Moving Wood

January 29th, 2013

When I was in high school, my father took up a new hobby:  woodcarving.  He was inspired to do so by the work of Spirit Williams, a woodcarver and artist who lived in Columbus, and whose work is, frankly, wonderful, at least in my memory.  One of her more fantastic pieces, Kenya Bush,  used to hang in the administration building at the Columbus Zoo, in a public area, and I remember it as a mural of African animals, in high relief.  I also remember seeing a work in progress, an in-the-round depiction of the Last Supper.

I was surrounded by creative people as a young person, and but my connection with Spirit was mostly secondhand–my father eventually took regular classes with her, but I spent time talking to him about his work, as I was fascinated with the way he learned to take a plain piece of basswood and use simple hand tools and his eyes (and Spirit’s eyes as well) to shape deeply realistic relief carvings.  Through my father, I learned three lessons Spirit that have served me well as a composer (and so the implied fourth lesson, that all artists can learn from other artists, no matter what the medium).

The first:  treat your materials with respect.  In Spirit’s studio, this meant that you could have a glass of water at the workbench, but it had to be a double-walled plastic cup, to avoid condensation that could drip onto the work.  In my work, this means writing always with the eventual human performer in mind.

The second:  don’t buy a new tool until you’ve done everything you can do with the tools you already have.  In woodcarving, this means don’t spend sums of money on specialized knives and gouges that promise to get you out of a jam when, with patience and ingenuity, the tools you already know how to use will serve you better.  Tools are not the answer: creativity and patience are.  In composition, this means having a “toolkit” of techniques, devices, and methods at the ready, and knowing when and how to apply each one.  To my music, it means not going for the flashy, novel, or merely schematic ideas when something more meaningful might be created through means that are more conservative, and, usually, more accessible, and–I’m out on a limb here–likely more durable in the end.  I learned this from the experience of a woman who began carving with a kitchen knife on a shelf pilfered from the closet in her bedroom–she discovered that she was able to make art with these sparse tools and materials, and in the end, it is the art that matters, not the medium or the technology that manipulates it.

The third:  sometimes you are being creative, and sometimes you are just “moving wood.”  Relief carving begins with a flat surface, and the excess material must be moved away.  It takes attention and technique at every phase, but clearing the field around the carving proper is one of the “chores” of the process–crucial, yet not as explicitly creative.  In composition, this is the endgame of my process, particularly when I’m composing for band or orchestra and switching from a short score to a full score.  In some ways, it’s the least frustrating part–predictable, full of skill as much as art, even somewhat capable of being automated by my notation software (ahh… the time saved over manuscript by the computer; in manuscript, it would be drudgery, but in the digital workspace, it is a romp).  The beauty of the “moving wood” phase of the work is that it can be done hodge-podge and higgeldy-piggledy–sessions of a half-hour can be productive, unlike the earlier parts of the process, which require either weeks of carrying ideas around in the mind, or uninterrupted hours in which to pound out the first drafts.  I currently have two projects in the “moving wood” phase, and being able to see the light at the end of the tunnel on both is encouraging, and gives me a sense that my time is being well-spent.

So, those are three things I learned from my dad’s woodcarving teacher, Spirit Williams, without ever picking up a knife.  Hopefully, they will serve others just as well.

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Regaining my Sense of Snow

January 26th, 2013

In the five years that we lived in the Oklahoma Panhandle, it only snowed two or three times, and the sheer novelty of seeing snow made me not look at it too carefully. Yesterday I went out to my car in the faculty lot at Lakeland, though, and found it covered with about another inch of snow (yes… one of the joys of living in Northeast Ohio is cleaning snow off of your car multiple times in a day). As I was brushing, I noticed that the snow was extra fluffy–if I were a skier, I would probably have loved it. Looking closer, the flakes were very large, and mostly planar, like little pieces of plastic that almost looked fake… up close they were shiny and had the six-pointed structure we associate with snow flakes, writ large so that I could examine it easily. I realized that in the six or eight times that it’s snowed this season, the flakes have been different every time. I knew this–the eskimos famously are supposed to have 30 different words for snow in their language–but the reminder was fantastic. Winter can get to be grind, but we have to remember to stop and notice the beauty of Creation whenever we can.

