The Argument

I rarely reblog anything. However, I was really impressed with the clarity and directness of this man's argument regarding LGBT rights. Please check it out:

def shepherd: Why A Heterosexual, Married, North Carolinian Father of Three Cares About LGBT Equality: I am a heterosexual, married, father of three, who has lived in North Carolina for most of my life. There have been a few ugly North Carolina...

Coming Home

My friend Alexandre Lunsqui – an exceptional musician, professor, thinker, and composer of truly questioning music – said something a few years ago that remains key to my life today. I can’t even remember the exact conversational context now, only the simple statement "I want to wake up and think about music." It really struck me then and the line has stayed with me since, such a clear and concentrated expression of singular purpose and codified passion.

I have always felt that my best friend (besides my wife) Jason Lind has labored as a remarkably underrated and unappreciated visual artist. One of the most truly creative and original people I know, he possesses an unrelenting imagination and love of ideas, and whether with others or left to himself he is constantly constructing rich, unique worlds across a spectrum of media and formats. Nonetheless, I’ve watched his best skills go to waste again and again as he's passed from under one shortsighted boss to another, with only the rarest exceptions. Jason and I have been creating art together pretty much since meeting in high school, and working through ideas and projects with him continues to rank among the great joys of my life. One of many positive consequences of choosing to reengage my real life has been the opportunity to spend more time collaborating him and other people like him again.

It’s been an interesting process this last year+ as I’ve had more space for compositional work while at the same time initiating and re-initiating a number of ancillary projects. Among these, one in particular has allowed me and a bunch of important people in my life the opportunity to do something together, and this project recently landed us in the Hollywood Fringe Festival. In my professional roles over the last few years I’ve grinned-and-bared-it through countless exceedingly boring and unpleasant conversations/meetings/social events, and I already have too many memories of looking around the room and wondering what the fuck I was doing with my life that I had found myself surrounded by a roomful of lawyers and other utterly disconnected and powerhungry people. Hanging out in the beer tent of the Fringe Festival these last few days and meeting so many interesting, authentic, and adventurous individuals, it’s been such a pleasure of a tangible reminder to stop from time to time and just look around and see where I have returned to, breathing a sigh of relief that I stopped with that other game before I’d gone too far and sacrificed too much of myself.

It has taken a few years for Alex’s statement even to seem like a real possibility to me, and the fact is that I do still have to wake up and think about something besides music first. However, I'm much closer to that other reality now, and these days the money work is direct and quick and flexible. The real key is that when all that's finished I still have most of my day to think about my music, my family, and my ongoing body of work - whatever else my amazingly talented friends and I might come up with on any given day.

Letting Things Slide

So I began working on this blog a bit over a year ago now. I realize I’m an insanely late starter with the whole blog thing, one in how many these days? I was never much interested in blogs or blog culture and am usually the kind of person who takes some time to get involved with whatever the cool new mode of communication happens to be. Until spring 2010 in fact, I never thought I’d start a blog, and this project only really happened in the end out of some kind of basic necessity.

When I was a student, I spent some time running the graduate New Music group. I had a lot of amazing experiences in this role, and the process helped initiate my fire for producing. One of my responsibilities was arranging the weekly composition colloquia guests, most of which were local or in-house, though we had a decent budget for others further out as well. Once when I attempted to invite John Zorn, he instead turned the invitation around and let a bunch of us to come visit him in NYC. We took him up on his offer, subsequently engaging an awesome pilgrimage to meet the experimental music godfather. When we finally left after a few hours of unbelievable conversation, he said something to me that’s stuck ever since: that I might ultimately find more success changing the system by working outside of it. Nonetheless, I wouldn’t come to completely believe him for a number of years; for better or worse, I needed to see it for myself.

