally, I could play every instrument and this is what I would improvise with myself.  With Incite, I do play both instruments, which made it that much easier.

Is there a non-musical source that comes into your process at all?  A programmatic content or particular inspiration outside of free improvisation?

I don’t generally think of music programmatically, though many people have told me that they think my music seems to be telling a story, or something like that.  I don’t think of it that way, but I like the idea that it can be thought of that way.  Incite is inspired by my past as a heavy metal fan, and also by Balinese gamelan music, which I’ve studied a bit over the last few years.  The two are sort of connected in my mind, since they both tend to involve fast, aggressive rhythmic figures.  Maybe I’m the only person that would see these two genres as related, but Incite is a cross-breed of these two influences.

I recently spoke with composer Ruben Naeff who is one of the winners of Wild Rumpus’ Commissioning Project, and whose piece Euphoria is being featured on our upcoming concert on May 11, 2013 at Salle Pianos in San Francisco. Ruben is a native of the Netherlands, but has lived for the last few years in New York City. He recently graduated with a Master’s degree from New York University, where he studied with Michael Gordon, and is currently working as a freelance composer and a math teacher. Our conversation ranged over a wide array of topics, from differences between the Dutch and American music scenes, to economics, to the various influences at work in his very evocative and engaging music. – Dan VanHassel

Dan VanHassel: You have a certain perspective on music that I think is a bit different than the typical contemporary music composer. You weren’t originally planning to be a musician correct?

Ruben Naeff: That’s true. I studied mathematics, I did a Master’s degree so I studied that for six years. But I had composition lessons all the time as well. Then I had a short break in composition lessons because I moved and didn’t have a piano, so that’s why I started studying musicology just so I would have something going on. After my graduation I went to the Conservatory at the Hague to study full time, but I didn’t like that at all, so I quit after half a year and became a business strategy consultant. I did that for about a year, and after that I worked as an economist at the anti-trust department. Breaking up monopolies and so forth. So I was a watchdog.

That was actually fun. I was doing economical research, scanning the markets to see which ones were vulnerable to these practices. Typically markets with high technicalities that are difficult for consumers to understand. I just did research, so I didn’t really deal with complaints. Well I did a little bit, I assisted with dawn raids, where you go early in the morning to a company and say “Everyone freeze!” and you go through the books. It’s kind of fun actually, you go with the police.

D: (laughs)

R: And you can do good work. I like working in business, but on the good side of business. Trying to make it fair.

D: So how does all of this relate to you as a composer? Does it relate?

R: Yeah…maybe it does actually. Everyone always asks me how mathematics relates to music, but now you’re asking me about…

D: I’m asking you how does anti-trust work relate to music.

R: (laughs) Yeah, well…not at all…maybe there are some things…

D: Was music just an escape for you? Just a totally different thing?

R: Well, both are true. Yes, it’s a different part of the brain. So if I work hard as an economist or a mathematician then I’m tired, but if I spend the next day composing it’s totally fine. It’s not like you’re tired so you can’t, because it’s a different part of the brain. And if you’re tired composing then you have more energy for doing the other things. So it was actually very productive.

Also, having that kind of job teaches you to be efficient. So your composing itself becomes more efficient.

D: Because you have limited time to work?

R: Yeah, but you also apply all of the things you learn at your job to your composing, like how to divide your time, what are the real problems you have to address, and so forth.

D: I remember when we spoke before you said something about how you felt that you didn’t identify with the musical status quo at the school you were at or in general in the Netherlands, in terms of the avant-garde, etc. Is this still what you think?

R: I must say that I have lost touch a bit with the music from Holland. But that’s one reason why I moved to the U.S. actually, because I think that the music here – and I know mostly New York, but I have a feeling it’s the same where you guys are, because I hear the same music – the music I hear here is more down to earth, as in it’s very clear what it is and what it wants to tell, and it is free of pretensions in that way. This is the answer you were looking for I think!

D: Well…I’m not necessarily looking for anything…

R: Hold on, because I’m going to answer it right now. In every field, but especially in consulting or economics, there are many people who are just talking BS, right? So they want to convince you of their point of view and they make arguments and sometimes they use very difficult words just to – well maybe it’s not on purpose – but the effect is that many people get intimidated by the difficult words and they think “Wow! This is a really smart consultant. I don’t really understand what he’s saying, but I don’t want to look stupid, and it sounds quite nice, so probably it’s true.” Something like that right? This happens more often than you think. And I think it happens in new music too. Not so much here, but in the Netherlands I hear people writing music that is just using difficult “words” – or notes, in that case.

D: Do you mean in terms of the way people talk about music? Or the music itself?

R: The music itself. And it’s emphasized by the way they talk about the music, because if you read the program notes it’s all very esoteric and floating away. And what I noticed is that if you listen to American music it is more direct, I think. More accessible, but that doesn’t make it easier.

Another difference is the following discussion, which I often had in Holland  – although I was also much younger, so maybe that helps – I would ask “How do you think the audience will get this?” and they would say “Why do you refer to something like an audience? Because if you want to write music that’s appealing for an audience you should write pop songs.” That’s the kind of discussion you would often have. It’s very black and white, and not very honest either, because they do want to have an audience also. Sometimes in Holland, I’m not sure about the other countries, because Europe is less homogeneous than Americans often think, but in Holland especially new music often is a kind of “sacred” thing. So there’s always this serious thing around it, which is not healthy for the art itself either, you know? We talk [in America] about a “piece” and there they talk about a “composition”, that’s already a big difference.

D: So who would you say your audience is? Who are you writing for?

R: I have actually thought about that. My audience is fictitious person, a person like me, not necessarily me myself. This is something I think of between composing, it’s not what I think of during composing. Why do I write music? Why do I write in this genre? Why do I not just write film music? Why do I write music that doesn’t sell? Right? This is actually the question?

D: Sure.

R: I think about someone who struggles with things in the world and in his life, and thinks about that and tries to seek answers to that, and also in a musical way. He tries to hear music that responds to things that he feels. It’s very abstract I realize…

D: So are you writing for other composers and other artists? Or more of a sort of general public? Or do you not think about that? Because, you’re saying people that want to experience music in this way, it sounds like that’s going to be primarily musicians who want to do that right?

R: Yeah, that’s true. But it’s a little bit broader, everyone who’s interested in music. I’m not writing for someone who gets scared easily. So I’m not avoiding difficult things – Ok, let me give you two different answers that are contradictory and both true. First let me say, I do adjust what I write if I know the audience is different. I noticed that, maybe not on purpose. One time I wrote for a general audience of scientists (De Bètacanon), and I knew it would be a book presentation, and I knew that the audience wouldn’t be scientists but more people with a general interest in science. That was the only thing I knew. And I had that audience in mind. It’s not that I dumbed down everything, but I talked to them, so you change your voice.

Listen to De Bètacanon: 

D: So how did you change what you did for them? What does that mean? Does that mean you simplified things, or you used a different type of musical language?

R: Well, I wanted to set their “Bètacanon” to music, so I made that very clear. I started with words they can relate to and it’s very clear what is going on. And in a piece that’s written for a new music ensemble in New York, you can go crazy right away, because people will right away understand that. So the context makes it a little bit different. It’s not like you have some idea and you think “oh they won’t understand, so let’s make it easy”. That’s not how it works but it’s that I have something else to tell. I always hated it if somebody wants to explain something to you but they don’t really explain it because they are afraid they will lose you. So he’s making it easier, but then also a little harder. So I’d rather think, maybe this is too hard, but they will get it if they listen ten times. So I’m not diluting the music I want to write.

D: In your music I hear a lot of different influences. I’m curious what you see as your major influences.

R: Stravinsky, of course. But, world music often helps me.

D: Oh yeah? What kind?

R: Often, Latin music. This was very important in Fill the Present Day with Joy actually. It has a sort of groove, and there are often claves in my music.

It differs a little bit though, in De Bètacanon I used this song in the middle that I thought was very inspired by a Dutch cabaret song. Often stand up comedians have a sort of song that is very simple, but effective, and this sounded much like that. There is a kind of potpourri of all kinds of genres.

I’m interested in living things…what are other people now playing, what are other people now dancing to, what do other people love now, and I want to dive into that.

Listen to Fill the Present Day with Joy:

D: So what is your relationship to pop music?

R: I tune in and out every now and then. I’m not super thrilled actually, because often it’s just a trick, or just the same music, like Amy Winehouse, for example, is just the same music with a different filter over it.

D: The same music as what?

R: As the blues. Often popular music I don’t find very interesting. But for example, sometimes I pick something out that I think I should know, or get into. So I’ve listened to a ton of Radiohead and Coldplay. Like in Fill the Present Day with Joy, the entire intro is a Radiohead kind of intro.

D: Oh, that’s the part I though sounded like Philip Glass, but it’s Radiohead actually!

R: Here’s the thing. You write music, you look for what you think is beautiful and after a few pieces you ask yourself, what on earth have I been doing? And what is it that I want to write? I think I am looking for something, but I’m not sure what, so I’m trying to figure out what I’m looking for. So now if I look back on my last few pieces after De Bètacanon, I thought I should find new harmonies, so that’s why I started playing with twelve-tone rows.

D: So what about the piece you wrote for Wild Rumpus, Euphoria? I didn’t notice any twelve-tone stuff in there. Are you using tone rows in this one?

R: Yes, but it’s very distinct. I started with a progression using all twelve tones, and I started playing with that. The piece grows, but not all of the twelve tones grew as big. So there are actually basically four chords in the entire pieces, and the other chords crop up somewhere.  So with a microscope you might be able to find them.

D: So you started with twelve chords, but then they kind of grew at different rates, so some of them got a little obscured?

R: Yes, but I also did some mirror stuff, so other chords come in that are not part of the row. But it was a departure point. Because I’m not trying to use the row to construct something like in serialism, I’m just trying to break out of something that I am always doing. It also brings you different rhythms if you have a twelve-tone melody, and you have chords under that. They will dictate rhythms, so you get this kind of meter automatically. But when I look back on my last few pieces, including the piece I wrote for Wild Rumpus, they are very busy and I think they represent that life is busy, and there’s a lot of information thrown at us, and we have to do something with that and be happy with it.

With so many more applications than last year, it took us longer to finish reviewing submissions than we’d expected, so our commissions will premiere over the 2014 calendar year, as opposed to just the 2013-2014 season. Thanks again to everyone who took the time to send us their work! We can’t wait to get started!

Ioannis Angelakis

Born in Thessaloniki, Greece in 1988. He studied in the Department of Music of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and he received his undergraduate degree in composition. His principal teacher was Prof. Christos Samaras. Since fall 2011 he has been living in Boston, where he is studying with Joshua Fineberg in a master’s degree in composition in Boston University.

He is a recipient of many international and national awards and distinctions and he has been selected in numerous festivals of new music.

www.reverbnation.com/ioannisangelakis

Per Bloland

Per Bloland is a composer of acoustic and electroacoustic music whose works have been described as having an “incandescent effect” with “dangerous and luscious textures.” The New York Times recently praised him for his “ear-opening electronic innovations.” His compositions range from short, intimate solo pieces to works for large orchestra, and incorporate video, dance, and custom built electronics. He has received awards and recognition from national and international organizations, including SEAMUS/ASCAP, Digital Art Awards of Tokyo, ISCM, and SCI/ASCAP. Performers of his work include the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra, the ICE Ensemble, Bent Frequency, Insomnio, the Callithumpian Consort, Linea Ensemble, ECCE, and Inauthentica, among others. His music can be heard on the TauKay (Italy), Capstone, Spektral, and SEAMUS labels, and through the MIT Press. The first album dedicated to his compositions, featuring performances by the East Coast Contemporary Ensemble, will be released on John Zorn’s Tzadik label in the fall of 2013.

