BLOG: A New Record: Mass Transmission

A new record, a new ballet, and performances from orchestras to choruses to clubs: this month is a multi-headed beast.

The big news is the April 19th release of Mass Transmission, my 2012 work for the San Francisco Symphony Chorus, organist Paul Jacobs, and electronic sounds. This album comes from the SFS chorusmaster Ragnar Bohlin and his group Cappella SF, a stellar pro-bowl of choristers who have already made waves during their short existence. 
 
Mass Transmission tells the true story of a distantly-separated family communicating over the earliest radio transmissions.  It’s 1920’s-era Skype: on one end of the line is a Dutch girl sent to be a page in the colonial government of the East Indies; on the other end is her mother, thousands of miles away in the Dutch Telegraph Office.  The piece explores the warmth of human emotions pulsing through a mechanistic medium. 

Two obscure texts are set to music.  I came across an old publication by the Dutch government that compiled recollections and transcripts of these ground-breaking communications, giving us the mother’s perspective in the outer movements.  The central movement gives us the daughter’s perspective of jungle-life in Java, drawn from recollections by Elizabeth van Kampen about her early years there.
 
The chorus sing these texts, comprising the ‘animal warmth’ of the piece, while the electronics give us a ‘musical scrim’ of static and short-wave radio sounds.  The organ connects the two: sometimes it supports the chorus, sometimes it plays the toccata-like music of the Dutch Telegraph Office.  On this recording we hear the amazing Isabelle Demers, protégé of Paul Jacobs and a longtime collaborator.

Chorus master Ragnar Bohlin made this piece happen: when he heard the SF Symphony premiere The B-Sides and Chanticleer premiere Sirens in the spring of 2009, he immediately suggested we take a piece to Michael Tilson Thomas.  This resulted in perhaps my most personal piece, dedicated to my wife Jamie and my son Toliver, who are always at ‘the other end of the line’ when I ring them up from various cities. 

Chanticleer continues to sing Sirens, which they most recently performed on my KC Jukebox series as part of the Kennedy Center’s Direct Current festival of new work. While they’ve performed excerpts of the work over the past ten years, this was the first time they’ve reprised the entire 30-minute piece.  It was fascinating to hear how this superstar chorus retains its trademark blend even though many of the twelve choristers have changed. (Cf Ship of Theseus conundrum: if a ship’s board were changed one at a time while en route to a destination, so that all the boards were new when it arrives, is it the same ship?  In the case of choruses and orchestras, the institutional memory is so strong that the answer is often Yes: same ship, new boards.)

Also on the Direct Current festival were two superb National Symphony concerts organized around the theme of water.  Alongside pieces such as Sibelius’ Oceantides and Glass’ Ipietu, my Sea-Blue Circuitry sounded the least watery – by design.  The piece was one of the first acoustic works I wrote after pushing into electronic sounds, and I was primarily focused on creating a circuit-board surface of shattered jazz minimalism. Teddy Abrams did a marvelous job conjuring the complex web of novel sounds.  He’s a longtime friend who, just watch, continue to impact American music in deeper and more profound ways.

A few days later, the Washington Ballet premiered a new ballet set to my Omnivorous Furniture, one of my earliest electro-acoustic compositions. The choreographer, Dana Genshaft, was already known to me through her reign at SF Ballet. She has a gift creating a clear emotional arc while also integrating a huge variety of dance styles within a singular, original voice.  I also enjoyed collaborating with a stellar group that works outside of the Kennedy Center.  Washington Ballet has superb dancers and a hugely supportive audience.

On the way back to California, I dropped into Sioux City to perform Passage with Sasha Cooke, who brought the role of Laurene Jobs to life in my opera The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs.  I wrote Passage for the Kennedy Center’s celebration of JFK’s centennial, and the works pairs a poem celebrating American exploration (Whitman’s Passage to India) with recorded fragments of JFK’s moonshot speech.  Sasha leaves a wake of enthralled audiences wherever she goes, and this performance was no exception. We also performed Alternative Energy under Ryan Haskins, the energetic and visionary young conductor of the SC Symphony.  I always enjoy seeing a regional orchestra performing inventive programming for a supportive audience, and Ryan’s work is a fine example.

