Durata

Busy busy busy busy. But overcome with nostalgia in the past few days. Wrote my first Italian chamber opera the summer of 2005 (pictured above at Casa di Puccini). We spent all our money before anyone thought about recording it - so the only record I have are on these hissy tracks made with a laptop microphone. I don't mind, though - there is a certain Victor Victrola quality to the sound. Here is a short clip of my good friend Jason, the cellist taking a solo during the love scene between Florizel and Perdita. Uber romantic... despite all of the pressures not to write or live the romantic life. I'm glad I did - for at least one summer when I was 23. Wrote an opera, found a wonderful girl, took naps in the vineyard, learned to cook. If there was ever a time in my adult life that I managed to live intuitively, it was during that summer. Very glad.

From the Vaults

Going through the hard drive today, I came across a set of pieces written my second year in college as a composition student. After taking a course in digital recording, I became much more interested in the sculpting of pieces through the graphic interface of Pro Tools - and the sound quality of the recording itself. I would bring a solo instrumentalist into the studio, study the particular style of their playing, and compose a piece in the moment - quickly scribbling music down on the staff paper, or simply singing what I wanted them to play. It was very dynamic - and a relief from the long hours of solitude I spent at a piano composing my other pieces. It didn't take long to draw the obvious connection between this method of composing with the method that most studio rock bands practiced. Afterall, I was raised on the Beatles, not Beethoven.



This piece was one of my early attempts to compose with the inspiration of nature - particularly insects. I managed to escape the city that summer. After a few years living in the concrete jungle of Philadelphia where sounds of birds and insects were rare, my ears became suddenly sensitive to those strange frequencies of living animals.

Here is Krysta performing on her bassoon. I titled the piece Insects.

Improvised Laughter

My compositional style has turned largely towards improvisation in the past 3 years or so. Along with the influence of my buddy Sean, improvisation has revealed more depth to the music I've always loved, as well as the music I've wished to create. I have a catalog of improvised recordings on my computer that have been kept relatively private. I suppose that their spiritual connotations have kept these pieces close, without any attachment to the ambition that a composing career demands. And although this blog is public, I also consider it something of a private space.

Sean and I have been playing as a duo under the name Mad Man's Laughter. We began playing in what was once a tool shed - later a very redroom just big enough for one pieced together drum set and a large theater organ. The sound of the organ pumping through a lopsided but virile leslie speaker was a powerful sound, no doubt. So much that we were convinced that this music would be "ecstatic gospel" if anything at all.

A year has passed since this recording was made. The house was sold, the shed emptied. Our organ was too big to move, so it was put to sleep. Piece by piece, we took it apart - hoping to salvage the leslie. I've never felt nostalgia for an instrument before, but my feelings for that organ are pretty close. I'm sad that it's gone. I have since bought an old hammond, an old rhodes, but it's not the same. One day I will be an old man searching the internet, willing to pay any price for that same organ.

This track is called Mad Man's Laughter. Clearly one of our ecstatic improvisations. There are some mild hoots and hollers to prove it. More to come.

Embedded Music!

I have been moonlighting as a theater "sound designer" for the past year or so. I'm not sure what I think of the title "sound designer" since really I think a more accurate term is "mini-composer." I end up writing about 20-30 original pieces per show, each one between 30 seconds and 1.5 minutes. A sound designer can be mistaken for cuing doorbells, rain, and crickets. Ok, that's not true anyhow. The sound design to Stalker was one of the most brilliantly ticklish auditory experiences I've had in a long time.

Anyway, although it's not "serious" music, I try to bring compositional aesthetic to the table. Composing for theater can be a bit fun, particularly the bit of collaborating with non-musicians.* There are without a doubt countless obstacles and compromises in theatrical music, but I've found that I enjoy working within certain confines from time to time.

My first solo project was for The Wilma Theater's production of Brecht's Life of Galileo. The sets were bare wood and steel, evoking Galileo's story through the lens of an oppressed Eastern European 1940s society. Choosing the most obvious solution then, I decided to compose music using primarily percussive sounds on wood and steel. The result was interesting - a combination of Reich-like rhythmic effects with a certain rustic production quality. As an added bonus, the music was very well received. The production was reviewed by Terry Teachout of the Wall Street Journal but unfortunately there was no comment on music. Maybe next time an Alex Ross type should join the audience and offer a bit of perspective on the potential of a modern compositional element to today's live theater.

My second production was a US premier of Lisa Griffiths' Age of Arousal, also produced by the Wilma Theater. The play was inspired by George Gissing's progressive victorian novel The Odd Women. I read the set as a psychedelic Victorian parlor with its over-sized floral wallpaper and hints of eastern exoticism lining the lingerie. There was a sense of nature's urge for creation bubbling just below the surface as the modern women considered their intellectual, spiritual, and sexual roles in post-imperialist British society. Typewriters, commerce, and lesbianism abound, but the music was mostly inspired by a sensual undercurrent not least of which was highlighted visually by a giant floral arrangement that stretched over one-third of the stage.

Best of all was that Blanka, the director of both shows, decided to choreograph the scene transitions with intricate ballets of characters and sets moving. The transitions were always exciting and gave the music a chance to fulfill a worthwhile lifecycle without any fade-outs(!).

I've discovered a way to embed music files to this blog - so this is a test to see if it works. Track 1 is from The Life of Galileo, serving as a segue from the industrialist, socialist sensibilities of Brecht's Galileo to the aristocratic ball scene where the Grand Inquisitor is first introduced.

The second track from Age of Arousal is the introduction of victorian psychedelic beauty as walls open up to reveal a young bachelor courting a beautiful debutante on a stroll through some London park. I bought a 1972 Fender Rhodes and an out of tune piano at the used furniture store to create the atmosphere. The tape delay was also a favorite post production tool of mine.

The third track introduces Act II of Age of Arousal. The scene is entitled Impressionism - the characters are walking through the first exhibit of this new art form in a London gallery.

The fourth is the final scene of Age of Arousal, titled Garden, when the cycle of death and re-birth come to full realization in a beautifully lit (slightly psychedelic) garden. The internet provided the birds - I guess I modeled the short track on Messiaen and some freejazz solos. Enjoy!

*except when everything outside of classic tonality is considered "creepy" or "sinister"