Bloland is also the co-creator of the Electromagnetically-Prepared Piano, about which he has given numerous lecture/demonstrations and published a paper. He is an Assistant Professor of Technology and Music Theory at Miami University, Ohio, and is currently in residence at IRCAM in Paris for the spring semester of 2013 for a Musical Research Residency. He received his D.M.A. in composition from Stanford University and his M.M. from the University of Texas at Austin.

www.perbloland.com

Eliza Brown

Composer Eliza Brown (b. 1985) writes music that explores the interaction between natural acoustic properties of sound, the physical construction of instruments, and culturally defined elements of musical meaning and syntax. Eliza’s music, described as “delicate, haunting, [and] introspective” by Symphony Magazine, has been performed and/or commissioned by Ensemble Dal Niente, Network for New Music, Spektral Quartet, Wet Ink Ensemble, members of the PRISM and Anubis saxophone quartets, and others. Eliza’s current projects include the Barely cycle, an extractable cycle of solo works and chamber miniatures that seeks to render in sound the interior psychological processes of identity formation and attempted communication, and a new opera with librettist Royce Vavrek inspired by Bronzino’s 1539 portrait of Cosimo I di Medici as Orpheus. A native of Philadelphia, Eliza is currently a doctoral student and lecturer at Northwestern University.

www.elizabrown.net

Joshua Carro

joshua michael carro (b.1982) is a sound artist based in Los Angeles, California. starting at the age of 5 years old, carro pursued a life in the arts by drawing and the making of objects. at the age of 9, josh became obsessed with jazz and quickly began to play and specialize in jazz drumset. this would later lead him to a scholarship to Arizona State University where he then was able to study classical percussion and new music composition. carro is now pursuing a master’s degree in performance and composition from CalArts where he studies with Ulrich Krieger, Wolfgang Von Schweinitz, Pandit Swapan Chaudhuri, Susan Allen, and Randy Gloss. carro has released over 10 electro-acoustic albums on a series of net labels including: H.L.M. (France), Somehow Recordings (London), with reviews by Silent Ballet, Kultur Industrialna (Poland), Norman Records, and Linus Records (Japan).

Ruby Fulton

Baltimore-based musician Ruby Fulton (b.1981) writes music which invites listeners to explore non-musical ideas through sound. Her musical portfolio includes explorations into mental illness, buddhism, philosophy, psychedelic drugs, addiction, and chess strategy; and profiles of iconic popular figures Syd Barrett, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Ringo Starr. She holds degrees from Boston University, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and the Peabody Conservatory, and she teaches composition at the Shenandoah Conservatory.

www.rubyfulton.com

Leaha Maria Villareal

Blending literature and visual art with experimental composition, Leaha Maria Villareal brings a contemporary focus to classical music. Her sonic explorations often stem from themes of home, loss, and memory.

With works written for dance, opera, and the concert hall, Villarreal’s output includes the electro-acoustic solo The Warmth of Other Suns for violinist Andie Tanning Springer, The Bell for Waking/The Bell for Sleep premiered by the JACK Quartet, and A Window to a Door commissioned by Experiments in Opera. She has worked with organizations and ensembles such as W4, the Composers’ Voice concert series, the Boston New Music Initiative, BODYART, and the PUBLIQuartet. Past composition teachers include Pulitzer-prize winner Roger Reynolds, Steven Kazuo Takasugi, Chinary Ung, and Tania Leon. Villarreal holds a B.A. from the University of California, San Diego and is pursuing her M.M. at New York University with Julia Wolfe and Michael Gordon.

In addition to her work as a composer, Villarreal is an avid supporter of the performing arts. She has lent her services to such preeminent institutions as Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Wordless Music Series, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, MATA, the Unsound Festival, and the FIGMENT Arts Festival on Governor’s Island. She is a co-founder and the artistic director of the New York-based contemporary music ensemble Hotel Elefant. (www.hotelelefant.org)

Originally from Los Angeles, Leaha lives and works in New York City.

www.leahamaria.com

Lee Weisert

Lee Weisert is a composer of instrumental and electronic music. His recent work draws inspiration from a wide variety of scientific disciplines and reinterprets their respective principles into an artistic context. His instrumental music has been played by nationally recognized performers and ensembles, including Steve Schick and the red fish blue fish percussion ensemble, the Callithumpian Consort, the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) and the JACK string quartet. His pieces have been performed at several music festivals including the Summer Institute for Contemporary Performance Practice (SICPP 2009, 2011), June in Buffalo (2008), and New Interfaces In Musical Expression (NIME 2009, 2012).

His electronic music, composed primarily in cSound and MAX/MSP, deals with algorithmic and chaotic structures in 4- and 8-channel spatialization. Along with composer Jonathon Kirk, he is a member of the Portable Acoustic Modification Laboratory (PAML), a collaborative sound installation team. PAML’s most recent project, Cryoacoustic Orb, uses hydrophones frozen inside several large spheres of ice to create a dense and naturally-evolving soundscape. Lee has degrees in music composition from the University of Colorado (BM), California Institute of the Arts (MM), and Northwestern University (DM). His primary composition instructors have been James Tenney, Michael Pisaro, Jay Alan Yim, and Chris Mercer. He is currently an assistant professor at UNC Chapel Hill.

www.leeweisert.com

Nina Young

Nina C. Young (b.1984) is a New York-based composer who writes instrumental and electronic music. Her pieces incorporate her research on blending amplification and live electronics into instrumental ensembles, always with a view toward creating a natural and cohesive sound world.

Nina’s music has been performed internationally by ensembles including the Orkest de ereprijs, Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, JACK Quartet, Sixtrum, Yarn/Wire, the Chameleon Arts Ensemble, and artists affiliated with the Live@CIRMMT Concert Series. The American Composers Orchestra recently read her orchestral work “Remnants” as part of the Underwood New Music Readings. Nina has received honors from BMI, IAWM, SEAMUS, and SCI and has participated in festivals and conferences including the 17th International Young Composers Meeting, SEAMUS, N SEME, Domaine Forget’s New Music Session, the Electroacoustic Barn Dance, the European American Musical Alliance, and the US State Department’s Fusion Arts Exchange. Nina has held fellowship residencies at the Atlantic Music Festival and the Bennington Chamber Music Conference; and will participate as a fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center in 2013.

Nina is currently pursuing doctoral studies in composition at Columbia University under the tutelage of Fred Lerdahl, George Lewis, Richard Carrick, and Brad Garton. She is an active participant at the Columbia Computer Music Center where she is teaching electronic music. Nina received a Master’s degree from McGill University, studying with Sean Ferguson. While in Montreal she worked as a research assistant at the Centre for Research in Music Media and Technology (CIRMMT) and as a studio and teaching assistant at the McGill Digital Composition Studios. Nina completed her undergraduate studies at MIT receiving degrees in ocean engineering and music (working with Keeril Makan) alongside holding a research assistantship at the MIT Media Lab.

In addition to concert music Nina composes music for theatre, dance, and film. She also works as a concert organizer and promoter of new music; Nina currently serves as General Manager for the publisher APNM (Association for the Promotion of New Music) and as a board member of Columbia Composers.

ninacyoung.com

Program:

Jeffrey Treviño: The World All Around (2013) for piano, harp, and clarinet

Dan VanHassel: Incite (2013) for electric guitar and piano

Julian Day: Father (2013) for clarinet, electric guitar, piano, violin, cello, and percussion

Ruben Naeff: Euphoria (2013) for flute, clarinet, harp, electric guitar, piano, violin, cello, and percussion

Jonathan Russell: Lament and Frippery (2013) for clarinet, harp, piano, violin, and cello

Julian Day :: www.julianday.com

Biography

Julian Day is a composer and sound artist based in Sydney, Australia. Described as “an epic and intimate formalist”, he creates evocative works through simple yet often lateral means. His work inhabits a lush and frequently dark world of slowed down sounds, broken patterns and basic geometries, influenced by conceptual art, cracked media and pop culture. Recent works include Ascent for 100 flutes, Totem for skipping CDs and Ceremony for multiple spatialized synthesizers. Much of his work is site-specific and collaborative, taking place in spaces as varied as railway sheds, former meat markets and even on New York’s Central Park lake.

Day has worked with Lisa Moore and Mark Stewart (Bang On A Can All Stars), TILT Brass, Mark Dancigers (NOW Ensemble), David Longstreth (Dirty Projectors), ExhAUST and DuoSolo. His work has featured at New York’s MATA festival, Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, ISCM World New Music Days, Whitechapel Gallery (London), Het Nutshuis (The Hague), Liquid Architecture Festival and Perth Institute of Contemporary Art. He directs the keyboard ensemble An Infinity Room (A.I.R) and co-directs Super Critical Mass, a large-scale performance project for massed identical instruments.

Day studied at the Queensland Conservatorium and Sydney College of the Arts, undertaking lessons and masterclasses with Louis Andriessen, Martin Bresnick, Michael Gordon, David Lang and Julia Wolfe among others. He won the British Council’s Realize Your Dream Award and The Australian Voices Young Composer of the Year. Julian is also a writer and new music broadcaster, having appeared on BBC Radio 3 and ABC Classic FM. His interviewees include Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Pauline Oliveros, Christian Wolff, Terry Riley, Laurie Anderson and John Cale.

Ruben Naeff :: www.rubennaeff.nl

Biography

Educated in both mathematics and music and recently employed as an economist, Dutch composer Ruben Naeff (1981) finds himself in an attempt to comprehend the world and set it to music.  His broad interest led to many interdisciplinary pieces like De Bètacanon (about the hard sciences), The Dancing Dollar (about the current financial crisis), and the YouOpera (about our lives online). Currently, he is a recipient of the HSP Huygens Talent Scholarship from the Dutch government to study composition with Michael Gordon in a master’s program at New York University.

Ruben has collaborated with numerous people and organizations from a wide range of disciplines, reaching from national newspaper de Volkskrant to the debate & fine arts festival happyChaos. He is co-founder of the West 4th New Music Collective, which promotes the work of emerging composers in New York. He has written for renowned ensembles as the Deviant Septet, JACK Quartet, Vigil Ensemble, Cadillac Moon Ensemble, the Los Angeles based duo Meyerson & Valitutto, and the Dutch Erasmus Kamerkoor and Quatre Bouches, and for festivals as the Bang on a Can Summer Festival, Music11, and the UNL Chamber Music Institute. His music has been performed in the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, Latvia, and various states across the USA (NY, CA, MA, CT, TX, NE). He has joined forces with such public figures as NRC Handelsblad economics editor Maarten Schinkel, scientists and (former) presidents of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences Robbert Dijkgraaf and Frits van Oostrom, and the Dutch Fokke & Sukke cartoonist Jean-Marc van Tol.

Jeffrey Treviño :: www.jeffreytrevino.com

Biography

Jeff Treviño’s recent projects include a one-act musical theater adaptation of Anthony Ha’s award-winning science-fiction story, Orbiting, a set of solo percussion frames for recordings of Alice Notley reading her poems, four two-minute duos for for a two-seat theatre in the Hammer Museum’s coat closet, a series of abstract animations for Golden Parachutes gallery’s Total Vivid Presence, and a year-long series of fluxus performances with his Berlin-based ensemble, the Institute for Intermediate Studies. Notable mentors include Mark Applebaum, Brian Ferneyhough, Max Mathews, Rand Steiger, Miller Puckette, Tom Erbe, Walter Zimmermann, Pauline Oliveros, Beat Furrer, Helmut Lachenmann, Chaya Czernowin, and Steven Takasugi.

