The 2019-20 Season

Composing anchors my musical life, but sometimes it’s only the beginning of my creative journeys.  The 2019-20 season has plenty of focus on my compositions, but it also has me storyboarding an animated film; creating a multimedia installation for the Kennedy Center’s new campus; and DJing in a variety of clubs and art spaces.  Here’s an overview of the season ahead:

Philharmonia Fantastique


    One of the biggest musical events of my life happens this spring with the premiere of Philharmonia Fantastique: The Making of the Orchestra, for animated film and live orchestra, by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the San Francisco Symphony.  This is a dream project, the result of years of  creative work and fundraising.  The work explores the connection between creativity and technology with the help of a capricious Sprite, who flies through instruments as they’re played.

    Director Gary Rydstrom of Skywalker Sound is a legend in sound design, having won seven Oscars for his work with Spielberg, and he has also directed several Lucasfilm animated films such as Strange Magic.  A few years ago, I approached him about making an animated film that would journey inside the orchestra without words, using purely images and music to showcase the wonders of musical engineering that make up the orchestra.  Gary brought in famed animator Jim Capobianco, whose Aerial Contrivance Workshop has created animation for Disney and Pixar films, and we’ve been working at Skywalker Ranch over the past year.
    In the film, you’ll airwaves sliced by flute keys and trumpet values…you’ll fall inside a cello as it’s vibrating…you’ll perch atop a timpani head while its being struck.  Additional commissioners include the National, Pittsburgh, and Dallas Symphonies, as well as the Goldman Foundation.  It will subsequently be released in theaters and on TV, but you should catch it live first!

Kennedy Center


    Of my guiding lights as composer-in-residence at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts has been the integration of ambient information into my concerts.  In things such as my KC Jukebox series, the audience is immersed in a fluid and social environment amidst projected imagery and information, a 21st century update on the program book.  The opening of the Center’s new REACH campus takes this one step further with a week-long installation in the Skylight Pavilion, where I’m creating a series of immersive environments responding to a variety of musical styles, from Renaissance choral music to Detroit techno.  The KC Jukebox series itself, which recently featured the composers of the Netflix hit Stranger Things alongside a tribute to composer Johann Johannsson, continues in its fifth year with appearances by DJ Juan Atkins, Get Out composer Michael Abels, and many others.  Also at the Kennedy Center, the National Symphony Orchestra will perform several of my works, beginning with Warehouse Medicine from The B-Sides and continuing later with Resurrexit.

Opera & ballet


    Later this season, The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs comes to the heart of the tech world with performances at San Francisco Opera in June/July 2020.  This is a major event in the life of this opera.  It’s been thrilling to see audiences embrace the work from Santa Fe to Seattle to Indiana, but there’s nothing like bringing an opera to the locale of its setting.  My initial inspiration for the piece was the Bay Area’s legion of creative technologists, whose work is changing the way we interact, create, and live.  Jobs remains a fascination for techies and non-technics alike, someone whose personal challenges and contradictions are the stuff of opera.  San Francisco Opera has been a phenomenal partner from the start of the commissioning process, and they’re bringing back the original cast that won the 2019 Grammy for Best Opera, led by baritone Edward Parks and mezzo Sasha Cooke.  Also onstage this season are several ballets, from Aszure Barton’s stunning work at the Houston Ballet to a work by Joffrey Ballet’s Nicholas Blanc, who reprises a work he recently created for NYC Ballet.

Resurrexit and popular works
    Performances of new and popular symphonic works continue throughout the season, with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra touring my new biblical opener Resurrexit.  Inspired by Maestro Manfred Honneck’s focus on spirituality in music, the piece animates the classic narrative of the Resurrection with propulsion and theatricality.  Pittsburgh is a world-class orchestra that has played more of my music than any other, so it’s thrilling to have them tour the work from Hamburg to Vienna.
    Another new works gets featured this season when the Colorado Symphony records my recent oratorio Children of Adam, which was just released by the Richmond Symphony Orchestra under Steven Smith.  Colorado’s music director Brett Mitchell is a leading light in American music, a master of repertoire old and new, and it’s been a joy to get to know him over several seasons.  Other popular works such as Alternative Energy and Mothership continue all over the place – just check out my calendar to see where.

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.

2018-19 Overview

I reverse hibernate. Summertime is when I hole up in my studio to complete composing projects, with far fewer appearances during the busy symphonic season. It’s a pleasant respite from travel and performing, offering time for reflection as I put the finishing touches on pieces that have been in process for a year or more, but by summer’s end I’m eager to reengage with the world – either to the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, where I continue my stint as composer-in-residence, or at orchestras and opera houses around the country.