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Film Scoring, Self-Taught

January 21st, 2013

It’s important to try new things, and I was inspired by BJ Brooks’ presentation of his silent film scores at the SCI Region VI Conference back in October.  Now that I’m conducting the Lakeland Civic Orchestra, and I can pick our repertoire, I have the chance to try my own hand at such a thing.  The orchestra at West Texas A&M, where BJ works, has been presenting silent movies with BJ’s scores every other year for the last few years, and they’ve been doing feature-length films, which is an exciting proposition.  I decided for Lakeland’s first effort to choose a shorter film (more on the difficulties of that later), but even at 13 minutes, this will be the longest single movement I’ve written for orchestra.  The film is Georges Melies’ Le Voyage Dans la Lune, from 1902, a somewhat groundbreaking piece from a groundbreaking era in cinema.

If you watch the film, you can see that Melies is operating in an era when the technology of film was brand new.  Many of the things that we take for granted about cinematography aren’t present–the movie is shot as though the action were happening on a stage, and the camera were an audience member, with no close-ups, no pans, no framing shots… some of the things that make film what we think of it today.  What is present, though, is the magic of cinema, which is not surprising, since Melies started out as an illusionist of note before switching to film.  Particularly fascinating are his special effects, which are somewhat crude, but surprisingly effective.

Composing to this has been interesting–I’ve completed the piece in short score, and will be orchestrating over the next couple of weeks.  I’m not the first to score the film–there is a score by George Antheil, and at least one uploaded to archive.org.  I made the decision early on to stick to sounds that could have been a part of the musical sound of 1902, so my score has references to Debussy, Elgar and Strauss, although not specifically.  The tricky part has been making things fit–identifying the places where the music needs to change, and making the notes change at the same time.  This is my first film score, unless you count my entry a few years back for the TCM Young Composers Competition.  Since then, Sibelius has added the ability to sync a score with a video, which has been invaluable–both in finding “hit points” and in seeing how my ideas fit the action on screen.

The style that’s coming out is different from how I usually write, which is somewhat intentional.  I’ve ended up with more repetition, and a great deal more of a “tonal” style than I’ve customarily used; in some ways, this is some of the most predictable music I’ve written.  Part of this is a decision to use the sounds typical of 1902, and part of this is knowing that I’m dealing with an orchestra and audience who aren’t expecting dissonant, angular music that might have been my first choice.

The sense of time in the music is intriguing as well.  Watching the movie with no sound, alone, as I have several times, is somewhat difficult.  A few weeks back, some of the orchestra members and I watched it together, again with no sound, and the experience was more rewarding.  But–now that I have a draft score to add to the film (which I now know very well, of course), the story seems to come to life–it will be incredible to see and hear it with live instruments!  The dimension that the music adds to the film is even more important than the “dimension” that 3-D aims to add.  Thirteen minutes that seemed to positively crawl by in silence are enlivened by the music in a way that explains why, as Richard Taruskin writes, “the movies were never silent.”

The other challenge has been dealing with the inherent flaws in Melies’ narrative–events are repeated (the moon landing, the celebration at the end), and the pre-launch events dominate the structure in a way that is somewhat unfortunate.  Melies was dealing with this brand-new idea–telling a story in moving images–so it’s not surprising that his early work moves somewhat creakily, but making my music work with this narrative has been tricky in the sense that some things go longer than I would like them to, while others peter out just as they are getting going in the score, but there are no more images for them.  Melies was really making science-fiction, which, for a fan of Star Trek and Star Wars, is exciting–he made this movie at the same time that Jules Verne and H.G. Wells were inventing the literary genre.

