NYC Performing Arts Spaces Blog

Composers Spotlight: Octavio Vazquez in Residence at Turtle Bay Music School

Posted by anonymous user, 3 days ago - 0 comments

Tags: composers, residencies, musicians' residencies

 

 

Composer Octavio Vazquez is one of six composers chosen as winners of the 2010 Con Edison Musicians’ Residency: Composition Program. In this interview he describes his influences, challenges and being a working composer in New York City.

What are some of your inspirations when composing?

Inspiration is for me always a mysterious subject, and I find it somewhat challenging to talk about the compositional process.  That said, some music has had a great impact on me – Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, and Mahler.

How many hours per week do you spend composing?

There are many things that go into composition besides composing itself. I often travel for work, or spend entire days on the computer and on the phone talking to presenters, managers and musicians. Then there are those times when I have a pressing deadline and I do little else than work on the piece.

How has the Con Edison Residency helped you?

Not only did it provide me with an excellent space to work, it also afforded me an appropriate venue to showcase my work to music presenters, and the opportunity to collaborate in outreach programs and to forge an ongoing relationship with Turtle Bay Music School in order to plan and develop further collaborations.

What’s challenging about being a composer in NYC? And what’s positive?

For me, the main challenge and the main positive aspect are one and the same: the great amount of wonderful musicians from all over the world concentrated in the city.

What have been your greatest successes to date?

I feel very lucky to have collaborated with great soloists like Jonathan Gandelsman, Nicholas Cords, Eric Jacobsen, Eldar Nebolsin, Viacheslav Dinerchtein, and Daniel Gaisford. Also, commissions from the Galicia Symphony Orchestra and the Galician Royal Philharmonic.

What’s next?

I have been recently commissioned to write a Violin Concerto for the Xacobeo Classics Festival 2010.  In October, the Washington Metropolitan Philharmonic will give the US premiere of my symphonic poem “Styx." In November, a new CD will be released in a recording by pianist and piper Cristina Pato, singer Rosa Cedrón, and the Bratislava Symphony Orchestra.

Learn more about Octavio Vazquez on his website.

Photo credit:  Andrzej Naklicki

 

Composer's Spotlight: Helen Sung in Residence at Flushing Town Hall

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Tags: residencies, jazz, musicians' residency, composers

Jazz pianist Helen Sung is one of four Queens-based composers chosen as winners of the 2010 Con Edison Musicians’ Residency: Composition Program. In this interview she describes her influences, current projects and what it's like to perform with some of the living jazz greats.

Helen, when did you start composing?

I started composing while a student at the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Performance. The great bassist Ron Carter was artistic director, and I’ll never forget what he said: if one wants to develop/find his/her own “voice” he/she should compose music. Thus, we each had to compose one piece per week, and then during our weekly ensemble class, Mr. Carter would have us play each student’s work and then critique it. No one is more surprised than me that I would be able to write compositions and even perform them!

You’ve studied and performed with many of the greatest masters of jazz.  Can you tell us about one or two really unforgettable moments with one or more of them?

Getting to play with Wayne Shorter, one of my favorite musicians and composers of all time, was an incredible thrill. Being around him is a rare experience – listening to him play, and talk (he has such a way with words…and notes!).  We also toured India & Thailand with Wayne and Herbie Hancock. I still remember the first time I saw Herbie – we were at the departure airport – initially it was surreal to see him in three-dimensional space!  Having Ron Carter as our artistic director month after month was an unforgettable two years. Working with trumpet great Clark Terry has been a great honor – what a wonderful legacy he has as a performer and educator. I’ll always remember when another trumpet great, Dizzy-protégé Jon Faddis, told me I needed to learn about the blues. Piano master Barry Harris, who carries the bebop torch so brilliantly…to tell you the truth, every single jazz master was unforgettable.

You toured parts of Africa last year with your group, NuGenerations…  What were some of the highlights?

