Transcript - S1 Ep4: In the Zone
Intro:
This is Mission: Commission [intro]
Melissa Smey:
Welcome to Mission: Commission, a podcast demystifying the process of how classical music gets made. I'm Melissa Smey and I'm the Artistic Director of Miller Theatre at Columbia University. On this podcast, we're following the creative journey of three composers as they create vibrant new works of classical music. Our composers are Augusta Read Thomas in Chicago, Courtney Bryan in New Orleans, and Marcos Balter in New York. And right now, all three of our composers are in the thick of it -- finding ideas, or in some cases being found by an idea, sifting through those ideas. They are deep in the zone. In this episode, we go into the zone with them, exploring the origin story of those ideas and asking them, what are you like when you're in the zone? And each of our composers have a different answer to those questions. Here to start us off is Augusta Read Thomas, Gusty.
Augusta Read Thomas:
I think of all of my life's work as captured improvisations.
[MUSIC - "HEMKE CONCERTO 'PRISMS OF LIGHT’" BY AUGUSTA READ THOMAS]
And what I mean by that is I'm sitting at the piano, I'm dancing, I'm scatting, I'm imagining, I'm, sort of, dancing the rhythms. I'm improvising. I'm like, "Oh, go this way! Okay, go that way! Oh, this note. Oh no, the next note. Oh, take a breath. We need a lift. No, we don't need a lift. Go faster. Take it slower. Let's try it this way." Whatever it is I'm doing, I'm improvising it. And then when I find something, I capture it.
[MUSIC CONT. - "HEMKE CONCERTO 'PRISMS OF LIGHT’" BY AUGUSTA READ THOMAS]
And then I’m like, "that's it! That's it! Let me find that." And then I sculpt it, and polish it, and my notations are extremely nuanced. So these are highly notated pieces that don't involve improvisation. But what they were for me was an improvisation.
[MUSIC CONT. - "HEMKE CONCERTO 'PRISMS OF LIGHT’" BY AUGUSTA READ THOMAS]
And that’s why I like it when people play my music with that inner life. To play the music with that sense of passion and embodiment that I put into the making of it.
Melissa Smey:
For Mission: Commission, Gusty is working on a piece for solo marimba with percussionist, John Corkill. She's also been keeping a weekly audio diary to chart her creative journey.
Augusta Read Thomas:
I'm working on the second movement of our composition, which is for solo marimba -- back to solo marimba, exclamation point! And the working title is "Amalgamation," meaning blending, or fusion, or collisions of certain things that then interact. When I shared some of the score with the performer, John Corkill, he wrote me an email and he said that one of the images that came to his mind was very colorful silly putty, which is like a certain kind of clay. And if you take different colors of it and sort of braid them together or push them together, you end up getting a kind of scarf of colors.
Right now, I'm in the stage of just nitty-gritty, fine tooth comb nuance, note by note hard work. It's a little bit like knitting fine lace or building a three-dimensional spider web: very, very intricate with lots of little connections and fulcrum points. You know, I love this work. It's my favorite thing to be doing, but it's also just extremely exhausting.
In addition, the composition is really hard to play. Oh my gosh, John is going to kill me because it's going to take him so many hours just to shed the notes and the rhythms. It's very, very hard. It's, I'm moving quickly between the low notes of the marimba and the high notes. And on a five octave marimba, that's a fairly wide span, even a large, tall human being with long arms, you know, really has to move their body to get from the lowest note to the highest note, especially when you're trying to play chords or doing an interlocking like "low note, low note, high note, low note, low note, high, high, high, low, low, low, high, high, high" jumping back and forth like that. It's an absolute ballet to watch someone be doing this. So I hope this gives you a sense of where I am with the piece, and it's going to be like this essentially until I finish the piece. I'm just right in the nitty-gritty and enjoying it immensely.
Melissa Smey:
Well hello, Gusty. What does it sound like so far?
Augusta Read Thomas:
Good morning, Melissa. The second movement is for solo marimba. And I can tell you don't ever write for solo marimba. It is so difficult. It's really, really difficult because you have a uniform color. Now of course, the top notes are a little more brittle and the low notes ring a little longer, but essentially you're hitting wood and you can only use four mallets. So your chords are limited to four notes and that you can't go like "chord, chord, chord, chord, chord, chord, chord" because the hands can't move that fast, especially if the chords are chromatic. So you have to really plan the way that one is leading in and out of harmonies. And yeah, it's just very, very, very difficult. So it's really my first time writing for marimba, solo. And I hadn't realized how tricky it is.