The premiere is in April, and rehearsals start in five weeks, giving me time to finish the scoring and get the parts to the concertmaster, if I work hard.  Look for more as it progresses.

I’ve also spent some time over the last few days helping Daniel Perttu with his new trombone sonata, which has been interesting.  It’s been interesting to consider someone else’s ideas about my own instrument (it’s almost been an education in Dan’s instrument, the bassoon, because I feel like much of what he’s written for the trombone would work better on bassoon). It leads me to wonder about how I know what I know about “how” to write for an instrument, and how best to communicate that.  Certainly part of my training as a music education major has been useful here–the chance to take “methods” classes and get to play every instrument, even if only a few notes, makes writing for that instrument a different experience.  This is why I required two instrumental methods classes when I wrote the composition degree plan at OPSU, and I would push for the same thing again if I had the chance (now that I’m at a two-year school, I don’t think it makes much sense to be thinking about an Associate of Arts in Music Composition).  I recall an incident in Jean Sibelius’ biography where he spent an afternoon with an excellent English horn player–I don’t recall whether that correlated with his composition of The Swan of Tuonela.  It’s too bad that he didn’t write any film music.

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A Challenge for my Cohort

January 1st, 2013

2013 is my 36th New Year (and I’ve got lots of good friends for whom it is number 37).  For those of us born in 1976 in the United States, there were (at one time) about 3.1 million of us–not a particularly high number given the booms before and since (there were about a million more in my son’s birth year, 2010).  This doesn’t take into account those of us who were prevented from entering the world by contraception or abortion, but that’s only a statement–this isn’t a political blog.  There will never be any more of us, and I’m sure an actuary could give us an idea of how many are left.  That makes this post important, and I’m speaking to my cohort, specifically, but to all of us (humans, that is).

I know people my age who are dead before their time.  I know people who have essentially been lost to addiction, to abuse, to every other form of death-in-life that our species has devised for itself.  We mourn those who are gone, and of course, we help those who can be helped.

More important, though, halfway through our short lives, is that we pick up the slack they have left for us and continue to make our contributions to the Human Project.  Every one of us has some unique thing that only we can do–raising our children, improving our communities, making art, understanding our world–and we must all press on an do it.  Do it for those who have gone before, and for those who will follow.

Write that book, start that movement, talk to a lonely person, worship as you will, study that phenomenon.  Your species needs it.  You don’t have to have an advanced degree, or a huge pile of money, or enormous political power.  Whatever it is that you are passionate about, whatever you “geek out” over, this is your thing.

My fellow Bicentennial Babies (and those close by):  our time is probably ahead, not behind.  Our generation isn’t known for its amazing positive contributions, and we have often been in the shadow of our parents and grandparents, but leadership now falls to us as more and more of them pass on.  Be a part of the Human Project.  Make your impact, and if your life is too messed up to make an impact, then now is the time to get things in order.

This is not a New Years Resolution as much as it is a challenge to make the most of what we’ve been granted in this life and to make our mark on the legacy our species will leave behind.  Only you can do what only you can do.

Happy New Year!

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White Heat

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.

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Chapter 51: Zek

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.

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Building Community

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.

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Lunchtime Thoughts

October 31st, 2012

Looking back, I’ve been neglecting this blog–posting every six weeks isn’t really going to do it. So–my Halloween resolution is now and then to go on at lunchtime and put up about ten minutes worth of thoughts. Here goes:
I’ve been spending some time getting together a group of composition projects for the next year or so, and it’s looking good. First, there will be a piece for flute choir in honor of Donald McGinnis’ 95th birthday, commissioned by Katherine Borst Jones at Ohio State for her Flute Troupe there. Dr. McGinnis was Kathy’s teacher and the subject of my doctoral research–he was the band director at Ohio State for over thirty years (from the 40s to the 70s), and was also a composer and flutist, so it’s a very interesting commission from a personal point of view. I’ve started a couple of different openings, but I haven’t found the one that really makes me want to keep writing–when I do, the piece will come, so I’m giving it another shot this weekend.