Treviño has received commissions from the University of California at Berkeley Graduate Program in Media Studies, the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts, the Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Music at the University of California at Santa Barbara, bass clarinetist Anthony Burr, percussionist Ross Karre, pianist Rei Nakamura, contrabassist James Ilgenfritz, violinist Batya MacAdam-Somer, and the Arditti String Quartet, with notable premieres at the International Computer Music Conference (Miami, 2004, and New Orleans, 2006), the Oberlin Conservatory Percussion Institute (2006), New York City’s Symphony Space, Germany’s Akademie Schloss Solitude Summer Residencies, South Korea’s Seoul International Computer Music Festival (2007), Mexico’s Visiones Sonoras (2007), SIGGRAPH (2007), the International Conference of the Society for Improvised Music (Chicago, 2007), the Freiburg Hochschule für Musik, June in Buffalo (2008), Portugal’s Vila Real Conservatory, New York City’s Miguel Abreu Gallery, the Carlsbad Music Festival (2008), Freiburg im Breisgau’s E-Werk (2009), and Berlin’s Hanns Eisler Akademie (2009).

An accomplished pianist and tubist, Treviño has performed in world class venues such as Carnegie Hall, Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Sheldonian Theatre, and the Sydney Opera House. He is currently studying John Cage’s Sonatas and Interludes for prepared piano with pianist Aleck Karis.

Treviño researches the ways composers think when they write computer programs, and his doctoral work at the University of California at San Diego is supported by the university’s San Diego Fellowship, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the university’s Center for Latin-American Studies.

Jonathan Russell :: www.jonrussellmusic.com

Biography

Jonathan Russell is a composer, clarinetist, conductor, and educator who is active in a wide variety of music, from classical to experimental to klezmer to church music. Especially known for his innovative bass clarinet and clarinet ensemble compositions, his works for bass clarinet duo, bass clarinet quartet, bass clarinet soloists, and clarinet ensembles have been performed around the world and are radically expanding the technical and stylistic possibilities of these genres. He has received commissions from ensembles such as the San Francisco Symphony, Empyrean Ensemble, ADORNO Ensemble, Classical Revolution, Woodstock Chamber Orchestra, Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra, Imani Winds, and DZ4, and performances from numerous other ensembles and performers, including the Berkeley Symphony, San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra, the BluePrint Project, the Great Noise Ensemble, the new music bands FIREWORKS, Capital M, and Oogog, pianist-percussionist Danny Holt, and pianists Sarah Cahill, Lisa Moore, Lara Downes, and Matthew McCright. Upcoming projects include compositions for So Percussion, the guitar-percussion duo The Living Earth Show, the new music ensemble REDSHIFT, and a new Bass Clarinet Concerto commissioned by the Bass Clarinet Commissioning Collective. His works are published by Potenza Music and BCP Music, and have been commercially recorded by the Sqwonk bass clarinet duo and pianist Jeffrey Jacob.

An avid performer on clarinet and bass clarinet, Jonathan is a member of the heavy metal-inspired Edmund Welles bass clarinet quartet and the Sqwonk bass clarinet duo, which has commissioned numerous new works and released two CDs of new American bass clarinet duets. He has also music directed two dance productions with choreographers Janice Garrett and Charles Moulton, and is co-director of the Switchboard Music Festival, an annual eight-hour marathon concert that brings together the San Francisco Bay Area’s most creative and innovative composers and performers. He has served on the Music Theory Faculty at San Francisco Conservatory and on the Composition Faculty at the Conservatory’s Adult Extension and Preparatory Divisions. He has a B.A. in Music from Harvard University and an M.M. in Music Composition from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. His composition teachers have included Paul Lansky, Dmitri Tymoczko, Dan Becker, Elinor Armer, Eric Sawyer, John Stewart, and Eric Ewazen. He is currently a student in the Composition PhD program at Princeton University.

Dan VanHassel :: www.danvanhassel.com

It’s time! The Wild Rumpus Kickstarter project is now live. In our first 24 hours, we reached 30% of our fundraising goal, which is wonderful. We still have a ways to go before we meet our goal, though, and Kickstarter’s all-or-nothing. We’d love your help spreading the word about the project, and we’d also be so grateful if you donated!

Last year, Wild Rumpus held our first open call for the Wild Rumpus Commissioning Project. From the 215 submissions we got last year, we commissioned eight composers to write pieces from our 2012-2013 season: Julian Day, Ruben Naeff, Andrea La Rose, Elizabeth Lim, Nicole Murphy, Jonathan Russell, Nicolas Tzortzis, and Jeffrey Treviño. The Kickstarter project will support their commissioning fees, and help ensure that we not only can support emerging artists by producing their work, but that we can compensate them for the huge investment of time and energy that a new work comprises.

Wild Rumpus is dedicated to collaboration with emerging artists. Selected composers are not only commissioned for a new piece, but are invited to collaborate with the ensemble through individual meetings and monthly reading sessions. We believe that, by giving composers a space to experiment and push their own boundaries, we can not only support new music through its performance, but foster the growth and development of emerging artists.

We have an incredible array of rewards available for donors to our project. Would you like go on a hiking brewery tour through the hills in Germany with Andrea La Rose? Visit jazz clubs in Paris with Nicolas Tzortzis or galleries in Sydney with Julian Day? Or would you like Jen to teach you to make Chinese dumplings, or get your power ballad on with the members of Wild Rumpus? Would you like a custom arrangement or a home concert, or recordings of all the new pieces you help support? Or amazing seats at the San Francisco Symphony? You can get all these and much more when you give!

You can donate and learn more about the project at:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jenwang/wild-rumpus-commissioning-project

Can you tell me a little bit about where you’re from and how you got started as a musician?

Sure, I’m from California, from Santa Monica originally, and then I moved to Claremont when I was nine years old and went to school there. My last year of [high] school, I went to Idyllwild Arts Academy, and that was a formative time because that’s when I started composing.

I didn’t know you went to Idyllwild; that’s awesome. I went up there once and it seemed so magical.

Yeah, [I went] just for a year but it was quite a year. It’s a small arts school up in the San Bernardino Mountains and I went there as a percussionist; I was always a drummer and a percussionist in band and orchestra. That’s the place where I realized it was possible to start composing. I did and it was an amazing year of my life.

It was a really lucky coincidence in a lot of ways. I went there for a summer camp—they have a music summer school thing for two weeks and my percussion teacher, Bill Schlitt, was the teacher up there and he’s the one who brought me up there for the first time. At that stage I was just a teen and I had no idea this would become so important to me. It was a perfect storm of a situation; my parents had to move to New York for my mom’s work and it was too late for me to enroll in school there. It was in August when all these decisions were made, but I had to be at Idyllwild for the camp and I just auditioned while I was there. It also turned out that somebody had asked me to audition a year earlier for the school and my parents said no. I had been playing this Joseph Schwantner piece, which I loved—and the mountains rising nowhere—which has this huge percussion battery and so I was playing that and the pianist who was playing it noticed me and said, “You should apply for school here,” and I said, “What?” I didn’t even know there was school there or the idea was totally foreign to me, I was so clueless. But it all ended up working out in the end. It was an amazing experience.

Was that the year you started composing, too?

Yes indeed. I had been doing some creative music-making of a sort before that with my Casio and my tape recorders, but at that stage I didn’t take it seriously, it was just a hobby. Just making weird sound collages. But when I finally got to Idyllwild and I saw that other people were doing that—namely, a jazz bassist who had written his own piece for his recital, which I thought was just incredible. I went and talked to him and said, “You wrote that? You wrote that by yourself?!” and he said “Yeah,” and I said, “I never ever thought about doing that, but I’d love to,” and he said, “Well, you gotta do it.” And that was all it took, somebody to say to me you gotta do it, those little words. Ray Clemens was his name. He is a great bass player. Thanks, Ray.

In college, did you keep playing? Did you keep composing regularly?

I did. I auditioned for the Columbia Orchestra, and I got in and I was very happy because I knew I was competing with grad students. It was just a lucky thing, they needed a lot of people that year. I kept playing in orchestra. I was also writing this really weird piece that I had started the summer before. God, it’s a long story, but it was a spoken opera and all my friends were involved. People I went to Idyllwild with, a lot of them had moved to New York or nearby, including the visual artist Nate Lowman, television writer Angelina Burnett, and cinematographer Ava Berkofsky. Nate and Ava were in my band in high school. Nate came to New York to go to NYU and he played guitar in this piece. I was writing that piece for a long time, and we finally actually put it together. We produced it by ourselves; I went and got a job to pay for the production costs, which were about $2000, to put it on in someone’s apartment/theater in Koreatown. We did it! We all just put it together by the skin of our teeth. It was a lot of fun.

I kept doing stuff like that, and then finally I got it together to take some music classes at Columbia. Barnard, where I went to school, had a tiny music department, so everybody who wanted to do theory and composition especially had to go over to Columbia, which was great for me. I finally ended up taking some counterpoint classes with Jonathan Kramer, who later became my teacher. Nothing cohered until the end of college, when I started taking real lessons and writing for ensembles that were hired from Juilliard, and really working with musicians who had been classically trained rather than whoever I could grab. All the people I initially worked with were great, but a lot of them were rock musicians. In a way, I have been trying to return to those roots of writing hybridized rock and classical and experimental music that I initially did when I was at Idyllwild and early college, but it wasn’t until late college that I started working with semi-professional musicians.

I’m curious whether you feel that all that early time you spent as a percussionist and a drummer influence the work you do now. I know that you and I have discussed in the past our share of 80′s-type things, and you mentioned working with Casios and tape recorders. I’m curious if you could talk about how your early sound world may have affected your later sound world.

My love for repetition and slowly evolving forms comes from being a drummer and from finding uniqueness within repetitive patterns, and just being obsessed with that kind of continuity—what’s possible to shift within a very static sound field. Trying to work within a very fixed rhythmic grid, trying to work harmonically in a way that’s interesting. The actual harmonies themselves that I tend to favor come directly from the pantheon of 80′s music that I adored. My experiences listening to radio in the car—somehow I just always feel like that was a big part of what made me into a composer.

I wonder if some of that comes from growing up in southern California. It’s such a freeway culture. At least for me, so much of the music listening I did was in the car. So much time was spent in the car.

I’ve never thought of it that way, but I think it’s a huge part. I spent so much time in the car, whether it was going to school every day or just with my parents, going to work. They had to drive at least three or four hours a day from where we lived to downtown LA. We were always just in the goddamn car. Radio became this very familiar presence. It was a subject in my life.

When you commute that long, you almost don’t have time to listen to music at home!

It was rare that we did! When we got home, it was the baseball game, the news, the TV. Once in a while, my dad would pull out the Elton John records and play them really loud, or the Beatles, but I didn’t really learn how to listen to music just for its own sake, on tape or CD until I was eight or nine, which is pretty late for a musician.

I think for me it was more like college!

I still feel kind of pathetic about my music [listening habits]…I mean, I have a ton of CDs but it’s not really a part of my habitual life to put a CD in. It’s more likely that I would turn the radio on or go for something random. Just turn on some object that makes noise and see what happens. I think you really hit it on the head in terms of the earliest musical influence [being] the randomness of the radio. It’s not that random; it’s Top 40 and songs that you hear over and over again—

But to us there’s still a moment-to-moment uncertainty as to what will come next.