From this hibernation emerges a pair of new cubs this season – two symphonic premieres exploring big subjects – along with continuing performances of recent and popular works, including my opera The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs. Here’s a overview of highlights for the coming season:

 

Premieres: Art of War and Resurrexit

Two premieres debut this season: Art of War, a large-scale exploration of human conflict; and Resurrexit, a theatrical and fast-paced conjuring of the classic biblical narrative. The symphonic medium continues to inspire me to examine big topics in dramatic ways, enhanced with the addition of electronic sounds or new symphonic effects.

The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra kicks off its new season with the September premiere of Resurrexit, in celebration of the 60th birthday of Manfred Honneck.  He challenged me to write a “spiritual opener,” which seems almost an oxymoron: how can the lightning-quick character of an opener coexist with something more meditative? While these days I focus on larger works than openers, I was intrigued by the audaciousness of the challenge and the supernatural elements of the story.   I had long wanted to explore the ‘dusty’ mystery of Middle Eastern scales and exotic sonorities, so I dreamed up piece that animates the classic Resurrection narrative with propulsion and drama, rising from a biblical darkness into an exhilarating finale.

My largest musical event of the season is the December premiere by the National Symphony Orchestra under Gianandrea Noseda of Art of War, a symphony exploring the drama of human conflict from the perspectives of soldiers, weaponry, and human loss. Animating a three-movement symphonic structure are original field recordings of weapons tests and the printing presses of the US Treasury. For my first large commission for the Kennedy Center, I wanted to deliver something of a political nature and a darker soundworld than I’ve ever explored.

The drama is heightened with the inclusion of astonishing sounds, such as field recordings of munitions tests (artillery and mortars) I made with the US Marines. I always felt the canon fire in the 1812 Overture could be further explored. So after a lengthy application process and, yes, the donning of a helmet and flak jacket, I was driven as close to the impact zone of a 50 caliber canon as you ever want to be. There’s also the sound of a different kind of weapon in the opening “Money As a Weapons System.” Based on an actual US military handbook describing the use of money to achieve military goals, the movement integrates actual recordings of the US Mint’s printing presses into 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. The soulful heart of the piece, “Two Worlds,” explores the perspective of an American soldier and an Iraqi soldier through a synthesis American blues and Persian flute music — a musical evocation of the larger message of “stronger together.”

 

The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs, Carnegie Hall, and beyond

Following its sold-out premiere at Santa Fe Opera and this summer’s release on CD, my first opera continues appearing around the country, with productions this season at Seattle Opera and Indiana University. It’s thrilling to see new casts and audiences discover the work, with the stunning premiere production going to very different opera houses. As Steve Jobs’ legacy continues to resonate in our lives – with Apple now valued at a trillion dollars – the work offers a window into his complex inner life.

On the symphonic stage, performances of recent and popular works continue around the US and the world. Under visionary maestro Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the Philadelphia Orchestra brings Anthology of Fantastic Zoology to Carnegie Hall after performances in Philadelphia.  Previously recorded by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Riccardo Muti, the work explores the dark, surrealist fantasy of Jorge Luis-Borges.

My concertos continue to be performed by their amazing soloists. Joshua Roman performs the Cello Concerto in a variety of places, from Chicago to Malaysia to Denver (where the Colorado Symphony also performs my baroque thriller Auditorium). Anne Akiko Meyers brings my Violin Concerto to the Helsinki Philharmonic for a live-streamed event in December. And the stunning mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke, who performs the role of Laurene Jobs at Seattle Opera, continues to perform Passage, which weaves fragments of JFK’s moonshot speech into a celebration of American exploration.

 

Curating: The Kennedy Center, KC Jukebox, Mercury Soul…

In my third season as composer-in-residence at the Kennedy Center, I’m continually astonished at the vast possibilities of making art in such a magnificent place. While I work with a variety of institutions within the Center, from the National Symphony to the Jazz Center, the primary focus of my curating is the KC Jukebox series, which presents new music in new formats – featuring immersive production and ambient information to educate the audience, as well as post-parties with DJs to allow people to debrief in a casual setting.

This season, the series presents the renown analogue synth duo Kyle Dixon and Michael Klein, of the band Survive, known for their distinctive score to the hit Netflix show Stranger Things. The duo headlines a show that also pays tribute to Icelandic composer Johann Johannson, who also brought the sounds of analogue synths to a wide audience.   Also appearing on KC Jukebox is Pulitzer Prize-winner Caroline Shaw on a show featuring the Scottish balladier King Creosote; and as part of the Kennedy Center’s Direct Current festival, the series brings the beloved chorus Chanticleer back for a concert of new vocal music.

My classical-club hybrid Mercury Soul continues to build a strong following in San Francisco, having recently completed a year that climaxed with Thievery Corporation’s Rob Garza headlining our show at The Great Northern. The project has become something of a showcase for musicians of the entire Bay Area, from Philarhmonia Baroque to the DJ collective Housepitality. As I’ve focused my DJ performances on large shows integrating live musicians within sets of electronica, I’ve found Mercury Soul to offer a unique experience that continues to challenge me as a DJ and composer. Stay tuned here for an announcement of our upcoming season.