One highlight was the Harare International Festival for the Arts (HIFA) in Zimbabwe. Everyone was saying how dangerous things were in Zimbabwe, how economically unstable it was, along with widespread poverty, suffering, and scarce resources; thus, it was especially inspiring to see a country (and continent) gather peacefully to celebrate arts and music for a week. Artists and ensembles from all over the world performed all types of music – it was truly a global event, and a testament to the power of the arts as a force for good. May HIFA live long and prosper!

Meeting and interacting with young musicians in every country we visited were also a highlight: from Harare’s Book Cafe where musicians, artists, poets, and actors meet to share ideas and engage in art; to the universities in Johannesburg and Windhoek (Namibia); to the dynamic young talent that is being encouraged and nurtured in the townships…all great stuff. 

 

What kind of work have you been able to accomplish during your residency at Flushing Town Hall thus far?

I’ve been able to finish a song project called Sung With Words – it’s a collection of mostly original music where I’ve taken poems and set them to music. Writing for and working with vocalists has been a great learning experience. I hope to record the project before the end of the year. Dana Gioia, poet and former Chairman for the NEA, was the original inspiration for this project (the first poem I set was one of his), and we plan to collaborate on a new song cycle together, co-creating the music and words.  Fortunately, I’ve been in a heavy writing phase, so I’ve also completed quite a few new instrumental compositions that will be on the next couple of recording projects.  Finally, because of a recent gig that had a focus on young people, I discovered pianist Chick Corea’s Children’s Songs (20 short pieces for solo piano) and have been arranging them for jazz piano trio as well as solo piano – that’s been a lot of fun.

How has the Con Edison Residency helped you?

Well, to get the pragmatic stuff out of the way first – air conditioning! Although I was fortunate to be away from NYC during the hottest part of July, the rest of this summer has still been quite warm and muggy. It’s a great blessing to have a comfortable working environment at Flushing Town Hall – I can relax and focus on the tasks at hand. My apartment’s noisy window unit doesn’t quite cut it…  Also, to be able to work on the Steinway grand pianos at Flushing Town Hall is amazing. When the instrument is inspiring, one can reach new heights and hear new things.  And Flushing Town Hall’s art gallery, where one of the pianos is housed, is a wonderful space. I find the rotating work exhibits stimulating and enjoy checking them out either before or after my work sessions.

Learn more about Helen Sung on her website, which has her upcoming performance itinerary, contact information, her CDs and an e-mail sign-up.

 

Photo credit: Jason A. Cina

Composer's Spotlight: Evan Mazunik in Residence

Posted by anonymous user, on July 15, 2010 - 0 comments

Tags: composers, residencies

A composer of experimental music, Evan Mazunik is one of four Queens-based composers chosen as winners of the 2010 Con Edison Musicians’ Residency: Composition Program. He describes in this interview what Soundpainting is, how one "mulches" with sound, and his current projects.

 

Evan, can you describe what happens when you are using a language of signs to conduct an improvising orchestra?

That all depends on which signs I use and how the improvisers choose to interpret them!  Most of the time, I use Soundpainting, a live composing sign language created by Walter Thompson.  Some signs are very specific and technical (e.g. “Brass 3 enter slowly with a high fortissimo Db long tone on beat four”), while others are more open to interpretation (e.g. “Point to Point” – when I point at a performer, they begin slowly developing a motif, and when I stop pointing, they stop playing).  I’m much more interested in the risk and surprise inherent in composing live with improvisers, where I provide a structure, and the player(s) provide a content.  Otherwise, I’d just as soon write something down on paper and hand it to them to read.

Is the result ever transcribed onto sheet music?  Or does it only exist documented on video (if taken) and in the minds of those who heard/saw it performed?

Good question.  While the end results are often ephemeral and only exist in the moment, there are occasionally some exceptions. My experimental chamber ensemble, ZAHA, recorded their debut album “Shoot the Sun” on Snapback Records. For our CD release show, I transcribed a excerpt from one track titled “Boneshaker.”  During the original recording session, the band had improvised within a structure I had given them (they could choose their notes, but I had given them parameters for when to change notes and how high or low they could move between notes). I then rehearsed this transcription with the band, and at the performance, we played this excerpt in the midst of the original “rules of the game” for the composition.  It's kind of like mulching -- with sound...

