Quince Contemporary Vocal Ensemble is a quartet made up of members Kayleigh Butcher, Amanda DeBoer Bartlett, Liz Pearse and Carrie Henneman Shaw. Quince specializes in new music by living composers and has been described as "a new force in vocal excellence and innovation" by the Brooklyn Rail.
Read my interview below to learn a little more about Quince and what they do! Photo by Karjaka Studios How was Quince originally formed, and what brought the four of you together? Kayleigh Butcher: Amanda and I met at a Neko Case concert in Bowling Green, OH. We had an instant connection. Eventually, we were keen on starting an all-female group. I’m not sure it was originally discussed what *kind* of repertoire we would perform, but we gravitated toward new music in some way. We tried a lot of different kinds of rep at various times while still in school, but none of them really clicked until we realized working with composers is what we wanted to focus on. Let me also say that we were actually originally 5 women. You can even see some of the VERY early promo photos on Facebook. Life happens though and eventually we were down to 4, and then Carrie came along when Quince did a gig with Ensemble Dal Niente in Chicago. We just had to have her :) Liz Pearse: BGSU! Amanda and Kayleigh asked if I would join their small-ensemble. As I had just started my doctorate in what was a new field for me (contemporary music), it seemed like a good idea. I liked them, and having a team of vocalists around me while beginning my journey into new music was both comforting and challenging. Your website describes Quince as an ensemble of “dedicated advocates of new music” and your albums (“Realign the Time” and 2017’s “Hushers”) definitely demonstrate that advocacy. With such a rich history of vocal repertoire throughout the Western music canon, what prompted you to focus so strongly on new music? KB: There’s just something about being able to communicate to composers how to write for us specifically that is such an amazing experience. I see so many singers complain about things that aren’t intuitive in a score and we have a direct hand in making things work better for voices. It’s an empowering feeling. On top of that, we’ve been able to work with a lot of insanely talented composers to make their ideas a reality. It’s nice to know and trust your collaborators in such an intimate way. I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Plus I like doing the weird things. I can’t stand going to concerts and knowing exactly what to expect. I want to show people what’s really possible for the voice. LP: Though there is a lot of repertoire out there, there is not a lot of treble-voice-unaccompanied chamber music post-Renaissance. Neither ADB/KB/nor I were very interested in becoming early-music experts at the time, and there are plenty such ensembles around anyway. It was then, as is now, more fulfilling to work with living composers to create a body of work for our instrumentation, and build a repertoire (in the hopes of fostering a resurgence of interest in treble voice chamber music – why should Cantus/Chanticleer have all the fun?) Carrie Henneman Shaw: It’s funny you should put the question quite that way. In the Western canon, there is astoundingly little repertoire for unaccompanied women’s voices. There are conspicuous exceptions - convent music, some early American music, to name a couple. Outside of that, most women’s ensemble music includes some sort of lower register accompaniment or is geared towards youth ensembles. This repertoire needs advocates who help expand not only what’s out there but also push it in a direction that broadens the kinds of skills, sophistication of expressivity and decision-making, and the content that’s associated with work for treble voices. Furthermore, I think each of us feels compelled as artists to make work that is entangled with our lives right here and now, and even if we did have a body of repertoire like that of the 19th-century string quartet, I don’t think it would be long before we’d be looking for something that is more specifically the product of our place and time. On a related note, Quince’s repertoire also has a very strong focus on music by living composers, and you have commissioned numerous new works by young emerging composers. Championing music of living composers seems to be a very important aspect of what you do. Can you talk a little bit about that and what it means to you individually and as an ensemble? KB: I think we all have our individual ideas about how to write for the voice, whether it is a solo or for Quince. In our personal experiences, academic environments don’t always embrace their student composers writing for voices. I have no idea why. We’d love to see that change though. That’s why we focus so much on doing residencies and student readings. Also, contrary to what people think, there’s not a lot of existing rep for 4 female voices (SSSA). There are choral works, but they aren’t all that experimental, and there are some renaissance and medieval things, but they weren’t actually written for women so not all of them are actually possible for a female group to perform. Working with student composers and commissioning new repertoire