There were also stylistic and genre continuities to the different stations that my parents programmed. There was always the easy listening station, the classic rock station. But more the easy listening station. KOST 103. “Love Songs on the KOST.” I used to listen to it at night, falling asleep, because I thought it was so interesting that people would call the radio. To me, the radio was like God. It’s like you’re calling the ether and saying “please play my song.”

I remember calling in to make a request to the radio and what a thrill it was, to know that your song was going to be played all across the Southland.

Later on, it became KROQ’s Loveline, that show where people would talk about their issues, and I had a friend call in who actually got on the radio with the Poorman and Dr. Drew. It was a big deal…Even people talking is a big musical memory for me. Like Dr. Laura and her crappy advice, and some other guy who would just talk about politics, Reagan administration. I have these very deep memories of listening to commentary.

I think [one thing] from that particular memory does carry over, which is that I tend to set text—I [often] write vocal music but I don’t often care what the voices are saying. I often choose words for their Formant value—their timbral value. Obviously, there is some scaffolding of meaning that accrues to the texts that I choose because I’m thinking about this story, and I’m piecing together the lyrics and the poetry, but I don’t even call it poetry because it doesn’t serve that function. It’s more a gateway to a certain sound of a voice. A certain lilt and cadence.

For you, music often has a strong visual connection. Are you synesthetic?

I am, and it’s a weird thing. I’ve written a lot of about synethesia; my dissertation was about synesthesia. In recent months, I’ve given up thinking about it so much because I got just burned out from all the research. I also became—I really hit this crossroad that a lot of synthesia researchers who are not in neuroscience reach, which is that it’s this completely subjective, perceptual experience that one cannot verify and is actually hard to describe in any meaningful way. I often feel that people ask me, “What color is this chord?”, and I tell them and they’re like, “Wow, what about this chord?” and they think that I have perfect pitch and I’m like, “No, actually, I don’t.” I have very strong associations with certain pitch sonorities and pitch collections but it’s actually more timbral, there are so many different factors and parameters that I can’t even really sort it out.

The reason I’ve stopped trying to figure it out is my figuring it out was becoming a deterrent to me using it as a tool. Its chief value to me is that I use it as a tool to compose. I knew, for the piece I wrote for you, for instance, that it had to start very red, and so I chose appropriate pitches and appropriate timbres and rhythms to some extent. I chose lengths of phrases based on that, types of color shifts that I was imagining. But I know that doesn’t have meaning for anybody but me. Unless I were to accompany it with something visual.

It’s a tool, a language for you.

Once in a while, especially in the piece that I wrote for you, for the first time, I was really wishing I could have somebody choreograph dance to it. I really see dancers. This is the first time.

Listening to the piece, it feels very grand in scope and I can only imagine that once it’s paired with the delay lines that will be even more of a thing. I could easily picture it having a very visual dimension to it. Maybe we could do it again, get some people!

That would be phenomenal. That’s the next step for me. I have a year off; I’ve been blessed by Wellesley with an early sabbatical. It’s blowing my mind! I feel it’s really incumbent upon me to take this time to figure out all the things I’ve always wanted to do and said, “Oh, if only I had time or space or whatever I would try this,” and really just frigging do it just for once. That’s something that I really want to think about, types of collaboration I haven’t tried yet. Dance is definitely one I have not tried and would love to. There are others. It’s interesting this is all coming together at this time in my life. Maybe down the line we could do this again; I would advocate for something like that. We’ll see how it is in the concert version.

We were talking about your text and your relationship to text, and you alluded to the piece you wrote for us. Can we talk about that a little more?

Most of my pieces that involve these types of voices, and there’s a few of them, I have a story in my head and, it’s not a straightforward narrative at all. It’s a collection of tableaux, and usually what happens is I start piecing the work together—stitching it, really—suturing it with different random word ideas or phrases. The phrases usually come from some other poem or some other person’s work, but I’m usually culling other fragmentary lyrical ideas from a variety of different texts that usually have nothing to do with one another.

One of the cases in point that I always think about is a piece that I wrote in 2005 called Leaving Santa Monica that is a combination of texts from Luce Irigaray’s [When Our Lips Speak Together], a post-structuralist feminist essay about lips and about multiplicities of identities and sexuality. I took one sentence in French from that and I paired it with some of my own text, and I also quoted the Song of Songs here and there in an English translation from King James. I was literally shovelling all this stuff together and for some reason it made sense to me and I can’t really explain why. But that’s usually how my pieces come together.

Your piece is no exception. What happened is I started writing these lines, these triadic lines, in a combination of Ab and Eb Major, and I was kind of singing them up and down. I was thinking, this kind of reminds me of “Jesu, Meine Freude.” I don’t know why, it doesn’t have anything to do with it musically, but those are the worlds that I was hearing to it. So I just went with that. I followed that initial weird impetus and it became a story unto itself. It became another dimension to the story, that the two people in question, these mythical creatures, were also choristers. I started thinking about the orphanage that Vivaldi taught at in Italy, and student choir members, because that’s a large part of my student body here [at Wellesley]. It was all just conflating from a variety of different narrative ideas and experiential things that were happening to me at the time. That was one part of it. At the end of the piece there’s this Latin from the Narcissus myth. I was just piecing it together from Ovid, taking out fragments that I thought sounded good, that to me suggested emotions like loneliness, sorrow, despair, but also colors. I chose a lot of words based on the color. That’s how it came together. It’s an opera that doesn’t have a straightforward story; it’s more a collision of different emotions and colors.

Can you tell me about where you’re from, and how you got started as a musician?

I was born in China. I am originally Cantonese, but I mostly grew up in the northwest of China. I went to the music high school affiliated with the Xinghai Conservatory of Music in Guangzhou. After I finished high school, I moved to Beijing to attend the conservatory. I was a singer and then pianist, but then my music life started to change after a short meeting with a piano professor in Guangzhou. He said I was probably too old to get into [conservatory] as a piano major, [but] maybe I can get in doing composition. I thought, “Okay, as long as I can get into the conservatory and as long as you let me play piano, I’ll be happy to do anything.” However, as my music composition gradually took up my time more and more during my high school years, I decided to be a composer. I did my bachelor’s degree in music composition in the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. And after that, I came to Chicago, and I’m going to receive my Ph.D. in two weeks.

When did you decide you wanted to be a musician?

Since I was very, very young. I was maybe seven or eight. I was into music from the very beginning; there was no doubt. Even when I was very little I really loved listening to music, and danced with music all the time, though I had no idea what kinds of style I was dancing, and I followed the rhythm. Even now today, I still believe that music is part of your body, not just your brain. It’s really integrated into your life and physical movement.

Very often I would improvise on my voice, and the first audience was always my grandma. When I was nine years old, I finally got a real piano after practicing on several different electronic keyboards for two years. I stopped playing with other kids outside, and stayed at home practicing the piano as much as I was able to. Since then my will of becoming a better musician never changes.

When you talk about movement and flow, is it less about the literal physicality of playing as it is about capturing an intuitive kind of momentum in your pieces?

I’m trying to convey a sense of nature in my music. What does nature mean, it means something really harmonious but also at the same time, has a kind of randomness in it. It’s really an interplay between your natural human being and the artificial craft. In composing, we sometime care so much more about our craft that we forgot our human natural randomness. I do pre-compositional structuring, but I always spend much more time on feeling my music, and readjusting the timings among my notes and phrases according to my blood pressure. This procedure sometime would last until the premiere, and even the second performance.

Maybe it’s part of my earlier music education in China; I basically studied music under Russian pedagogy. It’s all about your feelings, your passion and your devotion on music before you can have any rational thinking. Every next note comes from your sub-consciousness, and the phrasing of music is directly from your breathing. I also love French music, which is also about sensuality and sensibility; we talk so much about colors, feelings, textures in French music. For example, in my orchestral piece Two Poems, I wish my audience to feel it viscerally at first.

Starting in high school and college as an undergraduate at Central Conservatory, were there any early composers or early teachers who were important to you?

My teachers are all important to my growing as a composer. My high school composition teacher really let me be myself and search new sounds. A good composer/theorist friend, my high school classmate, tremendously influenced me with his huge music knowledge and opened many doors to me. Those great classic music works I have heard and studied were very influential. When I was in high school, I was very fascinated by Messiaen’s music. I borrowed every available score and recording of his music from the school library to study. I read some Chinese translations of the treatises of Olivier Messiaen, though I don’t think I really understood them deeply enough. I was seriously intoxicated in his sound world and religious fascination. I even tried to imitate his style. I remember my first song I did during my freshmen year, Floating for piano and soprano, that piece is really Messian-esque.

Also in my high school, someone introduced me to Sofia Gubaidulina’s music, and I also met her in person in France in 1998. I love [her music] so much because it’s not totally Western; it also has an Oriental concept of time and timbre playing. I can not remember how many times I have listened to her violin concerto Offertorium. These two composers [were] seminal in my understanding about new music. My chamber piece Transience and string quartet Afterglow, they all have connections to these composers’ musics.

Later on, I started to learn other composers. Recently, I have been quite into Sciarrino. I’m interested in his way of dealing with timbres and effects. Sometimes he almost uplifts the timbre, using sound effects in a structural way so they’re more than just effects—they’ve really become the chief structural forces of the music. Of course, Baroque music, I’ve been listening to as well.

Did your interest in Baroque music begin as a pianist, or was it a later development for you?

Later, much later. Just in the past recent years, maybe first from [Cecilia] Bartoli’s many Baroque opera recordings. At the beginning I was very stunned by her vocal technique, but then I started to pay more attention to the music she sang and then Baroque operas and instrumental music. It’s really fascinating because we barely found that kind of steady rhythm, pulsation and musical form in contemporary music. We contemporary composers tend to break the rhythmic pattern or the pulsation, and not much repetition, we always want to go away and create something newer and newer. In Baroque music, we have the da capo form, coming back to the original idea with lifted emotions. I don’t repeat history but I do want to find my way to utilize these interesting devices to make enough impressions on people. I think my Wild Rumpus-commissioned piece O…What an Awakening definitely exposes my fascination on Baroque music in many unspoken ways.

You’re in school right now at University of Chicago, set to graduate in a couple weeks, and we’ll be missing you [at our concert] because you have a doctorate to get!

Yeah, I really feel too bad. I have to miss you guys and miss the premiere, because the premiere will be on June 8th evening and my graduation parade and ceremony and hooding will be on June 9th morning. But I trust Wild Rumpus, they are really committed and experienced group! The premiere of the piece is actually announcing a new beginning of my life will lead to so much unforeseen, which totally echoes my graduation. In the program notes, I implied that I was searching a way of composing, a new stage. The piece also has some significant indeterminate elements. What a coincidence! But I’m kind of worried because there is one section with all the silent gestures and no sound, and how can I ensure this be done in a profound way instead of superficially.

Can you talk a bit more about performing the action in a profound way?

You ask hard questions! In new music, we have to have lots of communication because the expressions are so specific, so individual. As musicians, it’s really important to know what a composer is trying to express, and at the same time, you must also integrate your own voice with sheer confidence. I really like the idea that when you play chamber music, each musician is an individual actor or actress. Particularly for this piece, I address that, each voice of the piece has a significant aspect of individuality and theatricality, and musicians’ physical involvements are definitely demanded and shall be choreographed.

Can you describe what that physical involvement might look like, or if there’s a specific style or goal or objective that you’d like the physicality to convey?