And you asked how the piece sounds, it's quite jazzy. It's very virtuosic, it's rhythmic, it's syncopated, it's playful. It's in ways humorous in the sense of, you don't expect me to go there, and then I jumped back over here, and then we're over there. And, kind of yeah, capricious is not quite the right word, but there's a playful spirit to it in the way that you would have with a jazz combo where somebody jumps in and takes a solo that you didn't quite expect, but then you're so glad that they took that solo, and then you're, then you're back in the pocket as it were. So, setting up expectations and breaking them. It's about four and a half minutes long and it's all fast music. It's all moving at a really big clip. So it's, you know, a huge amount of bars for a piece that's so short.
Melissa Smey:
So, I want to back up for a minute. I'm interested in unpacking something about your process. And so you had talked about, you know, really being in the fine details of the piece. And I'm curious, how do you pull yourself out, or do you pull yourself out? Like, is walking away from the work useful or needed, or do you find it counterproductive when you're really in the zone?
Augusta Read Thomas:
That's a wonderful question. I think I'm always totally in the zone.
Melissa Smey:
Yeah. I had that sense.
Augusta Read Thomas:
I don't think I ever get out of it because when I'm making something, it just takes over my whole self. It's my whole life. My music is my life, my life is my music. I don't separate, I don't have a, quote, "career" or whatever. I just have a life and this is what I do every day. So I don't really come out of the vortex, in the biggest sense. What I usually do when I finish a piece, I know when the piece is done, when I can sleep through the night. When I'm not going over, like, "oh, that transition isn't right. And that just doesn't feel right. And the implied harmony there, is just, it's no good. That's no good. I got to fix that. Gotta fix that. Oh, I don't like that rhythm there. This is too square" or, you know, whatever. If there's something bothering me like that, I'm, it's impossible. I cannot turn the piece in. I can't. Even though somebody else might not be bothered by that little teeny weeny, itty bitty thing, it'll drive me crazy. So I just have to kind of get it right for myself. It's a kind of perfectionism thing. But then when I can sleep through the night and then I continue to review the piece and think about it and I, I'm like, "that's it! That's it, finally! There it is!" Then I can, kind of, let it go, and what I usually do is start a new piece, like 10 minutes later and it drives my husband crazy. He's always like, "why don't you take a day off? How about a day off? How about, how about lunch?" You know, but the problem is my brain is like that. I want to have a project.
Melissa Smey:
Sure.
Augusta Read Thomas:
It's kind of obsessive. It's, I’m probably sounding like some kind of psychotic person, but the truth is that this is just the way it is.
Melissa Smey:
It's funny. Earlier you had said something about, you're kind of talking in broad strokes about your process and that you would walk to get coffee, like to the beat of the piece that was in your head. And I just, I could visualize that. And I could also imagine what it would feel like to have that piece of music in your head. So even though you might physically separate yourself from, you know, the composition studio, that the piece is still with you.
Augusta Read Thomas:
Yeah actually, what's interesting is the pieces become like ear worms.
Melissa Smey:
Yes.
Augusta Read Thomas:
They're just going around in my head. But I think to your point, or maybe, you know, a slightly spinoff of your very good question, has to do with the zooming in and zooming out. So suppose you're at a local place, and of course I can't sing harmonies right now, but you're trying to decide if it goes [improvised scatting] or whether it goes [variation on improvised scatting] or whether it goes [different variation on improvised scatting] you know, whatever. So you’re really local on it. Like, "okay, those are three things kind of similar." I didn't sing them very well, but you get the sense, kind of similar, but they're all wickedly different. But where are they coming from and where are they going to? So you've got to back up ten bars and run your brain into them and out of them. Because the relation of those to the 5-bar phrase around them really changes which of those three you might want.
Or the fact that none of those three is even vaguely good. And then you have to, you have to move out to the larger phrase. So a lot of times I am scatting, I'm like literally singing better than I just sang now, but , jumping around in my living room and sort of feeling it like "how long can I hold that rest?" You know, like "where's the lift?" So it could be like, [continued improvised scatting] you know, so I put kind of a pretty long rest in there. That's cool like, "well, is that rest too long? Who says if it's too long? Well, locally it worked. But what does it work on the longer phrase? Maybe it should be shorter? How much shorter, an eighth-note shorter? Maybe there should be an accent. Maybe the dynamic should," you know, it's a billion decisions and that's what I love about composition. But it, you know, to get the right one for every last little thing, it's tricky.