from living composers is basically the only way for us to have new rep. It works out perfectly for us :) Amanda DeBoer Bartlett: For me, feeling like I have influence and “voice” as an artist has become exceedingly important, and working with living composers presents an opportunity to have creative input as an artist. I want to help bring art into the world that challenges preconceived norms, empowers individuals to use their imagination, and reinforces narratives of individual empowerment for people who need it most. When I’m hired to sing an opera, for example, I usually don’t have any control over the role I’m singing and how I’m portrayed as a woman. With Quince, we’re in charge of our own narrative, and we work with composers that we feel bring those values into their work. LP: Working with living composers allows us to influence vocal music in our own small way. We have spent much time talking with composers about the human voice – its possibilities, its limitations, and its quirks (both in general and for our specific instruments). The ability to have this direct interaction has created a variety of timbres/sounds/techniques in our repertoire that arguably has not previously existed in treble voice chamber music. In addition, discussing what we do as chamber music (as distinguished from “choral music”) has been enlightening. One-per-part music for SSAA is uncommon, but allows for a greater virtuosity and flexibility than choral singing affords. We hope other treble vocalists will consider such an ensemble as a meaningful musical outlet. CHS: Amanda perfectly voices a lot of what I feel. If I were to add anything, looking at problem of vocal quartet repertoire from another angle, we feel pretty motivated to ask for new pieces from composers whose works we admire, because once they’re gone, it’s too late, and it’s become part of our role in the artistic world to ensure that future generations of women’s vocal quartets actually has a body of work to drawn from. The four of you are spread out around the country geographically (Kansas City, Omaha, St. Paul, New York), and perform individually and with other ensembles, but as a group you still maintain a very active performance schedule and always produce highly polished performances. Do you meet often to rehearse together, or do you often prepare your parts individually and put them together prior to performances? KB: We never do anything without rehearsals. We plan months, sometimes years in advance depending on the project or piece. We make a point to meet every month and also plan residencies where we only focus on the upcoming repertoire. We will always make sure to have a concentrated amount of time before every performance to rehearse. We all definitely learn the repertoire individually first. I can’t imagine sightreading some of the repertoire we do with my other Quince ladies. Dear lord. We absolutely need that prep time so that tuning and metronome work is easier later when we all come together. ADB: We have several systems for dealing with our long-distance situation. For most of our shows, we meet 3-4 days in advance and have an intensive rehearsal period before the show. We’ve also received multiple artist residencies at Avaloch Farm Music Institute (New Hampshire) and High Concept Labs (Chicago) which we have used to develop new repertoire. Our Avaloch Farms residences, in particular, have been instrumental in preparing for our seasons. The repertoire for our programs is typically decided well in advance, so over the summer at Avaloch we have been meeting before the season begins to work on all of our music for the year. It’s enormously helpful! EP: Depending on the performance/schedule/timing, we generally try to plan many months in advance, taking advantage of summer residencies like Avaloch Farm Music Institute to put in intense-learning sessions. We must prepare individually (and the way we each learn music is unique, so it is often better to have individual time first!). We then will spend several more intense days together prior to performances/tours, working out final ensemble issues. (For us, video-rehearsals have not yet proven a viable option!) In addition to being amazingly talented singers, you also employ the use of other instruments, as well as technology and multimedia in some pieces/performances (Fjola Evans’ Whirlpools, Levy Lorenzo’s Intimate Voices, Molly Herron’s Stellar Atmospheres). Was this always a goal of the ensemble or is it something that evolved over time? And what amount of collaboration with the composers goes into preparing these works? KB: You know, it never really was the goal. Our goal is always to do interesting and innovative things with the voice and it always manages to manifest in something really cool with electronics. There are just so many cool things happening every day. It’s unbelievable. And to be able to create new works that incorporate new technology AND the voice. It’s living a dream, for sure! EP: Aww, thanks! I’m not sure it was ever stated as a goal…with all three above pieces, it was the composer’s suggestion/request that we work with instruments they had previously invented (Fjola’s piece existed before we performed it, and Molly’s “Dervishes” has been