The Taste of Music

Poussin Saltimbocca: the fourth course at the
Grove Park Inn Culinary Getaway.

Anyone who knows me at all, knows that I love to cook. I believe it's the only non-musical activity I engage in on a regular basis. Mostly, I like to prepare heavy Greek and Italian dishes with some side trips into certain Latin cuisines. There are obvious connections between cooking and composing, of course. The combining of ingredients is much like the combining of musical sounds. Chefs develop an individual style usually based upon their training and background much as a composer develops a unique musical voice. Good chefs are also mindful of time - making sure that different ingredients begin cooking at separate times in order to insure that all items are warm and ready for the table at the same time. This is very similar to a composer's concern for unveiling musical materials in a proper pace as the piece moves along in time in order to to maintain a sense of structure. I also can't help but be reminded of the similarity between chefs and composers when, after spending hours (sometimes days) in the cooking process, those at the table finish off the meal in minutes (or seconds if you count hungry teenagers). How like the process of crafting a piece of music this is! Composing a piece may take weeks (or more) to compose and rehearse and then is seemingly over in the blink of an eye at the premiere.

Sumac Dusted Carolina Bison: the fifth course at the
Grove Park Inn Culinary Getaway.

Two recent events have also reminded me of another way cooking is like composing. The first of these events took place several weeks ago as my wife and I celebrated our 20th Wedding Anniversary at the gorgeous Grove Park Inn located in Asheville, North Carolina. We just happened to plan our stay during a culinary weekend and thus had an opportunity to enjoy a five-hour, six-course meal at the resort's acclaimed Horizons Restaurant. The striking aspect of this meal was its collaborative nature. Four chefs combined to present the six courses. Each course was paired with a different wine and/or drink with the wine maker and distillery manager also on hand. Intricately prepared, each course needed to work in context with the others. Care was also taken to select a compatible winemaker and then to be sure that the pairings worked with the different offerings. This task of pairing wine and food was left to yet a different member of the culinary staff. One of the more unique, experimental and perhaps even risky collaborations occurred at the beginning of the meal. The person responsible for the pairings created an aperitif that consisted of 1 part Four Roses Bourbon and 2 parts Niagra Ice Wine. Both the distillery manager from Four Roses Bourbon and wine maker of Sparkman Cellars admitted later that they each had grave doubts about the concoction. However both of them - along with the rest of us - were pleasantly surprised. The drink was delicious both as a refreshing stand alone offering as well as the prelude to the amazing meal to come. Somehow this collaboration seemed more intimate. It's one thing to try and pair disparate items and quite another to literally mix them together to create something wonderful.

Candied Ginger Carrot Cake: the sixth course
at the Grove Park Inn Culinary Getaway.

The thoughts of this type of collaboration were brought back to mind at the second event that reminded of the connection between food and music. This event is more recent. I have just returned from Huntsville, Alabama where the Huntsville Symphony Orchestra performed an older piece of mine entitled epiphanies. I have to admit that I was a little surprised at just how really good this group is! In addition to being able to work with a fine orchestra, I had the good fortune of also having an opportunity to work with conductor Daniel Boico, who, at the time of this writing, is currently serving as the Assistant Conductor of the New York Philharmonic. I say that I am fortunate to have worked with this conductor not so much because he is a very fine artist - which he certainly is - but also because of his collaborative nature. In my first meeting with him prior to a rehearsal, Boico went over the piece with me and shared his thoughts about how he was interpreting the music. It was immediately evident to me that he had spent some time with the work and had definite ideas of how to proceed. And yet, he wanted to talk things over with me first. He sought my opinion on his ideas. There have been many times in the past when a conductor - especially an orchestral conductor - has simply pushed an interpretation without consultation. Sometimes I have never been invited to attend even a single rehearsal. This is not collaboration. Rather, it is an occupational hazard of being a composer. Boico certainly had strong opinions about how and why he might change a tempo marking here or there. Yet he always had a rationale for his decision; a rationale he shared with me. There was an immediate trust that was formed between us. This trust allowed me to let his vision of the music mix with mine to create something wonderful in the same way that the Niagra Bourbon Cocktail had at our dinner weeks ago. 

As I always remind my students, I believe that the act of composing music goes through five stages: first is a conceptual stage; second an active writing stage; third a notation/engraving/part preparation stage; fourth, the rehearsal stage wherein collaboration takes place with performers; and fifth, the created stage wherein the music is brought to life for an audience. It is the fourth stage that many of us overlook. Rather than thinking a piece is completed after a double bar is drawn, it is vital for composers to recognize that collaboration is part of the compositional process. Both my meal at the Grove Park Inn and my work with Daniel Boico and the Huntsville Symphony have reminded how important it is to work with performers as a piece begins to come alive in sound. Great collaboration usually leads to great art - whether in matters of food or sound.

