So I’ve never tried this before, but I’m wondering if any oboists out there have a recording of the Zwilich Oboe Concerto? I’m playing it for my jury, and ordered it from my local classical record store, but it is backordered or really expensive from all their sources, and available nowhere online! Now, as you know, it is Very Handy to be able to listen to a recording of a piece, particularly a contemporary piece, before playing it, and so this is a bit of a hardship.

So, if anyone has this recording, how would you feel about emailing it to me in the knowledge that I am, in fact, going to buy it the second it arrives in KW? Contribute to the “Renegade Oboe Jury” cause?

So first of all, I blogged about the KW Symphony’s 10/11 season over here. KWSocial, that thing over there, is something I’ve been working on here for the past few weeks.  I’ll admit I was skeptical at first – another social networking site? – but I’ve been rethinking its purpose, and I like the idea of a place where people can interact with musicians without it being creepy, as an aggregator for KWS news, reviews, and discussion, as a place where people new to the orchestra (and old hands) can find out about the music, local restaurants, parking and venues, and where it is relaxed and comfortable, and I am given basically free reign to write sassy FAQs.

Okay, so I really like being given free reign to write sassy FAQs.

This week we’re having a concert about Music and Food (best idea ever), and the way this concert is programmed is basically amazing.  You have to admit this is genius. It is set up like a multi-course meal!

We begin with dinner music

Raymond Scott: Dinner Music for a Pack of Hungry Cannibals

Leading to a nice amuse bouche

Per Nørgard: Pastorale from Babette’s Feast

Drinks, anyone?

Shostakovich: Tahiti Trot (Tea for Two)

Sitting down to dinnerrrr

Vaughan Williams: “March Past of the Kitchen Utensils” from The Wasps

Vegetables

John Estacio: “The Harversters” from A Farmer’s Symphony

Entrée

Cole Porter arr. E. Outwater: “The Tale of the Oyster”

Chocolate gateau for dessert

Lee Hoiby: Bon Appetit

After-dinner mints

Strawberry Alarm Clock arr. Nicole Lizée: Incense and Peppermint

Delicious, n’est-ce pas? I am very excited! I am even attending the concert (Friday night) for the first time in a while (I have to work every concert, so I usually don’t go in, but I get a night off to go).

Okay, so I got an email this morning from Mary Jane Leach, a New York composer. She sent me a link to listen to her piece for solo oboe and 8 taped oboes which is here and you should definitely check it out! She also sent me a score, and that makes me very, Very happy because A) I love looking at scores while listening to music, and B) I just happen to have almost a dozen oboists who are always looking for oboe-army pieces to play in Friday Masterclass and elsewhere. This is Excellent!

Anyway, I guess Mary Jane knows Linda Catlin Smith, my composition prof, and I asked Linda today after seminar, and she was like, “of course! She lives in a church in upstate New York!” That is pretty fantastic! “Xantippe’s Rebuke” – the 9-oboe piece – was originally commissioned by Libby Van Cleve who quite literally wrote the book on contemporary oboe techniques. I have to get a lesson with this lady! Hey Libby Van Cleve, let’s talk. Contemporary oboe is like…what I’d really like to pursue in my future with the instrument.

So I learned lots of new things today.

Anyway, I mentioned composition seminar up there, and tonight we talked about Kevin Volans and listened to a bunch of his music and it is actually incredible. Like…incredible. All I want to listen to right now.  The movement he was part of in the 70’s and 80’s was called “New Simplicity” but it is very complex in its way. It’s more…honest than simple. Rewarding to listen to, engaging, it doesn’t talk down to the listeners, it talks to us. He puts style aside and focuses on an approach Linda described as being like “I have this and I have this and I have this and I have this for you.” And yet it’s organic, and doesn’t superimpose its African roots obviously…

Anyway, I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about music that is more about Being As Opposed To Going, and Volans’ music that I heard tonight scratched an itch in a hard-to-reach place.

Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet – Tom Waits and Gavin Bryars
I find that the music being made these days is more likely to speak truthfully, in short but meaningful sentences, about the stunning beauty of the ordinary.

Spiegel im Spiegel (clip)

A heart not so much heavy, but bigger.

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

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.

The last post of 2009! I guess this is when I talk about New Year’s Resolutions, but the truth is: I just don’t do resolutions. They never work out! Sure, I’d like to be healthier; sure, I’d like to exercise more; sure, I’d be a better musician if I practiced an hour a day…but the truth is, life always gets in the way of these things. SO no resolutions.