Yeah, I mean, in this particular piece, musicians have to lift their sensibility up to a visible level. Breathing, expressions, characteristic motives, accents in the music should be seen in their physical movements. The intensity and relaxation in the music shall also be seen. The silence and activity in the music shall be seen too. Everyone needs to be hyper and a wild creature for this piece! There is no specific style, and the objective or the goal but that musicians need to let their bodies to react the sounds they are playing and hearing. That is the only way to convince audience without imposing superficiality.

I think another way to say it is to say each gesture is very strong in character. It’s not just theatricality in terms of staging or movement, it’s about a certain strength and precision in terms of the perceiving and conveying the individual character of each idea.

Indeed. Sometimes I can be so convinced by performance that I can forgive imprecisions of notes or intonations. Performance is such an important element of the realization of music composition. I’m very flexible in that way. I’m not like, “Oh, the soprano is not reaching the right pitch!”, but if the emotion is there, the intensity is there,and the expression is there, it’s good!

Can you tell me a little about the text for the piece? How do you imagine the declamation for the singer, for Maria?

At the very beginning, I asked you to get a recording of Maria’s singing, and she sent me these two pieces. I instantly liked her bright tone color. One of the pieces she gave me reminded me Mozart’s operatic arias. I right away decided to embed some Mozart music association in my piece. The climax of the piece, inside the gusty surging of every other instruments, Maria is singing one short phrase La ci darem la mano… from Mozart’s Don Giovanni.

Besides that, I also wrote about my daily experience with Buddhism into this piece. We tend to talk about Buddhism in a very meditative, very sacred way, a very ethereal and antisocial way. However, I wanted this time to write [about how] to be enlightened through your daily life—how you understand the world, how you position yourself in such a chaotic, competitive world—there are so many sounds in one’s life, it’s about speed, it’s about noise, and how much you can make your voice out there. Can I enlighten myself by living? That’s why I set so many daily life sounds into my piece, including sounds from my friends’ names such as Wang, Dan, Dong, and Ling. I also used the name of my friend’s cat, Nadja. Anyway, it has all kinds of words, Chinese phonetic sounds, pinyin, as well as English, Sanskrit. I also included some Buddhist mantras, for example the “Om mani padme hum”—”oh what a beautiful jewel in the lotus”, that’s what it actually means in Sanskrit. It’s all mixed. Sometime the sounds are related to the local timbre context, and sometime the words are organized according to some characterized alignment of vow and consonance. Life is a mix of everything, so now the piece is coming along in that kind of sense.

In your bio, you mention drawing on Western and Eastern influences. I was wondering if you could talk a little about what specific ideas or techniques or interests you draw from that you consider Western or Eastern, and to what extent do you feel that the relationship between the two is important to you as a composer?

It can be explained and at the same time cannot be explained. I grew up in China and lived there for twenty-four years and then came to this country. Having lived here for more than 10 years, now I think I have gained a new kind of humanity which mixes the Western and Eastern. I am sure one can make distinctions, but as a composer, I don’t really think too much when I am called by an idea, and don’t really identify where my techniques and approaches come from. So for lots of times, I can not explain and I prefer not to explain. But I do think that time perception is an important issue which we could have some explanation. In Western music, there is so much emphasis on the organization of time. Time is the key to shape the structure of your musical materials. You never lose the time in Western music, and you are actually driven by it. A good musical time will give you perspectives. While in the Eastern part, time is diffusing, more of the vertical than horizontal. It is a kind of musical time that will let you lose yourself. It’s so common in Chinese music that a single pitch material can be lingering around for so long and does not go anywhere. What actually matters in this situation is that how much nuance and how many colors can generate from this lingering. You savor the note and you don’t follow the note. It is hard for a composer to achieve this idea and let different people enjoy it. This is definitely one of important things to look for in my music. There always exists the intercrossing of two different times, such as my recent piece Yearning for zheng and double bass and Jun for pipa and double bass.

Where are you from, and how did you get involved in music?

I’m from France, from Bordeaux. I played classical guitar for about seven years, then I switched to electric guitar in high school, and I began writing rock songs and stuff. I switched to the electric bass when I was sixteen or something and I still was writing music, but it was more weird things—we had this band with some friends and each piece was a different style—like, one jazz piece, one funk piece, one rock piece, one experimental piece. That’s why I say it was weird music, because I didn’t have a style. I was trying things out. I switched to the double bass around eighteen and I’ve been seriously into composition since I was twenty-something.

After high school I went to the music university. I studied musicology and classical bass and I have a masters in ethnomusicology in Arabic music, Egyptian music. Then I stopped the musicology side and went to the conservatory and studied ear training, harmony, counterpoint and all the boring stuff. (laughs)

When did you start composing actively?

When I was in Paris. We had a really great teacher who was organizing open composition evenings so you just needed to find musicians to play your music and there was a concert. I did a few of those and I was very lucky to have my friends and my family be very supportive; they really liked the music and [said things like] “It was great!” and “You should carry on, you really have something!” I think that’s very important at the beginning, to have supporting friends because otherwise you’re never happy at the beginning! I spent several years in Paris studying, then I went back to Bordeaux.

When I met you at [the] Bang On A Can [Summer Festival], you were still living in Bordeaux, right?

I was just trying to figure out what was next and Bang On A Can was very inspiring for me, very encouraging, so I decided to go back to the country and spend most of my time working on my stuff. I had a one year hermitage in the country, working in Bordeaux but mostly working on my stuff.

Were there other composers or bands or pieces or songs that were important to you at the time, that you felt like were influential?

At the time, I was listening to a lot of Arvo Pärt and I remember discovering Music for 18 Musicians by Steve Reich. I was like, I want to compose this piece! The same!

When you went home and you had your one-year hermitage, it sounds like a really intense period of time and a really potentially productive period of time. Were there certain issues you were trying to investigate musically, or were there ideas that you really wanted to think through [during] that period? Did you feel like the music at the end was different from the music in the beginning?

There were two things for me. The first is all the pieces I wrote before were very simple and largely using canons—one musical idea and canons and canons and canons to create a mass. It was great but I needed to find other ways to deal with counterpoint, try to find different techniques. The second thing was to try to find a way to play my music live with my bass. At first, it was a technical issue with the computer and which software to use, and then [it was deciding] what to do and how to do it.

I remember the music I heard at Bang On A Can and some of the music that I have on your CD—a lot of it deals with multiple layers of your own voice. Not only is it really personal—since it is your voice—but, contrapuntally, I thought that that’s a very interesting texture, a very interesting challenge, since you’re dealing with multiple equal instruments all in the same register. How do you differentiate textures, when are voices independent and how to establish that independence. It’s a really interesting treatment of texture. Was that something that was on your mind while you were working with those pieces? Or was it more a byproduct of using what is available to you? Or do the two feed off each other in some way?

At the beginning, I was writing pieces with different parts, and I was just like, “Okay, so ho can I record these multiple parts? I have the double bass, I have an electric bass, I have a guitar, I have a voice, okay, let’s do it with multitracked guitar, bass, and voice.” Then at some point, I realized the different kind of textures I could get with fifteen basses, in pizz, in arco, twenty voices, and thirty guitars. ”Maybe I can have ten guitars on the high [end] and the bass here”…and then I was working with textures.

Also I’ve been influenced by music from the Renaissance. At this time people were writing music with different parts where you could sing the music, you could play it on the violin, and transpose it if you can’t play it in this octave. I like this idea of having a piece which is mobile in terms of which instruments play what. I like working with orchestration, with instruments and the way they sound, but it’s almost the opposite of orchestration. It’s like the absence of orchestration. I like it too.

It’s really interesting, the idea of counterpoint or harmony divorced from orchestration; these pieces are flexible in a different way. So, Flo, after the year-long hermitage, what happened to you? Where did you go?

I went back to New York at some point and from then I tried to come to the US almost once a year. I had the chance to be a part of the Bang On A Can Marathon. I’m also very thankful to Bang On A Can because they were very supportive of my music. That was something very strong for me because in Bordeaux the music scene is very conservative. My music is not that contemporary or inaccessible, I even feel it’s very accessible, but still, in Bordeaux, it’s weird because it’s neither like rock or classical or contemporary. In France, music is really in boxes.

I came back to the US several times and then I had the opportunity to release a CD on Cantaloupe—I think it was 2010, we did the first EP at the end of 2010. I’m kind of confused in years… [Note: Flo's first EP with Cantaloupe, Baroque Tardif: Soli, was releated in 2009.]

I remember bumping into you at the Marathon in 2010 and you told me the story of how the CD came to happen. It’s a good story; can you tell it again?

In Bordeaux, I was working, but I had most of my time to compose and play, so I was very productive. In four years I did five albums or something, so every time I’d go to the US, I was bringing a new CD and giving my CDs to everybody I could meet in New York. One morning in September I had this message from Michael Gordon who was like, “Do you want to have your CD on our label?” And I was like, “Yeah!”

And the rest is history! Now sometime quite recently you were commissioned for a piece from the [Bang On A Can] All-Stars, right?

I was commissioned to write a piece for the Bang On A Can All-Stars, by Bang On A Can because it was their twenty-fifth anniversary. The project was called “Field Recordings”. The idea was to write a piece using something already existing; it could be anything you wanted. At the beginning of the year, I was working on some excerpts from John Cage—especially his diary; at the end of his life, he was reading a lot of lectures about his life. I was working on this and that’s what I did for the Bang On A Can All-Stars, using also the ”speech melody technique”, where the melody is following the intonation of the voice. I wrote this very simple piece where the musicians are playing along with John Cage.

I felt very happy for you when I heard the announcement, but also proud that we commissioned you first! And I was like, “Yeah, we’re early adopters!” Now, Flo, can you give me a general overview of the piece you wrote for us? Any things you were thinking about when you wrote it?

One of the main things I was thinking about while writing the piece was the voices and where the voices would be, what to do with the voices. I like when the voices are considered more as an instrument, with a different timbre.

It’s a combination of different things. I was eyeing a few Max/MSP patches; I made some note generative patches I was working on. I was thinking of this use of my voice in my own pieces and the fact that I like when the voice is equal to the instruments. At the same time, I was also looking at some old videos by Egyptian composers from the 70′s—[in some ways], it’s not a good example, because the voice is really in the foreground [in this music], everyone is waiting for the singer, and it’s really one singer with an orchestra. But what I like in those pieces generally [is that] there are very long introductions where the singers are just sitting in front of the orchestra—it creates an expectation, waiting for the singer to sing! I like this thing. The piece is called Homage to Baligh Hamdi. He’s one of my favorite Egyptian compsers of this era; he wrote a lot of very beautiful music. I like to write an homage to the people I respect.

There’s this great theatrical expectation established by having you wait and wait for the singers to enter. And yet, when the singers enter, it’s not this big aria, it’s a very sheer, very instrumental moment. I was curious what your thoughts were on that, because to me it was an interesting juxtaposition. You expect the supremacy of the singer, it’s established by making you wait, but then when Maria and Kali do begin to sing, it’s not what you’d expect. There’s this element of surprise to what you get instead. Were you thinking about a tension between those two?

I was definitely thinking about this. It’s the combination of what I was talking about at the beginning, playing with expectation, and then what you’re expecting doesn’t come, something else comes, more instruments, like they were playing instruments—the surprise of waiting, waiting, and then what comes is not what you were expecting.

Now you’re at Steinhardt, at NYU. How long have you been there?

It’s the end of the first year. I decided to go back to school to really study composition, because actually I never studied composition in school. I’ve been accepted to NYU, that was also a good reason to come to New York. I did the first year and it’s a two-year program, so one more year.