Snow Days

A rare sight outside my front window.

During the second week of January, a somewhat rare event took place in Atlanta. The city was completely shut down for a week due to a significant snow and ice storm. Atlanta, being a southern city generally oblivious to winter - I mean, real winter - was caught wholly unprepared. Only a handful of salt trucks labored to make just the most essential roads passable. They were generally unsuccessful in this endeavor and so, most citizens - myself included - found themselves trapped at home.

It was a very odd week for the city. The novelty of snow closed schools and businesses for days. In fact, people are still talking about it weeks after. I couldn't help but smile about the reaction to the weather having spent many years living up north - first in Bloomington, Indiana and then on the east side of Cleveland, Ohio. Of course, such snow falls as we received in Atlanta, are the norm up north. I remember it once snowing more during a single exam I took up at the Cleveland Institute of Music than the whole evening of Sunday, January 9 when the storm blew through. Yet, I no longer live up north and this kind of weather is truly remarkable. I had almost forgotten how beautifully new fallen snow can transform a familiar landscape. It's not that snow is not lovely and magical up north - it is. It's just that it becomes a little routine. Part of the novelty of the week down here was due to the disruption of a normal routine. Up north, unless the storm is truly massive, such snow as we received might hardly get a special mention on the news.

I put the extra time to good use. While my family huddled around a blazing fire, eyes glued to movies courtesy of Netflix and iTunes, I sat busily preparing a score in my basement studio. I still compose music using a No. 2 pencil and manuscript paper and so, when a piece is completed, still must notate the music using music notation software. It can be a somewhat tedious process and as I sat clicking away at the computer keyboard, I began to think about my composition career in terms of the piled up snow outside my window.

For me, the completion of a new work is always a magical moment. I am at once filled with relief that a piece is completed, nervous anticipation at how the players will react once the music is delivered and a bit of apprehension at how an audience will respond to my effort. However, I don't want this feeling to be as rare an occurrence as a snow storm in the deep south. I don't want the process of preparing a score, putting it in rehearsal and attending a premiere to be a disruption to a normal routine. These activities must in and of themselves be a major part of the normal routine.

A creative artist working within the sphere of the academy must constantly guard against this. It is so easy for the composer working within a university to be sucked into endless committee meetings, petty faculty bickering, mounds of student work to be graded and the slowly creeping paralysis of lowered expectations.

Somehow, living up north, I never truly lost my sense of wonder at significant snowfall. However, I did not treat it as a rare event. So long as I can see that my creative output as a composer follows a similar pattern, I know that I will remain moving in the right direction.

"Dear Composer..."

There are many wonderful moments in the professional life of a composer: the satisfaction of a newly completed work; hearing a piece come to life for the first time - especially in the hands of very talented and experienced performers; a good review; and, of course, the thrill of the premiere itself complete with a warm reception from the audience. Then there are the downsides: hours of work; writer's block; deadline stress; editing scores and parts; lack of time to work; less than stellar reviews; and especially the arrival of the very thin envelope in the mail. 

All composers recognize this envelope immediately. On the outside, there is the logo of the competition or ensemble to whom we sent our music in hopes of winning an award or performance opportunity. On the inside there is only the thin piece of paper. It doesn't matter the contest or the sponsoring organization, they all contain pretty much the same prose:

"Dear Composer,

Thank you for your submission to [insert name of sponsor]. After a careful review of all submissions, we are sorry to inform you that [name of your favorite piece] was not selected for the [insert name of opportunity] at this time. There were a large number of applicants this year and the selection process was extremely difficult. 

We wish you best of luck in your future creative work and encourage you to submit again next year."

This is the letter we receive most often. One would imagine that a composer would become numb to the familiar words in the thin envelope over the years. Yet, strangely, this letter always stings me. Everytime. These messages also seem to come in bunches and are not merely confined to the  thin envelope waiting patiently in the mailbox, but lurk in email mailboxes as well. The only way to make them stop, seemingly, is to just stop sending music out.

But that's no answer.

All creative artists must embrace the unending cycle of defeats and victories that define our careers. It helps me a little bit to also find myself often on the other side of that message; sitting on a selection committee that ultimately decides against awarding an opportunity to another composer. Some decisions are no-brainers. Many, however, are reached achingly and after much discussion. 