After that will be a first for me–a film score. At the Region VI Society of Composers conference earlier this month, the WTAMU Symphony Orchestra performed excerpts of the silent film scores that BJ Brooks has created for them over the last few years. Now that I’m conducting the Lakeland Civic Orchestra, I’ve decided to try the same thing with them in April, and I’m pretty sure I’m going to use Georges Melies’ 1902 Le Voyage Dans La Lune, which I will score and we will then project during our performance.

Next, a collaborative project–Antoine Clark, a clarinetist who was at Ohio State at the same time I was, approached me about scoring a new work of his for clarinet and band.  Antoine’s work is a Fantasy on Themes from the Barber of Seville for clarinet and piano, and would make an excellent solo vehicle in the tradition of pieces for cornet by Clarke and Arban, and I’m very excited about working on this.  Look for performances in the Columbus area next fall.

Finally–and I find this incredibly exciting, I will be writing a piano concerto for pianist Avguste Antonov, who is based in Grapevine, Texas and has performed my Starry Wanderers and my Piano Sonata.  Avguste performs as a concerto soloist regularly, and the piece won’t be ready until the 2014-2015 season, but I’m thrilled to be writing for this medium.  If you need a preview, Avguste is playing excerpts from Starry Wanderers tonight in Youngstown!

Those are the new projects–there are plenty of performances of old pieces on the horizon as well:  In two weeks, Magie Smith will be the clarinet soloist with the Sinclair Community College Wind Symphony and Kenneth Kohlenberg in the premiere of my concerto Daytime Drama–a piece that has been waiting longer than it was supposed to wait, but that is in good hands with a group I used to play in.  November 17 in Dayton, Ohio.  Two weeks late, I’ll be conducting my Variations on a French Carol with the Lakeland Civic Band, on December 2 here in Kirtland.  Then after the new year, performances of my Suite for String Orchestra will get rolling, beginning with Maura Brown and that Batavia High School strings at the Illinois Music Educators Association convention on Friday, January 25 in Peoria–at 9:30am, but it’s my first MEA convention performance, so I’m excited.  Performances will follow thereafter in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kansas and Florida!

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Begin the Ohio Period

September 10th, 2012

I’m not a huge fan of the music of Arnold Schoenberg, unlike a certain friend of mine who claims to listen to Pierrot Lunaire to relax.  Don’t get me wrong–it’s great music, just not for every day.

What I love about Schoenberg is that his music kept changing throughout his career, with the biggest change of all being the one that happened with his move to America in 1933.  At this moment, Schoenberg backed away from the “pure” 12-tone works of the ’20s and early ’30s and started to compose in a more eclectic, less dogmatic way.  These late works aren’t his best-known, but some of them are wonderful–the Theme and Variations, Op. 43, for example.  It was as though after moving away from Vienna, ending up in Los Angeles, Schoenberg could no longer be everything he had been and had to be what he would be next.

This summer, I finished the last piece of my “Oklahoma” period–my Suite for String Orchestra, which will have multiple performances over the next nine months.  Reflecting, I’ve written some good music over the last five years–several pieces that I am really proud of and that have gotten some favorable attention: Starry Wanderers, South Africa, Ode, and Moriarty’s Necktie have all had performances in multiple states and get me to thinking that I just might be a good composer when I think about them.  My Piano Sonata is also slated for second and third performances this fall, and my concerto for clarinet and band Daytime Drama is slated for a premiere in November.  It’s been a good five years.