As far as comics go: the set coming up (which I have drawn, but since I am at my parents’ house away from my scanner, will not go up until I get back to Waterloo) are about Production Managers–I am branching waaaaay out of this “oboe comics” thing, but I think it is a good thing. The Production Manager at the KWS is basically a superhero, and superheroes belong in comics!

I have been in Maryland since the 26th visiting my mom’s family who play word games! Guys, I love word games so much; I will take on all comers in Scrabble or Boggle or what-have-you–I’m not claiming I’ll win, necessarily, but that I will put up a fight! Words, guys. They’re wonderful.

For Christmas I got mostly books, which is normal, but I also got Musicians’ Dice! (My mom keeps pronouncing the company, Philomuse, like “phyllomouse” and it makes me smile. Pastry-wrapped rodents, delicious!) I’m pretty excited for all the fun improvs and compositions I will make with those dice. Once my grad project is well on its way, and my oboe/viola/piano trio is done, I’m writing a piece involving piano and beatbox for my friend Sarah Whynot (who is crazy and sassy and beatboxy) and flute and vocal solos for two other friends. Writing for flute! There’s something I haven’t done before, or wanted to do before, or will ever want to do again. We shall see how it goes.

This term: workin’ full time! Aaaaaah, it will be crazy. Also writing music and rehearsing-recording-producing my grad project, playing oboe in FIRE and taking lessons with Dick, and taking an English course (”Rest. and 18th C. Literature”–what is “Rest.” I would like to know?), and a Theory course (”Music After 1945″ for which I am excited).
And drawing comics, of course, although they will become increasingly about Music and the Arts-World as a whole as I slip further and further out of the oboeverse.

Finally, you all have to enjoy this with me:

I have one last theory-ish class next term, and I am going to have to start being creative with my notes-on-scores.

All the best to everyone in the new year! Twentyten, it is the best to say.

It is the holiday season, and while I am a bit of a grinch and refuse to get into “the spirit” throughout, I do like to take the time off to do multitudinous things. This holiday I’m assembling my grad piece–that work which is simultaneously a song cycle and an album–hanging out with my family (including my mom’s family down in Maryland, hooray!), putting together my application to Bang on a Can, and hopefully reading a few books before I start my full-time job and full-time school in the new year.

I’ve been thinking about my writing style. It has changed a lot this year! I keep incorporating bits of things that I find in other people’s writing–Ryan North’s enthusiasm and punctuation (!) and ALL CAPS (because things are EXCITING, yo!), Joey Comeau’s vivid images, Said the Gramophone’s way of describing something in experiences rather than in adjectives so you know exactly what the music they talk about feels like, sounds like, tastes like. This thing where we Capitalize The Important Words so that it makes them seem pompous and sassy simultaneously (bet you can guess where); “oh yes” is a Kate Beaton quirk, I have been making an actual effort to not do sidebar information or link to random things with random words…I feel like I should start getting my own style eventually, but maybe it is okay to just imitate for now? Dabble, you know. One thing that I do that is all mine is use a minimum of contractions–I tried to give them up for Lent last year, and while it did not work entirely (it’s HARD, try it), it has left me with this dearth of apostrophes in my vocabulary. OH WELL.

People recently have been asking me to try to define my composing style, and it is so hard! Much like my writing, I dabble dabble dabble. I guess my trios are Modernist and Minimalist, I guess my tuba suite is neo-classical (all quartal harmonies and images)…I don’t know! It is weird, this figuring-out what I do, figuring out what I like.

The one trend I think is prevalent across a lot of my work–literary and musical–is a penchant for pointing out how imperfect things can be beautiful. Like this poem:

Spectacle

The first day you wear glasses
you feel short and ugly,
you get a headache;
you see
all the things you missed before:
patterns in hubcaps,
bricks in walls,
leaves on trees.

I submitted this poem as part of my Manuscript for the poetry class I was in last term. Do you see what I mean? Getting glasses is harsh because it hurts your eyes and makes you look like a loser, but you can see detail and that makes it worthwhile. Who knew hubcaps and bricks and leaves could be so attractive? I don’t know if it comes across in the music that I write, but it does appear in my approach to performances–the things that happen that are unwritten make it, separate each performance from each other as a different work of art. At the premiere of a piece by Nancy Tam at the last NUMUS concert (for which I have been meaning to write a review, hurgh), a motorcycle revved by the church just as the last chord was fading away. It couldn’t have been scripted, that sound, but it was perfect. I like the mistakes, guys, I like imperfection. That’s what makes us human, and since music is the expression of human emotion, it’s so much better when it’s not perfect.