Miss Gender

Strap in folks, this one’s going to be pretty personal.

You may have noticed a *minor* change to the homepage of my website - “they/them” smack-dab in the middle, in massive bold font. Oh yes, those dreadful things destroying western culture and silencing Every Day Americans - pronouns.

Let’s lay some groundwork before I address the elephant in the room. It’s fascinating how the discourse around pronoun usage that plagues conservative politics reveals an astounding lack of basic knowledge of the English language and how it serves us. Pundits I will not dignify by drawing attention to by name proudly proclaim nonsense like “biology is the nature of the pronoun,” a conclusion so bizarre and blatantly wrong I have to laugh. If you were to look at my headshot without knowing my gender, you would default to using he/him - but not because you can see my XY chromosomes and not because my… erm… “private parts” are visible. No, you default to he/him because my presentation in the photo is in line with cultural signifiers we associate with men. My outfit is straight from H&M’s men’s section, my vacation stubble is clearly visible, and my hair is clipped short. Unequivocally, in that picture, I look like a man.

But, if the picture was exactly the same - same pose, same framing, location, color grading, etc. - but my hair was shoulder length, I was wearing a red sundress, shaved my arms and face, and had on red lipstick and a beret, I’d venture to guess most people would default to she/her. Sure, my shoulders are broad, my face structure is closer to a man’s than a woman’s, and chest-wise I’m… flat as a cheeseboard (or at least I was until I gained all this Covid weight). But in the first millisecond you see me, you’re not seeing those things. You’re seeing the sundress, the hair, the lipstick - cultural signifiers of femininity. In effect, to claim that “biology is the nature of the pronoun” is to ignore that usually, pronouns are unconsciously used to describe what our eyes are telling us.

Which brings me to they/them pronouns. First of all - no, it is not ungrammatical to use “they” to describe a singular person. Do you want to know how I know? Because when you’re talking about one individual whose gender you don’t know, you usually refer to THEM with they/them pronouns. Case closed.

I understand why people who have never interacted with a nonbinary person have a hard time wrapping their head around it. We live in a binary world, so there really aren’t cultural signifiers to denote nonbinary people except for androgyny and nonconformity. But even then, the response still seems to be “I can’t tell if that’s a man or a woman” rather than “That person is neither a man nor a woman.” Frankly, overcoming that hurdle is a pretty big step for nonbinary acceptance and I don’t have the time or energy to delve into that today, nor do I think I would do the topic any justice. What I really want to talk about is why I am currently using they/them pronouns.

It begins with Abigail Thorn of Philosophy Tube.

This video popped up in my recommendations when I was on a ContraPoints binge. I put it on a bit passively, but by the end I was sobbing my eyes out. It’s a beautiful story, but it resonated with me in a way that went deeper than just… being moved by a beautiful story. I saw in Abigail a spark of recognition in myself, and this whole identity crisis snowballed from the realization that I’ve always taken my identity as a gay man at face value. I figured out from an early-ish age that I was attracted to men, and that was kind of it as far as queer self discovery. At the time I came out, I didn’t have any close relationships with trans people, and honestly didn’t really believe in the validity of trans identity. I probably hadn’t even heard of nonbinary people now that I look back on it. But as I’ve grown older and come to know and love many trans and nonbinary people, trans identity and inequality has begun to take up a lot of mental real estate… too much mental real estate for someone with zero skin in the game, so to speak. I’m always thinking about it, and I find myself always wanting to talk about it.

When I look at a trans woman, or a cis woman for that matter, I’m often petrified by her beauty. It’s different from how I look at a beautiful man. In the past I’ve shrugged it off as “Maybe I’m just a little bi. Sexuality is a spectrum!” but I still have no romantic or sexual interest in women. No, what I think I feel looking at someone like Abigail Thorn is not “I want to love you.” It’s “I wish I was as beautiful as you.”

So, I’m a trans woman right? Well, it’s not that simple. Gender identity isn’t something you can just figure out in two weeks. I can’t yet confidently say that I want to live the rest of my life as a woman. But I also know I can’t spend the rest of my life being perceived as a man full stop. The difference between coming to terms with the fact that I was gay and coming to terms with my gender identity was that the latter could be done internally. Who I love is not conditional on how other people see me. But to me, gender is something that’s predominantly social and interpersonal. It’s not something I can figure out entirely on my own, in my own head. I can’t know how I want to be perceived until I am perceived that way, and that can only come from outside myself.

For me, the ability to exist in a space where I am neither a man nor a woman is necessary. I’m in gender purgatory, and they/them pronouns are a way for me to still exist in the world while I consider what my ideal next life is. It’s important, though, to note that “gender purgatory” is just how I am conceiving of my internal world right now. I cannot stress enough that nonbinary identities are NOT, oh, a “pit stop on the way to Transtown (sounds like a place I’d like to visit!).” Just because I don’t foresee myself using they/them pronouns for the rest of my life does NOT mean I think it’s invalid to do so, nor do I write that off entirely as a potential future for me.

So, for those who skimmed my meandering, sickeningly saccharine prose thinking “what the hell kind of leftist antifa snowlfakery is this! Are you a boy or a girl?” my answer is……..

(Shaking Magic 8 Ball)

….. ask again later.

If I had to choose a label for my current presentation, I like the labels gender-nonconforming and genderqueer. But those are just words I’m using to sublimate my internal world into something communicable. Ultimately they don’t really mean anything to me anymore than the fact that I have XY chromosomes. What matters to me can be easily summed up by this astute observation from the only good YouTuber Natalie Wynn: “Being a boy was fine, but being a man is not.”

I’m not going to chide anyone for misgendering me or deadnaming me, but my pronouns for the time being are they/them, and I will be asking those in my personal life to call me Lin (I don’t want to give up my name entirely!). I’d like to think I’ve cultivated a following that will understand and will be happy for me, and who will see me for who I am. At, least I hope so. Ultimately I have no control over how you refer to me, and I know getting used to different pronouns for someone you’ve perceived as another gender takes time and effort. Go ahead and use your free speech to call me whatever you’d like, and in turn I’ll use MY free speech to respond accordingly!

I’m not naive. I’ve seen how trans and nonbinary people are vilified, degraded, mocked, and abused by the majority of people. I won’t pretend that doesn’t scare me. But what resonated with me above all else in Abigail Thorn’s video was that I had never seen or heard a trans coming out story so unapologetically joyous. Of course it’s difficult. Of course openly identifying as genderqueer is not going to make my life any easier. Of course I’ve just alienated a pretty hefty group of people. But to see that pain is not the definitive trans experience, that there is joy in liberation from a dissatisfying societal role, in becoming… that means something to me. That gives me courage. That is the life I want, and it’s the life I’m striving for.

Just one last thing:

Kiss my genderqueer ass, Joanne Rowling.

What is Colin Listening to this Month? - August 2021

Welcome to the second installment of this monthly series on my blog where I highlight five pieces of music I have had on repeat this past month! The goal of this blog is to promote new music and my friends and colleagues, but I am not excluding older music or more popular styles (as you will certainly see today). I hope you check out all these fabulous artists!

1. Nico Muhly, The Only Tune (2007)

I will admit, Nico Muhly’s music is a bit hit or miss for me. But his collaborations with Sam Amidon are nothing short of some of the most beautiful music ever written. This is a modern reworking of an old murder ballad called The Two Sisters, which has become a bluegrass standard. As you may know from my piece Dream States, bluegrass/folk music is incredibly close to my heart and The Only Tune is the type of piece I wish I could write. The emotional breadth of this piece is massive, exploring the horror of the story before it all crashes into something much more bittersweet and devastating.

2. Ida Maria, Oh My God (2007)

Well I did say not all of this was going to be the most esoteric music, didn’t I? To be honest I’m not sure what it is about this song that just gets me every time. The lyrics and musical material (while effective) are quite repetitive, but Ida Maria completely sells it and explores different vocal timbres in an engaging way. Oh My God is a perfect example of my fundamental belief that complexity doesn’t automatically make a piece of music good; passion does.

3. Alain Goraguer, La Planète Sauvage (1973)

Rene Laloux’s La Planète Sauvage (Fantastic Planet) is one of my favorite films ever made, and the score is a large factor in that. The gorgeous psychedelic images Laloux treats the viewer to marry perfectly with the sound world Goraguer creates, and to be honest I don’t know if I’ve ever encountered any film where the score and visuals complement one another so beautifully. It’s a fantastic score and a really cool film that everyone should watch.

4. Yunfei Li, Circling (2019)

I’m thrilled to have the incredible opportunity to be writing a work for Duo Entre-nous, a new music-focused ensemble formed by clarinetist Jackie Glazier (my professor during my undergrad) and saxophonist Don-Paul Kahl. Duo Entre-nous recently released their first album, Fresh Ink, and I have been listening to all the wonderful new pieces included on the album quite a lot in preparation of writing my own work for the ensemble.

I had the pleasure of meeting Yunfei Li virtually in May at the TURNUP Festival, and have loved all the works I have heard by her. Circling is such a high energy piece with memorable themes and motives that constantly get stuck in my head. It’s a highlight for me on an album that consists entirely of sublime works by living composers.

5. Michael Nyman, Drowning by Numbers (1988)

I suppose this has been a month of film scores, which is fitting given that one of my current projects is incidental music for a screenplay by Graham Knapman! I first encountered the filmmaker Peter Greenaway last year with his 1989 masterpiece The Cook, the Thief, his Wife, and her Lover, and it immediately cemented itself as one of my personal favorite films. What shocked me most was how beautiful the look of the film and the score by Michael Nyman were, given that all I knew about it beforehand was how uncompromising the violence and sexual content were.

Shortly after seeing it, I watched the film he made prior, Drowning by Numbers and while it didn’t hit me quite as hard as the Cook, I was even more struck by Nyman’s score for it. I was luckily able to track down a vinyl of it on Ebay, and it’s the record I put on most often. Greenaway’s films are so morbid in their narratives, but the dignified style and utterly lovely music make them linger in my mind as strangely optimistic experiences. I can’t exactly recommend the films themselves as they are certainly not to everyone’s taste, but Michael Nyman’s music is something I think everyone can find beauty in.

What is Colin Listening to this Month? - July 2021

To me, equally important to my own works is promoting the works of others and cultivating interest in new music. To this end, I felt it would be nice to do a monthly series in which I share five pieces of music I can’t get enough of. Nothing is off limits here - while I primarily want to focus my efforts on sharing the works of my contemporaries in the world of classical music, if I feel a different genre or older work is adding something to my life in a given month I will certainly highlight it on this blog. Let’s kick it off with what I’ve been listening to in July!

1. Julius Eastman - Femenine (1974)

There is a beautiful quote from Julius Eastman I often think about: “What I want to achieve is to be what I am to the fullest: Black to the fullest, a musician to the fullest, and a homosexual to the fullest.” To me, Femenine is the ultimate encapsulation of this notion. While his angstier piano series (a quick Google search should explain why I do not feel comfortable using the title) consists of perhaps his most celebrated works - which are all dense, mysterious masterpieces - Femenine is the piece of his that speaks to me the most. It unfolds over a joyous 70 minutes with a theme of only two notes, played by the vibraphone throughout the entire work as other instruments gradually join in with their own takes on the theme and improvisations. It’s a particularly fitting work for the summer; the constant sleigh bells are like the chirping of cicadas and the density of the textures is an enveloping humidity.

Femenine is one of my favorite musical works of all time and in my estimation Julius Eastman achieved what he wanted to - and so much more.

Note - this is the first recording of the work I heard and the one that made me fall in love with it, but the ensemble wild Up has recently released an album of what may be the definitive recording of this masterpiece. It is available on Spotify.

2. Yaz Lancaster - Neutral Objects (2020)

Yaz Lancaster is a name I’ve seen more and more often with each passing year, and with Neutral Objects I can very clearly see why. They are one of the most exciting young American composers and I will certainly be following their career as a rabid fan.

Neutral Objects is a hazy, dreamlike work for string quartet. Each note and gesture carries such emotional weight, yet it is simultaneously weightless. Lancaster’s use of microtones is very accessible and utterly beautiful. It’s a rare work in which I feel every note, harmonic, gesture, and especially extended technique is placed exactly right. It’s a pretty flawless three minutes that leaves me craving more.

3. Lou Harrison - Symphony no. 4, Mvt. 4 - Three Coyote Stories (1990)

I do feel the need to add a caveat to this piece - its appropriation of Javanese gamelan traditions and Navajo stories (Lou Harrison was white) is, at best, questionable and at worst, objectionable. The reason I feel marginally comfortable including it is twofold: 1) I do think Harrison approaches this material from a place of genuine admiration and fascination and 2) the stories told are so beautiful and the way Harrison tells them through music is practically transcendental.

I won’t touch on the conundrum of white American composers incorporating and imitating the music and instruments of other cultures (though I see it as an unavoidable consequence of globalization), because others more qualified have written more thoroughly on it than I can. What I will say is that the musical material of this work is, to my ears, some of the most engaging and dreamlike beauty I’ve encountered and I can’t pretend it didn’t have a massive impact on me the first time I heard it.

It’s perhaps the definition of a guilty pleasure, but this piece has inspired me to learn more about Indigenous folktales and religions and to seek out more music by Indigenous composers that tell these stories from a deeper place. In my estimation, that’s worth something.

4. Arturo Márquez - Danzón no. 2 (1994)

This is easily the most well known work on this list, but I hope I can introduce at least one person to it who has never had the absolute pleasure of listening to it. This is just one of the most invigorating, fun, and easy to love pieces of music I’ve ever encountered. It’s usually my go-to rebuttal to the notion that “classical” music is boring.

It has an unbelievably catchy theme, infectious rhythm, and gorgeous orchestration. Danzon no. 2 is one of those pieces that just speaks for itself, so I’m going to stop trying to describe how good it is and let it do exactly that.

Alondra de la Parra’s conducting here just adds another layer of energy to this already vibrant work!

5. Michael Torke - Being (2020)

At last we come to this, the piece of music that I have had on repeat more than any other. Michael Torke’s Being encapsulates everything I love about music - it’s optimistic and joyful, yet carries an undercurrent of yearning. The orchestration is so colorful, every note is exactly right, the emotional journey is breathless - it is a truly flawless piece of music and I cannot get enough of it. There are precious few pieces of this length that I can listen to in their entirety on a whim, and this is one of them. It’s utterly spectacular.

Towards a New Future

Oh how time flies!

It’s been months since last I blogged and too much has happened in the world to even scratch the surface. We have a new president which, though he was not my first choice, has given me hope for the future (I’m very proud of my home state’s flip to blue!!), as well as the first Black woman as vice president! Things are not automatically better, but after the disastrous four years we’ve been through, I think this is cause for some celebration.

I have some very exciting projects lined up for the coming months! In less than a month on February 13th, I will present my senior performance recital, In Dreams. I have just had my first rehearsal with my fantastic accompanist, and I am so excited to perform some incredible contemporary works. And the most exciting part is - anyone can watch it from anywhere! It will be livestreamed on the Fred Fox School of Music YouTube channel. I am so excited to finally perform again after a year of not being able to perform at all!

On the composition side of things, I’m working towards my composition recital, Outer Space/Inner Space which will be in May. This recital explores the concept of space in different contexts both metaphorical and literal. Dr. Jackie Glazier will perform my piece Automata for Clarinet and Electronics, pianist Mathew Lanning will perform Solitudes, and the Vulpes Wind Quintet (of which I am a part) will premiere my passion project Dream States. I began writing Dream States in November of 2019 and finished it last July, and it is the longest and most intricate piece I have ever written. Tonight is our first rehearsal on it and I couldn’t be more excited to bring it to life!

In addition, my composition recital will feature two new commissions that are in the works. One is for tuba and electronics titled Inland Empire, commissioned by Caroline Earnhardt. The other is a solo viola work for my dear friend Gabby Cioca. We first bonded over our shared love of film, so she asked me to write something inspired by a film I love. I settled on Richard Linklater’s beautiful romance Before Sunrise, and specifically a monologue Julie Delpy’s character gives near the end about how if any god exists, it’s in the space between people and the attempt at understanding them. It’s one of the most beautiful pieces of cinematic writing I’ve ever encountered, and I am attempting to reflect the sincere beauty of it in the work.

Finally, and perhaps most excitingly, I will be recording a solo clarinet album over the summer! I have always wanted to commission living composers, and this project is a perfect opportunity. I will be recording my own piece Automata, Theresa Martin’s Gryphon, selections of Alice Jones’ Tiny Efforts, and commissioning three new works by Sayre Evans, Chris Holmes, and Ahmed Alabaca. I have gotten to know these three exceptional composers through Twitter of all places, and I am so excited to bring new works of theirs to life and to share them with you! This album is something I’ve always dreamed of doing; curating a program of entirely living LGBTQ+, BIPOC, and women composers. I really hope this won’t be my last such project! I’ve always seen myself more as a composer than a performer, but lately I’ve been trying to balance both of those things so I can continue supporting other living composers and getting their music played. It’s something very near to my heart.

That’s all for now, please tune into my recital on the 13th!

A Dream Nearly Woken From

It’s been some time since I’ve updated this blog, simply because there’s not much to update. Despite the chaos of COVID ravaging the United States (especially Arizona, hooray we’re number 1!) and being in the midst of a revolution as the Black Lives Matter movement makes progress towards dismantling the oppressive systems inherently built into this country (here is a fantastic resource for ways YOU can help!), day to day life is quite slow.

I have been struggling lately with depression and anxiety, which is not helped by the frustration of knowing we could be on our way back to a semblance of normalcy by now if it weren’t for the combination of selfishness, misinformation, and poor leadership that led Arizona to reopen prematurely. As a musician, the uncertainty of not knowing when performances will take place again has a very serious effect on my ability to motivate myself to practice or compose. The feeling of “what’s the point” that set in when this chaos started has returned.

Nevertheless, I have nearly completed my wind quintet, Dream States. I finished movements 1, 3, and 4 earlier this year, but movement 2 has been a challenge to finish. It is the fastest movement, which means I need to write more music to make it as long as the other 3. I’m shooting for 3 minutes for this one, which would make the piece as a whole 16 minutes. That is by far the longest singular piece I have written, so I’m trying not to be too angry with myself for how long it’s taken me to complete it. I currently have about 2 minutes and 40 seconds of the movement, and it doesn’t feel I’ve made my point yet, so the 3 minute goal should be fairly easy to reach. Here’s a snippet of one of my personal favorite sections which contains fragments of multiple themes from the movement:

Each movement is given a long and descriptive title: I. The sound of rain on asphalt gives way to a deep slumber, II. A fiddler in the desert plays for an audience of dancing sparrows, III. Those trees whose voices can be heard from beneath a moonlit pool, and IV. The rain becomes a cloud of fireflies illuminating a grove. These titles are not based on anything in particular, just images from my mind. The concept of dream fascinates me greatly as a subject of art (likely why David Lynch is my favorite filmmaker). It allows for so much artistic freedom, because dreams don’t follow any logic other than their own. This piece is very fragmentary, with certain gestures and melodies appearing in odd places and only for a moment, as when you see a face from real life in a dream. I’m trying to avoid complete melodies, because often thoughts in dreams trail off and never complete themselves.

I think this second movement is my favorite I’ve written. It’s directly based on bluegrass, a genre that means very much to me. Some of my fondest memories as a child are listening to my very close friend Rebekah Rolland (of Run Boy Run) singing traditional folk tunes to me, and she remains a brilliant musician, mentor, and friend. In writing the second movement of Dream States, my intention was to create something that sounded like a fiddle tune that had been put through a blender. I couldn’t help myself but to include a brief quote of one of my favorite fiddle tunes Rebekah has written, a beautifully melancholic dance called Lion and the Fawn.

A very brief quote from Lion and the Fawn in the flute and oboe

After experimenting with tonality and texture quite a bit in the first and third movements of the piece, it’s felt very cathartic to write something as instinctual and joyous as this movement. I have been troubled of late by the elitism of the classical world. There is value in the more abstract and intellectual works being written today, but the sad truth is that really, really out there music doesn’t draw a crowd. I love that kind of stuff, but I’m surrounded by it in my every day life. I am hesitant to bring friends and family from outside the music world to new music concerts because more often than not, they don’t find it rewarding. I’m about to use the dreaded “A” word, but I hold the opinion that accessibility is not the death of art. There’s nothing wrong with writing music that mainstream audiences find accessible. It took me a long time to get over my own elitist opinions on music and reach this conclusion, but I do believe in it with all my heart.

This post got away from me a bit, I must admit. This has all been on my mind a lot lately, and I needed an outlet to vent about it.

To end on a positive note, Solo de Concours, Five Miniatures, and Sonata for Soprano Saxophone are now available for purchase from T.U.X. People’s Music Publishing!

Until next time.

T.U.X.!

Exciting news!!!

Yesterday, I received an email informing me that three of my works (Solo de Concours, Five Miniatures, and Sonata for Soprano Saxophone and Piano) have been selected for publication by T.U.X. People’s Music! These pieces will be included in their 2020-21 catalogue, and I couldn’t be more excited or honored. T.U.X. is a new (established in 2016) and relatively small publisher, and from what I can gather they truly care about their composers and treat them and their music with respect. I am eagerly anticipating having professional copies of my scores, but what I look forward to the most is discovering the music of the other composers T.U.X. publishes.

Being published is a huge deal to me. I have received countless rejection emails from competitions in the past, and each is more discouraging than the last. Getting this email felt the same as when I found out I was accepted to the Fred Fox School of Music composition program; as if I could finally stop calling myself a composer* and remove the asterisk. I don’t think there’s ever a point where you’ve “made it.” If there were, there would be no reason to keep composing. There are just these moments of reassurance that your music is worth something, that there’s at least one person who thinks it’s good enough to publish. Who knows whether I’ll sell many copies, but just being included in their catalogue is so exciting to me!

As for the clarinet side of things, I’ve just finished a recording of a short piece I commissioned from my good friend Sarah Anne Evans, called The Stages of Being Trapped Indoors. The recording is available here! I have also been working diligently on Gryphon by Theresa Martin, and just for fun I am starting to learn Scott McAllister’s Black Dog. Here’s a brief (and flawed) recording of a section I’ve been working on this past week:

I am, of course, watching a lot of movies and TV. I have one more episode of Twin Peaks: The Return and I have been putting off watching it because I just don’t want to be done! It is a phenomenal series and I have been enjoying it immensely. This past week I also crossed a couple movies off my Criterion watchlist; Rashomon and Multiple Maniacs. I enjoyed both, but I can’t say I truly fell in love with either of them. That’s always bound to happen, though. Not everything ends up resonating with you!

That’s about all I have to update you on, things have been slow lately. Still, I am very, very excited to be working with T.U.X. and I look forward to writing more this summer! Until next time.

Movies, Max MSP, and Martin

It’s been a couple weeks since I finished my series of blog posts on Solitudes (which now has its very own page where you can view the score and listen to a recording), so I feel it’s about time to give a little update on my life and composing!

I finished my Junior year of college today, which is a bizarre feeling! It seems only yesterday I was moving into my dorm and wandering the halls of the Fred Fox School of Music like a child who has lost their parent in a mall. This summer is going to be interesting; without school I fear the cabin fever of being in quarantine will only increase, so I’m trying to find ways to keep myself busy.

One such way is by subscribing to the Criterion Channel! Those who know me personally know that I am incredibly invested in film, and I have been a collector of the Criterion Collection’s wonderful blu-ray line for a little over a year now. Their streaming service offers a fantastic array of classic, international, and important cinema (I am not sponsored by them, sadly) and I have set myself up a watchlist (currently 87 films long!!) of films I have been meaning to watch for a long time. I’ve been trying to watch a lot of essential cinema lately, and some of the standouts I have watched recently have included A Brighter Summer Day, There Will Be Blood, Metropolis, and as much David Lynch as I can get my hands on!

Just one corner of my watchlist that is sure to keep me busy this summer!

Of course I have composition and clarinet projects that are keeping me busy. In addition to finishing my wind quintet which is 75% done, I have decided that this summer will finally be the time I learn to use Max MSP. Max is a software that I’m still trying to get my brain around, which enables the user to create patchers for numerous things, which in my case will be electroacoustic music! My goal for the summer (which might be ambitious as the learning curve is… so steep as to be almost vertical) is to write a short piece for clarinet and electronics that I can record myself. It’s an exciting adventure I’m embarking on, but I have to wrestle with the fact that the first project I do will probably… suck. I think I’ll have to do a couple smaller, incomplete pieces before I try to write a full-fledged work using the software.

This is what a Max patcher looks like. If you’re thinking “How the hell do you make music out of THAT?”… you’re not alone, because I made this with the help of a tutorial and I’m still at a loss for what it truly means. All I know is I can now make a timer and change the color of an object.

One other composition project I’d be interested in doing is a duet for myself and my roommate, who is a trumpet player. Again, something short, but after working on 3 fairly large projects in the past few months I would like to write some small-scale stuff that doesn’t take itself too seriously and that could actually be recorded by myself and my roommate.

Of course, I am also diligently working on my clarinet playing. I’m gearing up for my senior recital (which will hopefully take place in January), and have begun working on the final piece I have to learn: Theresa Martin’s fabulous unaccompanied work Gryphon. It’s an incredibly challenging piece, but it is exactly the kind of contemporary music I love playing. The rest of my program will include X by Scott McAllister, Andre Messager’s Solo de Concours, and Libby Larsen’s Black Birds, Red Hills, which I will be performing with two very close friends: pianist Brice Kimble and violist Corissa Knecht.

This section of Gryphon has been giving me hell… but it’s a remarkable piece of music.

It’s been a bizarre semester, and I’m sure the summer will be no less bizarre. Nevertheless, I’m going to keep composing, keep playing, and of course keep watching as many movies as I possibly can!

Solitudes: An Epilogue

Well, well, well! Here we are at the end of a three-month long project. In January, I embarked on a new compositional journey attempting to write two pieces for piano, each an homage to composers I admire. The first was to be written in the style of John Adams, and the second in the style of George Crumb. I wanted to work on this project because though I am aware of my influences, I have never actively tried to write in the style of another composer. Inhabiting that headspace, I hoped, would open my eyes to compositional techniques I have not used and different ways of creating music. Once the piece was written, I had planned on recording it with two colleagues at the University of Arizona.

I am happy to say that in some ways, I succeeded in what I set out to do. By the end of this project, I did have a live recording (though not professionally rendered in a studio like I had hoped) of the second movement and an adequate MIDI approximation of the first. Because of the Coronavirus pandemic, I was no longer able to complete the studio recording I had hoped for, so instead I shifted my goal to publication. Today, I submitted the piece to TUX People’s Music Publishing, and should hear back in the near future.

Fingers crossed!

Week 1

In the first week of this project, I began by coming up with sketches for the first movement and writing them out by hand. I had in my mind a brief gesture that I had come up with while trying to improve my piano skills when I was unable to play clarinet for two weeks due to wisdom tooth extraction in December. In realizing how much the ideas I was sketching reminded me of the music of John Adams, I decided to run with it and build my project around the idea of homages to different composers.

Week 2

Having decided to embrace the styles of John Cage and George Crumb, I spent the second week doing a fair amount of score studying; asking myself questions such as “why did the composer choose to notate it in this way?” “What are the techniques that give these composers their distinct sound?” Understanding their style was key to replicating it.

I included this picture in my blog post for week two, but I wanted to post it again here - I miss doing all of my work at Black Crown Coffee Co. with my close friend Reason (who took the picture) so very much and I eagerly await the day I’m able to do so again.

Week 3

In the third week of the project, I wrote a bit more on the first movement and focused my energy on notating what I had in a clear and sensible way. It was during this week that I was racing to my deadline for my Solo de Concours, so much of my creative energy went toward that piece and my work on Solitudes was mostly technical.

Week 4(ish)

“Week four” was… rough, and in terms of this project encapsulated three difficult weeks. COVID-19’s rapid spread in the United States meant no more in person classes - and therefore no more in person collaborations. In other words, no studio recording. During this week, I shifted my goal from having a recording to submitting the piece for publication. I still made progress, however. I fixed playability issues to make the first movement more performer-friendly and had completed about 75% of the movement.

Week 5

I finally finished the first movement (admittedly quite behind schedule) during this week! That’s pretty much it, this was a huge milestone for this project.

Week 6

In the sixth week, I struggled to work out my sketches for the second movement. I wanted to use a multitude of extended techniques, and when I initially embarked on the project I had hoped I would be able to workshop with Brice Kimble (the pianist I was going to work with) to see how I could use them. However, I did not have access to a grand piano so I had to just approximate what I felt they would sound like.

Week 7

The penultimate week of the project I made some progress in creating my palette of extended techniques, but my composition teacher Kay He (rightly) took issue with what I had written because it was just not cohesive - only a collection of these techniques with no connective tissue. I had to rethink the movement entirely.

Week 8

The final week arrived, and I finally knew where I was going with the second movement. A lot of time was spent this week finishing it, and I was slightly surprised at how happy I was with how it turned out after all the struggles of the previous two weeks. Another stroke of luck came in the fact that I found someone with a grand piano who was willing to record the piece - an excellent fellow composer named Mathew Lanning.

The very least I can do to thank Mathew for his enormous help in this project is to tell you to visit his website and listen to his music. He is an incredible and very prolific composer - he’s written fifteen symphonies!!!

Some final thoughts

To quote 30 Rock, which I have been watching even more of lately than I usually do, “You want to make God laugh? Make a plan… Or read him a Dave Barry book.” Perhaps that second part doesn’t quite apply, but this project really was an exercise in adapting to things not going to plan. I encountered a lot of obstacles during this project, even beyond the logistical aspects of not being able to record as I wanted to or not having access to a grand piano. When things first shut down, I went through a period where all I could think was “what is the point?” I didn’t want to practice clarinet and I didn’t want to compose. Up to the end of the project, I almost believed I wouldn’t finish the second movement. I scrapped multiple versions of it because they were just bad, and I wasn’t convinced I knew how to write something good.

Even with all of this, I tried to force myself to finish it. Some days, it was easy and I felt genuinely inspired. Other days, I would sit at the piano or computer and just stare because I didn’t know where to begin. Suffice it to say, I was pretty incredulous when I finished the second movement and it was (at least to my ears) quite good. With all the difficulties in writing the piece and adapting to the world in which we now live, I think Solitudes is some of my best work.

The biggest skill I feel I gained from this piece is the ability to write in styles I previously had little experience in, especially in the realm of extended techniques. I’ve learned a lot about the ins and outs of how the piano works as an instrument, and what can be played and what simply can’t. I really enjoyed hearing the extended techniques I had written come to life in Mathew’s performance, and I will definitely be exploring them again, perhaps to an even more extreme extent. Above all, I feel this was an important project in developing my own voice. In writing like other composers, I feel more concrete in my understanding of my compositional language and the kind of music I want to write.

Though this project is over, this isn’t the end of this blog. I don’t know that I will be posting with as much regularity, but I want to keep you all updated on the projects I’m working on. I have some exciting things coming down the pipeline. Until then, enjoy this video of the process of composing Solitudes, which ends with a performance of the second movement:

Now if you’ll excuse me, I think I have some more composing to do.

Solitudes: Week 9

Greetings, readers! I hope everyone is well.

For those new to my blog (or website in general), welcome! For the past 9 weeks I have been writing about my current project, which is a two movement work for piano. Each movement is an homage to favorite composers I admire: John Adams and George Crumb.

I finished the first movement a couple weeks ago and have since been working on movement two, “Seafarer.” This week I met with my composition instructor Kay He (through Zoom of course), and she demonstrated for me a number of extended techniques on the piano. This was extremely helpful, as most of these techniques can only be accomplished on a grand piano (which I do not own), and I now feel I have a broader palette with which to work in composing this movement.

I am experimenting in this movement with spacial notation, wherein stems are not used on notes and instead the physical space between them on the page determines how much musical space should be used.

One of the biggest challenges with this movement so far has been just figuring out how to notate the darn thing. The above excerpt calls for four distinct extended
”inside-the-piano” techniques: plucked strings (the lone notes with “x” shaped noteheads), Glissandi across the low strings (the first gesture you see on the page), strings muted with the left hand while the right hand strikes the keys (the notes with a “+” over them), and the final gesture on the page, which I can only describe with the following score note:

This technique creates an indescribably brilliant effect in which the pitch varies as the left hand moves along the string, sometimes hitting points which create harmonics.

The difficulty in notation is in trying to make it as clear and concise as possible, and to make obvious distinctions between different techniques through the notation. As it stands now, I think the notation is accurate and clear enough. Also, as I mentioned last week, it is incredibly difficult to write a piece with this many extended techniques without knowing exactly how it will sound, so I look forward to the day where I may be able to hear it played live.

This project is winding down, so within the next couple weeks this movement and final edits on the first movement will be completely done. After which comes the task of getting it played and, hopefully, published!

Here is an example of what piano harmonics sound like from this neat YouTube channel:

Solitudes: Week 8

Hello again, and welcome to week eight! I hope everyone is staying safe and indoors. If you are new to this blog, I have been chronicling the composing process of a two movement work for piano solo, entitled Solitudes. When the piece is completed (by April 28th), I intend to submit it for publication.

Last week, I completed the first movement, “Andromeda Fragments.” I still need to do one final editing process on it, but I expect very little change in the musical content. With this hurdle leaped, this past week I shifted my focus to the very different challenge of the second movement, “Seafarer.” Movement one had a lot of notes and constant motion, so each individual note was less important to me than the gesture they were creating. This second movement is an entirely different beast, however.

My early sketches for the second movement.

It is influenced by the work of George Crumb, so everything is much sparser and I intend to be much pickier with the micro aspect of things. Crumb’s music also relies heavily on extended techniques (I discussed this at length in week two), which I have yet to explore with any depth thus far in my career. Because of this venture into uncharted territory (the title is quite fitting, I suppose), this week was spent just trying to come up with a plan of attack for this thing. Above are sketches of ideas; I know I want to open with slow glissandi over the low strings and plucking on the upper strings. This will be contrasted with a gesture something like the following:

These specific pitches/rhythms will likely not remain in the finished product, but I know I will use a 3 against 2 rhythmic pattern to blur the beat, and base the pitch content in pentatonicism.

Crumb’s music tends to be very sectional; he’ll present a short gesture outright, move to something else, and then probably come back to the first idea and dance between the two. That is the structure I plan on using in this movement, dancing between the mysterious opening idea with extended techniques and the second, more lyrical idea.

I think I have enough planned out to really start diving into the piece this coming week, but so far it has been very challenging. I initially planned on writing much of it at a grand piano where I could actually experiment with the extended techniques, but because of our current situation that cannot happen. So, much of the extended techniques in the movement will have to be written with only my conception of what it will actually sound like. It’s a fascinating challenge, and one I look forward to confronting this week…

Some conceptual ideas for how to notate this movement.

Solitudes: Week 7

Hello hello, and welcome to week seven of my current project: Solitudes! For those of you new to this blog and project, I am working on a two-movement work for solo piano. Each movement is an homage to a composer I admire; the first, entitled “Andromeda Fragments” is a minimalist piece inspired by the works of John Adams, and the second, “Seafarer,” is influenced by George Crumb. My goal is to have the entire work finished by April 30th so I can submit it to publication.

I am very excited to announce that this week marked a huge milestone - “Andromeda Fragments” is finished!*

*Okay, well “finished” is perhaps a slightly overly-optimistic term; I still have to get feedback from Dr. Kay He (my incredible composition teacher), and as I have mentioned ad nauseam in previous posts, engraving is a detail-oriented process that I still need to go through. With that said, all the material is on the page and I don’t expect much to change in the way of music itself. As the remaining steps to be taken are somewhat less challenging and should go by quick, I am confident in saying the movement is virtually complete.

My final round of sketches for this movement. I ended up expanding these six gestures for the final minute of the movement - roughly 1/3 of the entire length!

This week, finishing the final third of the first movement was my goal and I am happy to say it was met. Frankly, this was probably the easiest and fastest section of the entire piece to write. There is a lot more repetition than earlier sections, and I envisioned this ending section as an extended journey back to the opening motive. Because of this, virtually all of the material is generated from gestures that came earlier in the movement. It ends with the exact same gesture from the opening, but this time in a higher register and with the sustain pedal instead of detached staccato notes.

As you can see, this is an expansion of three of the different gestures from my sketches.

The biggest challenge I faced this week was simply making decisions as to how the movement should end - quiet and sustained? Bombastic? Exactly the same as it began? I opted for a combination of the first and third options. Initially my plan was to keep the detached nature of the first two-thirds going until the end, but in a happy accident I found I really loved the transition to these rolling, pedaled gestures with long chords underneath. It gives the listener a chance to cool down after the sharp, dissonant chords in the climax. Ultimately, I think the movement became really balanced in its form: a long buildup, a climactic stretch of incessant clusters loudly articulated, and a long wind down back to the fragment that we started with. I knew from the start this was roughly how the structure should be, but the challenge (and excitement) came from figuring out exactly what that climax and wind down would be.

In the end, I am immensely happy with how this movement turned out. I don’t often feel completely satisfied when I reach the end of the piece, but in this case I feel I’ve successfully communicated what I set out to, even if the journey there took me in some interesting and unexpected directions.

Next week begins a sharply contrasted movement that will heavily feature inside-the-piano effects. It is a challenge I am both daunted and excited by! Until then, enjoy “Andromeda Fragments:”

Solitudes: Weeks 4-6

Well.

What an interesting couple of weeks it’s been. I hope everyone is staying safe, sane, and especially home! Over the past few weeks, I have been working on a two movement piece for solo piano that I had hoped to record professionally with a pianist friend of mine. Unfortunately due to the COVID-19 pandemic essentially halting everything, the recording will most likely have to wait. I am not giving up, though! I hope there will be a way to make it work, but as for now my goal with the piece is to finish and submit it to publication by April 29th. You may notice I have changed the name from Quietudes to Solitudes for reasons which will become apparent when you listen to the recording at the end of this post!

My composition studio while confined to my house during the pandemic - I thought it would be nice to give an idea of the space I’m working in!

I had hoped to finish the first movement in the last week, but I hit a little (giant) snag - much of what I had written was unplayable. It is not uncommon for me to get slightly carried away with what I am writing, and thankfully my composition teacher Yuanyuan He caught it before it was too late to restructure the entire piece. Unfortunately, I did have to retool much of what I had written, which means I could not make forward progress on the movement. This process meant I spent a lot of time at the piano working out the fingerings as a performer would and trying to make it doable while retaining as much of my original intention as possible. Luckily, there were few sections that I had to change completely. Most of the edits were moving notes from the left hand to the right or changing what beat a chord lands on. Ultimately, it is disheartening to have to compromise on what I have written, but playability cannot be sacrificed for the sake of “artistic vision.”

An excerpt from the piece before my edits - the left hand part had too many leaps which would have been impossible to execute at the written tempo.

The revised version of the same passage - unfortunately, some of my engraving work was undone by this, so I will have to go through again and engrave carefully. As you can see, much of it remains intact, but the difference in playability is night and day. Even for myself (not a pianist), I could play this version much faster and with ease than how I initially notated it.

The past few weeks have proved very difficult for all of us. Performers are losing gigs and composers like myself are having performances of our works cancelled. It is a necessary evil, but it is difficult to find inspiration to write, practice, and create music when future performances are so uncertain. But, I’ve been trying to continue working to restore as much of a sense of normalcy as possible. My work on this piece halted for a few days as I was trying to just adjust to how different things have become, but I am confident in saying I am back on track. I can finally say that I will actually likely be able to finish movement 1 in the next week. After that comes movement 2, and a completely different kind of compositional challenge…

Stay safe, everyone!

Here is a quick video of what engraving a piece actually looks like - with an excerpt of the MIDI recording of the piece! Enjoy.

Quietudes: Week 3

Hello again!

If you are new to this blog, I am chronicling my weekly progress on my current work-in-progress, a two-movement piano piece called Quietudes. Each movement is an homage to composers I admire: John Adams and George Crumb. When the piece is finished, I will be working with pianist Brice Kimble to record them professionally!

Last week, I mentioned that I hoped to finish the first movement though that was an ambitious goal. And alas, an ambitious goal it was, and it was not met. Still, I did make progress on the piece despite most of my creative energy being spent on my Solo de Concours (I wrote a whopping 100 measures on that piece last week), which is now finished! In the coming weeks I will only be focusing on this and my wind quintet, so I hope to make more headway on both.

An excerpt from movement one with hidden (greyed out) objects visible, before I cleaned everything up. There is a whole lot of ugliness in the background of pristine-looking sheet music!

This week I want to discuss the engraving process, because it is a much more important and time consuming aspect of composition than many realize. Engraving is the process of making scores look as professional, clear, and concise to the performer as possible. Above is an example of a passage before I took the time to fix spacing errors, etc. The barlines everywhere, random rests, and spacing issues come about when trying to notate a piece like this with no barlines and continuous beams. Here is the same passage, after the clutter has been tidied:

It still isn’t perfect, but hopefully this looks much cleaner to the eye. Before sending the performer the piece, I will be even more meticulous with the spacing between each note in the left hand. They should all be exactly equal!

My biggest challenge this week, as always, was managing my creative energy, and I’m disappointed to say I did not get as much done on this piece as I had hoped. Balancing performance and composition is tough and requires not just time management, but also energy management. I can set aside time to compose and practice each day but if I’ve spent a few hours of focused practice on clarinet in addition to chamber and orchestra rehearsals, I can sometimes sit down at a piano or a Sibelius file to compose and have nothing at all to express. In these moments, however, progress can still be made. Engraving takes little artistic energy, so it can be a great way to make progress on a work without actually writing a large amount.

Next week is my spring break, which means I can plan to finish the first movement and likely will actually achieve it. Until then, enjoy this brief video of me trying (and failing) to play some of what I have written on this piece.

As you can see, I am not the best pianist in the world.

Quietudes: Week 2

Welcome back!

I am currently working on a two movement piece for solo piano that will be recorded within 8 weeks. The piece is called Quietudes and the goal for each movement is to emulate the style of two composers whose music I deeply connect with: John Adams and George Crumb, respectively. The first movement is called “Andromeda Fragments” and depicts constellations, while the second movement is called “Seafarer” and deals with the isolation of the deep sea.

This week, very little composing was actually done. I am working in crunch time on my Solo de Concours for clarinet and piano, which you can look forward to soon! I have a lot of difficulty actively composing two pieces at once, so while I made leaps of progress on the Solo, my work on Quietudes was relegated to score study - which is a very valuable thing! How am I to emulate the style of different composers without thoroughly studying their work first?

Here I am looking over the comically large score for Crumb’s Vox Balaenae at my favorite coffee shop, Black Crown Coffee Co. (where I do 99% of my work and am currently writing this entry!) The photo was taken by my very close friend Reason Meyer.

As I mentioned last week, George Crumb’s Vox Balaenae is a huge inspiration for movement 2 of my own work. (Yes, we’re discussing movement 2 first this week because I most certainly do not write my music in chronological order!) Crumb always explores such a wide range of sonic capabilities of the instruments he writes for, and the extended techniques he uses for piano in this work are myriad. Since inside-the-piano techniques are something I have used very sparingly in the past (only in After Midnight), it was important for me to really get a sense of what can be done safely before I really dig into the sketching/writing process for movement 2. Think of it as an artist assembling the colors on their palette before they begin a painting. Some techniques Crumb uses in this piece are perhaps too aggressive for my own work, such as glass rods placed on the strings, but I found several things that would work beautifully, such as:

Excerpt from Crumb’s Vox Balaenae, in which he asks the pianist to run their fingers along the low strings and create harmonics.

To explain the concept of harmonics in detail would take much longer than a brief blog post, but suffice it to say that they are accomplished by lightly touching the string at its midpoint before striking the corresponding key. The effect is a pitch much higher than the regularly struck pitch with a clear, “icy” tone color. I was fairly awestruck when I saw this notated in the score because this is a technique most commonly used on string instruments, and I have never encountered it in piano music. The effect is, in this composer’s opinion, awesome and I will certainly be exploring it.

On the other end of the spectrum, I looked at John Adams’ excellent solo piano work Phrygian Gates. Most of what I took away from this is the way he chooses to notate: with very, very long beams that blur where the beat is. This is roughly how I am notating the first movement of my work, but I am taking it a step further and writing entirely without barlines or meter. The effect is a sense of continuous motion, an endless sea of notes. Apt, I think, for a movement about the endlessness of space!

Excerpt from John Adam's’ Phrygian Gates. Ignore the shadow!

The biggest challenge I face is to maintain my own musical voice while trying to channel Adams and Crumb. A few weeks ago I spoke with composer Brian Petuch and something he said really stuck with me. He was discussing his love for the music of Pierre Boulez and that he used to beat himself up over the fact that his own music was considerably more accessible, “like microtonal pop music” he put it. But he learned to hone his own voice. “There’s no use being a second-rate Boulez impersonator.” So, I need to straddle to line between becoming a lazy impersonator of Adams and Crumb and incorporating elements of their music into my own while retaining my musical language. It’s a challenge I look forward to taking on.

Next week, I hope to finish movement one. It’s an ambitious goal, but feasible. We shall see…

Quietudes: An Introduction

Welcome!

I am starting on a new composition/recording project, and I would like to share the details from the beginnings of the work all the way through to the recording of the finished product in roughly 8 weeks. The piece is relatively simple in concept; a two movement work for solo piano. As a composer I am greatly influenced by the raw power of nature and attempting to portray that through music. For this piece, titled Quietudes, I am thinking about two extremes: the vastness of space and the darkness of the deepest parts of the ocean.

The first movement, “Andromeda Fragments” will explore the former through constant motion. Fragments of gestures will gradually move into a longer phrase without meter, as if individual notes are stars, gestures are constellations, and all together the individual fragments make up the image of the night sky. The second movement, “Seafarer” will be much quieter and stagnant, utilizing many extended techniques within the piano to create the illusion of suspending the listener in the ocean depths. When the composition aspect is finished, I will be enlisting the help of two wonderful people to record the work: pianist Brice Kimble and fellow composer/sound engineer Daniela Bolin.

The sketches for movement one, as well as some ideas for an abandoned third movement.

For myself, the first step in creating a new work is to sketch ideas by hand. For some composers, this step is much more comprehensive than it is for me. In the past I have tried to write pieces entirely on paper before inputting them into notation software, but in my personal experience I find it tedious and limiting. This week, I wrote out some ideas and began inputting them into Sibelius (my notation software of choice.) I would like to do more on actual paper, but I need to be able to hear what I’ve written so far to be able to continue composing and my piano skills are not good enough to play it back myself! Hearing the MIDI play it back is a blessing and a curse; it plays it with more accuracy than I can manage, but the expression is not there. That’s where the fun comes in hearing it played by a live musician for the first time!

A snippet of what the piece looks like when notated in Sibelius; for now I’m writing without barlines to keep the sense of continuous motion, but that may change if I feel it just hinders the performance.

This movement so far feels quite influenced by the work of John Adams (no, not that John Adams), which I was initially fighting, but I think I’m going to run with it for now. I’ve never really composed in his specific style of minimalism before so I think I’ll use this piece as a way to explore new styles and sounds for each movement. For the second, many of the sounds I have in my head are rooted in George Crumb’s (my favorite composer) outstanding work Vox Balaenae. Writing one movement in the style of Adams and another in the style of Crumb will prove an interesting challenge for me, and I look forward to continuing on this journey.

Next week, I hope to continue my journey into the stars for movement one and begin sketches for movement two (which I anticipate will take considerably longer given the nature of branching out to extended techniques.) Until then, take a listen to the pieces I am taking inspiration from for this work, and enjoy!

John Adams - Hallelujah Junction for 2 pianos; this is the primary work I’m drawing on for the first movement of Quietudes.

George Crumb - Vox Balaenae for 3 masked players; I plan to utilize some of the sonic capabilities of the piano in this work in the second movement, especially pay attention to the piano part in “Sea Nocturne.” As a side note, I consider this to be one of the greatest works from the 20th century!