I guess we'll start with the obligatory question of why you decided to go into music professionally, specifically composition. I have always enjoyed creative activity. In addition to a natural affinity for it, there were influential people in my life who fostered my creative growth. Specifically, my father was a musician and my mother introduced me to many different genres, including opera, at a young age. Although my musical education began with playing trombone and piano, I soon started composing and was encouraged to continue doing so by my music teachers. Specifically, Jon Gibbons, one of my early piano instructors, who is also a composer, exposed me to Alban Berg's Lulu Suite, which helped influence me to expand my awareness of the many varieties of musical styles. Later, in college, my main composition instructor Don Malone made a positive impression on me by exposing me to music technology and experimental music. After that exposure, I came to realize that music utilizing electronic technology affords great potential for artistic expression and I want to be part of this phenomenon. I read in your bio that you in the late 90s you started“overdubbing various noises onto cassette tape.” Can you go into that a little more as far as sound sources go, and what made you decide to start experimenting with sound and tape in that way? One of my first experiences overdubbing with a tape cassette was to orchestrate a prank. I learned that it was possible to record over a commercially released cassette by covering the open rectangular holes on the top of the cassette shell. My friend, an avid Beatles fan, had collected everything the band created and claimed to know everything about them. With this in mind, I thought it would be humorous to give him a "very rare, limited release" greatest hits tape with a "largely unknown" hidden track at the end. I used a Casio keyboard and overdubbed layers of muddy low clusters, high tinkling on the keys, finger cymbals, and a short yell (which ended up to be the giveaway). After that hoax, I overdubbed mostly vocal harmonies and the keyboard to represent a bass line or another treble part. Today, I still use the same finger cymbals utilized in that "hidden track"; one can hear them right at the beginning of my latest composition, “of the Wild.” Would you say that was an early stepping-stone to your interest in electronic music? Although my experiences with tape had some influence on my interest in electronic music, my early experiences with electronic keyboards had a more substantial impact. At the time, I was much more concerned with performance and very interested in using the keyboard in a conventional manner. I was intrigued by amplification and included some form of it in my compositions whenever possible, which led to a greater exploration of other technology for pure electronic works. It seems that a lot of your output these days is electronic and electroacoustic music. Do you still write much acoustic music, or do most of your projects involve electronics in some capacity? Let me start by saying that I think the divisions are rather artificial. In my music, I perceive the loudspeaker as a highly advanced acoustic instrument, so it would take a lot of persuasion for me to omit electronics in a composition. In fact, I have declined several commission opportunities for instrumental pieces because the performers are not willing to include electronics. With that being said, I have some music for percussion and electronics that has been performed by percussionist Scott Deal, and I am currently in the early stages of a second composition for Disklavier and electronics. What aspect of electronic music and digital media pulls you into that particular sound world? Is it something you have always been interested in? The more exposure I have to the medium, the more I appreciate electroacoustic music because it enables great expressive capability and diversity of sound material while exhibiting potential for a very powerful and immersive experience. I especially appreciate the variety and spatial element of sounds in a composition. One of the greatest things about the electronic medium is that virtually any sound imaginable can be created or obtained and included in a composition. Just think about all the possibilities resulting from field recordings alone, and the results are endless; there is really no end to the possibilities of timbre diversity that electronic composition can harbor. The other thing I deeply appreciate about this music is that the element of sound in space is brought to another level. In much of music, the sound source is located in the front. The loudspeaker array that modern composers use to surround the audience enables the sound to move around the space and through the audience with much more flexibility than any number of performers can achieve. When starting a new piece of electronic music, specifically an acousmatic piece, do you typically start with source material, a concept or is it some combination of the two? When starting a new piece, I typically start with a combination of the two. In the past, I worked with a “found template.” For example, I may use a personal field recording, such as a tree being cut down, to determine the length and flow of a particular section (or entirety) of a composition. In this case, I would start with the field recording of the tree being cut down. The accented moments (onsets/transients) and areas of greater activity are perceived to have greater "weight" in the found template and can be thought of as causing other sounds (subsequently added to the session) to gravitate toward these moments, and then I begin layering the sounds. From there, I thread the events together based around these central areas. Eventually, most of the original template is removed, but some of the flow of the original experience remains. I still sometimes use this technique, as evidenced in my composition“Age.” Besides that, the spatial element is characteristic of the genre. I consider motion and positioning with increasing frequency when beginning a composition. In a stereo composition, the element of density can convey a totally different impression than in a surround situation. For example, something that has extremely dense layers of activity, where the sounds are perceived as competing against each other and overcrowding, may not have the same effect in a multi-channel situation, where the same material given more space may be extremely open, dynamic, complex, and engrossing. Finally, I remix and recompose material frequently, especially if I am not totally satisfied with the initial result. Do you have any exciting projects coming up in the near future? At the SEAMUS 2015 Conference from March 26-28, I am presenting a commission called “of the Wild” for Virginia Tech's 124.4 loudspeaker system called the Cube. Also in March-April, I am fortunate enough to serve as a Fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. I plan to use this residency to work on a new composition for Disklavier and Electronics. A few upcoming CDs including the following: “Age”was jury selected for inclusion on the Luigi Russolo 2014 Sound Art Competition CD from MonoChrome Vision (Russia). “The Pillar”for amplified prepared Disklavier and electronics will be included on an upcoming Experimental Music Studios CD from University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign called "Transient Images." “GATES”was selected for inclusion on the SEAMUS Vol. 24 CD. “GATES”was also jury selected for inclusion on the CONTEMPORANEA 2013 CD by Taukay Edizioni Musicali (Italy). Closing with another obligatory question, what are top 5 favorite pieces of music (any time period, any genre)? Xenakis: Le Légend d'Eer Parmegiani: Sonare Dhomont: AvatArsSon Stockhausen: Microphonie Varèse: Poèm électronique To check out some of John's music you can visit his website or Soundcloud page Here is a video of "The Pillar" for amplified prepared Disklavier