What is Soundpainting and how has it influenced your work?

I’ll begin by offering the official working definition of Soundpainting from the website: "Soundpainting is the universal live composing sign language created by New York composer Walter Thompson for musicians, dancers, actors, poets, and visual artists working in the medium of structured improvisation."  For me, Soundpainting is a versatile language that enables me to collaborate with creative individuals from diverse backgrounds and trainings while fashioning a composition in real-time from the improvised contributions of the performers.  Even when I’m not overtly using it in my composition or improvisation, I’ve found that this language -- its concept and philosophy -- still seeps into the fabric of everything I make in music.

What project(s) you are working on now during your residency and what stage they are at?

I’ve started composing a piece with a working title of “Trigger’s Broom: an emerging suite for chamber ensemble.”  Trigger’s Broom is a composition that plumbs the paradoxes of identity, change, decay, and growth.  Soundpainting, graphic scores, structured improvisation, and traditional notation will be re-combined and re-arranged in an open-form, multi-movement suite that will gradually evolve over the course of several performances.  I've written an assortment of “palettes” (i.e. pre-composed materials) and have culled signs from the Soundpainting language that will work well in both processing these palettes (as an electronic musician might “process” a pre-recorded sound) and generating related ideas from improvisers.

How has the Con Edison Residency helped you?

It has helped me in at least three ways.  First, it’s provided me access to a studio space away from home.  It’s difficult to stay productive at home, and “going to the office” has immensely helped my discipline as a composer.  Second, it has provided some money during the slow months of the summer, when freelance teaching and gigs typically slow down in New York.  Third, and perhaps most importantly, this residency has served as an encouragement to me as a composer, a gesture of support and interest, which can serve as food for the soul during the lean periods of struggle and doubt one often encounters in the creative process.

What’s next on your professional horizon?

I have a few irons in the fire -- ZAHA is performing at Brooklyn Lyceum on September 1st, and we're organizing a tour of the eastern U.S. for the spring of 2011.  Also, every week for the rest of 2010, I'm releasing a new musical setting of a sacred text in a series of liturgical music titled "Sunday Songs."

Learn more about Evan and his work on blissstreetstudios.com, evanmazunik.com and on the Fractured Atlas blog.

 

Photo (c) 2008 Colette Mazunik

Composers' Spotlight: Joseph Di Ponio in Residence

Posted by anonymous user, on July 12, 2010 - 0 comments

Tags: composers, residencies

Joseph Di Ponio is one of four Queens-based composers chosen as winners of the 2010 Con Edison Musicians’ Residency: Composition Program.  Joseph completed his Ph.D. in music composition at SUNY Stony Brook, and has composed music for concert performance, theater, art installations, and silent films. His concert music can be heard on solo and chamber music recitals throughout the U.S. and Canada, and is often inspired by the visual arts. In general, his work is concerned with issues of aural history and temporality and has been influenced by the thought of Heidegger, Lyotard, Deleuze and Guattari.  In this interview, he describes how Spectral music has also influenced him.

 

Joseph, what are some of your inspirations when composing?

I'm influenced quite a bit by philosophy and the visual arts. Most of my recent works are inspired by a philosophical concept -- generally one that has to do with time. I'm drawn to temporal openness, the physicality of being in a place in time and the relationship between the two. My piece "Chora", for two pianos and two percussionists, is based entirely on this idea.

You have said that you owe a "certain debt to the Spectral composers."  Could you explain what Spectral music is and describe how it has influenced you?

