Transcript - S2 Ep1: The Composers
Intro:
This is Mission: Commission [intro]
Melissa Smey:
This is Mission: Commission, a podcast where we demystify the process of how classical music gets made. I'm your host, Melissa Smey, and I'm the Artistic Director of Miller Theatre at Columbia University in New York City. For this podcast, I commissioned three composers to write new works of classical music and to do it in just six weeks. I want to understand how things are made; to watch the Lego blocks come together step-by-step, as the house is being built. I'll try to get inside the composers' heads and unpack their creative process in real time. And every week you'll hear how that creative journey unfolds through my conversations with the composers and their own audio diaries of the process. Our season will end with the pieces they composed. So follow along on their journey as we hear how the very first ideas and notes grow and evolve and deepen into vibrant new works of classical music. On the second season of the show, we've commissioned Kate Soper -
Kate Soper:
“You can't let frustration be the thing that's like coming out of the pencil. It's not gonna work.”
Melissa Smey:
Vijay Iyer -
Vijay Iyer:
“Do I belong in this thing that still is annoyingly called classical music?”
Melissa Smey:
And Oscar Bettison.
Oscar Bettison:
“I think composition is a real exercise in forced patience, you know? It'll go the way it goes.”
Melissa Smey:
And this season, all three composers will be writing music for the Parker Quartet. At Miller Theatre, we commission new music by world-class composers; music that brings joy and a spirit of connection to listeners. And that's at the very heart of my practice as a curator. This is a mission to discover illuminating and personal moments beyond our concert stage in New York and into your ears wherever you are.
So let's get started on that journey with our first composer, Vijay Iyer. Vijay is a composer, pianist, collaborator, and wonderful human being. It's hard to distill everything that his practice encompasses into just a few sentences, but he cares deeply about social justice, and in 2019, he wrote a piece for Miller called Song For Flint.
[MUSIC - "SONG FOR FLINT" BY VIJAY IYER]
Melissa Smey:
This piece for solo viola, which he wrote for Kyle Armbrust, references the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, and the systemic inequality and environmental racism that produced it.
[CONT. MUSIC - "SONG FOR FLINT" BY VIJAY IYER]
Melissa Smey:
He's a longtime collaborator with us at Miller Theatre. His writing for strings is so varied. It never means just one thing. It can be lush and lyrical, rhythmic and propulsive and energetic. I am so looking forward to hearing what he comes up with for Mission: Commission.
Hello, Vijay, and thanks for joining us on the podcast.
Vijay Iyer:
Thank you. Happy to be here.
Melissa Smey:
Hooray! So I am delighted that you agreed to embark on this journey with us. I wanted to start by asking you, why did you say yes?
Vijay Iyer:
[Laughs] Oh … it's hard to say no to you. That's one thing, you know, we've had lots of great collaborations over the years. I find that it's often kind of helpful for me to have a couple of different things I'm working on at the same time, because otherwise I put everything into one thing, whether it belongs or not, you know, and it's just nice to have some options in terms of format, and in terms of palette, and in terms of just aesthetic goals and strategies, and stuff like that, so I can kind of just brainstorm freely or - I'm not even sure if that's the right word for what it is that I do [laughs]. It's a gut storm - I don't know what it is. And then kind of think of these different destinations. And then I'd say the icing on the cake is that it's the Parker Quartet.
[MUSIC - "STRING QUARTET NO. 15 IN A MINOR, OP. 132" BY LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN]
Vijay Iyer:
Dear friends of mine and really among the best, one of the best string quartets of their generation. And they've played my music before and I've played with them before and I really believe in them.
[MUSIC CONT. - "STRING QUARTET NO. 15 IN A MINOR, OP. 132" BY LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN]
Vijay Iyer:
So then - actually, the idea of expanding your invitation - I kind of wanted to be in it. So this is just a good occasion to reconnect with them and learn from them because they're amazing musicians.