And…one more thing: a club show.  On April 26, Mercury Soul presents “Jazz Mafia” at San Francisco’s DNA Lounge, where some of SF’s finest DJs and musicians explore the varied hues of jazz, from Stravinsky to Ellington and beyond. 

No rest for the weary!

BLOG: Steve Jobs at the Grammys

The first question everyone asks: “So how crazy are the Grammys?”  I answer with the description of someone I saw on the red carpet: trailing in the cruiseship-sized wake of J.Lo, there appeared a very large bodyguard wearing a Louis Vuitton bullet-proof vest – while carrying a baby.  Because this is how you roll on the red carpet at the Grammys.

I didn’t have a bodyguard – we classical music nominees just take our chances – but I did have a lovely crew of family, friends, and cast members from The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs, which was nominated in four categories.  And even though we didn’t have a rapper’s posse, we had plenty of swagger when they announced we won in Best Opera. (The swagger notched down when they cut my speech to move to the next category – nexxxxt!)

The Grammy for Best Opera is a much-appreciated recognition for a piece that continues to stay in the public awareness.  After its exhilarating premiere run at Santa Fe Opera two summers ago, the stellar recording was released by Pentatone Records under producer Elizabeth Ostrow, followed by performances at Indiana University and now Seattle Opera Feb 23 – Mar 9 (info here).  And like the mothership returning to home base, the ultimate trajectory of Steve Jobs is the subject’s birthplace – the Bay Area, where San Francisco Opera presents the original cast next spring.  It’ll be a highly resonant convergence of setting and subject matter.

That resonance can be felt now in Seattle, a tech powerhouse filled with plenty of creative technologists who can relate to this story.  Many people seem both surprised and intrigued by the notion of Steve Jobs as the subject of an opera, but it has always struck me as such a pregnant possibility.  After all, opera trades in stories of artists – from La Bohème to Tales of Hoffman to Death in Venice – and Jobs very much fashioned himself as an artist, albeit a new breed.  Whether you live in the Bay Area as I do, or Seattle or Boston or countless other cities, you’ve encountered this new class of creative techies.  Like Jobs, these are people who are changing our civilization yet face some serious human challenges.  Jobs’ role as both protagonist and antagonist in his own life is the stuff of opera, and it’s been fascinating to see this work resonate in very different places.

One huge surprise to me: how different casts inhabit the work.  I’ve now heard three different casts perform the work, and I’m struck by the way the piece fosters a tight, almost familial bond between its singers.  That has a lot to do with the intimate architecture of the principle roles, of which there are only six.  Each character, from Jobs’ wife Laurene to his girlfriend Chrisann, from his Apple co-founder Woz to his Buddhist mentor Kobun, plays a pivotal role in the opera.

It was wonderful to hang at the Grammys with Ed Parks, the stunning baritone who first brought the role of Jobs to life.  He has a hugely powerful voice that retains a clarity even at the top of the range.  It’ll be fascinating to see Ed reprise the role in San Francisco next year.  Right now in Seattle, we’ve got a fascinating new take on the role by John Moore, whose laser-sharp dramatic focus and flashes of darkness were evident on the first day of rehearsals.  Seeing these two phenomenal singers invest everything in inhabiting this role, I’m reminded that many of us see a bit Steve Jobs in us.  There’s a straight line between brilliant creativity and authoritarian control, between charismatic persuasion and manipulation.