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At what age did you start composing? I started composing at the age of 10 through a program that was offered in my elementary school. When did you realize that music was what you wanted to do for the rest of your life? It was probably around my second year of high school. I was already spending any free time I had doing music, and it was never something that I was uncertain about. Both my parents are musicians so they couldn't exactly give me the "do something practical" speech. They supported the idea from the very beginning. What is your compositional method? Do you compose intuitively or do you make a detailed framework and proceed from there? How does your interest in improvisation factor in? I do not have a single compositional method. For me, creativity must be a process of continual criticism and renewal. If I were to settle on a single approach, it would be disingenuous since my immediate response to certainty is skepticism. I sometimes rely on nothing but my ear and my intuitive responses to the sounds and shapes that I am creating, but at other times I will use extensive pre-compositional systems or experimental methods. Likewise, I will sometimes employ tried and true compositions techniques or forms and other times I will strive for novelty. One of the most liberating aspects of my work as an improviser is that it provides a temporary freedom from doubt. Of course, one can always look back and think twice about the decisions one has made, but in the moment, improvisation must be a committed act. Especially when I am having trouble finding clarity in my composing work, I try to draw on some of the bravery that is necessary to constantly be committed as an improviser. You are also active as a performer on viola. How does performance influence your work as a composer, or do you not separate the two practices? Most of my activities as a performer are on the viola and are usually in a vernacular or improvisatory stylistic milieu. On a very practical level, my experiences as a performer allow me to situate the creative decisions that I make as a composer in a real physical context. My knowledge of string instruments is invaluable when I write for them, but more generally, being aware of the practical demands of playing in an ensemble or mastering a difficult technical passage helps me when writing for any instrument or voice. More abstractly, performing allows me to experience music-making as pure presence, and my familiarity with that experience undoubtedly effects how I conceive of a score that I am working on. Where do you find inspiration for your music, both as a composer and performer? I've never tried to define where (or even if) I find inspiration for my music. Too often, I think that the romantic notion of "artistic inspiration" is prioritized over the more mundane values of hard work and an unflinching critical awareness. My music results from those things far more than from inspiration, but I will say that when I am at a creative impasse, the best thing for me to do is to get out of the house and go for a run. Maybe that's my version of inspiration. Which composers have influenced you over the years? I'd have to say that the biggest influences on me have been the composers and musicians that have been my teachers, colleagues, and collaborators. Beyond that, I listen to music voraciously and omnivorously. I think that anything and everything that I listen to leaks into my music in one way or another. Some big influences have been Charles Mingus, Stephen Sondheim, The Art Ensemble of Chicago, Brian Ferneyhough, Skip James, and Tribe Called Quest. Some colleagues that I greatly admire are Eliza Brown, Shawn Jaeger, Joan Arnau Pamies, Katie Young, Jenna Lyle, Alex Temple, Dave Reminick, and of course my bandmates Ben Hjertmann and Luke Gullickson. You're biography mentions a strong interest in some popular genres (jazz, hip-hop, blues). Do elements of those genres find their way into your “classical” compositions? As you can tell from the above list, yes, they absolutely do. I don't usually write music that is explicitly polystylistic, but I think that the influence goes way beyond style. I inherit ideas, attitudes, and aesthetic priorities from all the music I am interested in. In the music I write – within a single piece, I mean – the style is usually very unified. When I’m creating a sound world for a piece my ear draws me to a more unified sound. But the influence of all of the music I listen to comes through in other ways that aren’t limited to style. There are attitudes, gestures and aesthetic qualities that demonstrate my interest in various genres and styles. As an active performer and composer in adventurous music, what are some trends you've noticed in listeners of the 21st century? Do you feel people are becoming more or less receptive to experimental music? I've noticed a very healthy interest in problematizing musical orthodoxies. Of course, this is nothing new, but there seem to be several people all across the aesthetic spectrum convincingly asking the question "why do I have to do it that way?". I believe that a healthy musical community is one in which a plurality of viewpoints and approaches can flourish, and I'm optimistic about the prospects for that in today's musical landscape. I don't have much first hand knowledge of how receptive people "used to" be to experimental or avant-garde music, but in my own experience, most people (even those with very little musical knowledge or education) are receptive to music that is challenging or unfamiliar. It is those people that have extensive musical education or strong interests in a particular kind of music that object to anything that strays from their definition of what music should be. You were recently selected for a Barlow commission. Can you talk a little about what your plans for the work you will write for that? The piece is a 30-minute string quartet for the Spektral Quartet. I’ve worked with them several times, but this is a much bigger piece than what I’ve done before. The piece uses transcriptions of the vocal delivery of standup comics as a source of musical material. Transcribing speech is something really interests me. Outside of the meaning of words there is so much expressive information in the way we speak and those qualities are exaggerated when it comes to standup. I believe that we interpret these extra-linguistic cues in the same way we interpret music. It is the fact that this musical sensibility is at the heart of every act of vocal linguistic communication that interests me. Name your top 5 pieces of music, any genre, any time period. With the reservation that, like any top 5 list, this is going to be insufficient: Igor Stravinsky: Oedipus Rex (1927) Karlheinz Stockhausen: Mikrophonie I (1964) John Coltrane: Sun Ship (1965) Joni Mitchell: Hejira (1976) Tribe Called Quest: Beats, Rhymes and Life (1996) For information about Chris and his music check out his website: http://www.cflmusic.com/ Below are two of Chris' pieces, one of his original concert works and one with his group Grant Wallace Band. |
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