Melissa Smey:
Yeah. Well, so we're here now at the beginning of a process, right? The beginning of a new piece, the beginning of a creative process. Can you tell us a little bit about how do you feel about beginnings, right? Are you energized by them? Are they daunting, are different beginnings different? Kind of unpack that a little bit for us.
Vijay Iyer:
It's hard to get started. I'm mindful of the kind of process where you just sort of fish around on the piano or on some other instrument. I guess I'd say I don't trust that process quite so much, although it is certainly a part of what I do as a composer. I usually need more of a sense of like, "Why am I writing a piece?" You know, besides the fact that you invited me to, which is certainly a good reason, but I need more personally just to motivate myself from within, you know. Because otherwise it's just, "Oh, I have a deadline. Great. Another deadline!" But more like, what's the piece's raison d'être? - you know, like why do we need another piano quintet? How do I make something that I want to actually have in my life and introduce into other people's lives like, for keeps, you know? And so then it's really, it is more like I often kind of find myself back at fundamentals, you know. Rather than like, "Look ma, I wrote a piece." It's more like, "What is music?" So it's like real basic stuff that I find myself kind of asking again to see if there's another answer today that makes sense to me today, you know?
Melissa Smey:
Yeah. And so, have you made a start? Like where are you in the creative process for this piece? No pressure, but where are you?
Vijay Iyer:
I'm not sure where I am. I mean, I'm going through an interesting moment with pianos, which is that it turns out that somebody acquired Chick Corea's piano and is gonna loan it to me, kind of, for a while.
Melissa Smey:
Wow.
Vijay Iyer:
His nine-foot Yamaha that he played until he died, you know. Like it was the one that he was live streaming on and recording on and - it's that piano like, you've seen it and you've heard it.
Melissa Smey:
Oh my gosh.
Vijay Iyer:
Meanwhile, I have this Steinway that I've had that's right behind me here that I've had since the '80s. It's a Steinway S as you can see is kind of short. And I have a kind of love-hate relationship with it - it's like, the piano that I became a pianist on, but it also kind of drives me nuts sometimes. [laughs] So I need to grow into another instrument. And it's coming in a month, so it's right in the middle of all this. I think this piece will end up kind of chronicling that for me in a way. Like that moment of coming to terms with a new sound world, essentially at my home instrument, you know?
Melissa Smey:
What I would love to ask you to wrap up would be a tough one, but if you could just describe a little bit about your creative practice, which is a very broad question to ask.
Vijay Iyer:
It's hard for me to answer because I've been making music for 30 years and I've probably tried every damn thing there is, you know, so I don't think there's one consistent method or approach. I think a lot of it is very intuitive, and I remember when I wrote the solo piece for Matt Haimovitz, that was like - I think it premiered at Miller Theatre, in fact - it was the overture to the C Major Bach Cello Suite. Yeah.
Melissa Smey:
Yep, that's right.
Vijay Iyer:
It's called "Run."
[MUSIC - "RUN" BY VIJAY IYER]
Vijay Iyer:
I remember like I listened to a bunch of solo cello music, just to see what people are doing now with the cello. And I kind of hated all of it. [laughs] It was just like - that's too harsh. I don't mean that - but it was like everything was really spare and plaintive and kind of mournful and with a lot of silence in it. And I just found myself getting impatient, like, when does it get to the thing that it's supposed to do? [laughs] So then I wrote this piece called "Run," which is basically a perpetual motion.
[CONT. MUSIC - "RUN" BY VIJAY IYER]
Vijay Iyer:
I was just like, I don't want it to stop, actually, I want it to just like be this push from the beginning to the end.
[CONT. MUSIC - "RUN' BY VIJAY IYER]
Vijay Iyer:
So that was one basically like I wrote against everything I was hearing, but then there's another anecdote, I guess, which is Sarah Rothenberg from DACAMERA of Houston. She commissioned me to write a solo piece for her, solo piano piece. It's not due until, I mean, she's playing it in May. So at some point in September or October, Igor Levit released that Shostakovich Preludes and Fugues.