So.  The Grammys.  What else?  Some facts:

  • The most outrageous outfits always appear in the New Age category (this year someone wore a birdcage on his head).
  • The live telecast prohibits alcohol, so you have people in black-tie-clad smuggling booze despite paying hundreds of dollars per ticket.
  • The official Grammy afterparty is the most spectacular and glamorous assembling of thousands of black-tie-clad people I’ve encountered.  But the security line to get inside resembled a refugee camp, with people freezing in the cold while waiting to go through three metal detectors.
  • Serious politics are at work behind the scenes, and all big awards have music industry shenanigans (even in classical music).  So, like concert reviews, what happens at the Grammys should not be internalized.  If you come close, you enjoy the show and meet some great people.  If Fortune smiles upon you, you thank your luck stars – and get in the long security line.

BLOG: Art of War

The moment you squeeze into a flak jacket, gravity seems to have doubled. The flak is as weighty as a bag of concrete – the better to withstand exploding shrapnel – and wearing it gives you an immediate soldier’s perspective. It’s a heavy job; a lot rests on your shoulders.

Field recording is part of my artistic life, taking me from FermiLab’s particle accelerator to the forests of Virginia, but venturing onto the firing range at the US Marine Corps’ Camp Pendleton is by far the most impactful recording experience I’ve ever had. I went there to captured the sounds of mortar and artillery for Art of War, a symphony exploring the perspective of soldiers, weapons, and the collision of civilizations that’s premiering this month at the National Symphony Orchestra under Gianandrea Noseda.

So, how did I end up next to the impact zone of a 50 caliber guns?

For my largest symphonic commission as composer-in-residence at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, I wanted to create a piece that resonated in Washington DC. A symphonic exploration of war intrigued me for a number of reasons. On a musical level, I’ve always been fascinated by the vividness of martial music, whether celebratory or cataclysmic, and the possibility of upping-the-ante with explosions seemed a provocative challenge. (I don’t think it’s happened time since the1812 Overture). But beyond bombast, I also wanted to explore the musical possibilities of two civilizations becoming intertwined, which in this case is a fusion of the folk musics of America and Iraq.

There are also personal reasons for Art of War. The US has been in the Middle East for most of my life. No matter your political opinion, that fact is overwhelming. What might have seemed a “CNN war” in the 90’s came much closer to home in 2003, when my brother was deployed in the Iraq invasion as captain of a mortar platoon. There was a particularly fraught time in Fallujah when many families lived in terror that the dreaded “black car” would show up at their house with bad news. Thankfully that didn’t happen for us, and the experience of serving in the US Marines made an lasting impact on my brother, giving him a focus and discipline in his later business endeavors.

But having the war brought so close to home makes one think about the costs, the goals, and the impacts on the people on the front lines. And, truth be told, the experience of spending two days with Maj. Matthew Hilton and the US Marines informed the piece beyond the sounds of that I captured. Wearing a flak jacket and talking to the soldiers, you start to see through their eyes.

Political art on its own can be perishable, sometimes too closely hitched to the news cycle, and my interest is always musical and dramatic. I find it more artistically interesting if works present a prism-like collection of viewpoints. So, beyond the conjuring of the battlefield, the project also inspired a lyrical response in the central movement “Two Worlds.”

This heart and soul of the work examines the perspectives of an American soldier and an Iraqi translator through the folk music of their cultures. Over an ambient re-imagination of American blues, a fiddle sings a melancholic tune; thousands of miles away, a bent melody floats over a drone, informed by the modes of the Arabic maqam. These worlds seem so distant, yet over the course of the movement, the two merge, connected by the soulful “blue notes” that inform both folk traditions – a musical tribute to the hope that diverse cultures can be “stronger together.” This movement is inspired by the story of Dylan Park, who wrote a touching reflection on his friendship with an Iraqi who worked at his Air Force base (read it here – prepare to be moved).

One final “DC element” to the piece is the sound of the printing presses of the US Treasury, which can be heard in the opening movement “Money As a Weapons System.” That is the title of an actual US military handbook describing the use of money to achieve military goals, and I couldn’t resist composing a musical analogue to the alarming idea of weaponized money. Special access granted by the US Treasury’s Bureau of Engraving & Printing took me before giant, strange machines clattering endless sheets of money into being. Lurching rhythms created from these sounds integrate with quicksilver, caffeinated musical textures that glitter like coins from a slot machine – only to spin wildly out of control over the course of the movement. I have never spent so much time on any single movement; the concept demanded I create endlessly undulating surfaces.