A Steve Jobs opera record

Remember old cartoon images of a stork dropping off a baby? That actually happens for composers. A package left on my doorstep yesterday contained a dozen CDs of The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs, just now available from Pentatone Records. When I held up one of the elegant black boxes containing the CDs and libretto booklets, stylishly contained in a minimalist design worthy of Apple, my son asked, “Is that a new phone?”

Good guess. While the intention was always to focus on the human side of the Steve Jobs story, his products are intricately woven into his life – and ours. The opera is, in fact, a kind of giant smart phone, exploring the music of communication. The piece examines a fundamental tension in our lives today: how do we simplify human communication on such beautifully minimalist devices – when humans are so complicated?

This sleek CD package, too, contains a complex web under its surface. Turning over the package in my hands, little details belie massive collaborative efforts that brought this piece to life.

First thing you notice, of course, is the name of my key collaborator, librettist Mark Campbell.  Our work on Jobs began years ago when I approached him about writing an opera about a creative technologist possessing both positive and negative charges, grounded by the strong figure of his wife. Initially ambivalent, Mark soon fell in love with the complex, duel protagonist-and-antagonist role of Jobs; the soulful figure of Laurene Jobs; and the mystical character of Kobun, the Buddhist spiritual advisor to Jobs.

Before any words were written, we agreed that this story needed a non-linear, ‘pixelated’ structure – which, on the list of CD tracks, you’ll notice is splayed across two dozen scenes in one giant act. Any one of these short scenes seen own its own, like a single pixel, is but a flicker of light. But arranged together, these pixels animate an image, a life. The juxtapositions that occur in this kind of storytelling help us understand a man who transformed from a hippy in an apple orchard to a mogul at the helm of the world’s most valuable company.

Next thing you notice, opening the package and looking at the images on the CD cases and libretto booklet, is the stunning set design and production. This was the work of director Kevin Newbury, a master at assembling a strong design team. The subject matter of this opera required a dazzling, high-tech production that would take as through time and space in a unique way. He brought in production designer Vita Tzykun, who created a mesmerizing series of lighted panels that glide around the stage, along with lighting designer Japhy Weideman and projectionist Ben Pearcy. I learned a great deal watching these four at each tech rehearsal, which in Santa Fe occur in the wee hours of the night. Lighting storms would play out in the desert behind the stage while, onstage, the magic of stagecraft would unfold.

You’re finally pulling the first CD out of its sleeve and put it in your CD player (which has almost been killed off by Jobs’ creations). The first sounds you hear are electronic, little chirps and tweets awakening from all directions like birds in a future forest. Those are all derived from actual Mac gear: whizzing hard drives, tapping key clicks, chipper beeps. Some of those I actually recorded from my array of old Mac gear, some of them I found via the incredible Gary Rydstrom who worked at Apple a few decades before moving to Lucasfilm.  I wanted an arresting opening that sounded nothing like opera, and I was intrigued by the challenge of building the soundworld out of the creations of Jobs himself.

In my orchestral music, the integration of electronic and symphonic textures always runs deeper than surface sound, for the simple reason that electronic sounds carry so much content: the sound of a particle accelerator, the crackle of a NASA astronaut, the rumble of glaciers calving. That has brought elements of theater into the concert hall, and I definitely wanted to bring this element of sonic storytelling into the opera house. So we hear Jobs’ own machines whizzing around him in his workshop garage, or processed prayer bowls and Japanese wind chimes when Kobun is onstage. These elements of sound design play a crucial role in the opera and were a intriguing challenge in both the live performances and in the recording.

As you continue to listen to the CD, you’ll notice the most important elements – the voices and the orchestra. We were so fortunate to have a stellar cast, led by the mesmerizing Edward Parks in the title role and Sasha Cooke as Jobs’ wife Laurene Powell Jobs. Wei Wu, Garrett Sorenson, Kelly Markgraf, and Jessica Jones not only created the roles of the key supporting figures in Jobs’ life; they became an extended family for me at Santa Fe Opera, which nurtured us all so carefully in every stage of this work’s creation. The orchestra included some surprise instruments, such as acoustic guitar (a kind of partner instrument for Jobs) and saxophones. Conductor Michael Christie was a dream collaborator, perfectly managing the orchestra, singers, and electronics.

And what’s a CD without a producer and a label? Elizabeth Ostrow guided the recording from the first rehearsals in Santa Fe, assisted by engineer Mark Donahue (one of the finest in the business). It’s so rare to have a new opera recorded immediately, and for that we can all thank both Pentatone Records and, of course, Santa Fe Opera – which nurtured this piece so confidently from its earliest beginnings.  While these days you can enjoy music in any form, from MP3 to streaming, consider springing for the real-deal package for this one. Pentatone and Santa Fe Opera did a phenomenal job bringing this stage work into a format available to all.