[MUSIC - "FUGUE NO. 16 IN B-FLAT MINOR, OP. 87" BY DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH]
Vijay Iyer:
I was listening through it, and something really caught me, which is the fugue from number 16. There's a prelude and fugue. The prelude is something, but the fugue - I don't know what happened to me, but I ended up listening to it on loop for a week.
[MUSIC CONT. - "FUGUE NO. 16 ON B-FLAT MINOR, OP. 87" BY DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH]
Vijay Iyer:
It's an adagio fugue. It didn't even strike my ear as a fugue the first time I heard it, it just felt like things falling in slow motion - and just like leaves falling or something like that - but just like constant, this constant slow motion rain of leaves or something like that. And I couldn't let go of it. I don't know what happened to me. I just became kind of immersed in it. And then all of a sudden I wrote this whole solo piano piece for Sarah - like I wrote it in two days. And it was six months early - I didn't have to, you know? And then I realized - you know, I lost my father this summer - um, and I realized that all of this had to do with him, so...and that just happened all in a burst. Like I don't - I can't really account for it even, but it was basically - I kind of shadowed, at some distance, the form of that piece, the prelude and the fugue as a way of kind of working through something, whatever it was. So that's - these are two pretty different [laughs] kinds of ways of working, and I don't - basically, I don't know what to tell you.
Melissa Smey:
No, I think that is beautiful. I think it's, I mean, it's different for every person obviously, and I think it's different at different times in your career and depending on where you are, and losing a parent is really hard. I lost my mom in the summer of 2020, and it just, it's really hard to lose a parent.
Vijay Iyer:
Yeah.
Melissa Smey:
So, I'm sorry.
Vijay Iyer:
Yeah. I'm sorry, too.
Melissa Smey:
Yeah. But, a follow up that I have for you about the Shostakovich is, did you yourself play it or did you only listen?
Vijay Iyer:
Well, I got my hands on the score and I wouldn't say that I became proficient, but I did study it - I guess I studied it, you know. Basically because I couldn't fathom what it was … it's like the form is just this pretense for something that happened, you know, like, yes, it's a fugue which gives it a certain kind of orderliness, but that was not my experience of it. You know, my experience of it was, this, just immersion, and this atmosphere that was kind of just constant and sustained so consistently. And I didn't, I just didn't want it to end, you know?
Melissa Smey:
Yeah.
[CONT. MUSIC - "FUGUE NO. 16 IN B-FLAT MINOR, OP. 87" BY DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH]
Melissa Smey:
On to our next composer in the series, Kate Soper. She's a composer, and a writer, and a real innovator,
[MUSIC - "IPSA DIXIT: I. POETICS" BY KATE SOPER]
Melissa Smey:
Her music is full of humor. A few years ago in 2017, I saw a performance of one of her pieces called IPSA DIXIT. She was in a tiny space with a small audience, and the performance ran for two nights only. It's a tour de force, and I was so blown away by it. I felt strongly that it needed a wider audience, so we brought it to Miller Theatre.
[MUSIC CONT. - "IPSA DIXIT: I. POETICS" BY KATE SOPER]
Melissa Smey:
IPSA DIXIT it was a finalist for the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in Music. It was a piece that took six years to develop, and now Kate has accepted the challenge to compose a piece for this podcast in six weeks.
Hello, Kate, thanks for joining us on the podcast. To start with, I would love to hear about why you decided to take this on. Why did you agree to make a new piece of music in six weeks and talk about it in real time?