The Oklahoma pieces are, by-and-large, practically conceived–shortly after arriving in Oklahoma, I decided that I wouldn’t write anything without a commission or at least a promise of a performance.  I’m starting to feel able to make more out of less–creating a piece using developmental techniques rather than stringing together sections of music based on different material–Moriarty’s Necktie feels like a leap forward in that respect.  My study of Beethoven’s piano sonatas and Mahler’s symphonies a few years ago helped me see this–as a theory teacher, I am often inspired by my teaching, but we don’t always spend a great deal of time on large-scale works.  I’ve become less of a vocal composer than I used to think I was–and I’m coming to terms with that, in a way.  I don’t think I’ll ever be a songsmith of the likes of Ned Rorem or Roger Quilter, but again, if the right levels of interest come along, that’s fine.  Except for a little bit of fiddling with Pure Data, I haven’t done any electronic music since leaving Ohio State in 2007, and I have to say that I don’t miss it.

In Oklahoma, my music became more focused, more diatonic, more image-driven.  I saw things and places that were inspiring, and I became a father.  There was longing, and there was hardship–as though, like Schoenberg, I was an exile, but like Schoenberg, who played tennis with Gershwin and ran into Stravinsky at the market, there were times of living, as well.

So, what will the Ohio period bring?  I hope to have time now to focus on the post-compositional phases of each piece–publication, promotion, building the brand, as it were.  For me, this is not the fun part.  I spent last weekend composing a new work for clarinet and percussion for Jenny Laubenthal in a white heat, and it was a great time.  I had been thinking about the piece for a month, and it was pure joy to see it come together.  I want to make a sincere effort to get behind my works and send it out to the world more often.  Moriarty’s Necktie is headed to a conference and two awards juries–big awards, the Ostwald and Beeler Prizes, that would put me on the map in a very significant way.  There need to be more subsequent performances, more publications.  I want to be less distracted by other projects.  It was great to write a book in 2010-2011, but it was enormously consuming.  I’m glad to be able to say that I did it, but if I do it again, I need a better reason than “It will look good on my CV.”

I’ve been exploring quintuplous meter, and I’m not sure where it’s going to go, or what the potential for it really is.  But, just as a composer can’t write everything in 6/8, not every piece will be in quintuplous meter.  So far it has been sections of pieces, or short pieces within larger groupings.  What would it mean to have an entire symphonic movement in quintuplous meter?

I’ve taken on the orchestra position here at Lakeland, and I one day hope to write for orchestra again.  Mahler became a great orchestral composer by being a great orchestral conductor.  I have the benefit of being able to learn from Mahler’s scores and recordings, of course, but it’s good to be back in an environment where I will see those instruments on a regular basis!  Will there be orchestra music?  This has always been a question for me.  I have a love-hate relationship with the wind ensemble–bands commission and play my music, but they aren’t orchestras.  There is possibly a piano concerto in my future… would it be too much to hope for a symphony?

It will be interesting to read this post again in five years, to see what has actually happened in this part of my life–until then, Keep Fighting Mediocrity!

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Panhandle, I wish you good luck and Godspeed!

July 7th, 2012

We’re gone in a week, and I want to make sure that I get to this.

When I was in fifth grade, I went to Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama.  The place was very much a work in progress at that moment, and was enjoying a surge in popularity brought on by the movie of the same name.  They were building cool, futuristic-looking dorms that looked like something an astronaut would sleep in, but when I was there, all the boys were in a barracks-style dorm underneath the main building.  The first night, after lights-out, the dorm manager came in and gave a little speech about his expectations for keeping the place in order (as all of us pre-pubescents lay stock still freaking out on our bunks).  The last night, he came back, told us we had done a good job (after all, we were a bunch of kids who wanted to be astronauts), and ended with the phrase, “Gentlemen, I wish you good luck and Godspeed!”

Twenty-five years later, I’m leaving the place that has become my home, and the first job that I can say that I really liked, and I want to give the same kind of message to the Panhandle.  I came here with my wife because it was a job teaching college music.  These aren’t easy to come by, folks–you don’t just pick schools you like and send out applications, and when there is an opening, at least in my area of music theory and composition, there are typically about 100 or so applicants, all more or less qualified.  I didn’t really have much idea how long we would stay, but I don’t think I would have said it would be five years.  Now, though, I look back and realize that I’ve been at OPSU longer than I’ve been *anywhere* since I’ve been an adult.  And most of it I wouldn’t do any differently.