used in other works. Levy had been working on the iLophone prior to our collaboration, but it was a grant that supported the collaboration between him and Quince!) We met with Fjola and Molly in NYC prior to the SONIC fest performance learning how to use the sensor instruments, and coordinating with the Dervishes. With Levy, we had a few skype calls to talk about nuance and phrasing in Inside Voice. We have since produced an all EA/voice(s) tour in Chicago and Connecticut, as part of a collaboration with Connecticut College. Working with both fixed and live-interaction works, we are able to expand our tonal palette in more ways than we had previously been able. Earlier this year you were part of the KODY festival as part of a collaboration with David Lang and Beth Morrison Productions. Could you talk a little more about that collaboration, how it was started and what the KODY festival experience was like? KB: This came about in many steps. Liz was actually the one that realized that a) Anonymous 4 was retiring and b) love fail (the piece that was written for and premiered by A4) was going to be out of exclusivity shortly after. We all absolutely love David Lang and the piece. We made a goal of reaching out to David and Beth Morrison to see if we could continue touring their amazing production. We met David and Beth at various times in NYC and found a date for the Poland Codes Festival. The festival itself was such a life-changing experience for us. Not only was it our first international gig, but it was our first full-length program with staging and with all 4 of us. (Our only other full-length program is Three Voices, which obviously only has 3 voices!) And working closely with David and Beth was absolutely inspiring. They care about this piece and it shows in the production. EP: KODY was amazing. Though not a country generally flush with cash, Poland (and Lublin especially) place a HIGH value on the arts, and it was clear a lot of love, money, and care was spent on this festival. We performed in a beautiful, brand new performing arts center run by the city of Lublin (not attached to a specific school). The festival was extraordinarily professionally run – we were pampered for the days we were there. As an ensemble that mostly self-produces, it felt luxurious to be there. In addition, it was amazing working with David Lang, who was extremely open about his motivations for writing love fail, his wishes for the piece, and his philosophy on what music can be for a varied audience. Being able to prepare the work with him in the room was so, so valuable. Quince’s second album titled “Hushers,” featuring works by Giacinto Scelsi, Kaija Saariaho, Warren Enström, and Kate Soper will be coming out in February of 2017. Could you talk a little bit about what listeners can expect from this album? Do you have any upcoming projects or collaborations, both as an ensemble KB: I think this next album is a total 180 from our first album. Firstly, there’s only one QUince commission on the album (Warren Enstrom’s hushers); the other pieces already existed. We also go in an almost exclusively microtonal direction and most of the pieces don’t have any understandable text. The whole point of this 180 is to show what voices can really do - we can sing tonally, atonally, aleatorically, microtonally, the list goes on. I hope people enjoy listening to it as much as we liked recording it. ADB: This album dives deep into some spaced-out sounds, but it still has a visceral character. The title, “HUSHERS,” which is also the title of one of the tracks written by Warren Enström, refers to particular phonetic sounds in the Russian Language (SH). As a group, we’ve noticed a tendency to want to use female voices in “ethereal” ways that remove the physical, bodily experience of the singer. On this album, with speech phonemes and earthy microtones and poetry about the body as our inspiration, we created tracks that place the singer and the body in the forefront of the experience. EP: Listeners can expect representations of a wide variety of sub-“genres” within contemporary vocal repertoire. The Saariaho places beautiful and angular Sylvia Plath texts at the forefront with her signature beauty of line and breath. Kate Soper’s Songs for Nobody is a charming, sinuous setting of Merton poetry. The rest of the album is text-less (over half!). Expect an onslaught of Scelsi’s microtonal timbral-exploration in the full Sauh “liturgie”, with immediacy of ever-changing rhythms and sonic interaction among voices. The title track, Warren Enstrom’s “Hushers”, combines a percussive use of the voice with a timbral chorale reminiscent of Sauh. We loved performing the piece at UW-Milwaukee, where Warren’s piece was premiered, and we are so happy to present it on this album! CHS: Expect awesomeness. Do you have any current or upcoming projects and/or collaborations in the works? KB: Oh, man, so many projects! We’re going on tour with love fail (the concert version, no the staged version) in February and March. We’re recording our 3rd album, which will revolve around politics and feminism. We’re performing Curtis Rumrill’s The Passion of the Wilt-Mold Mothers in December 2016 in Pittsburgh. We’re heading to SUNY Fredonia for