Are there any pieces or composers that have been really influential to you? Or that have influenced your musical language?

That’s a tough question. I have a lot. I could give you composers like Bang On A Can composers or I bet you can guess when you listen to my music. The funny thing is when you look at my iTunes library, I think most of the music I listen to is not classical or contemporary. It’s more on the pop scene.

What are you listening to right now?

Right now, I’m listening to Hauschka, a German pianist doing a lot of multitracking; I’m listening to a lot of electronic music by Taylor Deupree, it’s very beautiful, ambient electronic music; and also I’m listening to Pandit Ram Narayan, an Indian sarangi player, the Indian violin, I really like his music. That’s not really contemporary…

Is there anything else you’d like to say?

I’m very excited right now because tomorrow we have the premiere of my new band [Bonjour], I’m putting together a quartet with James Moore on guitar, Eleanor Oppenheim on bass, and Ashley Bathgate on cello—two double bass, cello, guitar quartet. The first concert is tomorrow.

It’s almost time! The Wild Rumpus spring concert is fast approaching, and we’d love it if you came down and joined us for the show! We have a fantastic program lined up of newly-commissioned works written just for us:

Nomi Epstein
Pillars and Glisses

Florent Ghys
Homage to Baligh Hamdi

Jenny Olivia Johnson
reflect reflect respond respond

Dan VanHassel
Revealing, Unraveling

Yao Chen
O…What an Awakening

Friday, June 8, 2012: 8 PM
ODC Dance Commons, Studio B
351 Shotwell St., San Francisco, CA 94110
Tickets: $15 general admission, $10 students/seniors

For those of you who aren’t in the Bay Area, we might be able to offer live streaming of the concert; we’ll be testing it out this weekend. Stay tuned! We’ll let you know soon if it works out!

This post arose out of a conversation with Meerenai Shim, who wrote up an excellent post on submitting unsolicited scores to performers, which I highly recommend. Some of the ideas below are applicable to those inquiries as well.

The Application

Follow the instructions

I know, this sounds obvious, but it’s worth mentioning just because it’s so important. Read through instructions carefully, and submit the materials requested (and only the materials requested). If the call asks for 2-3 pieces, submit 2-3 pieces. If it asks for recordings, send recordings. If the call does not request a cover letter, don’t send a cover letter.

Another way of thinking of it is: don’t make substitutions. If a call asks for live recordings, don’t send MIDI. If it asks for scores as PDFs and recordings as MP3s, don’t send Sibelius files and AIFFs. If it asks for finished pieces, don’t send works-in-progress. If it asks for a resume and a bio, send both (not one or the other). If the call requests you submit online at their website, don’t send the application in via e-mail.

Of the applications we received, I’d guess that roughly 10-20% did not follow the directions in some way. Our approach is to do the best we can to understand what the composer and the music are all about, despite whatever problems there may be, but the mistakes can be time-consuming or difficult, or leave us feeling like we don’t know what we need/want to know about the composer.

Tailor and proofread your materials

Keep the information in your materials relevant to the discipline at hand. Your composition resume should consist only of information that supports and explains your experience as a composer. In addition to your compositional work, this could include your experience as a performer, or, if your work is interdisciplinary, your experiences in those other disciplines, but it should all lead back to your musical work in some way. I’d recommend keeping one resume for composition opportunities and one for non-musical work at the very least; you may find that further tailoring would make sense for you. If you’re a student, have your teacher look over your resume. Chances are, they’ve seen tons of materials from emerging composers and can give you good advice.

Tailoring also means preparing your application with the spirit of the project or the interests of the organizing group in mind. Read over the description of the opportunity carefully, and do your best to make sure your application is faithful to the intentions of the opportunity. In the case of Wild Rumpus, our Commissioning Project is about commissioning brand-new works, and our group is interested in collaboration because of the creative risks we believe it encourages composers to take. We received many proposals to re-orchestrate old pieces, and while some of those pieces were very strong, those proposals weren’t as inherently engaging to our interests as applications that proposed new works (or didn’t mention a proposed work at all).

Look over your materials carefully before you submit them. Does your score file include all the performance notes we’ll need to understand your score? Are the dynamics marked? Instruments clearly and correctly labeled? Graphic notation and/or extended technique notation clearly explained? If the score is handwritten, is it legible? Are the pages in each file rotated correctly and in the right order?

Do your best to get live recordings

Live recordings are always preferable to MIDI, and they are definitely not equivalent; MIDI is always at a significant disadvantage. Jurors reviewing submissions may not all (a) have enough experience with MIDI to mentally “get around” the inaccuracies and lesser sound quality, or (b) be willing to take the extra time with your score to figure out how the piece should “really” sound. If you’re lucky enough to have access to performers, do your best to wrangle a recording. The higher-quality that recording is, the better, but a halfway decent recording is better than MIDI.

Where MIDI is really absolutely necessary, do your best to make sure that the sounds are as faithful as possible. At the very least, the sounding pitches in your score should be accurate. (Artificial harmonics that sound as parallel fourths is a particularly common problem. Transposed scores that sound as written instead of at the transposition are less common, but definitely memorable.) The more high-quality your MIDI instruments are, and the more you can incorporate samples for your extended techniques, the better. Putting together a high-quality MIDI mock-up is an art in and of itself that’s worth taking time to master, if you have little access to performers, or if you often write for large ensembles.

Contact

Focus your questions

Imagine that the contact person you’re writing to wants to help you, but has hundreds (or thousands) of e-mails in his/her inbox. When you write to him/her, keeping your questions specific and short is greatly appreciated, as is asking a question only if you can’t find the answer elsewhere. It always helps to check the organization’s website and re-read the call, just to make sure the answer isn’t covered there. I can only speak for myself, but I tend to prioritize e-mails that (a) can be answered quickly, or (b) cannot be answered by anyone else. As Meerenai mentioned in her post, research is critical.

Be patient if/when you follow up

There’s an opportunity that hasn’t announced their results yet, and you’re anxiously awaiting the response (because you didn’t forget about it!). A polite follow-up is perfectly fine, although it may not be that fruitful. At least over here, we announce things as soon as we’re able, so if you haven’t heard anything, that’s because there’s nothing to tell yet. Personally, I don’t mind those e-mails, though there isn’t much I can do with/for them. I could imagine a staff member at a larger organization not having time to respond.

Respect the people on the other end

A call for scores is a group’s way of inviting you to contact them, but the other side of that is that, to them, your submission is a sufficient way for them to get started getting to know you, and the ball’s essentially in their court. While it may be tempting to immediately follow up on your application, in the hopes that it will make your application stand out, have faith that your work speaks for itself and will represent you and your interests in all the ways that matter to the judges.

All the rules that apply in other social situations apply with contact people running calls for scores. Extra unsolicited materials, insistently pursuing a meeting or extra attention for your portfolio, or reprimanding a contact person for not responding to your extra materials/requests are unlikely to make your application stand out in the way in which you’d like. Remember, you’re a total stranger, and an interest in further contact has to be mutual. Until it’s past the time they should have announced results, let them follow up with you. Friendly, non-creepy contact is always the way to go.

On to the Next One

Disclaimer: This last thing isn’t really advice from a person who runs calls for scores so much as a suggestion from an emerging composer who also applies for stuff. So, you know, take it as you will.

A composer friend recently told me that he doesn’t apply to opportunities because he doesn’t handle rejection well, which seemed to me like a completely understandable impulse, but one that will end up only hurting him in the long run. I’d guess that I’ve been applying for opportunities in earnest for about six years, and I still have no ability to predict what opportunities will/won’t accept me. Let someone else decide whether or not you’re what they’re looking for that year. When you don’t apply at all, you’re basically making that decision for them.

Most composers are rejected for things fairly often, probably more often than not, and that’s a normal part of the process. Try not to take it to heart—the music you sent might not be right for them this time around, but it will likely be right for somebody else. It may even be right for this same group, just in a different year. Applications are basically a way of fishing for the people and the groups that your music engages. Keep giving your music the chance to be found by those people.

This post is really just a tip-of-the-iceberg post, since topics like a good MIDI mock-up, a well-tailored resume, or a beautifully written/engraved score could really be their own posts or series of posts (or overarching life pursuits), and I don’t claim to be an expert on any of them. But the process of reviewing submissions for our first two opportunities made me realize how important these basics are, and I hope this is helpful for those of you who are new to submissions. For those (thousands? millions?) of you who have more experience reviewing submissions than I do, I hope you’ll feel free to add your ideas in the comments. Happy applying!

So we’re so thrilled to announce the winners and finalists of our Commissioning Project, all of whom we will commission for new works, and who will comprise much of our programming for next season:

Congratulations to all and thanks to everyone who applied—it really was an incredibly difficult choice!

Julian Day is a composer and sound artist based in Sydney, Australia. Described as “an epic and intimate formalist”, he creates evocative works through simple yet often lateral means. His work inhabits a lush and frequently dark world of slowed down sounds, broken patterns and basic geometries, influenced by conceptual art, cracked media and pop culture. Recent works include Ascent for 100 flutes, Totem for skipping CDs and Ceremony for multiple spatialized synthesizers. Much of his work is site-specific and collaborative, taking place in spaces as varied as railway sheds, former meat markets and even on New York’s Central Park lake.
 
Day has worked with Lisa Moore and Mark Stewart (Bang On A Can All Stars), TILT Brass, Mark Dancigers (NOW Ensemble), David Longstreth (Dirty Projectors), ExhAUST and DuoSolo. His work has featured at New York’s MATA festival, Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, ISCM World New Music Days, Whitechapel Gallery (London), Het Nutshuis (The Hague), Liquid Architecture Festival and Perth Institute of Contemporary Art. He directs the keyboard ensemble An Infinity Room (A.I.R) and co-directs Super Critical Mass, a large-scale performance project for massed identical instruments. 

Day studied at the Queensland Conservatorium and Sydney College of the Arts, undertaking lessons and masterclasses with Louis Andriessen, Martin Bresnick, Michael Gordon, David Lang and Julia Wolfe among others. He won the British Council’s Realize Your Dream Award and The Australian Voices Young Composer of the Year. Julian is also a writer and new music broadcaster, having appeared on BBC Radio 3 and ABC Classic FM. His interviewees include Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Pauline Oliveros, Christian Wolff, Terry Riley, Laurie Anderson and John Cale.

www.julianday.com
www.aninfinityroom.com
www.supercriticalmass.com

Ruben Naeff

Educated in both mathematics and music and recently employed as an economist, Dutch composer Ruben Naeff (1981) finds himself in an attempt to comprehend the world and set it to music.  His broad interest led to many interdisciplinary pieces like De Bètacanon (about the hard sciences), The Dancing Dollar (about the current financial crisis), and the YouOpera (about our lives online). Currently, he is a recipient of the HSP Huygens Talent Scholarship from the Dutch government to study composition with Michael Gordon in a master’s program at New York University.