Kate Soper:
Well, yeah, I think my experience lately - my kind of professional experience has been working on large scale things. My creative attention has really been turning towards projects that take years to develop and, a ton of effort to produce and fundraise and revise and contemplate and talk about and revisit. And I've gotten used to a really kind of slow scale of thinking. And then of course, with the pandemic, an epically slow scale of seeing things to the end. So the thought of beginning, middle, and end occurring within a six week period just sounded like it might be a nice way to remind myself that things can still happen. And this probably will be the shortest time frame I've ever experienced of starting something and then saying, "This is the thing." So yes, this is unusual for me, for sure.
Melissa Smey:
Well, I'm glad you said yes. And hopefully at the end of six weeks, you will be, too.
Kate Soper:
Yes!
Melissa Smey:
I want to ask you a question about your childhood, actually, that I read in a really interesting profile about you, and it said that, as a child, you played at the piano using books of poems. And I found something about that was just so beautiful, and so could you tell me a little bit about kind of how and why and what that was like?
Kate Soper:
Yeah, well, I think, you know, I’m sort of maybe the last didn't-have-internet-until-my-teens kind of generation, I'd get bored and I loved playing the piano and I liked to sing and I liked writing music and, you know, I don't think my brain was developed enough to be like writing librettos or, you know, having deep poetic thoughts much myself. But it was always just good to have a prompt or just good to have something to play with. So yeah, I would just sort of like prop a book of poetry up and just sort of like, see what would happen, and probably just play some, you know, rip-off Chopin licks underneath and sing some rip-off Tori Amos vocals above. And I mean, it was just fun. It was just something fun to do, you know, to pass the time. And now I like can fit it into my work history as a professional, but I think it just was what I liked to do.
Melissa Smey:
Does that feeling of fun … is that still there for you? Like when you're composing, do you still have that childhood feeling of, "gosh, this is so fun?"
Kate Soper:
Yes, absolutely. I do. I mean, it's sometimes frustrating, but yeah, I do sometimes like, giggle, as I walk up the stairs with my tea or something.
[MUSIC CONT. - "IPSA DIXIT: I. POETICS" BY KATE SOPER]
Melissa Smey:
I want to take a step back and ask you to describe your creative process for me in the most broad terms.
Kate Soper:
I think I'll have some idea or some sound or some story that I want to think about. And then I think it's then just sort of a process of accumulating realizations of ideas, and then the sort of feedback loop of, like, that whatever is concrete then kind of interacts with the idea and changes it, and that produces some more concrete stuff. And then that kind of goes back in the thought machine and goes back on the page. So I think once things are starting to manifest in reality, it's about building on things. And I do - I used to do this more when I was younger - but I used to kind of really have a map of like a drawing - like, this is what the piece is going to be like. And I've realized now I think things change so much that I tend to be a little bit more open, but it does still help me to even early in the process be like, "this is how everything's going to go." And then you know, change that every day or something. Yeah, I think I describe it as kind of constant feedback and editing and revision and wandering far away from whatever the initial point was but still kind of having some tether to it.
Melissa Smey:
And so I'm curious, the piece that you're making for this project is for yourself and for the Parker Quartet. And so I'm curious if you would find that there are creative differences when you're making a piece that, of which you yourself will be a part, and then when you're making works for which you won't be a part, right? Because obviously your works list has examples of both. And so I'm curious for you, are there differences in your approach when you're working on those pieces?
Kate Soper:
You know, writing pieces that I, I know I'm gonna be in them - in a sense, I'm just another performer. So when I'm composing, I don't know that it's really that different in terms of like, okay, you know, clarinet: Joey; violin: Susie; soprano: Kate; or whatever, you know? So except of course I know intimately my strengths and weaknesses as a performer. It just happens that the kind of composer I am, I really like writing for a new music soprano who likes to talk and will do whatever I want and can play some instruments. So then it's like, "Great, I have one. It's me."
[MUSIC - "IPSA DIXIT: II. ONLY THE WORDS THEMSELVES MEAN WHAT THEY SAY" BY KATE SOPER]
Kate Soper:
If I was sort of like separated somehow, I would just write for that person who is me. I don't know if that makes any sense.