This is a complicated and somewhat involved question, but I’ll try to be brief.  Spectral music developed in France during the 1970s (although leanings can be found much earlier) through the research of composers such as Hughes Dufourt, Gérard Grisey and Tristan Murail. Grisey had said that it is more of an attitude than a technique and, as such, lends itself to a variety of methods. The cliché is that spectral music is concerned with representing the physical nature of sound based on a computer analysis of the harmonic content of a particular instrument and translating this information into sound. Structure tends to be governed more by timbre (sound color) than by melody, harmony and rhythm.  In reality, the possibilities are quite vast and each composer has their own way of dealing with their materials.  This spectral “attitude” allows me to move past traditional formal constructs and free the music from the specifics of time that they impose. It allows me to play with contrasts of temporalities. For example, a section of a work may be open-ended in that it could be performed in 20 seconds or a minute, while another section must be performed within a very specific time frame. Sometimes rhythms and duration are specifically notated, other times they are not. Sometimes I combine the two. In any case, it creates a flexible music that is never going to be exactly the same in any given performance but has enough structure to allow each piece to be recognized as its own entity.

Can you tell us a bit about the nature of the work you're doing while in residence at the Florence E. Smith Community Center in Corona?

I’m working primarily on two pieces: one for male voice, flute and electronics, and another for flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano. The first is a commission for the tenor James Brown who teaches at Pacific Lutheran University and the second is for the Queens-based Lost Dog New Music Ensemble.

Besides composing, what other writing and/or music making do you do on a regular basis?

I’ve been intimately involved with the philosophy of time for several years, and write articles about time in music and the visual arts since 1960. I’m not sure that I really see this as a separate activity from composing since my writing usually reflects the aesthetic concerns of my music. It tends to be another way of working out my musical ideas.

How has the Con Edison Residency helped you?

I think the most useful part of this residency has been access to a real piano. I have a pretty good keyboard that I work on, but the resonance of the instrument [that has been made available to me through my residency] is completely different. Also, I tend to use a lot of extended techniques, such as playing on the inside of the piano or placing objects on the strings. Having access to a piano allows me to try things out instead of calling up a pianist and describing the sound that I want. It makes the process a bit more efficient.

Is there any advice that you would give to a musician and/or composer at the start of their career?

Make sure that it is something that you really want to do. I think that one needs to be completely committed and make it a priority. Making (and thinking about) music needs to be an inseparable part of your life and you need to be willing to make that commitment even if you need to work another job to support your career.

What’s next on your professional horizon following the end of your residency?

I’ll continue making work, doing research, teaching and working at the AC Institute, a non-profit gallery in Chelsea.

How can we learn more about you and your work?

You can visit my website: www.josephdiponio.org. I’m slowly but surely getting scores and recordings posted, and there's also information about upcoming performances.

Affordable Housing in Midtown and Brooklyn: Now Accepting Applications

Posted by anonymous user, on July 9, 2010 - 0 comments

Tags: affordable housing

The Actors Fund is now accepting applications for affordable housing at The Dorothy Ross Friedman Residences (formerly The Aurora) and Schermerhorn House.
Schermerhorn House is a unique, 217-unit residence for single adults in the heart of downtown Brooklyn. Preferences for 100 studio apartments will be given to eligible individuals from Community Board 2 and the performing arts.  Schermerhorn House will also house 2,000 square foot state-of-the-art performance space and multipurpose room. Residents and community arts organizations may use this space for rehearsals, performances, films, and exhibitions, enriching the vibrant and growing Brooklyn arts culture.
 

More information about Schermerhorn House...

The Dorothy Ross Friedman Residences (formerly The Aurora) provides supportive housing to special low-income groups including seniors, working professionals and people living with AIDS. Located at 475 West 57th Street and Tenth Avenue in New York City, it is a 30-story, high rise condominium that was converted into 178 shared residential units of supportive housing.

At the Dorothy Ross Friedman Residences, The Actors Fund provides on-site social services for residents, including information and referral to community resources, entitlement program advocacy, coordination of home care and medical services, outreach, health education and support groups.
 

More information about the Dorothy Ross Friedman Residences...