When I resigned from my last job, it wasn’t just the end of that job or, say, a budding formal career in New Music administration. Much more painfully, it was the effective end of a dream that I could be a part of true and significant progress in large US New Music ideas/systems by being a part of that system. One of the realizations that hurt most and that ultimately convinced me to leave was coming to truly understand how practically these visions and plans for ways that things could be improved, these things that were possible—that I was utterly naive in believing that the individuals with real power actually meant what they said when they agreed with me toward wanting to engage significant organizational advancement. Instead, I allowed my zeal to make me a target for use by powerful people who had no interest in real transformation, since one basic consequence of this change would be somewhat less power for those powerful individuals. So it goes, I see it, but it was the second time I faced this basic lesson and I decided that I don't have any place in my life for a third.

Nonetheless, the instinct that had ultimately led me there in the first place remained following my resignation, and in fact had ironically amplified as a result of what I’d seen: I still maintain a belief that things can truly be so much better, that better ideas well executed can indeed lead to significant improved change across the New Music landscape, and that real progress is possible if people with control are truly willing to do what's necessary. But that's the crux, and is in fact why it's so much easier for effective change to happen at the grassroots level. Anyway, progress is indeed taking place, everywhere, as creative musicians and producers are making new things happen in new ways—though at least regarding New Music in the US, it seems that they’re usually not the ones with the biggest pocketbooks or the legacies to protect (exceptions do however exist, to be fair!).

So to come back to the initial point, I left the job still with a million things on my mind, about New Music but also just about trying to actually live as a creative and curious individual in the world, and writing this blog felt like some good simple thing I could do to articulate all this mess in my head, little by little and piece by piece. And indeed, in many ways it has been an important part of finding my way back to some things I'd let others distract me from for a spell. So I posted on the blog religiously for about a year, barely missing a week—in part, just to make it real, but also because there usually feels like there's just so damn much to say. Why I haven't written in a while now is not really relevant, except to say that the blog had lately accrued some unnecessary rules from which I needed to extricate myself, and I have. When I started this, I didn’t really know what the project would become, and though I do have a clearer picture now, to be honest I still really don’t know where it’s headed and in fact I’m not really interested in dictating a path like that anyway—in honor of the life I had let myself become lost from and that I am now very gratefully living again, I am allowing it change as it needs to change, so long as progress is being made in some way that feels relevant to me.

Anyway, even though taking a little break from the blog was right and necessary for a number of reasons, I was feeling a bit guilty about not "maintaining my self directed responsibilities" until my old friend and secular shaman Peter Gilbert reminded me again about the importance of letting things slide. It’s true, there’s a place for letting things slide, just like there's a place for getting things done. And though I still work pretty aggressively and consistently, I think it’s one more point of good evidence regarding the positive shifts of my recent life that sometimes I can just let things like this slide, just pause certain tasks while life needs to go elsewhere. Part of that whole balance thing.

A final note: I can't believe how much has happened in a year, nor how wonderful and unexpected life can really be if you're invested in being a traveler. I am so grateful for the decisions we've made and the life we live now, and I believe more than ever that there's no other way than to truly follow your heart, no matter how insane it may appear, no matter how hard it may be.

Cheers my dear friends and thanks as always for reading.

My Faith

That, in the end, investing in a more thoroughly-considered and finely-crafted work will indeed prove the most valuable path. That no matter how things may presently appear, a dedication to the highest quality and most adventurous work personally possible will indeed win out in all the ways that truly matter most.

The thing about New Music

It may seem a deep irony, but the fact remains that I haven't enjoyed the majority of the New Music that I've encountered over the years. Or, I should say, a lot of it is okay and more than its fair share seems pretty pointless beyond providing the composer an opportunity to occupy someone else's time and attention for a space. I will, for instance, tend to enjoy a random pop song for what it is more often on average than a random work of Contemporary Art Music. I guess I've just found way too much of what I've heard at concerts and across the field to be wanting in the things that I most value in that music. Too often, new pieces seem to lack either seriously original ideas or a real interest in presenting the audience with a thoroughly well-crafted and well-considered work, if not both.