Ruben has collaborated with numerous people and organizations from a wide range of disciplines, reaching from national newspaper de Volkskrant to the debate & fine arts festival happyChaos. He is co-founder of the West 4th New Music Collective, which promotes the work of emerging composers in New York. He has written for renowned ensembles as the Deviant Septet, JACK Quartet, Vigil Ensemble, Cadillac Moon Ensemble, the Los Angeles based duo Meyerson & Valitutto, and the Dutch Erasmus Kamerkoor and Quatre Bouches, and for festivals as the Bang on a Can Summer Festival, Music11, and the UNL Chamber Music Institute. His music has been performed in the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, Latvia, and various states across the USA (NY, CA, MA, CT, TX, NE). He has joined forces with such public figures as NRC Handelsblad economics editor Maarten Schinkel, scientists and (former) presidents of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences Robbert Dijkgraaf and Frits van Oostrom, and the Dutch Fokke & Sukke cartoonist Jean-Marc van Tol.

www.rubennaeff.nl

Andrea La Rose

Named by NPR as one of 100 composers under 40 you should know, flutist and composer Andrea La Rose is making waves in the New York music scene and beyond. Her pride and joy since 2002 has been her work as a flutist/composer/board member with the punk-classical antagonists known as Anti-Social Music, most recently (late 2010) touring the Ukraine and contributing to an album of remixes of songwriter Franz Nicolay. She has also been musically involved with thingNY, baj, Lone Wolf Tribe, and Mohair Timewarp. Print and online publications from Chamber Music America, to New Music Connoisseur, to Dusted have said lovely things about her fluting and composing prowess. Funding for her musical endeavors have been generously provided by the American Music Center and Meet the Composer. Since August 2009, she has been contributing her talents as a Music Teacher at the Franconian International School in Erlangen, Germany. When she is not making music in some fashion, she is quaffing beer and whipping up culinary magic in her kitchen.

“Prolific and an expert performer, she’s bouncing among a dozen good ideas, and wherever she lands will doubtless cause merriment, consternation, insight, and possibly the End of Civilization As We Know It.”
— Kyle Gann, artsjournal.com

www.reloadsanear.com

Elizabeth Lim

Elizabeth Lim is a second-year doctoral candidate at the Juilliard School, where she is studying composition with Dr. Robert Beaser. Noted for its unique expressiveness and verve, Elizabeth’s music has been widely performed throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia, and she has received honors and recognition from ASCAP, BMI, the Society of Composers, Inc. (SCI), the National Association of Composers, USA (NACUSA), the New England Philharmonic, and the Society for New Music, among others.

Elizabeth completed her undergraduate studies at Harvard University, where she was awarded the Hugh F. MacColl Prize in composition, the John Green Fellowship in composition, the Louis Sudler Prize in the Arts, and during her senior year, she was named one of the Class of 2008’s “Most Outstanding Seniors in the Arts.” She has been a composer-in-residence with the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra as part of the Under Construction concert series, and other accomplishments include commissions and awards from the Alabama Orchestra Association, the Palo Alto Youth-to-Youth Commissioning Project, Bellevue Youth Symphony Orchestra Composers Competition, as well as from the first national Iron Composer Competition, hosted by the University of Nebraska’s Artsaha. Additionally, Elizabeth was named winner of the annual Juilliard Orchestra Composition Competition, and her work for orchestra, Paranoia, was conducted by Jeffrey Milarsky for performance in the Alice Tully Hall in April 2009; more recently she has also participated as a student composer-in-residence with the Albany Symphony as part of the Composer to Center Stage program.

www.lizlim.com

Nicole Murphy

Australian composer Nicole Murphy completed her Masters of Music at the Queensland Conservatorium of Music in 2011, under the tutelage of Dr. Gerardo Dirié. During her undergraduate degree, she studied under composer Gerard Brophy, graduating in 2004 with a Bachelor of Music (Composition) with First Class Honours.

Nicole is the recipient of various awards, including the A.G. Francis Prize for Composition (2001), the Alan Lane Award for Composition (2004), and the Collusion/QCGU Composition Prize, for her setting of Australian writer John Tranter’s work The Moment of Waking (2004). She has written orchestral works for the Symphony Services Australia Young Composers Development Program (2010), TSO Australian Composer’s School (2010) and the Ku-Ring-Gai Philharmonic Orchestra’s Composer Development Program (2011).

Nicole has been commissioned by eminent arts organisations, including the Australian Ballet (2007), the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra (2008) and Orchestra Victoria (2010), and has had her music performed by ensembles such as the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra (Tasmania), Chronology Arts (Sydney), Halcyon (Sydney) and Ars Nova (Dallas). She is currently working on a new piece for the Definiens Project (Los Angeles) and holds the position of Composer-in-Residence at the Queensland Academy for Creative Industries.

www.nicolemurphy.com.au

Jonathan Russell

Jonathan Russell is a composer, clarinetist, conductor, and educator who is active in a wide variety of music, from classical to experimental to klezmer to church music. Especially known for his innovative bass clarinet and clarinet ensemble compositions, his works for bass clarinet duo, bass clarinet quartet, bass clarinet soloists, and clarinet ensembles have been performed around the world and are radically expanding the technical and stylistic possibilities of these genres. He has received commissions from ensembles such as the San Francisco Symphony, Empyrean Ensemble, ADORNO Ensemble, Classical Revolution, Woodstock Chamber Orchestra, Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra, Imani Winds, and DZ4, and performances from numerous other ensembles and performers, including the Berkeley Symphony, San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra, the BluePrint Project, the Great Noise Ensemble, the new music bands FIREWORKS, Capital M, and Oogog, pianist-percussionist Danny Holt, and pianists Sarah Cahill, Lisa Moore, Lara Downes, and Matthew McCright. Upcoming projects include compositions for So Percussion, the guitar-percussion duo The Living Earth Show, the new music ensemble REDSHIFT, and a new Bass Clarinet Concerto commissioned by the Bass Clarinet Commissioning Collective. His works are published by Potenza Music and BCP Music, and have been commercially recorded by the Sqwonk bass clarinet duo and pianist Jeffrey Jacob.


An avid performer on clarinet and bass clarinet, Jonathan is a member of the heavy metal-inspired Edmund Welles bass clarinet quartet and the Sqwonk bass clarinet duo, which has commissioned numerous new works and released two CDs of new American bass clarinet duets. He has also music directed two dance productions with choreographers Janice Garrett and Charles Moulton, and is co-director of the Switchboard Music Festival, an annual eight-hour marathon concert that brings together the San Francisco Bay Area’s most creative and innovative composers and performers. He has served on the Music Theory Faculty at San Francisco Conservatory and on the Composition Faculty at the Conservatory’s Adult Extension and Preparatory Divisions. He has a B.A. in Music from Harvard University and an M.M. in Music Composition from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. His composition teachers have included Paul Lansky, Dmitri Tymoczko, Dan Becker, Elinor Armer, Eric Sawyer, John Stewart, and Eric Ewazen. He is currently a student in the Composition PhD program at Princeton University.

www.jonrussellmusic.com

Jeffrey Treviño

Jeff Treviño’s recent projects include a one-act musical theater adaptation of Anthony Ha’s award-winning science-fiction story, Orbiting, a set of solo percussion frames for recordings of Alice Notley reading her poems, four two-minute duos for for a two-seat theatre in the Hammer Museum’s coat closet, a series of abstract animations for Golden Parachutes gallery’s Total Vivid Presence, and a year-long series of fluxus performances with his Berlin-based ensemble, the Institute for Intermediate Studies. Notable mentors include Mark Applebaum, Brian Ferneyhough, Max Mathews, Rand Steiger, Miller Puckette, Tom Erbe, Walter Zimmermann, Pauline Oliveros, Beat Furrer, Helmut Lachenmann, Chaya Czernowin, and Steven Takasugi.

Treviño has received commissions from the University of California at Berkeley Graduate Program in Media Studies, the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts, the Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Music at the University of California at Santa Barbara, bass clarinetist Anthony Burr, percussionist Ross Karre, pianist Rei Nakamura, contrabassist James Ilgenfritz, violinist Batya MacAdam-Somer, and the Arditti String Quartet, with notable premieres at the International Computer Music Conference (Miami, 2004, and New Orleans, 2006), the Oberlin Conservatory Percussion Institute (2006), New York City’s Symphony Space, Germany’s Akademie Schloss Solitude Summer Residencies, South Korea’s Seoul International Computer Music Festival (2007), Mexico’s Visiones Sonoras (2007), SIGGRAPH (2007), the International Conference of the Society for Improvised Music (Chicago, 2007), the Freiburg Hochschule für Musik, June in Buffalo (2008), Portugal’s Vila Real Conservatory, New York City’s Miguel Abreu Gallery, the Carlsbad Music Festival (2008), Freiburg im Breisgau’s E-Werk (2009), and Berlin’s Hanns Eisler Akademie (2009).

An accomplished pianist and tubist, Treviño has performed in world class venues such as Carnegie Hall, Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Sheldonian Theatre, and the Sydney Opera House. He is currently studying John Cage’s Sonatas and Interludes for prepared piano with pianist Aleck Karis.

Treviño researches the ways composers think when they write computer programs, and his doctoral work at the University of California at San Diego is supported by the university’s San Diego Fellowship, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the university’s Center for Latin-American Studies.

Nicolas Tzortzis

Born in Athens, Greece in May 1978, Nicolas Tzortzis has been living in Paris, France, since 2002. He studied instrumental and electronic composition with Philippe Leroux at the CRD de Blanc Mesnil, musical theatre composition with Georges Aperghis at the Hochschule der Kunste in Bern, Switzerland and Computer Aided Composition at the University of Paris 8 under the direction of Horacio Vaggione and José Manuel Lopez-Lopez. In 2009-2010 he attended the CURSUS 1 of composition and computer music at the IRCAM and he has been selected to do the CURSUS 2 for the years 2010-2012, where he will present a large-scale work for piano and live electronics. He is currently pursuing a PhD at the University of Montreal, under the supervision of Philippe Leroux.

He has taken part in master classes with Karlheinz Stockhausen, Brian Ferneyhough, Beat Furrer and François Paris, as well as computer music seminars at the IRCAM.  In 2010, he was selected for the 6th New Composers Forum of the Ensemble Aleph. His music has been performed in France, Greece, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Italy, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Great Britain, the Netherlands, the USA, Canada, Argentina, Peru, South Korea and Australia, and has been selected and awarded in competitions worldwide (USA, South Korea, Germany, France, Austria, Greece, Italy, Great Britain, Argentina).

If you come out in December, you’ll be able to meet Liza and Nick yourselves and talk to them about their work, but here’s a little bit about both of them to get you started:

Nicholas Omiccioli Nicholas S. Omiccioli is currently a Preparing Future Faculty Fellow at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and Production Coordinator for newEar Contemporary Ensemble. His works have been performed throughout the United States, Italy, Thailand, and China. He has recently been commissioned by the Souse Institute at the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival and the Wellesley Composers Conference.

Liza White Liza White’s music has been performed by Alarm Will Sound, ALEA III under Gunther Schuller, Fifth House Ensemble, the Charlestown Symphony Orchestra Brass Quintet, and many other world class musicians. Her work draws on a broad spectrum of real life experiences, including growing up in the 80′s and 90′s, living in major cities, enjoying a wide variety of music and cultural entertainment, and exploring issues of social justice. Liza is currently based in Chicago, where she is working on a doctorate in composition at Northwestern University and teaching at Northwestern, Access Contemporary Music, The Merit School of Music, and People’s Music School.

Thanks again to everyone who applied for our call: we chose these five pieces from fifty-five submissions, and the decision was an extremely difficult one. Our general call is essentially always open (the call for next season’s open now!), and our needs as an ensemble are bound to change from season to season, so please send us your work again!

