torture memos (a survivor from guantánamo) (2009) for nine instruments

Since June, I’ve been composing a piece for two female voices, flute, bass clarinet, marimba, electric bass, violin, cello and piano. The piece is titled torture memos (a survivor from guantánamo) and is one of three works I’ve written with a political/social action title (the others being darfur pogrommen and zichron (in memory of bisan, maye, aya and nur abu al-aish)). As mentioned in an earlier post, I had considered setting poetry by torture victims in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo, but the source poems didn’t grab me. Besides, I’m not sure the music would have done the poems justice.

So tonight I managed to put the final edits into the piece, so it’s completed. A few comments:

• The piece is a bit of a departure from my recent music. At the same time, it’s also an evolution and natural progression. In other words, it still sounds like me, but it’s not a rehash of a lot of earlier works. So I suspect people will either love it or really hate it; there’s no middle ground. If you’re disappointed, no worries.
• Don’t expect doom and gloom despite the title. This isn’t “program music.” In most ways, the title has nothing to do with the music.
• While the wind and vocal parts are far easier than some I’ve written, in that there are rests and intentional spots to breathe, in some areas the performers are on their own; when they need to grab a breath, they can, since many of the parts are doubled.
• No matter what I did, Finale 2010’s playback put in some unwritten and unwanted accents in some of the repeated eighth note sections. I gave up trying to solve this problem, since it seems unsolvable. It might be related to the ambience plugin, but without adding in resonance the audio file sounds worse than with ambience + accents, so I’m learning to live with it. Same thing happened in the final measures of ushabti, and it still drives me crazy.
• The audio level is higher than it should be-the entire piece is actually p throughout, so feel free to listen at a low volume

The duration clocks in at just over 40 minutes. The audio file, such as it is, is here. The score (bass clarinet is written as it sounds) is here.

fan mail, I get fan mail! (part 2 of a series)

another piece is on its way

Looking back at the past year and a half, it’s actually been the most productive musical year I’ve ever had. By my count, I’ve composed six pieces, and another is on its way. That’s amazing, at least in my opinion. For the most part, I had tended to compose one piece of music per year. Maybe two on occasion, but usually just one. Sometimes it took me even longer to finish a piece; three years wasn’t uncommon. In terms of people actually hearing my music, I’ve had one piece premiered, only a few months after it was written. And a few weeks after that concert premiere, it was heard on the radio on WPRB-FM. That’s never happened to me before.

Similarly, Steve Layton released his beautifully crafted realization of my piano work textbook, and it was heard on the first Music from Other Minds broadcast of the 2009-2010 season, with the opening selected as the show’s theme music for this year.

So why have I been so productive composition-wise since April of 2008? Probably because I spend 1-2 weeks each month in the Bay Area for work, and when I’m in my hotel room at night can work on new pieces. Having the time to write has been extremely fleeting since I started composing music several decades ago. In order to compose, I had to compromise, and that usually meant giving up sleep, time with my family, etc. Since I’m home only half the time, I have no more time to give up for my music except when I’m out on the West Coast, so that’s worked pretty well. That doesn’t make the notes come any easier-if anything, it’s really hard to motivate oneself to write music when you’re sleep deprived, off by three time zones, and have to sit in a really uncomfortable position to get access to a portable keyboard and laptop because hotel rooms rarely have desks that can accommodate 88-keys.

So on to the new piece-it’s been a real slog, since it’s based largely on some improvisations I did over the past year and required me to notate them while scoring the output for a chamber ensemble. But this past week was the charm; I got past the drudgery and things started to come together. I was up until almost 1:30 AM last night getting a lot of the piece done. It’s not there yet, but it’s 21+ minutes and counting, not that that matters. If anything, that’s a pretty short work for me. The piece is scored for two female voices (soprano/mezzo), flute, bass clarinet, electric bass, marimba, violin, cello and piano. It’s an unusual ensemble, but was dictated by both my preference for some of the instruments along with the range requirements of the piece.

What’s it called? torture memos (a survivor from guantánamo). I wanted to write a piece that called attention to the crimes against humanity committed by the Bush/Cheney administration, and initially thought to set some poetry of US torture victims to music. However, the existing poetry by Guantánamo inmates that I found just wasn’t to my taste. So I thought that, rather than set words by the victims to music, it would be more fitting for the music to be the main focus. That doesn’t mean that the music is doom and gloom–I’m not Shostakovich, of course. To some extent, the music doesn’t seem to even have anything to do with the subject. And that’s the point; I don’t compose “program music.” But I do want the music to at least provoke some thought, even if only through a title.

