Archive for November, 2012

White Heat

Friday, November 30th, 2012

For years, I’ve been telling students that they need to be composing daily, and I still believe it, but the reality of my approach to composition over the last couple of years has been something different.  I’ve become the person who doesn’t compose for weeks, then sits down and pounds out the draft of something in a few hours, tweaks it over the next few days and calls it finished.

This is not intentional, but for the last few pieces, it seems to have been working–from my Piano Sonata (composed in late 2010) forward, this has been my modus operandi, and it’s produced several strong pieces.  It’s as if in some sense I’ve paid my dues, and now the skills are just there, ready when I need them.  To try to use them every day might prove counterproductive–the result might be a dilution of the available resources (I’ve always thought of Saint-Saens in this way–he wrote so much music that the really good ideas were spread too thinly for him to be a “great” composer, and he became a merely facile one with a couple of memorable works and a lot of forgotten ones).

This new approach isn’t by choice–having a child under three and a wife who likes to see her husband regularly just isn’t conducive to consistently doing creative work once you throw in the full-time teaching position.  But it seems to be working.

I have no desire to continue this way, and I have no illusions that I’ll be able to maintain my “hot hand” indefinitely, but it’s interesting.  At some point, I’ll want to get into a better routine, but it’s thrilling right now to carry around ideas for a project in my head for a few weeks, and then pour them out into a new piece.

Chapter 51: Zek

Wednesday, November 21st, 2012

How in the world have fifteen years gone by?  The world has changed since November 1997, my friends.  I don’t even know how to begin to explain this, but it’s the day before Thanksgiving, and Matt Specter hasn’t posted this yet,  so here it is, with his attempt at an explanation (to which I would add that some things can’t ever be fully explained):

To some of you, welcome! To some of you, welcome back. Like it or not, everyone on this list has deemed themselves worthy of the strangest Thanksgiving tradition ever. From old friends, to former students, to current colleagues and graduate school mates, you are all about to experience the wonder that is Chapter 51.

Please allow me to explain for those who are totally lost.

Many years ago, I was but a mere undergraduate student in Music Education at CCM. While there, I and my closest friends began what can only be described as a serial story, told by email, detailing our many adventures together. A work of fiction which spanned several years, it chronicled our struggles to, among other things:

* Rid CCM of the demons which had overrun it.
* Close the portal to Hell which was a part of CCM
* Escape from Hell
* Travel to alternate universes
* Travel in time
* Destroy and save several universes along the way
* Continue to attend class and get our degrees.

This story (which simply became known as “The story”) grew into a life of its own, lived through three incarnations, and became a personal legend for all of us, as we used our writing abilities to vicariously live through our other selves, releasing some of the frustration we felt with our lives at the time.

Alas, The Story has ended, but every Thanksgiving, I send the most famous of all episodes, Chapter 51, to all I deem worthy. Most likely, you will end up shaking your head in confusion or disgust. If you find it funny, God help you. You understand my bizarre mind.

The background: In Chapter 51, my friends and I have been travelling from universe to universe, each universe being based on some TV show or movie from our own universe (how this is possible is explained in great detail in previous chapters – if you want to know more, ask me about the photon leak). We are trying desperately to get home, and have landed at last in the “Star Wars” universe. Naturally, we seek guidance from the great Jedi Master, Yoda.

Enjoy the chapter. And believe it or not, this is really my way of sincerely wishing everyone a truly happy Thanksgiving.

Author’s note – Due to recent years’ increase in the number of people who don’t ‘get it’ – I have done the unthinkable. I have made a slight edit to the text. Purists forgive me. Anyone who can spot the difference will win a free copy of the Specter Family 2009 Road Trip DVDs – all 5 discs.

Chapter 51 – Zek
_____________

“Mmm, come, come. With a Jedi it is time to eat as well,” said Yoda.

Yoda had laid out quite a spread. We didn’t know what anything was, but
there sure was an awful lot of it.

“Eat, eat. Mmmm, good food, yes? M-hm-hm-hm-hm-hm-hm. Ohhh.”

We sat down around the tiny table, careful not to bang our heads on the
low ceiling.

“Mmmm…Came you very far, yes? Hungry you must be! Eat, eat.”

We looked at each other hesitatingly. Quite frankly, the stuff looked
and smelled gross. Finally, Saunders decided we had better not make an
incident, and started scooping himself some glop.

“Why all the food?” asked Saunders conversationally, as the rest of us
followed his lead and helped ourselves.

“Is it not holiday in universe from where you came?”

I almost dropped by plate of swamp algae. I wasn’t shocked that Yoda
knew where we were from, but Yoda’s use of the word ‘Holiday’…

I looked at my watch, which still continued to function as if I were
walking around earth. The date said 11/26.

“You made us Thanksgiving dinner?” I asked Yoda.

“Yes! Yes…good food we have, talk we will. Work I not on holidays,
whatever universe may they be in. Come, eat, eat.”

I paused for a moment, then said genuinely and sincerely, “Thank you.”
The others turned to look at me, shocked by my sudden mood swing.
Slowly they seemed to realize that this really was our Thanksgiving
dinner, and that we should be truly thankful for it. Yoda had gone to
great trouble to make us feel welcome. I smiled, and took a bite of my
food.