This week's thin envelope and letter.

This week, as I am smarting from a couple of rejection letters, I try to remember an incident that happened to me many years ago. I was out of town sitting on a panel that was charged with evaluating compositions for a funding opportunity. There were a great number of applicants and the process took several days to complete. One evening, the panel, along with the facilitator, went out to dinner after a long day of evaluating composition entries. At the dinner, the facilitator of the panel introduced me to one of his colleagues (not on the panel but joining us for dinner) and remarked to this person what a good orchestral composer I was. This immediately raised my eyebrows. Not that I don't think I can write well for orchestra, it was just that I had not talked about or presented my music to this facilitator. I couldn't help but ask him how he was aware of my orchestral work. He responded that he had recently sat on a panel that was evaluating orchestral submissions for a composition contest and revealed to me that my piece was the last one cut before the panel arrived at a prize winner. "Yeah, " he continued, "everyone really loved your work."

At first I wasn't sure how to react. My first cynical thought was, "All right! Out of all the losers...I was the BEST loser!" Yet, I was oddly flattered nevertheless. At least I had been in the game; a real contender. It just hadn't worked out that time. And in the end, that's what keeps me submitting. There are just so many composers vying for so few opportunities that most of the time, you just miss. One can either be constantly hurt, pick up one's toys and run home or rub the sting out and try again.

I guess I'll try again.

How We Make The Sausage

What ProTools thinks my music looks like.

Making music in a studio is a completely different process than performing it live on stage. I suppose the closest analogy is that of movie making as compared to live theatre. Any live performance is a completely linear endeavor. You begin at the beginning and proceed straightway to the end. If any mistakes are made, you simply move on and hope the audience did not notice. Most times they don't. 

It's a completely different matter once you begin to commit any live performance to the recorded audio and/or video medium. Major errors cannot be left to stand. A recorded performance mistake that was once a passing gaff in an otherwise stellar live performance turns into a very noticeable stain. It doesn't matter how impeccable the rest of the beautiful white gown looks if there is a small spot of tomato sauce on the front. That's why, for both performers and the composers whose music they are committing to posterity, a recording session is a much more daunting and exhausting experience than simply playing music live in front of an audience.

Clarinetist Ken Long in the studio recording "Tonoi III."

I've been involved in many recording projects over the years and find myself this weekend in the familiar position of overseeing some recordings of my music. Although I've gone through it many times, I still find it a bizarre experience. By necessity, we are recording sections of my music out of order and then fashioning the sections together to restore the sense of the piece. It's anything  but the linear experience of a live performance. The music begins to lose meaning as we work diligently, for example, to correct one small phrase in a fast moving section of music. Imagine taking a simple straight-forward sentence like "The boys play baseball every Saturday" and focusing on the words "baseball every" over and over again. If you repeat those words a great deal, they lose their meaning first as words (sounding like random syllables) as well as their context. Now imagine having to re-orient yourself and splice the words "baseball every" to the string of words "The boys play." Now imagine repeating this process for hours. It's no wonder we all leave with our heads spinning, making a beeline for the nearest bar!

Aside from the urgency of "getting it right" for the recording, I, like every composer, feel the pressure of making any recording of my music perfect because in all reality - it will be the ONLY studio recording the work will EVER get. The performers understand this as well and are usually extremely dedicated to giving the best performance possible. I'm very fortunate in that I can personally program live performances of my music prior to heading into the studio. Musicians feel somewhat more comfortable in a recording session having already learned a piece well enough to present in a recent public performance. That's why I programmed my earlier neoPhonia concert just prior to these recording sessions and chose to present the very same music in concert that is currently being recorded. 

It's a long, crazy and exhausting journey from composing a piece, rehearsing it, premiering it then, finally, to entering a studio for hours to record it. (Then there's all the post production - but that's another story entirely!) It's a process, however, that I joyfully enter into repeatedly. Once the final product is created, I always forget about the process of making the sausage and just enjoy it!

It's Always Something...

I've been presenting contemporary music concerts now for over 15 years and have been involved in performing in them for a considerably longer time. Over the years, it never ceases to amaze me how much effort it takes to put on a concert - especially a "new music" concert. My first composition teacher, Roger Hannay (1930-2006), who also ran a contemporary music ensemble at the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill, always bemoaned the fact that it took almost Herculean efforts sometimes to produce even a single event. This is true, of course, for any concert, but even more so for the presentation of contemporary music.