BLOG: May Days

As May descends upon California and my garden explodes with flowers and weeds, music is also bursting to life on many fronts for me this month. From the premiere of my chorus and orchestra piece Children of Adam to several performances of my symphonic bestiary Anthology of Fantastic Zoology, music is coming out of the cracks in the sidewalk these days:

CHILDREN OF ADAM

Children of Adam is a kind of fanfare oratorio written for my hometown band, the Richmond Symphony Orchestra. My first encounters with symphonic music happened at RSO concerts, so it really touched me when Maestro Steven Smith approached me about a new work celebrating the orchestra’s 60th anniversary. It was high time to compose a work for chorus and orchestra, especially since I began my musical life as a choir boy at St. Christopher’s School in Richmond, Virginia.

For both the purposed of this celebration, and as well to contribute something fresh to the repertoire, I avoided the rather leaden vibe of many chorus and orchestra pieces (I do love requiems but, you know…).  I decided to create a collection of bright, uplifting works that would use both chorus and orchestra in vibrant ways.

Children of Adam explores seven exuberant perspectives of creation and rebirth, from American poets to sacred and Native American texts. The title comes from a Walt Whitman poem that appears throughout the work in the form of brief “fanfare intermezzos.” His celebrations of sensuality, considered provocative at the time, explore the connection of the body and the soul. Between these choral fanfares, each movement of the work offers a different perspective on creation.

Two Psalms offer colorful imagery of fertility, from crops to children – who are compared to olive shoots sprouting around the kitchen table (evoked by a sinewy snake-charmer tune in the double reeds). The harp is given a prominent role in the role of the “ten-stringed lyre” mentioned in the text, and the entire movement has an exotic allure. Later in the work, another biblical text comes in a darker vein, with the Book of Genesis’ creation of the world conjured in music both frightening and, ultimately, impassioned. An interesting secular complement to these sacred texts are two poems by Carl Sanburg, who describes the creations of the Industrial Age in a highly reverent manner in “Prayers of Steel.”  All manner of industrial clacks and clinks are heard from the orchestra.

The central movement of the cycle is a setting of “Tolepe Menenak” (Turtle Island) from the Mataponi Indians, whose reservation is close to my family’s farm in King & Queen County, Virginia. It was incredibly inspiring to explore a creation text whose roots are so close to that of my own family. The text, in native East Coast Algonquian, was sung to me by Sharon Sun Eagle at the reservation, where I visited with Hope Armstrong Erb – who has continued to be a mentor to me, well beyond my time with her at St. Christopher’s School.  Deepest thanks to Sharon for sharing some of the Mataponi traditions with me.

ANTHOLOGY OF FANTASTIC ZOOLOGY

The largest piece I’ve written appears in many places over the next month. Edwin Outwater brings it to the Colorado Symphony, which is emerging as one of the most dynamic orchestras in the country. Miguel Harth-Bedoya conducts it with the excellent Fort Worth Symphony, and my friend Benjamin Shwartz brings it to Portugal. Each one of those conductors have become longtime supporters of my music who should be applauded for fearlessly programming such a demanding work.

Written for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Riccardo Muti, the piece is a vivid setting of Jorge Luis Borges’ Anthology of Fantastic Zoology, a psychedelic bestiary teeming with strange creatures and wild sonic effects. Underpinning this is a sprawling form unlike anything I’ve composed.

A master of magical realism and narrative puzzles, Borges created a magical compendium of mythological creatures (several are of his own invention). The musical realization of this is eleven interlocking movements, an expansive form inspired by French and Russian ballet scores. In between evocations of creatures familiar (sprite, nymph) and unknown (an animal that is an island), brief “forest interludes” take us deeper into the night, and deeper into the forest itself.   Lots of spatial effects, both onstage and off, and a variety of theatrical surprises are used throughout the piece. The trick is that all of the animals fuse together at the end, when the preceding 30 minutes collapses in an epic finale in which all the animals fuse together.

ROBERT MOODY

Ever since he conducted my first symphonic work when I was a high school junior, Robert Moody has been a dear friend and mentor. This month he steps down from the Portland Symphony in Maine, where he programmed many of my pieces over the years, and heads to the Memphis Symphony where he is already doing phenomenal things. As I could not attend his farewell party, I write here some of my feelings about this superb musician and stellar human being.

Robert’s unique gift is combining revelatory music making with an approachable stage presence. Musicians love him for this, as attested by the growing number of principal musicians from the country’s top orchestras on the roster of his Arizona Music Fest. I have always appreciated Robert’s willingness to challenge audiences, in cities large and small, by programming new music in imaginative ways.

American music is lucky to have Robert, and I will always be thankful for everything he continues to do for my music.