However, while I may too often find the results of my genre/style/field/whathaveyou to be fairly jejune, and while I'm suspicious that too much New Music is actually about concerns other than the art work itself, the key for me is that when this music does work well, the resultant experience is more thoroughly engrossing and comprehensively remarkable than any experiences I've had with exceptional examples hailing from any other musical genre. I've indeed been heavily influenced by and continue to love all kinds of music, and have engaged very personal and magical experiences with, for instance, the works of Jane's Addiction. Nonetheless, a truly exceptional, original, and well-crafted piece of Contemporary Art Music occupies me in a way no other music quite can.

This music can be difficult. This is Pollock, not Kinkade. Complex art requires a personal investment from us in order to truly bloom. However, wonderful complicated works can multiply this personal investment, while the unexceptional simply occupies our time and frustrates attempts at any kind of understanding. It's up to the composer, the artist, to make every bit of difficulty well worth the effort - because time is not something to waste, and because when this music does pay off, the experience can be special in unimaginable ways.

The Significance of a Remarkable Teacher

I walked into James Heiner's Theory and Musicianship course at Los Positas Junior College in the fall of 1996. Not counting cramped guitar lesson studios, I'd never actually studied in a music classroom before this. I'd been involved with the visual arts from a young age, but hadn't started playing the guitar until I was a sophomore in high school. Working through various rock, jazz, and classical lessons, I practiced like crazy and subsequently helped start a band later in high school. Though the project never got very far, it nonetheless consumed my life for a couple of years, and it was in the context of this group that I was first forced to figure out the basics of creating and assembling music.

I had little larger life direction when I graduated from high school. Las Positas Junior College sits right next to my home town and was a convenient and obvious choice. Attending community college, I could easily study full time, work nearly full time, and still leave plenty of space for the guitar. Nothing else really seemed that important or interesting. Though I'd done fine in high school, I hadn't bothered to take my SATs as I had no deep desire to go anywhere in particular. Music was the only thing I really enjoyed doing, though I nonetheless still couldn't envision pursuing it as a career. Given all this, my plan was simply to tread water while I searched for the thing that I wanted to engage "seriously."

Within this process, it made sense to fulfill some general credits while seeking an attractive path of study. I also reasoned that enrolling in a few basic music theory courses would both fulfill humanities credits while simultaneously helping me to develop as a songwriter. As I noticed no indication otherwise, I incorrectly assumed that both of the music courses for which I'd signed up were oriented toward novices, and I was therefore utterly unprepared for James Heiner's opening speech to the class that fall. Among other things, Heiner explained that those in the course needed to know how to read music notation, and that everyone in the past who'd remained for the entire year had ultimately opted to major in Music. Hearing this, I knew immediately that it would be my last day in Theory and Musicianship.

A number of us all went up to James Heiner after that first class. I explained to him that I'd made a mistake, that I didn't belong here, that I couldn't read music, and that I would never be a Music major. He simply smiled and replied, "stick around." Within the year, my band had fallen apart and I'd declared my degree, transferring to UC Santa Barbara to complete a concentration in Music Composition a few years later. Looking back, I cannot now imagine my life being about anything else. I have been very privileged to study under a number of remarkable teachers over the years. Nonetheless, James Heiner literally changed everything for me.

The Practice

You have to avoid thinking about the results. You remain focused on accomplishing the small work at hand - today, at this moment - to the best of your ability. To decide for yourself the work that needs to be done by you, and then to set about accomplishing whatever those ends may require. It is so easy to become distracted by so many things, such ancillary things. But the future happens so fast, and there are often only two distinct madnesses from which to choose. It is both incredibly simple and yet remarkably difficult, but in the end it is about the daily practice of opting for a personal reason above a general insanity, about actively choosing for yourself what matters most and then investing life in whatever that actually is, piece by piece and instant by instant.

Confidence

Igor Stravinsky claimed of his 1911 ballet Petrushka that it “was the first piece in which I’ve had the full confidence of my inner ear,” and that it “was the first piece that really represents me, as I think of myself.” Premiered 100 years ago this year, Petrushka was composed on the heels of the tremendously successful ballet The Firebird, which Stravinsky had completed the year before. The composer who once declared that his music was "best understood by children and animals" subsequently finished the tremendously groundbreaking ballet The Rite of Spring in 1913, immediately following Petrushka. The Rite of Spring now ranks as perhaps the single most important and influential composition of the 20th century, if not at the very least among a very few most important.

