An artist's vent

Well, it's been a year and a half since my last post here. A lot has happened since then. The death of my beloved mom, Ann Coleman. A major CD/Download came out with two of my orchestral works on it. And I've been having a little battle with my own self confidence, debating whether or not I have what it takes to survive in this uncertain world we now live in. Although I am an optimist in the long term, I am nonetheless marred with some short term self doubt mixed with the seeming indifference of our society.

Every now and then, when someone I meet hears that I'm a composer who writes for the concert hall (not just because I like it, but it's the work I get mostly), I am often asked if I would ever consider writing more "accessible" music, ala pop, commercial, main stream, etc. Usually I get very annoyed when I hear that. Mainly because it's already assumed that I write esoteric music that is liked only by a small intellectual crowd and the person asking hasn't even heard a note of what I've written!

As I've said in previous posts, it's very clear to me that all great music from all walks of life have an innate quality and expression that any listener would be affected by regardless of genre. Music is simply meant to be heard, not understood. Ok, maybe that sounds a little trite, but I think I proved this theory recently.

About a week ago, a CD entitled "American Portraits" arrived in stores all over the world. It contains two of my works "Streetscape" and "Deep Woods" along with the great music of Jennifer Higdon, Carter Pann, Jonathan Bailey Holland and Kevin Puts, performed by the awesome Maestro Paavo Järvi leading the awesome Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. Naturally, I wanted it to be noticed. So I brought a personal copy of it to a record store in my neighborhood in NYC that would be played there all day in public. And within two days of it's release, all the copies there were sold!

This is clear proof to me that the subject of genre has absolutely nothing to do with how great a piece of music is. These customers were in the store hearing from the speakers this music of mine as well as that of Higdon, Pann, Holland and Puts. They were clearly affected by what they heard and decided to purchase. Nothing more natural.

Of course I was thrilled with this at the time. But later, I was sad because this happened only in one store and I didn't have the means and ability to get the CD played publicly like this in any of the other stores here and abroad. It's very perplexing to think that a simple gesture of getting a great recording heard in public wouldn't be made because the music is originally assumed to be esoteric and boring without even being heard in the first place.

A lot of us living artists are thought to be moral outcasts. Most of the jobs that I'm able to get are usually brief (commissions, teaching, singing gigs,etc) and these jobs irregularly come and go. It's very hard to find anything more permanent, and god help me, I've searched. Nonetheless, I am still dependent on family and friends to help me out now and then. I know I'm not the only one, but it still hurts and it makes me want to yell out sometimes.

I'm very tempted to assess blame for this current state that we artists are in. I often think of a certain powerful group of composers in the mid 20th century that seemed to write music that sounded more like a research activity than actual music (you composers know who I'm talking about). But this attitude may be more reflective of my own personal state of mind rather than the actual truth. And that's something I can't ignore. The fact is, before we judge anyone that we don't like, we still have to look at ourselves first. And that's very hard to do.

But a nice little thing happened recently. One night I was in a bar in my neighborhood and I had a great conversation with the bartender Pamela, a really cute, jaw dropping red head wearing dark glasses and a stunning tank top that almost made me drool. When she discovered that I was a composer, she then said to me: "Charles, I know this is a stupid question, but what exactly is a symphony?".

When she said that to me, instead of the usual "do you write commercial music" crap, I felt like a million bucks! It was like being in a nasty and humid swamp and finding that one beautiful sun flower. It showed me that we artists are still relevant and we all have a decent shot at getting that earthbound immortality that we're all looking for (whatever that is). Maybe I'm making too much of this little thing, but sometimes it's only the little things in life that matter. My mom certainly taught me that. Anyway, I gave Pamela a more or less concise description of what a symphony is and she didn't seem bored. :)

Overall, I'm still very proud to be an American composer and I'm proud of the works I've written. And lord knows that I truly appreciate the love and support from my family and friends who like what I do. I guess this means I'm not done yet.

CC

To be relevant

Well....I admit it. I'm kind of an eccentric.

Among my numerous oddities, I tend to conduct in public when I'm listening to my awesome ipod. Often I try to repress this kind of enthusiasm, but it's seems impossible to do that when you're listening to the 4th movement, Adagio from Mahler's 9th Symphony. There's so much orchestral passion and harmonic beauty in that piece, that you desperately want to share it with everyone within walking distance. Something that makes you feel worthy of their presence. Although I might occasionally get stared at in public, I accept it. I need the work to be heard on the street through my conducting gestures. We're it not for me, it would not be heard of. It makes me feel "relevant".

We artists are unusually proud of the work that we do. And when we feel unnoticed, we seem to have an unquenchable desire to spread the word. Some of us even go so far as to make alcohol induced gestures like chiming in on other people's conversations because we feel so "important".