I’m next out this way in late October, so hopefully I’ll have even more progress at that point to report. But in any case, this has been a very busy musical year, and with luck, it will continue. That’s great news if you like my music. If you hate it, then this has been the 18 months from hell. Sorry about that.

But if you aren’t freaked out by new music, here’s an eight-minute excerpt from the current draft of torture memos. Remember, it’s still a work in progress, but this is a good chunk of what I was working on last night. This part was a pleasure to write. Whether it’s a pleasure to listen to is beyond my pay grade.

odds and ends

My usual 7:45 AM flight to San Francisco got cancelled so I have some time on my hands here at Philadelphia International and figured I should do a quick update of some sundry items:

• I went to a Sharing Ramadan event at the Foundation for Islamic Education in Villanova, PA last night to break the fast with a lot of wonderful folks of all different backgrounds and faiths. I was very struck by how diverse the local Muslim population is and how accepting they are. It doesn’t matter if you’re rich or poor, white or of color, etc. Everyone shares with everyone else and there is a genuine community. There are so many similarities with Judaism, but at the same time I don’t know that every synagogue is really that welcoming or open to people of different backgrounds. There are indeed Jews of color, but they are often marginalized or dismissed (or worse, mistaken for the “hired help.”). The other thing that delighted me was how much the Muslims I spoke with truly want dialogue and friendship with those of other faiths. We need this, and badly.
• Still working on the torture memos piece very slowly. It’s coming along, though. I am also thinking of trying to put together a piece for harpsichord as well as another piano piece. Now, all I need are the ideas.
• I was really happy to have had two radio premieres in two weeks. I guess that’s not too bad for a gynecologist.
• Speaking of gynecology, I’ll be at the next AAGL meeting in Orlando. We have three abstracts being presented there. Also not too bad for a gynecologist.
• I think Twitter is starting to replace blogging, but slowly
• Great, the flight I got booked on leaving over six hours after the flight I was supposed to take is oversold. Should I take a voucher to wait some more for a flight that gets me in to SFO six hours later than I will now? Uh, I don’t think so…

bs piece: radio premiere Weds, 9/9 on WPRB-FM, 103.3

Last week I polluted the West Coast airwaves with textbook on KALW-FM. This week, it’s Princeton’s radio station WPRB-FM, where Marvin Rosen hosts Classical Discoveries, and will be programming a 24-hour new music marathon starting tonight at 7 PM EST. Marvin is going to program the radio premiere of bs piece as performed on 8/6 by Bill Solomon and Mike Lunoe at the Hartt School of Music. The broadcast should be sometime between 11 am and noon tomorrow (Weds, 9/9) and there’s a live audio stream at http://www.wprb.com. Enjoy!

radio premiere of ‘textbook’ (1984-1987) on Music From Other Minds

Friday, September 4, 2009, 11 PM PST on KALW-FM, 91.7, sections 1, 2 and 4 of textbook: music of solitary landscapes in hyperspace (piece for IPS), as realized by Steve Layton will be heard on Music From Other Minds. Amazingly, the opening will serve as the theme music for Music From Other Minds through next summer. Thanks to Steve Layton for taking two weeks out of his life to create a great realization of this two hour piano work, and to Richard Friedman for programming this monster on his wonderful new music program.

buy this album…seriously

Now on iTunes (and eMusic and Amazon). Thanks to Steve Layton, who did a phenomenal job making this all happen.

And did I mention you get over two hours of truly kickass music for $9.99? It’s a bahgain…

idiot music

Composer JC Combs commented on my Facebook page, “Your works are not easy to play. Only an idiot would think that.” He’s right. But what’s interesting is my music would probably be taken as the work of an idiot by folks who feel that nearly every note has to have a dynamic, articulation or some other marking specified. The above is from the piano work Mists by Iannis Xenakis. Not a bad work, and certainly looks more complicated than this:

This is the first page of this piece intentionally left blank, which is an open instrumentation work. See that single metronome marking and dynamic at the top left; that’s it for the entire piece. With the exception of a few sixteenth notes near the end, this is as rhythmically diverse as it gets: straight sixteenth notes that go on for around ten minutes.