I want to thank a few people who have made my time here good, starting with my wife and my son (did I mention that five years ago we had no idea that we would adopt a fantastic and perfect little boy who would be born in Guymon, Oklahoma?).  Becky took her marriage vows seriously and left a good job in a great city to come with me.  I joke that as we drove across the country to get here, it got flatter and flatter and browner and browner, and I kept watching for the brake lights on her car to come on so she could turn around and divorce me, but we pushed through, even when we drove through Greensburg, Kansas, which had been flattened by a tornado about six weeks earlier.  She’s put up with my musician’s temperament and listening to all of my favorite music in the car for almost ten years now, and I don’t know what I’d do without her.  We make a heck of a team, and I’m proud to have her as the best wife ever.  And, just when I had life down, Noah came along and everything got even better–I can thank Becky for making that happen, too.  I don’t know if he’ll remember much of this place, or if he’ll believe some of the things we tell him about it, but he’s an Okie from the ‘Handle, and we’ll definitely bring him back someday.

I need to thank Dr. Sara Richter, who has been a great person to work for, and who gave me a chance five years ago.  I need to thank the other people I’ve worked alongside–especially Joel Garber, Mariah Carrel-Coons, Linda Hugghins, Steve Banks, Kevin Coons, Tito Aznar, Russell Guthrie, Matt Howell, Sandy Cross, and Rene Brain.  You’ve been great colleagues, and I hope I’ve landed with as good a bunch at my new gig.  Keep fighting mediocrity!  Thank you, too, to all the administrative folks at OPSU.

If I didn’t say thank you to a larger network of colleagues and collaborators, I would be remiss.  Guymon and Goodwell are not exactly artistic hubs (although I’ve made some good music here), so being in touch with people online has been the saving grace of my artistic life.  Serendipity happens in all kinds of ways, though, and running into Nancy Joy on an airplane four Christmases ago was a fantastic opportunity for me.  Thank you, too, to  Dianna Anderson, Orieta Dado, Avguste Antonov, BJ Brooks, Rachel Ware, Skye Garcia, Mike Stone, Daniel Baldwin, Jim McAllister, Mike Manser, Milt Allen, Carly Johnson, CJ Talbott, Randolph Johnson, Greg Robin, and everyone else who, even if you have never set foot in the ‘Handle, has been a part of my artistic and professional life here.  Some of you have commissioned pieces, others have performed music that I wrote for someone else, and some have just been great sounding boards and friends.  I can’t thank three people enough–Don Harris, my graduate advisor (who, as of last month, is finally Dr. Harris), Dan Perttu, who, along with his wife Melinda, has been a great friend post-graduation just as he was in school, and Wes Flinn, who has been a conference roommate, fellow-candidate, and patient listener, in addition to being my first composition teacher back in 1996–if that weren’t enough, he sent me the posting for my new gig (and congrats on your new gig, Wes).

Thank you to the music educators who sent students to play and study music at OPSU, and who have also made music with me, and made my job easier by letting me into your classrooms to recruit your students–from west to east, Lendell Ford, Misty Viner, Chris Lehew, Melissa Law, LaQuita Graham, Tom Lee, Travis Hathcote, Sandy Cross, Seth Boothby, Tina Zollinger, Mike Minton, Dan Faulkner, Angela Flanagan, David Christie, Jim Parham, Charles Trayler, Fred Pankratz, Lance Burnett, Cara McDonald, Rachel Nuse, David Mudd.  “If your program is strong, then mine will be strong!”