a residency.We’ll be performing Music for 18 Musicians with Eighth Blackbird and Third Coast Percussion in Ann Arbor. And the last thing of our season is Berio’s Laborintus II with Alia Musica. As for next season, we’ll be premiering LJ White’s new piece (we got the CMA Commissioning Grant for LJ to write this for us!) plus David Reminick’s new piece, and a few other big projects that we can’t announce yet, but needless to say, we’re excited about what’s on the horizon…. ADB: Of course! There are too many to mention here, but we won a Chamber Music America grant to commission a new song cycle for voices and electronics by LJ White, we’re touring the Midwest and Rust Belt with David Lang’s “love fail” this Spring, we’re part of a three-concert series with Alia Music in Pittsburgh which includes Berio’s iconic “Laborintus II,” and we’re recording our 3rd album in 2017. We’re certainly keeping busy! EP: Yes of course! Frequency Fest 2017 will see KB/ADB/me performing as a trio, necessitating some new commissioned works for the performance (we have some, but not a full set, of trio rep). We just spent time in the studio recording sounds for Luis Amaya’s commission for that festival. In addition, we’re participating in a performance of Berio’s Laborintus II in May, after a spring love fail tour. Later in May, we’ll record Jenn Jolley’s Prisoner of Conscience, an oratorio using texts from the trial of Pussy Riot…it’s never seemed more current. Next year…we have many irons in the fire, and we’ll see soon which are ready for forgin’! For more information about Quince, check out their website:http://www.quince-ensemble.com/ Below are some videos of Quince performing selections from their repertoire. "Three Madrigals on Poems by Wallace Stevens" by Max Grafe "Whirlpool" by Fjola Evans "Three Voices" (excerpt) by Morton Feldman
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Megan Beugger is a composer currently residing in Chicago, IL. In addition to composing Megan also teaches theory and composition at Midwest Young Artist Conservatory and at the Walden School.
What got you started as a musician and made you want to pursue it professionally? My grandmother played the piano and had a piano in her house, and I was always mesmerized by it, and begged her to play. I wanted more than anything to know how to play, so my parents searched for a teacher. As soon as I started to play, it was intuitive for me to create pieces and improv. Later on, I switched to a more advanced piano teacher named Robert Ian Winstin, who was also a successful conductor and composer, and he immediately saw my interests in composition and started teaching me composition. At age 13, I premiered my horn concerto with his youth orchestra (I was featured as the soloist). I remember as I played the premiere having this strong feeling that this is what I wanted to do with my life, and I’ve been on that path since. What started your interest in composition, specifically? I was always improvised on the piano (and later on other instruments), and as soon as I learned to read music and learned what a composer was, I figured if all these guys could do it then I should too. Leading up to college, I was very passionate about horn performance as well, and it was a struggle for me to decide what I wanted to do in music. I applied to college as a double major, but all the best programs told me to pick one, as they felted I could never really be great at 2 things. Around the same time, I was really getting bored with the lack of good repertoire for horn, and felt like I was constantly playing the same pieces. Most of the repertoire for horn orchestral, and as a musician in the orchestra, sometimes I felt like a technician having to realize a conductor’s interpretation that was different from my own. That is why I ultimately choose to be a composition major. It was a huge revelation for me, but not for anyone around me. I actually ended taking horn lessons and playing quite a bit through school and still play sometimes, although it increasingly seems to take a back seat as I find less time. Through having to choose, I really did discover a lot about myself and got to focus on my music and develop a voice- I don’t regret it, but I also don’t condone teachers who force musicians to choose. With less standard music jobs available, more and more people are building their own careers, and it is only a benefit to have a multitude of skills, so my hope is that this is more rare now. I think the focus in composition would have come naturally regardless. Your website biography mentions that you are interested in the in the physicality of performance and sound production. Can you talk more about how this is achieved in your music? As an audience member, I’m very visually engaged with watching musicians perform. I find musicians’ physicalities to be very interesting and greatly affect my experience of the music. In my music, there is an overlap with other artforms, most specifically dance. Often my music has some type of choreography, but rather than have music and then movement, or music and dancers in separate spaces, both these mediums are realized in a single action. I often search for sounds and ways of approaching instruments