Same with the recently premiered bs piece:

Now, I’ve written plenty of music that looks just as formidable and “acceptable” as the Xenakis excerpt above, certainly back in the late 70’s and early 80’s before I was unplugged from the matrix:

four landscapes for six instruments (1978-1979)

ineffabilities (1980-1981)

Ouch-scary stuff. Now, I love all the music I’ve just referenced, complex or “simple” on the face of it. What matters in the end is the music itself, not how many nuances are communicated to the performers or how difficult the notation appears. Anyone who has performed my “idiot pieces” knows how incredibly bitchy they can be to play, both technically and interpretively. My personal bias is that I don’t need to give a huge Rosetta Stone to performers in order for them to figure out how to play my music. They’ll figure it out, and place their own stamps on the music in the process. And many of my rhythms even within an “idiot piece” can be extremely difficult to pull off:

zichron (2009)

two rhythmic spaces (2009)

Any of a number of new music composers are writing “idiot pieces” on a daily basis, music that looks unrefined, “simple” and akin to the work of a novice. These folks include Steve Reich, Philip Glass and predecessors like Cage (particularly some of his early piano works like In a Landscape) and Satie (pretty much everything he wrote was “unrefined”). My point is that you don’t have to, and even shouldn’t, write music that is designed for the academic complexity crowd. Been there, done that. My music is difficult enough, and the world doesn’t need another Xenakis, Ferneyhough or Boulez (I can barely follow some of his scores, and after awhile I think to myself “why bother?” and go do something else).

busy week for music

Last week was a really good week for my music. Given that I usually have to wait a long time for my music to be premiered, if at all, I was delighted that Mike Lunoe and Bill Solomon gave the first performance of bs piece (double canon for bill solomon) last Thursday (8/6) at the Hartt School of Music, essentially 11 months to the day after I started writing it in a Palo Alto hotel. Mike and Bill did an awesome job, performing with two live marimbas and four prerecorded marimbas (the piece is scored for six marimbas). It’s a bear to play, since it’s just too easy to get lost in the repetitions, plus the entire thing is 12-tone except for the last seven measures (the last chord contains all 12 tones, however). I’m still getting over the fact that no one seems to have shouted anything nasty or derogatory during the performance. Guess all the crazies were disrupting Democratic town hall meetings on health care reform instead. The performance is downloadable from the link above and has replaced my Finale-generated performance on the music page. The concert program is here.

But that’s not all…

The master composer/MIDI artist Steve Layton took it upon himself to release his excellent realization of my 80’s piano work textbook: music of solitary landscapes in hyperspace (piece for IPS) on a downloadable album via Amazon (I believe iTunes is coming soon as well). Steve broke up the 2 hour+ piece into its seven sections rather than keep it going continuously, so it’s even easier to listen to the entire thing in increments. Or just play the whole thing on an iPod /iPhone with gapless playback and experience the entire two hours in one sitting. It’s all about choice.

Finally, I locked myself in a hotel room in Palo Alto this week trying to get further into a new piece for two voices, flute, bass clarinet, violin, cello, marimba and piano I’m tentatively titling torture memos. It’s based on some improvisations I did a few months ago, mostly in May, but I’ve been really busy lately so putting it all together and scoring the music has been much slower than I would have thought. Only a little over six minutes have been dumped into Finale 2010 so far, but I’ll be back on the west coast in a little more than a week, so I hope to be more productive next time around. If anyone doesn’t mind hearing the beginning of a work in progress, click here.

So I really want to thank Mike, Bill and Steve for making last week a great week in terms of new music performance. Writing music is really really hard. Performing it with the musicianship and courage of these folks is even harder. And they make it sound easy.

brief update

Lots of good stuff going on, but I’ve been swamped so have not had time to blog.

• Next Thursday, August 6th at 7:30 PM, Bill Solomon and Mike Lunoe will be premiering my work for six marimbas titled bs piece (double canon for bill solomon) at the Berkman Recital Hall, Hartt School of Music in W. Hartford, CT. I’m listening to their latest rehearsal tape right now and it’s absolutely incredible. How they manage to play this without getting lost while syncing with a tape of the other four marimba parts and counting accurately how many times to repeat each measure (17x is not uncommon in this piece) boggles my mind. Kudos to them both for not just taking on my music but for realizing it so perfectly. The score is here. I’ll be posting a MP3 of the performance and possibly even a video once I get it from Mike and Bill.
• Just got an e-mail inviting me to be on the Editorial Advisory Board of the Journal of Minimally Invasive Gynecology, the official journal of the American Association of Gynecologic Laparoscopists. Obviously they’re extremely desperate.
• Composer/performer/MIDI artist Steve Layton is going to be releasing his realization of textbook: music of solitary landscapes in hyperspace (piece for IPS) via iTunes in the coming weeks. Steve’s realization is excellent and took him at least two weeks to accomplish. The piece is over two hours and is continuous, although it will be broken into individual sections for downloading.