I need to thank my church family at Guymon Church of the Nazarene, especially Pastors Wayne Dawson, Gregg Counce, and Angela Walker, Kenny and Jane Mason (Noah’s first babysitters!), Monty and Debbie Sanders, and the long-suffering college students who were in my “Crazy Love” Bible study in the summer of 2010, along with all the musicians I’ve worshipped with.

And I need to thank my students–all of you.  From that first class of guinea pigs, who suffered through my first attempts to teach many classes, to my Fundamentals of Music class this summer, it has been my privelege to be a part of your education, and I hope that you learned things that you will find useful, whether they be about music or about life.  It is my privelege then, to offer these parting bits of advice, things that I either learned or relearned while living in the Oklahoma Panhandle:

1.  It may sound like the wind is going to rip the roof off of your house while you are trying to get to sleep in your new home, but it probably won’t.  Just put some music on.

2.  Even if your new hometown seems unbelievably remote and strange to you at first, lots of the people here are here because they can’t imagine living anywhere else.  Figure out what they see in the place and relish it.

3.  Some other people want to get out of here much more badly than you do, so do what you can to help them see the good.

4.  Keep making music.  Find opportunities and make your own.  It’s OK to ask people if you can make art for them.

5.  Don’t quit learning.  Ever.  Find projects that overlap the transitions in your life and keep your mind active.

6.  Don’t be afraid to contact the conceptual artist you read about in an airline magazine whose work seems cool.  You just might end up with a neat plaque about a made-up land in front of the building where you work.

7.  Give everyone the benefit of the doubt.  Be cheerful and polite to everyone as much of the time as possible.

8.  On the other hand, don’t be afraid to stand up for yourself and those who depend on you.  Make a habit of trying to do what’s right.

9.  Take the time to look at the stars.  Encourage others to do the same.

10.  Try to find a way to get to go to interesting places.  If you can do this on your employer’s dime, even better (in academia, we call this “professional development,” and I’ve had the privelege of developing professionally in Aspen, Chicago, New York, Charleston, Seattle, Houston, and some other places over the last five  years).

11.  On the other hand, don’t go first class on your employer’s dime.  This may help you enjoy the journey a little more.  The drive to Aspen from Goodwell, for example, was fantastic, and flying in couldn’t possibly have been better.

12.  Amtrak is a great way to travel.

13.  Fatherhood is an incredible thing.

14.  You must observe the difference between the bass of a chord and the root of a chord.

15.  The attendant at the parking kiosk is not a machine for giving you a parking pass.  Smile and be nice to her, because she probably doesn’t wake up every morning feeling excited about her job the way some of us are lucky to feel.

16.  You don’t have to do this:  you get to do this.

17.  Don’t write music unless someone is paying you or has at least agreed to perform it if you write it.  Writing for the drawer is like taking a shower with a raincoat.

18.  All schools (and many other institutions) have two kinds of people.  One kind takes full advantage of the opportunities presented and the other does the minimum necessary to get by.  Make a firm decision to be the first kind.  (My students know this as the difference between “Oklahoma Panhandle State University” and “PSU”).

19.  Contrary to what one might glean from meetings of Liberal Arts faculties or Faculty Senate, there is usually less cause for alarm than you think.  Civilization has always been ten years away from certain doom.

20.  If you always get foul-smelling gas after eating at a certain place, stop eating there.

21.  Keep fighting mediocrity.

22.  When you’re going to be in a city where you have an old friend, try to get together for dinner (or breakfast, or lunch, or whatever).

23.  Keep track of your ideas, and learn to put the really good ones on hold until the right time.

24.  Sometimes the right time is now.

25.  Sometimes the best ideas come during the second half of Lady Aggies basketball games.  Make sure you have a pencil to write them down.

26.  If you’re part of a team, don’t act unilaterally.

27.  Lead by example, not by dictate.  Tolerate discussion at appropriate times.

28.  Repertoire is not curriculum, no matter what the skill level of the conductor who says it is.  Teach music-making, not individual pieces of music.