Igor Stravinsky has since assumed such an iconic role in music history that he’s now practically monolithic in stature. Given this, it’s particularly strange to imagine him as a young composer, still somewhat insecure about what he could accomplish, still refining his techniques, and harboring notions of a sound that he believed could be more. Stravinsky didn’t even feel prepared to compose the confidence-securing ballet The Firebird when he did. In fact, it was visionary impresario Serge Diaghilev who prompted Stravinsky to begin working on the defining piece. Nonetheless, The Rite of Spring started a revolution two years later. Igor Stravinsky had managed to gain a deep confidence in his own unique voice, a permission to follow his natural instincts, and through this personal confidence was ultimately able to create works that changed the course of music. We can't all be Stravinsky, of course, but if an individual follows his or her deepest instincts, who knows what might be possible?

The Oblivious

There's a very attractive house that sits a short distance down the street from us. It's one of the nicest on the block, if not the nicest. The house itself is very well-maintained, clean and clearly the subject of someone's ongoing attention. Beyond this, however, the entire front yard is beautifully landscaped, and done in a manner that must require regular maintenance. The lot is impressive for our area, and it would seem at a glance that the owners are individuals who indeed understand how to care for things.

Every time either my wife or I walk past this house when we're out with our dogs, an angry German Shepherd emerges in the driveway to bark at us relentlessly. Though we usually keep to the opposite side of the street, the dog nonetheless starts before we're in front of the house and continues barking for some time afterward. Going on and on at the top of his/her lungs, the dog leers at us aggressively through the high metal fence. I am always proud of our dogs in these moments, who stare quietly at the insane spectacle as we walk past. The German Shepherd is almost always there when we pass, and we have yet to see anyone come out and comfort the dog or even communicate with it during these spells. (I did see the people who lived in the house once, getting into their car; I'm pretty sure they were wearing Christmas sweaters.)

I used to feel frustration at this dog and its relentless barking, so uselessly loud and obnoxious, until the Redhead pointed out that this poor animal is just unsocialized, alone, perpetually trapped behind a fence -- not getting what it really needs and reacting accordingly. A prominent Beware of Dog sign on the driveway fence and the giant Merry Christmas permanently affixed above their porch remain the only text adorning the house. This poor, scary dog serves to protect these people's precious things and to complete an image, and has the terrible misfortune of being treated like just another ornament -- living under the control of humans who are either too stupid to understand or just don't care what this decorative creature living at their mercy might really need. But honestly, how could either of these realities be possible? The truly sad thing is, this dog would most likely be willing to die in defense of these people. It doesn't seem uncommon, but it never stops being disappointing -- seeing everything so well-maintained but real life itself.

American Repurposing

I’m not going to pretend that I know all that much about wind bands. What little information I do possess comes largely from friends working in that world. Nonetheless, the recent full completion of a very good experience involving large concert wind band brings to mind a few observations prompted during the project.

The modern wind band tradition remains a relatively successful “classical” musical tradition of those presently operating in the US, due largely to the simple fact that this particular tradition continues to be relatively well funded. It manages to maintain this ongoing support because a band’s typical raison d’arte derives from its relationships to various popular athletic activities – that is, it doesn't usually depend upon the whims of "artistically" interested patrons or generally underwhelming art concert ticket sales.

In addition to offering the obvious benefits of relatively consistent support, this detail also carries another positive consequence: While much of the currently practiced wind band repertoire may not be our favorite, when a spot for something truly adventurous does indeed open up there would actually seem to be far fewer compromising artistic actors directly involved in that decision-making process. (It’s also worth remembering that the typical American orchestra isn’t usually all that renowned for its experimentalism or adventurousness either.)

The modern art music composer may be attracted to wind band composition projects for a variety of good and interesting reasons. However, one obvious point worth mentioning is simply that modern concert wind ensembles are typically quite large. And while these groups admittedly don’t tend to offer an orchestra’s expansive string options, for instance, concert wind bands nonetheless boast their own endless spectrums of instrumental and timbral possibilities.

