Andrew Greenwald is a composer and percussionist currently based in New York. In addition to composing he is also a composer/performer with Ensemble Pamplemousse. