I’m always telling people that Wilfrid Laurier University has one of the best undergraduate composition programs anywhere. It’s not huge, or terribly well known, but it provides opportunities that you just can’t get anywhere else. We, for example, get a whole bunch of new music concerts, devoted to us, in the Recital Hall, in which our music can be played. And what’s more, it will be played because (second point) the performing musicians at Laurier love to play it! Not a single person I’ve asked to play a piece of mine has turned me down outright, and those that do say no because of prior commitments or time troubles. So you end up getting a really nice sounding performance of your work (because you can ask the Very Talented People to play), and a really nice sounding recording (because the tech people for the Maureen Forrester Recital Hall are lovely and beloved), and have these great interactive experiences with musicians. They’re happy to answer questions and give feedback and (nice thing #7 about WLU composers) we’re all happy to hear it and make changes. “Oh, so it’s really hard to trill up in that high register? I’m not super-attached to it, what if you did it this way? What do you think?” or “I know it sucks to play stopped horn for a long period of time, but I really like the sound. Would it be easier to read if I transposed it a semitone?” and the musicians are willing to work at it to make it sound good.

This attitude on the composers’ part is brought about largely by our professors. WLU has three main composition profs, with occasional fill-ins, and all three are pretty seriously wonderful.

I have never studied with Glenn Buhr, but I know lots of people enjoy it. Glenn is a fantastic composer, and his ideas about music as a community-thing I completely agree with. The thing about Glenn I like less – about his seminars, rather, since I can’t speak to him as a one-on-one teacher – is that he isn’t excited about what is happening with composers right now. He’s got endless knowledge about a few – Pärt, Gorecki, Miles Davis – but last year in seminar he was like, “There aren’t composers composing today! I bet you can’t name me North American composers making a living composing.” I went like this – 0_o – and then spoke up for the second time that term. There is so much exciting music happening right now! David Lang is so exciting! Lesley Barber is so exciting! The Toy Piano Composers are so exciting! Every grad school I look at I investigate the composers, and every time I get excited by what they’re all doing! There is tonnes of pure gold being created these days, and the main reason more people don’t know is because no one’s getting excited about it at them! (Man, I had a tiny freak out in the Marketing Department at the KWS the other day when I discovered the COC is putting on Nixon in China next season. Jess and Sarah went, “What’s Nixon in China?” and I went first 0_o and then, “IT IS THE BEST THING EVERRRRRR.” I suspect they’ll both be more inclined to see it now.)
Anyway, like I said, Glenn is a good composer! His music is good, and he certainly gets a few pieces out there (if I hear “Jackhammer” one more time I am going to cut a bitch), and he’s supportive of what his students do – but he’s got this tendency to relate everything back to his own work. So positives: interesting ideas about music-as-community, supportive of his students’ work (he has programmed several Laurier alumni works on NUMUS concerts this year), great music! Negatives: a very Glenn-based musical world.

Tangent #1: Why do modern composers close-guard their work so much? Why can’t we buy it in like…books and sheet music? I would full on be playing it all the time! I read an interview somewhere where Phillip Glass was like, “I won’t publish my piano etudes because I want people to have to pay to hear me play them” and hey now! I don’t like that, much. There is a certain connection we all get with music when we are a part of the performance. I love Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony (even though it is completely gauche to do so) because it was the first one I ever played in a Symphony Orchestra. The oboe concertos and sonatas I’ve played are the ones I love the most to hear! It’s that sense of familiarity, like the piece is an old friend – why do you think Singalong “Messiahs” always sell well? That goes along with pop concerts, too. Everyone knows the words, everyone can sing along, but even moreso, you can feel the music, dance to it, be a part of it.

Then you love the band, listen to their music, go to their concerts, wear their merch…
You can see where I’m going with this.

I want to talk to someone about SOCAN, about copyright, about unions…is there any reason I need to use anything but Creative Commons for my works? Am I being unfair to other composers, do you think, if I write music and let it be performed for free? Not that I think anyone’s going to be bustin’ down doors to get my music, but these are the kinds of things that keep me awake at night. I’m a communal soul, I like to share things! I like the idea of people liking my music because they get to play it whenever they want. Perhaps this is my youthful idealism talking, though.

Peter Hatch is composition prof numero dos on this list, and he is completely amazing about that thing Glenn is somewhat deficient in. Dude knows *everything* about new music, I swear! I have to raid his music collection someday. As a teacher he’s great, too, and in a large part because he’s got this ridiculous bank of knowledge. “Oh,” he’ll say, “You’re writing musical comics*? Check out this composer, and this piece, this play, and this YouTube video.” He’ll talk about his own experiences sometimes too, but he’s really good about not repeating himself, and it’s always relevant. Like Glenn, Peter’s really good about getting his students to take opportunities (and providing them with opportunities). Like Glenn, his music is really good – and it gets performed – but he’s a bit more interested in getting other artists heard. See: programming. Peter started up both NUMUS and Open Ears, both of which are like…My Favourite Things, and Open Ears didn’t have a single Hatch piece on it, while this season of NUMUS (which Glenn is programming) is essentially The Glenn Buhr show – he is playing and/or having pieces of his played on the majority of concerts. (Granted, he was called in a bit last minute as artistic director.) I like studying with Peter very much too because he studied bassoon in school! There is a distinct dearth of wind players who are also composers – barring Mr. Adams, of course – and it is an interesting perspective to work from. Peter as a teacher is…challenging, but in the positive sense of the word. Like, he’ll challenge you to do something you’re not used to doing. For me: writing for a large ensemble, writing in graphic notation, writing for piano, writing with form. He’ll go through and be like, “Oh, you haven’t written for cimbalom yet. You should get on that.” And he expects results! “Have a piano piece done by next week. Go.” I did find, though, that he asserted himself into some of my pieces; I felt like they were almost co-written…but it should be said that those are some of my favourite things I’ve done, and that I grew So Much as a composer in my year with him. Positives, then: Omniscient, challenges and encourages students, gives honest criticism and knows how to fix things. Negatives: none, really, unless you want to count “sometimes asserts self into students’ music” or “expects a lot”.

Tangent #2
I always feel disappointed when I mention John Adams, and it’s because I love love love his music and I am so influenced by it, but I do not like him as a dude! This keeps happening to me. IT KEEPS HAPPENING. I’ll be like, “I love so-and-so” and I’ll discover they strangle puppies or someone tells me they’re “difficult” or something! It’s horrible! I want to believe the best of the people whose work I like! Next up: “Nico Muhly is actually Hitler.” Noooooooooooo.

Linda! Linda Catlin Smith, everyone. She is completely underrated, she should be famous! She’s got a bank of musical knowledge almost as extensive as Peter’s, and if she doesn’t know the answer to something, she finds it out because she’s got this giant network of composers and musicians across Canada. When I was studying with her in second year, I wrote a piece for drumset – she said she’d never seen an entirely detailed-ly notated piece for kit, but she brought all my questions that she wasn’t sure about to her husband, percussionist Rick Sachs, and I ended up with this unique thing I’m actually still really proud of. Linda’s an Enabler, capital E. She is open to just about everything you could bring in, and what’s more, she has amazing insight into what’s good about it. I bring things in and go, “I hate this. What’s wrong with it?” and she’ll be like, “Look, you did this interesting thing here, that’s excellent, you should expand on that,” or alternatively ask, “What do you hate about it?” and then help you figure out how to make it work – so often it’s “doing it more”. She is very self-effacing – tends to tell other people’s stories rather than her own (although she will share personal experience when asked). We had to beg her to do a seminar about her music last year, and then it was my favourite seminar! Her music is intimate and more about creating a world of sound and colour than about Stating a Fact, and one of my favourite quotes from her, when I was being insecure about my music ‘not going anywhere’ is “Music is not a train or a bus. It doesn’t have to go, it can just be.” Linda is the most elegant dinosaur. Linda is always open. Linda is interested in process, she is great at answering questions, she is basically amazing.
All the negatives about Linda are also positives, so I’m just going to say ‘em all: Linda is self-effacing; she doesn’t talk about the particulars of her music, her career, her process, her education. I wish she did, more! But I am glad for her enthusiasm about other composers. Linda is an Enabler rather than a Critic, so I’ve talked to composition students who don’t know how to get the most out of her lessons. If you bring something you’re totally happy with to Linda, she’s going to look at it, maybe make a few comments, but she is probably going to trust you pleased-ness with it! So the key is to bring insecurities, to bring questions, to hate what you wrote. Bring that stuff, she’ll make it better. And what’s more, she’ll make it better in a way that it feels like *you* are making it better. “Look at this idea you expressed so well here, what more can you do with it?” It’s all your ideas, she just knows how to tease the best out of them.

The other great thing about the composition program at Laurier is the community of student composers. Much like the Oboe Studio (which I’ve been over-enthusiastic about before on this blog), we do things together! Tea Parties and post-concert beer and being friends. The Composers and Improvisers Association was begun this year when they cut our new music concerts from 10/year to 5/year (boo budget cuts). We decided to create our own performance opportunities! So we’re had a bunch of new works played at the KWCMS on February 8th (a concert which was amazing and packed out), and we’ve scheduled other times for concerts at the Button Factory, and in the concourse at WLU and around town, and we started FIRE, the Free Improv Renegade Ensemble (because Glenn is on sabbatical and there is no ImprovisationConcertEnsemble) and have several shows booked for that! (FIRE, can I just say, is way more fun for me than ICE ever was – we have guest workshoppers all the time who are amazing, and we all play together really well. I get into that place of intense, focused community with FIRE every rehearsal and I think I got it once in my entire year of ICE. We make collective compositions! That’s what improv is all about!)

The Program runs thus: In first year there is first-year seminar once a week for anyone who wants to take it. In second year there is senior seminar, and you get half-hour one-on-one lessons with one of the profs. At the end of second year, you submit a portfolio: three scores and a recording of at least one. In third year, if you were accepted, you get full-hour lessons and attend senior seminar. You submit a portfolio at the end of third year again (less to get into the program and more so the profs can check up on you). Fourth year you get hour-long lessons and go to senior seminar, and you have to compose a larger (either ensemble-y or lengthly) work that has to be heard by a certain number of people – in other words, it has to be performed in concert. Then you get your degree and fame awaits!

There is also a very unique combination of students in composition at Laurier. It’s large for the size of the school, and unintentionally divided exactly 50/50 guys and girls, and there are as many orchestral instrument majors and vocalists and guitarists as there are pianists. It’s fun! Everyone is different and writes interesting music!

Looooooooooooooooong story short, Canadian student thinking of going to school for composition? Come to Laurier! We are the best.

*I never finished my musical comic. Maybe someday.

I still DO those?

Apparently. Sorry about all the empty dates on that ‘January’ calendar up there. It’s been an exciting month computer-wise, job-wise, life-wise.

The next few comics are all inspired** by my friend Dawna Davis, the Production Manager at the KWS. Her Twitter is hilarious! Example:

I actually spat my breakfast cereal all over my desk when I read that. So surreal. Only at the KWS.

Anyway, long story short, hopefully I’ll be around more in the next few weeks!
Lots of love,
The First of now many Renegades Oboe.
**Not necessarily true to life – I’m tweaking things for privacy and Heightened Comedic Effect