that are physically interesting, and I build instruments as well. When I build instruments, I am much more concerned with the physicalities than the sounds. I feel like I can always accept the sounds at the end, and figure out how to make them interesting, but that isn’t the case for the physical production of sound. I am also very interested in how the physical nature of sound affects time, and have explored what I call “time resultant music,” and “physical indeterminacy,” quite extensively. In time resultant music, time is simply a result of producing a physical movement which creates sound, rather than an impetus for the musical material. For example, the physicality of a single bow or single breath is prescribed in detail, and the time it happens to be played in is just the result of this event. It kind of flips the musician’s typical relationship with time upsidedown. Physical indeterminacy is when the physical nature of the instrument, sound, or performer’s body is unable to be consistent, thus resulting in indeterminacy. This indeterminacy happen outside the will of both myself and the performers. An example would be repeating a gesture for longer than is possible, thus the fatigue of the performer is expressed in the sound, or a gesture that is too fast or too slow to be controlled. My music really showcases the physicality and musicality of the performers in the most raw way possible. Was this interest in gestural motion and physicality of sound production influenced by your studies with Aaron Cassidy and David Felder, or was that element of music making always of particular interest to you? I think a little bit of both. As a person, particularly a young person, I never sat still. I was constantly in motion and my own physical gestural language of my body has definitely always been influential, long before I was aware of the fact. I was interested in many physical gestures- fast flurries of notes, glissandi, and passing gestures across the stage in particular ways, well before I met either of them, or realized my specific interest in what I was doing. My mom studied visual arts, and I have always been encouraged to create. I studied painting quite seriously during my undergraduate, and part of where my music ended up was combining all the facets of myself. However, both Aaron Cassidy and David Felder pushed me further than I would have gone- at least at that time. I met Aaron when I was only 18, and knew nothing about new music. I must admit, that I didn’t like most of it immediately, but I was curious about it and questioned what it was trying to accomplish. Aaron continuously exposed me to rather radical music, and played devil’s advocate with me when I initially rejected it. I began to study the music to discover why I didn’t like it, and much of the time I discovered that I did. He definitely threw me outside my comfort zone, encouraged a more open mindset, and moreover inspired me to be boldly honest and myself. When I met David Felder, my music was already starting to cross the line between various artforms, and I was uncomfortable with the fact that it was hard to categorize or label. David Felder really showed me was that my desire (and others’ desire) to categorize what I do was really holding me back, and he encouraged me to go even further, often landing me in areas that were extremely uncomfortable for me. Specifically, he encouraged me to work with choreographers and dancers as musicians themselves. All the sudden I was actually creating choreography for dancers. It was very uncomfortable at first, because I have never studied that medium formally, but I eventually realized that I could learn a lot from them, and they could even learn a lot from me, because I came from a very different place and create choreography from a completely new perspective. It took much more research, experimentation, commitment, and just work than writing a piece that more solely explored my comfort zone (music), but I was able to express in a way that was so invigorating. He supported me working with a dancer instead of writing the typical orchestra piece, and supported me often taking months away from writing notes on paper to research sound, movement, and building new instruments, which is very unique in the academia. Having that kind of support and freedom really developed me into the artist I am. Does this approach to composition involve a general methodology, or do you take a unique approach with each piece in order to serve the needs of the composition? I take a unique approach with each piece. I’m not sure if it is because I tend to get bored easily, or that I always tend to overthink everything obsessively. It isn’t enough for me to accept the instruments as they are and write a piece for them. I have to think of these instruments purely as objects made from particular materials. Then I have to create a relationship between the instrument(s) and the player(s), and develop a way for the player to approach the instrument. Usually I end up knocking myself into a seemingly impossibly small box, which encourages me to be creative and push the edges of this box. Then of course once I discover these new relationships, I have to find a new notation system to write down these