My history with the National Symphony runs deep, and it will be so meaningful to hear these musicians bring to life a piece that goes in a new direction for me. Over ten years ago the NSO premiered my first large-scale work, Liquid Interface, and over the years they have played many pieces of mine, including a tribute to American exploration entitled Passage. Maestro Noseda has the perfect blend of precision, drama, and musicality to make this work leap off the page.

BLOG: A Mythological Zoo

The vampire bat stumbles through the eerie blue darkness, walking on its strange umbrella-like arms like the Landstriders in The Dark Crystal. It drags itself next to a tin of cow blood and begins lapping it like milk. And then the cameraman says, Perfect – stay right there and start talking.

I’m at the Philadelphia Zoo to shoot a video about my symphonic work Anthology of Fantastic Zoology, a concerto for orchestra in the guise of a bestiary of mythological creatures. This month the amazing Yannick Nezet-Seguin conducts the Philadelphia Orchestra in three concerts here and a one at Carnegie Hall, and someone had the brilliant idea to bring me to the zoo to examine the closest relatives to the creatures depicted in the symphony.

Anthology brings to life the dark fantasy of Jorge-Luis Borges, a master of magical realism and narrative puzzles. Through eleven interlocking movements, the piece showcases different sections and soloists with the vividness of Russian ballet scores, a major inspiration for the piece. Written for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 2015, the piece was the culmination of a 20-year fascination with the prospect of mythological creatures animated in imaginative and theatrical ways.

I first came across Borges’ slim volume while a student of comparative literature at Columbia College. With his unique mix of dry scientific description and fantastic elements, the Argentine writer has often drawn me into compositional What If’s. Turning through pages that include nymphs, sirens, gryphons, and several creatures of his own creation, I found myself asking What if this was a concerto for orchestra?

Created by Bela Bartok, the ‘concerto for orchestra’ is an ingenious symphonic form.  Instead of showcasing just one instrument as in the standard concerto, why not feature everyone?  It’s like the finale of a Broadway musical, where everyone pops up for a moment.  I embraced the concept of a mythological bestiary as the perfect vehicle for a concerto for orchestra. The basic compositional challenge was to create highly vivid themes associated with each instrument and creature, ones that would be so memorable that I could reprise them all at the ‘witching hour’ at the very end and have the listener recognize each one.

Creating memorable ideas is not a strong suit of contemporary music. The process-based focus of serialism and minimalism favors textures and surfaces, not melodies. That focus was an understandable move away from the traditional melody-and-accompaniment approach, but like all new things it became old at some point. In both the symphonic realm and now in opera, I look to create ‘craveable’ material that grabs you and won’t let go.

To make the themes even more vivid, I hard-wired dramatic elements to many of the them. The Sprite, for example, comes with the bracing new element of symphonic choreography. The tune hops from music stand to music stand, even bouncing offstage. For a few years, I’ve looked at the violins and wondered whether I could shoot music across them, stand by stand. I imagined a motif spinning from the concertmaster outwards, something like a miniature relay race at high speeds.  Sit in the balcony and you can watch patterns zig-zag across the string section like lighting.

Another creature, the serpentine A Bao A Qu, is conjured by a reptilian tune in the double reeds that is a palindrome. Borges describes a creature that slithers up a tower; gloriously molts at the top; then slides back down – and I wanted this movement to mimic that mirrored life cycle.  I spent a vast amount of time searching for material that could be perceptively reversible on both the micro and the macro level. So there are miniature cells that work in both directions, but also big interruptions that return in the reverse. There is a ridiculous gong that announces the creature that, in the end, swooshes backwards.