Melissa Smey:
Sure. No, absolutely. Okay, so I want to end - I'm going to end with the hardest question, or what can be a hard question for a composer at the beginning of a creative process, which is to ask, do you already have a sense of what your piece will be? Have you made a start, or not yet?
Kate Soper:
Yeah, I actually do kind of know what I want to do. I think, like I said, that I guess … sometimes, I get a commission or a request or something, and that will spark an idea, but sometimes I just have like a loose change jar of ideas, and just like, stick my hand in or something. So I had, had this idea for some reason over the past, you know, couple years of pandemic stuff. The Charlie Brown, like parents thing with the [imitates trombone] trombone.
[MUSIC - TALKING TROMBONE BY ANDRAE MURCHISON]
Kate Soper:
So like just some idea of like trying to talk to music, and feeling like trying to actually communicate with words and seeing, and you know - what if music talked back to you, but you wouldn't be able to understand it, because music isn't a language, and maybe it wouldn't be able to understand you? And so I had this kind of weird, funny idea, and then I was sort of thinking about like messages in a bottle or something. And I mean, I think it was sort of psychologically motivated by this feeling that it's so crazy what is going on in the world and how could we possibly have predicted so many of these insane eventualities. And why can't we know what's coming? It would be so much easier to prepare, you know? So I had this feeling, okay, so you can't talk to music. You also can't talk to the, the past, or talk to the future as much as you want to warn them, or like, just check on how a couple things maybe are going to go. So when you asked me about this piece, I thought, like, oh, maybe this is an opportunity for that. So yeah, that's kind of the concept so far.
Melissa Smey:
I love it. And I mean, who doesn't want a crystal ball, right? Who doesn't want to communicate?
Kate Soper:
Yeah! I mean, maybe you wouldn't because I don't know if you knew in 2019, what we would do about it, but it's so incredible how unpredictable the future is, even though it's such an obvious thing to point out.
Melissa Smey:
Good. Well, Kate, I think this is a lovely place for us to leave our first conversation. Thank you, Kate.
Kate Soper:
Thank you, Melissa.
Melissa Smey:
And onto our final composer of the series, Oscar Bettison. Oscar is a composer and a musician, and I find his approach to orchestration unique and simply amazing. When I listen to his music, I understand that a whole sound world already exists in his head and the work that needs to happen is figuring out how to put it down on paper for the musicians who will interpret it. Oscar is also a natural educator and just a really neat guy.
Hello Oscar.
Oscar Bettison:
Hi, Melissa. How are you?
Melissa Smey:
I'm great. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you for joining us, and thank you for saying yes to being part of Mission: Commission. To start with, I would love to hear more about why you decided to take this on why you said yes.
Oscar Bettison:
Sure. Well, first, you know, thanks for asking me this. I think this is a really great project. I love the idea. You know, for years I've been writing on Twitter about my process, my creative process. What I do on Twitter is I never say what the piece is that I'm working on. I always sort of leave it abstract, and I sort of say, well, you know, it's getting - you know, it's going okay. Or maybe I have a first draft or all of these things, but I never actually say what piece it is. And so that's my little way of getting away with it, but now I can't do that. So. [Laughs]
Melissa Smey:
But why do you need to get away with it? Is it that you don't want to reveal what the piece is? Is it that you want to keep something private?
Oscar Bettison:
Yeah. It's like revealing too much or something. I don't know. It's a funny thing, but then I thought this is a really nice way to actually talk about a piece being made in a sort of, there's more to say about it, I think, in this format. So I like that.
Melissa Smey:
Can you describe kind of big picture, if you had to take a step back and tell me broadly about your creative process, how would you describe that?