ideas. I end up making a lot more work for myself than many composers would, but that’s a reflection of my own personality as well. It seems that focusing so much on physicality of gesture could necessitate some degree of collaboration with performers, especially in a piece like Liaison for dancer and bowed piano. Do you often work closely with performers, or is a lot of the compositional work done independently on your end and work shopped later with the performers? I do often work with performers. I don’t always work that way, but it is my preferred way to work. For Liaison, I actually collaborated extensively, so much in fact that in the end, Melanie Aceto and I decided to share authorship of the work. I had the initial idea for the work, and made the final decisions on the material and form, but so much of the material was pulled from her improvisations, and so much of my material was explored further by Melanie to find more interesting solutions for both the instrument and her body (being a non-dancer, I had no idea the scope of movements that were possible), that it was impossible to separate the work we each did (as the sound and movement are connected, we each had a large impact in the others’ area of expertise). We worked on it for 2 years before the first performance (and have edited the work since then), spending many hours each week in the same room (pretty much all day every day in the months leading up to the premiere) with each other working over material. There would have been no way I could have created that piece myself. I walked into that piece knowing almost nothing about choreography, and had never taken on a technical project of building and working with a new instrument anywhere near that degree of complexity before. I am so inspired by performers and their personalities, and tend to be a social person. I prefer to be hands on creating and researching sounds with performers- that is the best way to find something new. This style of working however, isn’t always a reality for me, and I have written work, sometimes even strong work, without this collaborative method. Instrumentation is a strength of mine, and I think about it in a physical/ scientific way, which allows me to understand how sounds which I have never heard or explored would work, with a degree of accuracy that surprises people that don’t work the way I do. When I listen to your music I hear it as primarily gestural and timbrally driven as opposed to focusing on thematic development, in the more traditional definition of music themes? Is that correct? Yes. I enjoy stripping music down to something more raw and basic. I think working this way allows me to extract a deeper musicality from performers and myself. What are some of the facets (or even challenges) of timbrally and texturally driven music that interest, both in your own works and pieces that have inspired you over the years? While my music does tend to be timbral and textural, I also can’t say that it drives me. It is a physical gesture, sometimes connected with a specific music gestural, or physical idea that is the initial inspiration. Exploring within a certain physicality is where I find the timbres and textures, but my timbres and textures are always something that I find, rather than something which serves to inspire a piece of music. I am consistently inspired by the people around me; watching what drives them, the way the move, the way they engage with others and the world, etc. I typically am well into writing a piece before I have any sort of clarity about what the piece is, or even what my timbral palette is. The process really is a constant searching and discovery. Do you have any upcoming projects or collaborations? Yes, currently I’m trying to explore projects that I haven’t explored before, especially ones that take me out of my comfort zones. There is something about feeling fear that is comforting for me. I just finished my third string quartet titled Upend, but this quartet is for young pre-conservatory students at the place I teach at (Midwest Young Artists). These kids are crazy talented musicians, however they have little exposure or experience with contemporary music. I have found that younger musicians and people in general are much more open to trying new things and to new ideas, so I am very excited to start working with them and see how they react and engage with the piece. I have a longer term project for piano (an instrument that typically scares me due to its noteyness) in the very beginning stages, and I’m currently actively looking for new projects that put me in an area of a bit of unexplored territory. And for the obligatory “desert island list.” What are the five pieces (regardless of genre) that have been most influential on your development as a composer? These pieces certainly expanded the way I think about music Lachenmann “String Trio” Cage “Freedom Etudes” Globokar “Corporel” Kagel “Zwei-Mann Orchester” Tenney “Having Never Written a Note for Percussion” For more information about Megan, her music and her upcoming projects you can check out her website at http://www.megangracebeugger.com/ Below are some videos of Megan's works. Enjoy! |
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