Other creatures include a flying lion (the Gryphon, illustrated by brass and a vicious array of 13 timpani) and a creature that is an island (the Zaratan, which consumes the entire orchestra like a musical black hole). The lyrical core of the piece is inhabited by the Sirens, those beautiful creatures who lure sailors to their deaths. Using the offstage violins, I passed a melody between them that lures each of the onstage strings, soloist by soloist. The movement climaxes with a tapestry of a dozen soloists undulating among each other.

This week I’ve been in awe watching Yannick bring this piece to life. Like Riccardo Muti who premiered the work, Yannick is equally at home in the opera house. Having the skills of a ‘musical dramatist’ well serves this piece, which is as Technicolor a symphonic experience I’ve ever created. Having worked together on Alternative Energy a few years ago in Philly and now looking ahead to a new opera at The Met, Yannick and I are learning a lot about the way we approach musical theatrics together.  The Carnegie performance marks the New York premiere of this piece, my largest work to date – my own special zoo.

 
 

BLOG: Future Folks

This month I’m exploring American folk music on different sides of the country. In San Francisco, we kick off Mercury Soul’s season at The Great Northern with a show integrating DJs and bluegrass-inspired folk music. A week later at the Kennedy Center, my KC Jukebox series opens with Pulitzer Prize-winner Caroline Shaw’s Appalachia-informed string quartets and Scottish balladier King Creosote. Featuring totally different repertoire and concert formats – one in a club, the other a “tavern chamber music” – the shows both offer a window into the past and future of this longest of musical traditions.

I’ve always been fascinated by the raw energy and instrumental virtuosity of American roots music (blues, string band, bluegrass). The lightning-quick finger-picking of a mandolin legends David Grisman and Chris Thile, for example, often twang out of my kitchen speakers. The unique juxtaposition of virtuosity and vernacular is intriguing from both classical and electronica perspectives. As a symphonic composer, I’m drawn to the instrumental command; as a DJ, I appreciate the sheer sonic power of the plectrum textures of guitar, banjo, mandolin, and string bass.

With its combination of live instruments and thumping DJ sets, Mercury Soul is a great show to weave a line through the history of folk music. Jointly headlined by the amazing DJ Gavin Hardkiss and the blues band Hot Buttered Rum, the show also includes folk-inspired classical music from living composers John Adams and fiddler Mark O’Connor, as well as Dvorak and Brahms. The latter two composers often incorporated elements of Eastern European folk into their chamber music, so we included them to complement the modern folk perspective.

Other performers include the astonishing Matt Szemala, who plays as mean fiddle when not serving as concertmaster of the Berkeley Symphony; the string quartet Vitamin Em; and myself and DJ Justin Reed spinning roots and blues-influenced DJ sets. Brad Hogarth conducts this barn-burner of a show at The Great Northern.

The next week I return to my artistic home base at the Kennedy Center, where I am beginning the fourth year of my stint as composer-in-residence. This week I heard the superb Dover Quartet perform my From Amber Frozen on the Fortas Series, and it will great to hear them return this week on my series KC Jukebox, which offers new music in imaginative new formats. For this deep dive into the music of two fascinating living composers, we’re transforming the Kennedy Center’s atrium into a wood tavern (with a great bar!).

Caroline Shaw’s upbringing in Carolina is evident in much of her music. Her highly individual, quirky surface is animated by a soulful and bluesy undercurrent. We present several of her works for string quartet in addition to selections from her By and By, with Caroline joining the Dover as a vocalist. Looking at folk music from the other end of the spectrum, we bring in Scottish balladier King Creosote. He performs a solo set on guitar, with the Dover also joining him on several numbers. Hearing these two artists respond to the folk tradition from different fields, and indeed different countries, is one of the special things about KC Jukebox.

Very rarely can one hear classical and vernacular music on the same concert, but this kind of intersection can provide deep revelations. Whether on Mercury Soul or KC Jukebox, you can hear classical music ricocheting off divergent yet complementary musical styles.