Melissa Smey:
Our next composer is Marcos Balter in New York who's composing for solo harp.
Parker Ramsay:
[Improvisation On Harp]
Marcos Balter:
When we're, sort of, looking for an idea or looking for something that may work, it's like playing in a dumpster. Most things are ugly, and broken, and smelly, you know, but now and then you'll find a treasure. Now and then, you find something that is really beautiful.
Melissa Smey:
Yeah.
Marcos Balter:
You know, you have to, kind of, sort out through all of the not so great stuff, you know? But when you do find it, you know, there is that sort of magic connection. So I feel like I have, you know, gotten to that stage finally, you know, in this piece. I was afraid that it was too short of a timeframe for it to happen, but it did happen. I don't know how it's going to be like to actually bring the reality because that's yet another process. You know, like getting something that is immaterial, that is abstract, and little by little giving it a body in a real world, in a way that prevents it from losing its magic. But I think I got it. I think I can see it and I can hear it.
Melissa Smey:
Marcos is working with harpist, Parker Ramsay. Parker and Marcos connected on a Zoom call at the start of this commission and spent some time experimenting on the harp.
Parker Ramsay:
[Continued Improvisations On Harp]
Melissa Smey:
They came up with a range of sounds.
Marcos Balter:
...Different Configurations at around that area with both hands.
Parker Ramsay:
[Continued Improvisations On Harp]
Melissa Smey:
Raw material for the ideas that Marcos will work with. And Marcos has been deep in those ideas.
Parker Ramsay:
[Continued Improvisations On Harp]
Marcos Balter:
I can't really construct something out of no image and/or sound. And usually it's sort of like a, it's a combination of both. You know, I have to see something and hear something in order to then try to make that something happen. You know, a lot of times the image and sound are quite challenging to be made into reality, but that's, that's part of the fun, but it has to exist. I have to see it.
Melissa Smey:
The leap that you took with this, because there were components, several components of the project that were maybe outside of your past practice—I would leave it to you to characterize whether it was outside of your comfort zone or not—but, you know, the short timeframe, composing for a musician who you'd only just recently met, composing for a podcast, all of those things are outside of how you normally prefer to work.
Marcos Balter:
Yeah. I mean, there were many interesting, I don't know if I would qualify them as constraints, but interesting conditions that, you know, were very different from how I usually work. And I think that at the end it did end up, sort of, influencing me on a few of the choices that I'm finding myself making. You know, like, initially, I had talked to Parker about using different material on the harp.
Parker Ramsay:
[Plucking On The Harp With A Spoon] Like the back of the spoon.
Marcos Balter:
To create this, sort of, glissando effect and we tried different material and all that. And in the middle of showing me this material, Parker showed me a technique that is much more, you know, it's much more appealing sonically than it is visually. It doesn't really have any kind of visual component to it.
Parker Ramsay:
[Upward Arpeggiation On Harp To Create A Tremolo Effect]
Marcos Balter:
That. That. Can I hear the upper register?
Parker Ramsay:
[Continued Arpeggiation In A Higher Register On Harp]
Marcos Balter:
And it was really sort of like a side note to what we were exploring, but that is what ended up igniting my interest. And that is the image that actually came to my mind and sort of presented itself as the thing that I should explore for this project.
Melissa Smey:
Good. Well, so you started composing, you feel like it's coming, but now actually realizing it is another big step. So, when you're looking forward, what do you see? What awaits you?
Marcos Balter:
It's a combination of rational and irrational, really. It's a combination of a more sort of objective way of approaching composition, you know, using that quote-unquote "craft part." You know, and knowing how to make something out of this little thing, but there is a subjective part, which is just sort of denying sometimes even the sort of a very Cartesian structural way of thinking of composing, which can be boring. Or at least I find extremely boring when I hear something and I'm like, "Oh, okay, this is the thematic material. This is how it's being, you know," like, I don't want to see how it's made. You know, so I don't want my own music to be that one dimensional that people are like, "ah! There is the process!" And then sort of then figuring out what is this non-process process that can work artistically speaking, which is much more abstract and subjective. It's all about giving yourself chills. You know, like making these mental exercises of trying to forget that you wrote something, and sitting down and listening to it, pretending that it's the first time, and seeing how your spine reacts to it.