Like most new music groups nestled within the academy, my ensemble, neoPhonia, has no set rehearsal time within the School of Music. Students do not receive much credit for enrolling in the ensemble and what little credit they do receive does not count towards core performance requirements in their curriculum. The fact that it is difficult to get students to participate regularly is almost moot as one considers that a significant portion of the contemporary music repertoire is technically too imposing for a lot of students (especially undergraduates). With ad hoc rehearsal times the only resource, a presenter like myself most often turns to faculty performers or outside professional performers to present pieces. I am more blessed than most as I have wonderful colleagues at my school who often perform on my neoPhonia concerts purely as a service to the school and a personal favor to me. Without their generosity, presenting concerts would be impossible. However, I cannot continually ask my friends to perform for free and so must find funding to either pay them in ways that do not interfere with established protocols for payment within a state university (not easy) or pay outside professionals. Given that my annual budget devoted exclusively to contemporary music is, on average, a paltry sum, this is a challenge in and of itself.

With every concert, I dance around repertoire and how it may be performed. Can students do it? Can faculty colleagues help? Do I have funds for outside guests artists? Can I obtain the music easily? Are there other technical issues to be resolved? In the case of electronics - do we have the equipment and staff necessary at any given time to mount a program requiring the use of technology?

Pianist Brandt Fredriksen & clarinetist Ken Long

at the neoPhonia dress rehearsal.

Once all those hurdles are overcome - there's the inevitable unforeseen event that can threaten the entire production. Such was the case this past Tuesday night at the second neoPhonia concert of the season. I had thought this to be a wonderfully easy production. Two outstanding performers from our faculty, clarinetist Ken Long and pianist Brandt Fredriksen had agreed to perform the entire concert and the repertoire was securely covered. For once, I thought there would be no issues. However, four days before the concert, I learned that the lift for the orchestra pit in the recital hall had malfunctioned. The concert would have to proceed with a giant square hole in the stage. This would be fine, of course, for an opera with a orchestra in the pit, but not ideal for a chamber concert. Not only would placing the performers behind the pit compromise the sound a bit in the hall, it also would just look ridiculous.

I would not have blamed the performers for canceling the performance under the circumstances. However, to their great credit (and my considerable relief) they were extremely flexible and gave an incredible performance despite the less than ideal performing conditions.

Basking in the afterglow of the successful concert, it's hard to imagine my next event. However, I produce four of these each season and the next one looms just 89 days away. Everything looks fine for this upcoming event - performers and repertoire are secured...

What could possibly go wrong...?

A Necessary Hubris

I've never read the very first entry of a blog before so I'm not quite sure how to begin. I suppose it might be useful (at least for me) to describe what I'd like to accomplish with this space. Then again, maybe I should just launch directly into a topic and pretend that this has been an ongoing endeavor. In some ways, the latter is more honest; less contrived.

Although I haven't been formally chronicling my thoughts and experiences for public consumption up to this point in my career, I have, nevertheless, been sharing them with anyone within earshot for years. My students are easy targets because, as captive audiences, there is little escape during class or composition lessons. But lately, as I have somehow moved out of that "emerging" stage of my career as a composer into "mid-career" status, I have felt the need to begin jotting down my ideas for a wider audience. I suppose I got the bug to start my own blog after a series of articles written for the American Music Center's NewMusicBox this past summer. For the AMC webzine, I had a very particular subject to cover. It's not as clear with this personal blog. Who am I and what can I possibly add to the chatter here in cyberspace?

Like most creative artists, it's a sometimes (okay, mostly) chaotic life I lead. I'm foremost a composer. However, I make my primary living within the confines of higher education as a music professor. I have run a new music ensemble for over 15 years, serving as artistic director and when necessity dictates, also serving as a conductor. I try to also perform as a clarinetist as much as possible. Not serious contemporary "art music," mind you, but mostly Greek folk music. (I'm the guy in the band performing at a Greek Festival as patrons, oblivious to the music and enjoying meat on a stick, casually walk by.) I am a third generation Greek-American raised in Atlanta and equally steeped in the cultures of Greece and the American deep south. On top of all the craziness found in dual careers in the arts and higher education, I have a big fat Greek life complete with lots of relatives, food and drama. I love to cook big messy complicated meals for as many guests my wife will allow me to invite over to our home. I'm a father, a son, a husband, a brother, a teacher, a student, a cook, a performer and a sinner trying to do better day by day.

And all of this - plus more - gets poured into my compositions.

So this will be a big fat Greek messy blog mostly about composing. It's another composer creating another blog that no one asked for. Hubris on my part? Absolutely. But for one composer amid a perpetually growing throng - a necessary hubris.