In the present climate of perpetually diminishing resources and extremely limited artist support, as US orchestras experience ongoing funding challenges and symphonic opportunities vanish, composers of inquisitive contemporary art music will need to remain as innovative as ever. Continuing to seek out fresh, more available large-scale ensemble options, it seems somehow appropriate that we might among other possibilities turn to this this classically vernacular European tradition that has now also become very American. Yes, there are indeed significant trades, and a wind band is NOT an orchestra. Nonetheless, it certainly seems like a monster worthy of our investigation.

Special thanks to Eric Hewitt and the Boston Conservatory Wind Ensemble.

Great Audiences

We went out last Monday for our inaugural Los Angeles new music experience. The NYC-based Argento Chamber Ensemble returned to LA's Monday Evening Concerts, presented at the Colburn School’s Zipper Concert Hall. Justin Urcis’s exceptional Monday Evening Concerts series remains a Southern California haven of thoughtful, adventurous programming, and the longstanding Argento Chamber Ensemble serves as one of new music’s most dedicated advocates in the States, maintaining a well-deserved reputation for cutting-edge choices and world-class performances. Needless to say, the concert was fantastic. Ferneyhough, Pesson, and Sciarrino occupied the first half with density, playfulness, and fragility. However, this collection principally served as exceptional amuse-bouche for the second half of the show, which consisted of a dynamic West Coast premiere of Fausto Romitelli’s Professor Bad Trip (so much fun!).

An informal discussion was held following the concert, for which a healthy quorum of aficionados remained. More than one audience member posed a question to Argento conductor and point man Michel Galante regarding the nature of new music audiences, and something that Michel said in reply to one of these struck me. He remarked that, as opposed to the typical classical music fan (who "know what they like and like what they know"), new music audiences tend to be interested in ideas – basically that one of the defining characteristics of a new music audience member is the quality of creative curiosity. I agree with this, but besides that, I just like the idea. It also reminds me of something Walt Whitman once said, that “To have great poets, there must be great audiences, too.” We may not have a lot of resources nor a huge audience, but one thing I can say for our new music audiences is that they are indeed great and we are lucky to have them.

Support and Incentive

I know that extraordinary contemporary art music exists. In a world overrun with the mediocre and inauthentic, I've had the chance to experience deeply honest, considered, spectacular, and cutting edge music. The possibility of the thoughtfully fantastic is a principal reason why I love this tradition, why I'm still listening. And it's this music that I also feel compelled to spend so much time trying to write. Since a principal justifying value for the modern art music tradition is for me this quality of the extraordinary, or at least the possibility of the extraordinary, I find myself endlessly frustrated by what I see as an array of counterproductive tendencies at work in our already strapped and struggling little universe.

Deciding this last year to actively return composition to the forefront of my working life, I’ve reinitiated the process of regularly looking around for various grants, performances, contests, etc. to which to apply. While it's important that composers and artists continue to search out new and innovative ways of sustaining themselves and making it all work in modern society, nonetheless it also makes sense to try to plug into those systems that already do exist. In particular, my recent re-foray into searching for opportunities and support as an American art music composer has led to a few observations I wanted to share.

We already know that far too many pieces receive only one performance. Good new musical works should be played again and again and again. Well, at least more than once, right? Combing through the calls for scores, however, I see listing after listing requesting previously unperformed works – new, unperformed, unawarded, and so forth. Often, the group or institution is asking the composer to write a brand new piece that they will then consider or enter in their little contest, with no guarantee of any actual performance. Spend a bunch of time investing in a great new work and maybe we’ll perform it. Nice.

Additionally, groups and institutions sometimes request pieces that for various reasons might be particularly difficult to stage more than once, or that don't make sense to have performed by another group or at another time. Sometimes the reasoning behind this makes artistic and logistical sense and the project is still absolutely worth engaging. Most often though, unnecessary stipulations result from some gimmicky marketing-related tactic that won't really help the group stand out from the crowd the way it imagines anyway. All these unnecessary rules do is serve to limit the composer and handicap the artistic possibilities of the project.