Melissa Smey:
So if your spine doesn't react to it, what happens?
Marcos Balter:
It's no bueno. Then I have to really find a way of activating the spine.
Melissa Smey:
So you had talked earlier about, broad strokes, about your compositional practice and the idea that it's a gestation and that if, you know, biggest picture, like 80% of the process is gestation and letting ideas marinate and sleeping on it and letting it come to you. And so if you're doing math, that means that there's 20% left for the realization of the piece. But I wonder if you take a human connection, right? The gestation of a human takes nine months, nine and a half months, and then the labor, it's a very concentrated labor. And so I wonder if you can just, if you can follow that analogy for me and tell me about what for you, what is the labor of creating the piece? What is that like?
Marcos Balter:
It's exactly that like, whenever the piece is ready to come out, you know, it's ready to sort of like really come into existence, I need time. And perhaps as an angry parent, I need distance. You know, I don't want to share this with anyone. I need to close myself in a quiet place and have many, many, many, many hours that are just mine that I am not thinking of absolutely anything else but that one thing, and have absolute silence and laser sharp, you know, attention to just that. And maybe that's even part of my ADHD. You know, that if I step outside of that arena, everything is just, you know, crazy and, you know, floating around my head, you know? So I have to have that intense devotion and work long stretches of hours. I can't, I'm not one that can sit for like an hour or two and come up with something. I need, you know, fourteen uninterrupted hours on this thing, you know, that I can just do it for as many days as it gets.
Melissa Smey:
Yeah, no, that's right. I mean, in one of the things that I always, I, the thing I tried to, you know, strive to bring to the process is a supportive frame, right? To foster an environment that enables everyone to do their best work. So, you should feel no pressure from me. You will finish when you're finished and we'll make it work.
Marcos Balter:
Oh no, don't say that. Don't be too nice that actually also backfires. You know, like, I need a little pressure. So it's good that I have you and, you know, I have my agent, and, you know, I have Parker to hold me accountable when things, you know, get too much derailed. And I am desperately trying, you know, in my brain to just erase everything from the world, you know, including my mom and dad.
Melissa Smey:
Yeah. Sole focus.
Parker Ramsay:
[Improvisation On Harp]
Marcos Balter:
I love that!
Melissa Smey:
On to to our last composer now, Courtney Bryan in New Orleans, who's working on a piece called "Synchronicity" with trombonist, Andrae Murchison, who's based in Savannah, Georgia.
So hello, Courtney. So this week, both you and Andrae sent an audio diary called "Truth." Tell me the story behind that. You know, where did this idea come from and why is it called "Truth?"
Courtney Bryan:
I always have to remember how things come about because sometimes Andrae and I have running conversations. But there might be a certain phrase at that time and I think what it was, was once again, Instagram. So I think it was something he posted about truth. And I had been thinking a lot about, in the creative process, about the idea of honesty. And so even though those were two different words, I was like, "Oh, let's choose one of those honesty or truth," but I thought truth was good, you know, when I saw him post that. So that's how we came up with the word of the week. And then we went from there to think about how we were going to approach it.
Melissa Smey:
Let's talk about some of the other prompts that you're using. Like numbers. I know that you both like numbers. Tell me about how you've used numbers as a prompt to create.
Courtney Bryan:
One thing I wanted to do from before was to pick a certain time of day where we both created something at the same time without discussing what it would be, and then just see how that worked out together, musically.
Andrae Murchison:
[Improvised Musical Phrases On Trombone]
Courtney Bryan:
So this week when we picked truth as a theme, I mentioned that I did to Andrae, like, "how about we try this, where we pick a certain time." I'm like, "it could be any time, didn't matter what the numbers were." And he said, "how about 11:11?" That is one of my favorite numbers. We decided we would do his 11:11 eastern time and my central time, 10:11, cause it still had the one, one, one. Yeah. So we started with AM.
Andrae Murchison:
[Continued Improvised Musical Phrases On Trombone]
Courtney Bryan:
Yeah, and we both played what was on our mind.
[Improvised Musical Phrases On Piano]
But one thing that was different than what I originally planned, was Andrae came up with his plan ahead of time. I kind of had this idea, like we just see what happens without discussing anything. But he mentioned that he came up with a melody that had 11 notes in it. And that also he was building the melody thinking about fifths. Like, thinking about the interval of 5.