The fact is that most artists from all walks of life have a truly intimate knowledge of numerous different works. We are transfixed by the inner detail within the pieces that we worship. This inner detail that we listen to seems to grab us in the same way that moths obsess at flying to that hot light that will ultimately kill them.

My God! I still can't get over that f---ing Cello line in measures 57-59 of the aforementioned Mahler. It's so exquisite! And it works so beautifully in conjunction with the other strings. WE GOTTA TELL EVERYBODY!!!!!!

Anyway, did I mention that I am an eccentric. Well....I'm proud of it! Stare at me all you like! I am relevant, God Dammit! :)

CC

With regard to singers and new music

Of all the interpreters of new music and for that matter, music in general, singers seem to be the most problematic. Now, this is not meant to be a detriment to singers. At least not for the most part. The fact is, in the general culture, singers have often been judged for being the least reliable in a rehearsal or performance situation. They seem to make the most mistakes and therefore they are considered the least prepared in comparison to the seemingly more schooled instrumentalists. If this is an issue with repertoire music, then this is an even bigger problem with regard to new music. Works that have hardly been heard before, if ever.

I remember hearing the soprano/comedienne Anna Russell in her famous skit regarding: The singer who can't count when she points out to singers: "The reason you have a big voice is because there's resonance for where your brains ought to be!".

Well...(He! He!)...... although I've always found Madame Russell's skits very funny and witty over the years, I don't fully agree with her on this. Yes, I'm aware that she says what she says primarily for humorous reasons. Still, like all comics, part of their art is derived mainly from their own life experiences. So there is clearly a feeling of critical judgement when Russell discusses the issue of singers and their frailties.

So, is any of this true? Are singers the least disciplined of all musicians? Do they lack the hard work ethic in getting the job done when it comes to performing new music? Given that I am myself, both a professional baritone and composer (by that, I mean someone who actually gets paid for it), I will say that the answer is ultimately "No"!

The fact is that all people are capable of making the same number of mistakes whether they be singers or instrumentalists. The issue of how often they mess up is solely dependent on their own personal discipline in getting their music learned before they get to the stage. Naturally, new music is generally more difficult, mainly because it is more recently written. But if a musician cares enough about the piece they've been hired to perform in, then they are morally obligated to do their best in rehearsals so that there's no major accident in performance.

But the thing that makes the singer's mistakes more noticeable than the instrumentalist's is that in an opera or any other vocal work, the singer is the main focus. The singer is the person that the audience looks at. The singer interprets the story that the work is based on and the instrumental ensemble or orchestra is behind influencing the singers performance. So since the singer is in the forefront and therefore the most exposed, naturally, the singer's fallibility is also more exposed. Ergo, the singer is the cause for the most stops in rehearsal. The instumentalist's fallibility is not as noticed because generally, the player is not as much in the forefront as the singer is.

Of course, in the latter part of the 19 century, the instrumental writing in a vocal work started to have a bigger role and more graphic part, courtesy of composers like Wagner and Puccini. But even they knew in the end that the story revolves around the singer playing his or her character on stage. Therefore the singer gets most of the glory, but also, most of the heartache when they screw up.

Two years ago I wrote an opera entitled "Redemption" with the librettist John Darrell Roberts which was commissioned by Golden Fleece Ltd. in New York. When we got to the rehearsal stage, a few singers had problems regarding counting and their singing the right notes. At the time, I was naturally fustrated and I wondered if this was happening because the singers were flat out stupid! But in the end, I realized that there were other factors to consider. The singers had to memorize their music while the players had their music in front of them. Also, the singers were using their whole bodies to get the notes out, whereas the instrumentalist has a specific object in their hands with a particular fingering that automatically brings the right pitches out. Singers do not have such an automatic system. And then, as was mentioned before, singers are in the forefront which makes for an added pressure to their performance being noticed most often. When it boils down to it, singers are as brave as soldiers at the front line in a blood soaked battle.

Singers! Take note! I am not saying all of this to give any of you an excuse to be mean or arrogant in your working with others who are working just as hard as you do. I simply want to show an accurate account of why you singers are the way you are when problems come up. The truth is, for all musicians, the buck stops with true discipline, guts and a genuine love for the music.

CC

A delicate dance

I suppose it obvious, but I'll say it anyway.

While we, the living composers love, appreciate and learn from the great masters of the last 300 years, we are also intimidated by them. We want to come up with our own great and distinctive voice in the music we write. But the past composers are always present in some sub-conscious manner. It is both a blessing and a curse. We've no choice but to perform a kind of delicate dance with these two conflicts which we can't avoid.