29.  One of my teachers was right:  most conductors are charlatans most of the time.

30.  Get in touch with collaborators you want to work with now, before they retire.

31.  “Creativity is letting yourself make mistakes.  Art is knowing which ones to keep.”–Scott Adams.

32.  Listen more than you speak.

33.  If you aren’t learning from your own teaching, you aren’t doing it right.

34.  Hug your wife and your son as many chances as you get.

35.  Never refuse to give your wife a foot-rub.

36.  Talk to strangers when you are waiting around at the airport, when you go to conferences, or really just about anywhere else, but don’t bore them about your work.  Instead, find out about theirs.

37.  Keep reading.  Read good fiction, bad fiction and lots of non-fiction.  Read the Bible.

38.  Learning may have been a game in and of itself for you, but sometimes people learn better if you make it a game.

39.  Most people don’t find MacGAMUT to be a fun game, but if you can convince them that it is, they will develop aural skills more quickly.

40.  Don’t agree to write a book just because someone asks you.  There is no deadline for your book that is too far away.  Don’t submit a book proposal that is essentially, “I’m going to write down a summary of everything I know about the field in which I have a doctorate.”

41.  Don’t wait until tomorrow to quit procrastinating.

42.  (Jay Batzner gave me this one):  A composer’s bio in the concert program is utterly boring to everyone (including the composer) when it is a list of schools attended, awards won, and pieces written.  Every composer has attended schools, won awards, and written pieces.  Why not make a bio that is about who you really are?  (Since I switched to this type of bio, I have felt much less like a poser and gotten many compliments on my excellent bio at conferences).

43.  British journals don’t appreciate articles by Americans about British composers.  American journals greatly appreciate articles about Honorary Life Presidents of their sponsoring organizations.  I’m just sayin’.

44.  Those who can, do.  Those who can’t, try to fake it and sometimes succeed at pulling the wool over everyone else’s eyes for a time.  I didn’t always believe in the Peter Principle (One rises to the level at which they become unable to do the work effectively), because I thought it was overly pessimistic.  At age 37, I see it more clearly now, which is a positive thing.

45.  A greater epidemic than incompetence is the self-perception of incompetence, or the Imposter Effect.  In academia, it is quite common for people to believe (usually secretly) that they have no business being in their position and that it is only a matter of time before they are found out.  This accounts for a huge amount of workplace unpleasantness, as one might imagine.

46.  A greater epidemic still is loneliness.  Be kind and friendly to the people around you as a habit, because it costs you nothing and may mean everything to someone else.

47.  Practice is not simply playing or singing through what you already know.  Organize your practice, set specific goals, and practice smarter, not harder.  Learning the notes, rhythms, and pronunciation is only the beginning of learning a piece.

48.  When you get frustrated, do something else and come back to it.  If you’re frustrated by practicing your instrument, that something else should be your aural skills homework.  If you’re frustrated by your aural skills homework or MacGAMUT, that something else should be practicing your instrument.

49.  Set goals for yourself.  Don’t let others set your goals for you.

50.  Ask questions when you don’t understand, and take notes.

Have you made it this far?  You’re almost done.  I’ve loved my time in the Oklahoma Panhandle, and I’m glad that we moved here five years ago.  It’s been my pleasure to be a part of an amazing community of great human beings.  I’m going to miss the sunsets (although the ones over Lake Erie are great, too), the stuffed sopapilla at Marla’s, the chance to drive and drive and drive and still not be to Woodward yet, the winter night sky with the Milky Way so bright you could drink it in, and the reminder that there are still real-life cowboys and cowgirls out there.  Most of all, though, I’m going to miss all the people here, who have given my family and me their friendship, support, and comraderie.  The Panhandle wasn’t a part of our book proposal for the story of our lives, but we will always look back on it as a crucial and wonderful chapter.

It is with utter sincerity, then, that I say, “Panhandle, I wish you good luck and Godspeed!”

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