Archive for January, 2017

A View of Twenty Views, part 1

Friday, January 27th, 2017

In February, I will be travelling to Atlanta, where I will give the premiere performance of the complete Twenty Views of the Trombone at Eyedrum Art and Music Gallery, at the invitation of Olivia Kieffer.  This is the first in a series of posts about that piece and how it has come to be what it is.

The premiere performance will be Friday, February 17 at 8pm at Eyedrum.  Admission is $7 at the door.

I will be tweeting using the handle @MattSComposer before, during, and after this process.  Join the conversation with #twentyviews–the final post in this series will be a Q&A, so send me your questions about the piece, or composing, or life in general, and I’ll do my best to answer them.


 

In 2009, I was teaching at Oklahoma Panhandle State University.  David Morneau invited me to come to New York City as a composer, with a piece he remembered from our days together as graduate students called Let Everything that Has Breath Praise the Lord.  A short piece for trombone and electronics, I could play it myself on a Vox Novus Composer’s Voice concert that he was curating.  David asked if there was anything else we could program, and told him there wasn’t, since I didn’t have any other connections in New York, and no money to pay them, anyway.  He suggested that I write and learn a second short piece, for unaccompanied trombone, and I remembered the first assignment I like to give to new composers:  write a one-minute piece for your instrument that describes what it’s like to play your instrument.

The result was What It’s Like.  I played it on a faculty recital in Oklahoma before I left, and then in New York City in March 2009 at Jan Hus Church, alongside pieces by David Morneau, Jeremy Ribando, and Milica Paranosic.  That trip was many firsts–my first time bringing my trombone on an airplane; my first time missing a connection and getting stuck in Denver (on the way home, luckily); my first time visiting Queens, where David played the host with his gracious wife Jolayne; the first performance of my music in New York City, or anywhere on the East Coast; and the birth of what would become an eight-year composition project, Twenty Views of the Trombone.

I quickly discovered that having music of one’s own to play alone is a useful thing.  What It’s Like expanded from one piece to four for an Oklahoma Composers Association Salon Concert in 2010, and to six pieces for the Aspen Composers Conference in 2011.  I’m not sure at what point I began to think of an eventual large-scale work–twenty pieces, in homage to Messiaen’s Vingt Regards sur l’enfant-Jesus–but by the time I left Oklahoma in 2012, I’m certain that was the plan.

In Cleveland, more new pieces followed–for a John Cage Musicircus organized by Chris Auerbach-Brown at MOCA Cleveland, for the first performance of my work on a concert of the Cleveland Composers Guild, and for the 2015 Manchester New Music Festival in Indiana.  By that point, there were ten pieces, with ideas for a couple more. I didn’t know how I would wrap things up, but the plan was to always begin with What It’s Like, always end with What It’s Really Like, and include at least one new piece in the bunch every time I played the piece until there were twenty of them.

Meanwhile, I was playing trombone less and less–I wasn’t teaching lessons, or actively seeking gigs.  I don’t think there has been a time in my life since I started playing in 1986 that I was spending less time with the instrument, and that concerned me.  Two decades of developing my skills, of pushing my own limitations on this instrument would be lost, withering on the vine.

It reminded me of how, once upon a time, I knew Spanish fairly well.  Fluent might be an overstatement, but I think after five years of study in middle school and high school, I was relatively comfortable with it.  When I arrived at college, I had the chance to study the language further.  I had taken the AP exam in Spanish, but the modern language department wouldn’t grant credit for it–only placement by taking a computer-based test.  I took the test to see what might come of it, but chose not to enroll in the class.  There were other things to pursue, despite how useful fluency in a foreign language might be, and while I retain some limited ability with the language, I would say I’ve forgotten most of it.  Losing my skills as a trombonist would be much worse, a far greater loss.  I have difficulty imagining becoming an ex-trombonist.

I have friends in this situation, of course.  Not every college music student continues to pursue music seriously.  The horn player who develops focal dystonia and changes directions.  The violist who becomes a realtor, or the clarinetist who ends up in law school.  The many of my female classmates who simply seem to have gotten married and become mothers, leaving little time for music.  The music education major who ends up an administrator.  This is not what I want for myself, and in an important way, Twenty Views of the Trombone has been a reason to forestall it.