Andrae Murchison:
[Continued Improvised Musical Phrases On Trombone]
Courtney Bryan:
And so, I had that in mind by the time I went to improvise, because I think we spoke about it the night before. So when I, before going to the piano, I started thinking about 11 and 5 as far as, like, musical inspiration. So I decided instead of 11 notes in a melody, I would try 11 different chords in a chord pattern. And then instead of 5, for intervals of harmony, I would use 5 for a meter.
[Continued Improvised musical phrases on piano]
Having numbers for the time that we're doing a synchronous time was one part of using numbers. And then the other was to use certain numbers and find ways to use it for different musical elements and something that we would create. I guess the thing that makes something collaboration to me is really like the emphasis on the back and forth and the sharing.
Melissa Smey:
And so I'm curious, how do you think about creative tension? And is it useful for your process?
Courtney Bryan:
I'm trying to figure that out. Because of course it's always great when you say the same words and you mean the same thing.
Melissa Smey:
Sure.
Courtney Bryan:
And everybody's on the same page and you create stuff that you're both proud of. So that's what I always want. But of course, like, in reality, there's always going to be tension. It doesn't mean you won't create something great even while you have… friction, but it just depends. I mean, cause sometimes things do fall apart. So I mean, that's always my fear. I'm like, okay, if there is tension, I don't want to spend a long time working on something and find out it's not going to work out.
I like to negotiate. I like to make sure that the outcome works. So sometimes, say, on the bandleader side, I might have to compromise sometimes some of what my vision was for something to make sure that someone can comfortably contribute what they feel comfortable contributing.
Melissa Smey:
Yeah.
Courtney Bryan:
But I also want to learn the boundary with that for myself, because it is all about the art. I mean, what comes first, the relationship with the person that you're working with, or the outcome of the art, and I guess you trusting like your own vision about what the art should be. I'm working on all those things.
Melissa Smey:
Sure. And is there, is there a degree to which you, you have to kind of separate your creative, professional composer self from your own personal self? It seems to me that it would be hard if not impossible to separate those two, because all of the things that you're saying about a creative partnership or a creative endeavor, human relationships are just hard sometimes. So without putting you too much on the spot in a personal way, is there anything that you would want to say about what it means to be a person and then what it means to be a creative artist and how those are, or are not one in the same for you?
Courtney Bryan:
Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, I have the possibility to do art that's not all about who I am, but at this point in life, almost all of my projects are completely about not just who I am, but where I am at the moment. It's highly personal. And so there is no separation, the type of pieces I'm doing are more about the process and then whatever the final thing is, it's like a reflection of what that process was. So how I feel in the processes is super important and like the freedom that I feel and the connection I feel with those that I'm working with, that's the thing that's most important.
Melissa Smey:
Yeah, and it's, what's interesting about that is it's something that helped me feel connected to your music, even before I knew you and, you know, just knew of you and heard your music was how deeply personal your music is, and that it connected for me on a really personal level. And there was something really amazing about that. And so then it was such a wonderful opportunity to be able to get to know you and know how much of yourself that you are putting into your music. That's why it's interesting to hear you talk about those struggles, you know, about what that's like. Something that's really useful about it as that it's not just about being a composer because it's about being a human and anybody can identify with that struggle.
[MUSIC - "SYNCHRONICITY" BY COURTNEY BRYAN]
Courtney Bryan:
It goes back to that word truth and honesty. And how I think about the word honesty a lot in music. I think sometimes when I've had creative blocks, my mind is more on a focus of creating something new, or creating something innovative, or whatever the word is in mind. And when I think that way, it's hard for me to create, but when I think of the word honesty, it just kind of flows.
Melissa Smey:
Courtney, thank you so much. It was really a lovely pleasure to talk with you this week.
Courtney Bryan:
Thank you, Melissa. Same.
[MUSIC CONT. - "SYNCHRONICITY" BY COURTNEY BRYAN]
Melissa Smey:
That's it for this week's episode of Mission: Commission. On the next episode, we talk about the inner editor versus the composer.
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 and the National Endowment for the Arts. Support Miller Theatre is provided by the New York State Council on the Arts and the Howard Gilman Foundation. Support for contemporary music is provided by the Aaron Copland Fund for Music and the Amphion Foundation.
This episode was produced by Golda Arthur and me, with Adrienne Stortz, Lauren Cognetti, and Taylor Riccio. Erick Gomez is our sound designer and engineer. This episode featured audio excerpts of pieces written by Augusta Read Thomas, Courtney Bryan, and Marcos Balter. 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.