We certainly revere the better known dead guys like Bach, Beethoven, Mahler and Shostakovitch, etc. and we try to utilize our own craft in conjunction with their accomplishments and somehow mix it with the musical world we live in now in order to write the best work possible. We look at their troubled lives, their work ethic and their use of form which puts into a profound context all the materials they come up with. While our written music today does not directly resemble the sound world of their time, we nonetheless write for roughly the same instruments as they did.

For most of us, the acoustic instruments which were born out of the symphonic tradition are the best instruments known to man, both for their natural beauty, sound and their wide palette of expression. This goes hand in hand with our desire with these instruments to write pieces in a form that have a certain vagueness to it. Yes, there is an overall form, but the musical details within this canvas seem to have an expression of an uneven, through-composed nature. The overall form places these details in a more ordered fashion and therefore gives the piece an extra meaning to it. The composers today certainly owe a great debt of gratitude to our past heroes who led us to this expression.

And yet, because of the great masters of the past, today's composers have to deal with a distinct feeling of insecurity. Can we, in this time, write works that make as good an impression as the works in the last 3 Centuries? Have we reached the limit of the best written music possible? Is there nothing else to say?

The fact is that every artist from all walks of life have these questions in the back of their minds when they're trying to create. It's just a matter as to how much it consumes us. Usually it doesn't so much, and it shouldn't. Because if it did, we wouldn't get anything done. But this fear of ours is always present. And if we are forced to deal with it, then we must use it only for the purpose of driving the development of the composition we're writing. A kind of benign arrogance that disciplines us in the face of our own crippling insecurities.

This delicate dance of ours can be very disconcerting. But at the same time, it just might force us to write the best music possible.

CC

Lush Life

OK. I suppose this may sound a little arrogant. But dammit, I stand by it:

Lush Life by Billy Strayhorn is the greatest song ever written!

I admit that there may be a personal reason for this declaration. I've been familiar with Lush Life since I was a kid and admired it very much, but this song took on an even bigger meaning for me when my wife and I broke up last year. It is a song of loss, of pain, of loneliness and in the end, it is a song of the acceptance of all of these issues.

For me, Lush Life has everything. It has great lyrics, with a rhyme scheme that tingles on the tongue, like "relaxes on the axis" or "sad and sullen gray faces with distinque traces" etc. Then there's the unique form of the song: An introduction that tells a story and the monologue type chorus that depicts the singer's state of mind afterwards. And then, there's the music itself which is simply exquisite, both with it's jazz laden qualities and it's harmonic beauty that moves it along.

Lush Life loosely depicts a lost soul at some dive bar who is admiring the beauty of someone else in the same room. The singer imagines that they both have some affinity for each other with regard to their lonely states of mind. Of course, like most alcohol induced fantasies, it's not true. She's just there to have a drink. The lost soul moves on in his own endeavor for a "Lush Life".

Despite the simplicity and sadness of this story, this is a tale that we all can relate to. Plus, the music and lyrics add a distinctive charm and beauty that not only prevents it from being overly depressing, but there is also a profound grace that is depicted here unlike any other song I've ever heard. Amazingly, Billy Strayhorn wrote the words and music to this song in his mid to late teens! One can't even fathom what kind of a life he had in the years before that led him to the composition of this masterpiece.

Although, Lush Life has had some success after it was written, the song has yet to reach the status of a classic like Cole Porter's Night and Day or Johnny Green's Body and Soul, both of which were written at roughly the same time as this Strayhorn epic. There may be a few reasons for this. Besides the obvious struggle of Strayhorn's status as an African American in the early to mid 20th century, Lush Life also has a very tricky introduction in terms of it's freedom of tempo and it's somewhat rhythmic complexity. It seems to have a speaking rhythm which is hard to get down musically.

In 1958, Frank Sinatra tried to record this song with a full orchestra, but their attempt at the intro had mistakes happening left and right. In the end, Lush Life was dropped. One can't help but wonder if this song would have achieved an even bigger status if the greatest singer in the world at the time would have been able to finish it at that recording session. I guess we'll never know.

Nonetheless, there have been a number a great versions of this song performed by Nat King Cole, Nancy Wilson, Linda Ronstadt, Natalie Cole, and this version here featuring Johnny Hartman and the John Coltrane Quartet, which many people consider to be the definitive version.

I'll say it again folks, Lush Life by Billy Strayhorn is the greatest song ever written!

Just listen for yourself. :)

CC

The Distinctive Sound

Of the many problems composers have to deal with when it comes to their creative endeavors, one of the more interesting issues is whether or not they have a "distinctive sound" in their compositions. Is this "distinctiveness" achieved through the style or genre that a composer chooses? Or maybe, it could be some kind of innate sound that happens completely by accident through the composer's rhythmic and harmonic habits that he or she has worked with for years, sub-consciously?

The Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara once stated that the composer finds his materials rather than creates them. It's as if the composition existed in another place before the composer brings it out on paper. The distinctive sound has already been pre-determined in some way. Whereas the American composer John Adams has often said that when he is in the middle of composing something, there are occasions when he sees himself about write certain material that he may have used more or less in a previous work of his own. He then makes a conscious decision on whether he should come up with something else, or just go with it. Therefore, the distinctive sound can be determined by the circumstances at the time of composition.

There is a great deal of merit with either of these theories. Both Rautavaara and Adams are geniuses in their own right. But this issue also makes me think of another of one my favorite artists: The british composer, Arnold Bax.

Although Bax was a successful composer in his lifetime, the last few years for him were somewhat of a burden. All his life, Bax wrote roughly in the same kind of style. Light attitude, yet with a passion and lyricism merged with a sense of British charm and Irish tinge. Up until his death in 1953, when serial music was at it's most destructive, Bax was often chastised for his somewhat lighter color, which for many listeners, didn't seem very relevant during the mid 20th century, a time when various wars had caused the most damage at that point.

For me, one of the great elements in the music of Bax is his use of subtly. He seems to whisper his emotions through music rather than blow it up in ones face. Most other composers at the time prefered to vent their fustrations musically in a loud and blunt manner with a dissonance that accentuated their rage. But Bax was fully aware of the emotions of hardship in survival. So he makes a vague yet important statement in his works so that the listener can feel his emotional state in a gradual way rather than with the “in your face” attitude.

One should note that Bax himself lived through the horrors of war like everyone else. In particular, the uprising in Ireland and the two World Wars where he lost many close friends. If you were to listen to certain pieces he wrote like The Garden of Fand, Tintagel and most of the 7 Symphonies, one cannot deny that Arnold Bax has a desperate need to metaphorically smile amidst numerous tragedies he lived through during this time. He certainly has a distinctive voice in the works he created, whether they be guided by tradition or the obscure world he lived through, or maybe a combination of the two. In short, you know him when you hear him.

The issue of the distinctive sound will continue to be debated among composers time and time and again. But it is clear to me that the choice of style is merely one of many tools within the mix of an even bigger picture.

CC

A revelation! (maybe)

I recently had an interesting conversation with my friend Sam Baker, an enthusiastic drummer who lives in Brooklyn. Our musical backgrounds are very different: Mine, a classical tapestry with a subtle design and a paced structure. His, an "in your face" attitude filtered with percussive strokes made of thunderous rage.

Despite these seemingly polar opposites of expression, we nonetheless saw in our conversation that we both had the same common goal in our risky endeavors in this obscure world of music we are now swimming in and hopefully, we won't drown.

So there we were, Sam and I, at the Bushwick Country Club (Best bar in Brooklyn!) with a couple of pint sized $3 PBRs in front of us, debating the endless debate about what it is we musicians are trying to express in our music and how we strive to put it across. Naturally, the question came up as to what relationship we classical-based composers have with the listening audience. For myself and most of my colleagues, this issue is very difficult to deal with. Because in the classical world, it is widely believed that the living composer either doesn't give a damn about the audience or he panders to it like a prostitute to a pimp. A true rock and a hard place for me.

I told Sam that I knew in my heart I wasn't fully satisfied with either of these scenarios, but I could not fully put into words what my real intentions are. For me, it seemed inexplicable. That is, until Sam said to me: "It's obvious! You want to engage the listener. All musicians want to do that!". And when Sam said that to me, I started to feel this enormous weight being lifted from my back.

As he and I discussed this issue further, the term "Engaging music" seemed to have a nice ring to it. As if it could be some kind of future movement in the arts. Something that could appeal to anyone, classical listener or not (Although I'll hold off on that for now, until I figure this out some more). Nonetheless, the term "engaging" is such a great word. It has little or no baggage of it's own. It can be applied to any style of expression and is not directly associated with any one style alone. And most importantly, it accurately describes what every great artist from any background wants to do. As far as Sam and myself are concerned, we want to do engaging music!

For me, the term "engaging" implies that the composer wants to lure the listener into his or her unique sound world. What that world resembles is not as important, as the fact that it must have some kind of addictive allure which entices and then traps the listener till he's powerless to ignore it. Kind of like a drug addiction, but without the bad consequences. Of course the listener can press the "stop" button or leave the auditorium in mid performance, but that would feel so unnatural to do. The listener must see it through in order to get this incredible high that cant be achieved anywhere else. All of this can easily be done once the listener is "engaged" in the first place.

OK, I know there's more work to be done with this idea. I guess this isn't the musical equivilent of Einstein's theories. I'm sure there are other details I have overlooked. But I must say that this "engaging" concept feels very good insofar as I've been able to test it. You have to start somewhere.

Thank you Sam!

CC