Continuing to play the trombone gives me a connection to some of what brought me to music in the first place.  It helps me meet people who can relate to playing an instrument much more than they can relate to composition.  And it gives me a certain credibility when I place my music before other musicians.  It keeps me grounded and realistic in my expectations as a composer–my flawed, often rusty technique reminds me that most of the musicians I will work with possess the same.  My music is performed mostly by amateurs, students, and teachers, most of whom face the same challenges that I do when it comes to building or maintaining their skills.

In my fortieth year, then, 2016, I heard about Eyedrum.  One of my Atlanta connections posted Olivia Kieffer’s call for composers to present their music at this club/gallery/venue in a city I hadn’t visited in a very long time.  I contacted Olivia, and told her my proposed work, and shared the recordings I had of existing movements.  A forty-minute work for unaccompanied trombone is daunting on many levels, but it’s the kind of thing that works well at Eyedrum, apparently, and I was booked.  The plane ticket purchased, arrangements made.  I had only to write the remaining pieces, and, as always when I have a goal and a deadline, the music came quickly.


 

This is the first of a short series of posts about Twenty Views of the Trombone.  The next posts will discuss the individual pieces and serve as a program note.

Play Day

Thursday, January 5th, 2017

Noah is just past six-and-a-half years old now.  Before his sister Melia, who just turned three, came along, I was often Noah’s primary playmate, the one who would get down on the floor with him and play with toys.  I’ve been doing less of that, and at home his play is often circumscribed by this other, newer, smaller creature.  Melia only seems to know how to make messes, and she can’t yet play with the sophistication that her brother, with a head start of almost four years, can bring to the table

But for the first part of this week, Melia visited Becky’s mom, and for about twenty-four hours, Noah had us to himself again, and it was like old times.  It was a snapshot of what things would be like without a second child, and Noah and I both had a good day.  Tuesday, January 3, 2017.

It was a dark, rainy day, all day.  I woke Noah up at about 7:30.  He was sleepy, although I had just had a good work session, so I was not.  He initially didn’t want to wake up, so I hopped on his bed and cuddled with him for a moment.  He asked me to carry him into the kitchen for breakfast, so I did.  There will only be so many more days that can start like that, I thought.  Chocolate Pop-Tarts for Noah, and generic Cheerios for me, with orange juice for both of us.  A much quieter breakfast than when his sister is here.  Noah can be a loud kid, but appreciates quiet, too.

Noah had bathed the night before, so it was left only to get dressed, and brush teeth and hair, before heading upstairs for a piano practice session.  He is most of the way through the primer book after about four months of piano lessons, and he wants to do well, but he isn’t ready to practice on his own.  Too many distractions, perhaps.  A shower for me, and then we were off to his piano lesson–a mid-morning make-up lesson made possible by Tuesday being the last day of his Christmas break.  Usually, the studios at the Fine Arts Association are filled with the sound of many students having lessons at once, but on Tuesday morning, Noah was the only student, and for a change, I was essentially able to listen to his lesson in detail through the door.  He and his teacher, Rita Cyvas-Klioris, have a good rapport, and she has adapted well to his impulsive personality.

Then to the library to return the books that were due and select new ones.  Home for lunch.  After lunch, Noah wanted to play Legos, and I spent my afternoon with him in the basement building vehicles and acting out scenes with his minifigures.  He is interested in A Christmas Carol, and he named the figures Scrooge, Marley, and Cratchit, although once we had rehearsed Dickens’ story, there were myriad other adventures.  We took a break for a few hands of Uno, and then went back to Legos until dinner time.  Then Noah, Becky, and I went to Cracker Barrel.

We returned home and reinstituted Noah’s bedtime routine–earlier than it had evolved to be over the holiday break, and everything simplified by Melia’s absence.  Life would be simpler, I thought, with only one child, but once Melia is older and more reasonable, all of our lives will be enriched, I think.  I need to find way to play with Melia the way I did with Noah; I just haven’t seen her as much as I did Noah in his first three years.

But Tuesday, that was a good day, and there aren’t so many of those.