Oscar Bettison:
I think it's very much a process of sort of trial and error. You know, I oftentimes just start writing because I think you can do too much thinking. I think that you can get thinking and doing in the wrong way around quite easy in a creative process, or at least that's what I say to my students is that actually, you know, maybe the best thing to do is actually to start writing and then think about what you've done. Just getting ideas down on paper is just a really important thing. So that's, that's how I always start is just trying to get things out and then, you know, work on those ideas and play around with them. And there's a lot of editing and sort of chipping away at something and sort of, trying to find what the idea is. There's a lot of throwing ideas away, as well, which I think is actually a really important part of my process. And it becomes very sort of cathartic at times to actually just get down to like one idea, and then, you know, sometimes I get rid of like loads of ideas and come down to one idea, and then I start folding my ideas back in, but it's like a slightly different focus.
And the other thing I do, if I look at an idea, I sort of ask questions about it. So if I think that something might have to be at the beginning of a piece, I always try it at the end or in the middle or something. And sort of ask questions about it. If any sort of idea that I have, like maybe I say, well, why is it in - why is it at the speed? Like what would happen if it was three times faster or three times slower, or up three octaves or down three octaves, you know? And I have a rule that every time I ask myself something like that, I have to do it, even if I know it's a bad idea, regardless of craft and technique and training. Because it might make me think of something else and it might trigger something. I don't know who said this, but somebody said - and it's a great quote and I'm probably going to get it wrong - but it says something like, "If inspiration does exist, it has to catch you working." I feel very strongly that that's the case with me that it doesn't come at the beginning. There's just things that you kind of work on, and at a certain point, something, you know, you do something, there's something that just, or even like a little mistake. Like sometimes you write something, just the wrong - it just doesn't quite - or you write it in the wrong instrument or whatever it is. These tiny little things that suddenly spark something, but that's sort of making your own luck, you know? So that's sort of, yeah, that's kind of my process really. Yeah.
Melissa Smey:
Well and, something I like - the idea that I always like is the idea of a practice and a creative practice, and that it's a daily practice because there's this myth - with any creative endeavor - there's this myth in the popular imagination that it's just like a lightning bolt of inspiration strikes. And like this finished work comes tumbling out. And maybe that happens, [laughs] but all of the composers I talk to, it's a practice. It's work. I mean, and there is certainly an element of play, but this idea of a practice. So I like that you have to be working in order for it, you know, for the inspiration to find you.
Oscar Bettison:
Absolutely. Yeah.
Melissa Smey:
And so my follow up for you would be, when you're doing this work, are you writing on paper? Are you writing on a computer? How are you physically notating and capturing your ideas at this point?
Oscar Bettison:
I write on paper and then I put things into an engraving program. So, but I don't write, I never write like a perfect thing on paper and then put it in the computer. I find paper really liberating to just - you can do anything on paper, and you know, the problem with the computer is you're immediately like stuck in a rigid sort of - there’s bars, and you have to get, you know like, you have to get like rhythms absolutely right first go.
Melissa Smey:
And are you able to listen to what you're making? Are you hearing it in your head? Are you able to hear it from an external source? How are you able to listen to your ideas?
Oscar Bettison:
I mean, well, on paper I do it in my head and then I, I will put things into the computer, but if I do playback, it's only for like listening to, sort of, timings and things like that. So I get on anything that - I just set all my MIDI settings to piano sounds, basically, because I can't stand most MIDI sounds. And I know this makes me like, you know, kind of, really old fashioned, but like I just can't deal with - actually, there's some really good sound sets now, but I don't have them, and I kind of don't want them. [laughs] So I just set everything to piano sounds. And if I need to differentiate something, I might stretch to like maybe putting in a vibraphone sound for another part, but that's literally it. I cannot. I just can't deal.
Melissa Smey:
Well, so I want to ask you about beginnings in general. So some people love them. Some people dread them. How are you with the beginning of a new project?