Since the premiering ensemble or individual too often performs a work only once, it becomes especially important to get a good piece of new music out to others who might then take it on, or at least perform it again. As much as people seem enamored with premieres, a work really comes alive and shines only after an ensemble has honestly decided to own it - like a rock band with a song that it's played over and over. There's really no other way to really get everything out of the music that it deserves. Instead, what happens far more often is that a composer invests a ridiculous amount of energy and thought into creating a complex and considered work that will be performed once, maybe a few times, but that will never really be given its due because no one will ever really commit to owning it. Instead, we're already on to the next thing.

New music composers never have enough time, especially when it comes to writing music. Consequently, while an artistic project should be led first by an artistic impulse, composers also need to be smart about which of their good ideas they spend their time developing. Unless one's game is simply to produce as much music as possible without great regard as to its quality (often a successful marketing technique), writing only for the single instance is not usually the ideal move given the heavy artistic investment required to create something truly new and good. The truth is that this sort of opportunity is most often what's available, and it's certainly better than nothing. However, wouldn't it behoove those claiming to be advocates of new music to consider exactly what it is for which they're advocating? Are we as a tradition out just for the next exciting premiere, or to directly encourage the creation of exceptional, lasting works?

While I understand and appreciate the impulse guiding these kinds of contests, opportunities, and so forth, this approach will nonetheless tend to incentivize a get-it-done attitude toward art music composition that often ends up awarding composers who write more music rather than those who write better music. For me, it’s always been the great and individual pieces that have held our tradition together, that make it all worthwhile. This is what I want to hear and what I want to spend my life trying to write. I love many kinds of musics, for the various purposes they all serve. But this is not film music nor popular music. Art music is about the individually spectacular, the rare and adventurous, the risk for a chance at an extraordinary and truly surprising musical journey.

For me, a great modern art music work should to be experienced like a rare chocolate desert, a complex Scotch, or a painting by Pollock; it’s not necessarily designed to be consumed like Skittles and it doesn't end up doing its job all that well when treated like just another commercial commodity. When art music invests not in the truly experimental but instead in the next flashy redux or another film score hiding in the concert hall, we're no longer wandering in the realm of art music. It's not even honest music at that point. It's just commercial composing that couldn't survive among the popular trying to hide among the art. At least Brittany Spears isn't really trying to fool anyone into thinking she's doing something experimental.

Shouldn’t our support systems concentrate on really encouraging stronger, better pieces, not just more pieces - truly taking care of the ones that stand out while concomitantly encouraging fresh work? Shouldn’t we cultivate patience and quality and endurance, not speed and efficiency? This is art music after all, not the mass production of food. And what is this obsession associated with musical premieres anyway? It's indeed worth being proud of having done the work of encouraging and/or presenting a new work. This of course make sense, and presenters who take chances should be greatly commended. However, when taken to excess this tendency starts to remind me of high school, when you needed to buy a t-shirt from the concert for the new band in order to prove that you heard of them first. Promoting new works is fantastic. It's just important that we continue to balance this tendency with remembering and nurturing the good pieces that already do exist but that most people have not yet had the chance to hear.

What I want from new music is to experience extraordinary musical works. It doesn’t matter whether I hear it first so long as I get to hear it. I believe that ensembles and institutions of contemporary art music advocacy should be helping me to find those pieces, and helping composers to make those pieces. I am open to listening to whatever's out there, but for the most part I end up coming back to a handful of favorite works over and over, a slowly growing handful. Isn't this the core of it all? Isn’t finding and loving the truly questioning and enduring music the thing for which we should be searching and promoting and trying to support? Shouldn't our art music institutions and systems be designed to strongly incentivize both the creation of the new as well as the thoughtful ongoing maintenance of the potentially exceptional? New music organizations, groups, performers love to brag about advocacy; it's always worth considering precisely what is being advocated.