	Travis Alford Travis Alford is a composer, trumpet player, and improviser currently living in the Boston area. His music has been performed at venues including the June in Buffalo Festival, the Composers Conference at Wellesley College, and the ACA Summer Music Festival at Symphony Space in NY, by groups such as the Meridian Arts Ensemble, the Lydian String Quartet, Second Instrumental Unit, and members of the New York New Music Ensemble. Last year, he was awarded an ASCAP Young Composers Award for his composition, Breathing Room. He holds degrees from the New England Conservatory and East Carolina University, and is working toward a PhD in composition at Brandeis University.
	Nomi Epstein The music of Nomi Epstein, a Chicago based composer, curator and performer of experimental music, and music educator, has been performed throughout the US and Europe. In her music, she is interested in finding the space between static and dynamic art, examining subtlety, and sometimes working in the realm of acoustic sound sculpture.
	Florent Ghys Florent Ghys is a French composer and upright bass player from Bordeaux, France. He writes mainly acoustic music for himself and friends. He uses notes, hair dryers, blinkers, weather reports, numbers, and enjoys controlling randomness. The label Cantaloupe Music released a 5-track EP in January 2010 and a full length album called “Baroque Tardif” in September 2011.
	Jenny Olivia Johnson Jenny Olivia Johnson is a composer and music studies scholar from Santa Monica, California. She studied composition and theory at Columbia University, Manhattan School of Music, and NYU (Ph.D. 2009), and is currently an assistant professor of music at Wellesley College. Her academic and artistic interests include musical perception, synaesthesia, multi-media art, and the impact of audio technology on musical memory and sensation.
	Christopher Stark Christopher Stark is a composer of contemporary classical music deeply rooted in the American West. Having spent his formative years in rural western Montana, his music is always seeking to capture the expansive energy of this quintessential American landscape.
	Yao Chen The music of Yao Chen strikes audiences with its innovative ways of bringing the musical traditions of East and West together and its poetic telling of the composer’s innermost thoughts. His many works not only manifest his talent in navigating wide expressional and dramaturgical elements in music writing, but also shine his versatility in structuring musical forms that embrace mixed instruments, musical languages and styles.
	Yuan Peiying Peiying Yuan is a young Singaporean composer who is currently pursuing doctoral studies at Cornell University. Her music has been performed most notably by the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, Argento Ensemble, and the ensemble at Wellesley College Composers Conference. This summer, she has enjoyed exploring music from a sociological perspective while composing a piece for mixed traditional Chinese instruments.

We’re very, very honored to be working with these composers. Writing a piece is always a huge investment of energy and time, and writing a piece for a brand new ensemble is an act of faith to which we hope we’ll do justice. Over the next few months, as they work on their pieces with us, we’ll tell you more about these artists and hear from some of them as well. Stay tuned!

Let’s start with the basics. Where are you from?
I was born and raised in Shanghai, China. I came to the U.S. in high school, and then went to Manhattan School of Music for Prep Division. I did my undergrad at Oberlin College, with a double degree in Economics and Piano. Then I went for my doctorate at Northwestern.

Why did you choose Econ?
I just had so much conservatory training ever since I was six that by the time I got to college, I wanted to do something else. And I think when you’re younger, you’re concerned about different things. I was worried about having a job, and being more practical, and wanting to make money and be independent.

Oh, the silly things we believe when we’re young.
Actually, I took four years off from music after college. But by the end of the third year, I decided to apply to grad school because that’s what I really wanted to do.

What brought you to the Bay Area, and what do you like to do here besides music?
My husband got a job here after grad school and we relocated. It’s going on three years now, and it’s been great. I love hiking and doing road trips to Napa. Even though I grew up in a city, I’ve come to appreciate nature more.

How did you get into the music scene here?
Before Wild Rumpus existed, cellist Kathryn Bates Williams and I met at Tanglewood. We were both moving here, and we started New Spectrum Ensemble together. And then I was accompanying at various schools, including Stanford and the Conservatory, and one thing led to another. It’s a small world. You do run into people that you’ve seen or heard in other places. Actually, the way you and I met was one of the most out of the blue experiences I’ve had. I think originally you emailed me sometime in 2007?

Yes. I was living in New York and you were finishing up at Northwestern. I was coming to town for an audition, and you were on the list of accompanists, so we emailed. Then I got snowed out and I never made it.
So fast forward to California. You sent me another random email looking for an accompanist and I thought, “Elyse! Do you remember me? We meant to play together two years ago and it never happened.” So yeah, one thing led to another. I think we started off just making an audition tape for you, and we’ve been working together ever since.

Last but not least, could you share some thoughts on Wild Rumpus and new music in general?
I’m really excited about Wild Rumpus’ mission. It has a unique presence in the Bay Area. I did pretty much all new music at Tanglewood, but that wasn’t my first exposure. In grad school I studied with Ursula Oppens, who’s one of the premiere pianists that champions a lot of new music. And I still don’t exclusively do new music. I think music is music. There’s such a wide spectrum. We probably won’t know what really has staying power until 50 or 100 years from now, but I’ve really enjoyed a lot of pieces that I’ve come in contact with, and working with composers who can tell you about the background of the piece and what their intentions are. As a performer, you have the power to affect how things turn out as a piece is being written. So that part, to me, is really interesting.

How long have you been playing clarinet?

Sixteen years.  I started playing in fifth grade.

Why did you choose the clarinet?

In fifth grade when we were choosing instruments to play in school I didn’t want to play a brass instrument because all the boys played that, and I didn’t want to play the flute because it was too girly.  I thought that the clarinet was a good middle ground!  After high school I decided to pursue music professionally and did a dual degree in English and clarinet performance at the University of Michigan where I worked with Fred Ormand.  After finishing up there I moved back to the Bay Area to study with Luis Baez at the San Francisco Conservatory.

What sort of music do you like to play?

Everything.  I’m a big fan of the classics for clarinet, the stuff from the classical and romantic periods.  But really most of the clarinet’s repertoire is from the 20^th century, so I naturally played a lot of contemporary music.  I love chamber music; playing Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time was one of the most fulfilling musical experiences I’ve had.  And Brahms!  I love playing anything he wrote for the clarinet.

What is your favorite piece/composer for clarinet since 1950?

I played Berio’s clarinet sequenza on my senior recital and it was awesome!  Although not a piece specifically featuring the clarinet, I also really enjoyed performing Pins and Needles by Takuma Itoh with the New Spectrum Ensemble, another chamber music group I play with in San Francisco.  The piece had a great groove to it and was just a really good ensemble piece.

Why did you want to be a part of Wild Rumpus?

I was looking for opportunities to keep playing since being out of school and I’m also really into playing new music.  It’s something I’ve been doing since college and have really enjoyed.  Also being able to be part of the collaborative process with composers is really cool.

What is appealing to you about working with living composers?

You can ask questions!  When you are performing a piece by somebody who’s dead you never know exactly what they wanted.  Although it can be nice to make your own decisions, it’s also nice to be able to know you are getting exactly what somebody wants to hear in their music!

What is something you wish all composers knew about writing for clarinet?

A lot of composers think that flutter-tonguing on the clarinet is as loud and easy to produce as it is on the flute.  It’s actually really hard to do on the clarinet and doesn’t really produce that much of an effect when you do it.  I also wish more composers would write for the E-flat clarinet, it’s a great instrument!  Recently it seems composers have been very interested in writing for bass clarinet, but not as much for the E-flat.  Also, don’t write for auxiliary instruments if you don’t really need them!  Think about if that one note you’ve written for bass clarinet is really worth the clarinetist lugging around an extra 20 lbs. of equipment!

How do you think that playing new music connects with the culture at large?

Composers today draw on so many influences that I think that the boundaries between genres are becoming blurred.  The music being written and performed by pop musicians is also “new music”, it just doesn’t have the label, some would say the stigma, of being “new music”.  A lot of people think that all new music is ugly and atonal, but not all of it is like that!  People are doing all sorts of different things.  I think that anytime you affect someone emotionally you are affecting the culture at large.

What do you want music to be like 100 years from now?

I’d love for there to be a classical music resurgence and for everyone to love it.  The way I see that happening is for the differences between genres to continue to erode, which will broaden the audiences and broaden the appeal.

What is the best part about playing music for you?

The best part of playing music for me is being able to share music with others, both the audiences and the other players.  You can have a connection with people where the end result is greater than the sum of its parts.  It’s about making this amazing thing that is part of something bigger than anybody there!

The dialogue between composer and performer really gets at the heart of that inspiration and intersection between creative processes. The composer learns from the performer because, hey, they get to try things out before writing them down in ink! If I, as a performer, say, “No, I can’t do that. What you’re asking is impossible,” instead of going back to square one, I can ask, in effect, what effect are you going for? and maybe come up with something different that is playable but will still create the intended effect. And I learn from composers by getting a glimpse of what is in their head. Both in terms of what music they write, but also in terms of how they think about the sounds being created, what they’re looking for and want.

The upshot of all this is that I was super excited to be asked to help create this group and participate so directly with the composing process. It’s hard to argue with a composer who’s dead, after all.

I loved the abandon of the whole project: you’d sign up on a clipboard for a recital you’d hold three days later, in any of the galleries in that incredible space. You could write a piece (feverishly, in the middle of the night) for the first couple weeks and have it performed in the third. You’d be making music outside the neighborhood bar at midnight, or in the hallways at the gallery, or on your way to dinner. And not all the music was great, not all of it was even good, but the message was unmistakable: Try it out. See if it works. Try something else. Don’t be afraid. Do it do it do it.

It was exactly what I needed to hear right at that moment. It had been a rough couple of years since I’d gotten my masters, and I’d been feeling really uncertain of my next step. The sort of subterranean doubts that can accompany composing—nobody cares about your music, there’s no way for you to make a living—had grown worse since leaving school. I didn’t know any musicians where I was, and I didn’t have any performances lined up. I developed writer’s block for a year and a half. And then personal stuff came up, huge personal stuff, that ground life to a halt for a while. I don’t even remember why I thought of applying to that festival. When I got in, I couldn’t believe it. It was like something wonderful had happened to this composer who was really an elaborate fiction, this composer who happened to look like me and share my name.

But I went. I sang Meredith Monk. I played gamelan and samba. I went to three concerts a day. I sketched stuff and got feedback from my friends. I sketched some more. I talked about my music and that of my friends. I stayed up late. And my life was different. I was different. By the time we were having our workshop on starting your own new music group, I sat there and thought: Hm. I was making music again, and I started dreaming about ways to keep that momentum, ways to keep experimenting and discovering with other people who love new music. It stayed in my head for a long time. Until now, specifically, five years later, having lucked into meeting brilliant performers and composers who wanted to do this, too.

Wild Rumpus is a new music group dedicated to work by young/emerging composers, composers who are developing their craft and their careers. More importantly, it’s about developing music in collaboration with composers. We want to be an experimental laboratory for new music, a space to play and try stuff out and see what happens.

As a composer, I think there are practical reasons why this is a good thing. They go something like this:

• It’s an inspiration thing. When composers write for somebody specific, that person’s personality and style of playing inspire them. And when they get to exchange ideas with a performer, that dialogue usually leads to totally different discoveries that they might not have found alone.
• It’s a skill thing. When composers try stuff out with players while they write, they can quickly and easily figure out what works and what doesn’t in terms of practicality. Testing before you ship is a good idea in any discipline.
• Taken together, I believe that this kind of work can help support early-career composers not just by giving them a performance and a recording, but by giving them a chance to learn and grow while they write for us.

There’s another way of putting it. When I first started thinking about the thing that’s now Wild Rumpus, I was thinking of this:
Try it out. See if it works. Try something else. Don’t be afraid. Do it do it do it.

We hope to help with that. I hope you’ll come check us out.