Oscar Bettison:
You know, I think the initial beginning, like the very first thing is like really, really fun. It's like six year old kid in a toy store kind of fun, you know. But then you actually have to do something, you know, like -
Melissa Smey:
[Laughs]
Oscar Bettison:
You know, there's that moment of like, "Yay, I can do it!" And then there's, "Oh yeah, wait a minute." And that's the bit when you just realize how much you have to do and how much work it is. Well, the way I deal with it actually is that is just little baby steps, you know, and just do a little bit every day. Like you say, a practice.
Melissa Smey:
I know that you've been doing a little traveling, but that you also have a space at home where you write. Does where you are working make a difference to how you work or what you create in a particular space?
Oscar Bettison:
So I have a space now to work that I - this is like the cushiest space I have ever had. Ever. I mean, this happened, you know, right before the pandemic and I just, you know, I just managed to carve out the space in the house. And I work on trains a little bit. Hotel rooms - I love working in hotel rooms. I don't know. There's something great about hotel rooms. I think it's, I think some of it is also you kind of carve out your own space in the - you know, like, and it's a temporary space and it becomes like this thing of like, "Right, I'm gonna work right now." And like, in a weird way, because you've just changed environment. It kind of just makes you, I think you feel "Well, I better get something done." So I don't know. I find that, I think it's maybe harder to start a piece on the road. I think that's pretty hard for me. The theme of this is that my sensitive spot is starting a piece. I think once things are rolling, I feel pretty, you know, iron clad with my ability to deal with stuff, you know, moving places and all of that. So once I'm into something I can pretty much work anywhere.
Melissa Smey:
Do you ever experience creative block?
Oscar Bettison:
I mean I have done, but like I have sort of strategies for that. The main strategy is just, do stuff. Like just do things. You know, actually, the weird thing is as I get older, I get more and more excited about pieces. It's weird. I mean, there are definitely times where I go, "I don't know what to do here," but … do something else. I just make myself do … I think composition is a real exercise in forced patience, you know? It'll go the way it goes, and you just have to kind of roll with it. And I think that, sort of, for me, at least giving up that control is a really kind of useful thing and actually saying, "Well, I don't know. Let's just see. Today wasn't so good. Tomorrow might be better." And just sort of going with it rather than putting too much stress on yourself. I think it is easy. I mean, I think you put that stress on yourself anyway and that sort of results in blocks. At least for me, my way of dealing with my own psychology is just like, go with it, and then a block is much less likely to happen.
Melissa Smey:
Yeah. That's a good approach for composition, but that's a life lesson right there, you know? I mean, really.
Oscar Bettison:
Yeah, I think so. Yeah.
Melissa Smey:
Well, Oscar, it has been a real delight talking with you today. Thank you so much for making the time. Really a pleasure.
Oscar Bettison:
Thank you so much. This is a great project, and I'm really looking forward to it.
Melissa Smey:
That's it for this episode. Thanks for listening. Come back for the next episode when we'll find out where the composer's ideas originate and hear the audio diaries they have started to record.
Mission: Commission is a production of Miller Theatre at Columbia University.
Major support for Mission: Commission is provided by the Francis Goelet Charitable Lead Trusts. Support for Miller Theatre is provided by the New York State Council on the Arts and the Howard Gilman Foundation. Additional support is provided by the National Endowment for the Arts. Support for contemporary music at Miller Theatre is provided by the Aaron Copland Fund for Music and the Amphion Foundation.
Kate Soper's commissioned work was made possible with lead support from Sean T. Buffington.
This episode was produced by Golda Arthur and me, with Adrienne Stortz, Lauren Cognetti and Taylor Riccio. Eric Gomez is our sound designer and engineer.
This episode featured audio excerpts of pieces written by Vijay Iyer and Kate Soper.
Visit missioncommissionpodcast.com for a full listing of pieces, performers, and recordings included in this and every episode. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and, even better, leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It really helps the show. Thanks for listening. See you next week.
[MUSIC - TALKING TROMBONE BY ANDRAE MURCHISON]