It was nasty. I chewed slowly, fighting the urge to spit it back out.
Everyone around me was having a similar reaction, except for Yoda, who
ate with wild abandon, constantly commenting on the quality of the food.

Suddenly, he stopped, and looked up in shock.

“Ohhh…” he said, “Forgot I the most important thing!”

We all watched with intent curiosity as he picked up an empty bowl, got
up from the table, went over to the corner of the room, and opened a
large door, revealing a small horse-like creature. Yoda placed the bowl
on the ground in front of the horse-thing, then calmy went to its side
and punched it in the gut. The horse responded by vomiting into the
bowl. We stared in a mixture of horror, confusion, and nausea, as Yoda
brought the bowl back to the table, and began to spoon it over his food
like gravy. Suzanne had her hand over her mouth, and Loren looked
green.

Yoda finished scooping, and offered the bowl to us, speaking with a quiet intensity.

“Use the horse puke,” he said, “Use the horse puke!”

__________________________

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!

Matt

P.S. If you don’t get it, say it out loud.

And there it is.  You are now one of the select few.  Try not to let it go to your head.

Building Community

Saturday, November 10th, 2012

On Saturday, November 17, I’ll be in Dayton, Ohio for the world premiere of Daytime Drama, a concertpiece for clarinet and band.  Magie Smith, a classmate from Ohio State, will be the soloist and she’ll be accompanied by Ken Kohlenberg leading the Sinclair Community College Wind Symphony.  The next day, I’ll make my debut as the music director with the Lakeland Civic Orchestra, one of our five community-based ensembles at Lakeland Community College.  Looking back on my career as a musician, this is not at all unusual.

The list of community groups I’ve been a part of over the years is long–I’ve spent much more time being a non-paid member of a community musical ensemble or paid director of one than I have getting paid for gigs or performing with professional groups.  The list of groups is long–the Middle Georgia Concert Band, Tara Winds, the Sinclair Community College Wind Symphony, the Ohio Valley British Brass Band, the Community Concert Band, Community Orchestra and Community Jazz Ensemble at Lorain County Community College, the Oberlin Choral Spectrum, the Oklahoma Panhandle State University Concert Band and Concert Choir, and now the Lakeland Civic Orchestra.

What makes next Saturday’s premiere so exciting, though, is that I credit the Sinclair Wind Symphony with saving my life in some respects.

In September 1999, I was starting a new teaching job in Springfield, Ohio.  I had gone through a divorce over the summer that came as a complete surprise to me, and had decided to move back to Ohio after what had been a very difficult year teaching in an inner-city school in Georgia.  Getting a late start, I was glad to have nailed down a full-time job teaching choir, as it meant that I wouldn’t be living with my parents, but it was not the direction I thought my career would take.  I was lonely, despite being close to my parents, and the weeks seemed simply endless.  One of the ironies about teaching is that you are surrounded by people all day, and none of them can really be your friends.  Trying to become friends with students is almost always a mistake, and I’ve always found it difficult to befriend my colleagues; at this particular job, I traveled between two schools and didn’t share a common lunch hour with the rest of the faculty, which made the situation even worse.

One day, a representative from a fund-raising company came to visit.  Don Rader was a former band director, as so many of these reps are, and we got to talking about music.  He mentioned that he played in a group in Dayton, about a half-hour drive from where I was living, and that I should look into joining.  Desperate to get out of my apartment, I called the director, Ken Kohlenberg.  Dr. Kohlenberg explained that they didn’t need trombone players, so I quickly volunteered myself for euphonium, and he invited me to come on in, and I joined the Sinclair Wind Symphony that fall.

There was something fortuitous about this–I’m not a particularly good euphonium player, and I have a strange bell-front instrument that doesn’t always blend well.  Furthermore, the band already had two euphonium players and probably didn’t really need a third.  Somehow, I ended up in the back row of the band, as though Ken realized that I needed to be there.

And that fall, I needed to be there.  More importantly, I needed someplace to be where I wouldn’t hang out with my cat and feel sorry for myself at least one night a week.  That fall, there were days that I just wanted to quit my job, get out of music completely and find something that would let me wallow more than getting in front of thirty seventh-graders seemed to allow.  I thought there might be something where young, eager minds weren’t depending on me to somehow pull it together.  There were weeks when the only thing I had to look forward to was the Wednesday night rehearsal, and it wasn’t even about making through the week until Friday–it was about getting to 3:30 on Wednesday, when I would take myself to a fast-food dinner and drive over to Dayton.  In the band, I was a musician, not a divorced guy on his second teaching job in as many years–I was doing what had got me into music in a serious way in the first place, namely, playing in a band.

I spent three years in the Sinclair band, until a new job took me away, and I didn’t do a particularly good job keeping in touch, as with many other parts of my life in those years.  I know that some members of the group have probably moved on–at least one, Joanie Apfel, who mentored me as a teacher, has died, a loss for the profession and for the world.  Next Saturday, when I get to rehearsal, I hope to see some familiar faces, and I hope to take a moment to express to everyone what that group has meant to me–if not, there will at least be this blog post.

I hope my story makes the point of why we need community music-making.  In a society in which we are increasingly distant from our “friends,” neighbors and even our families, community music groups offer the chance to be together, enjoying something we are passionate about.  They keep us young, and they keep us happy.  They keep us from disappearing into our iPads or Androids or whatever other technology vies for our attention.  They keep us human.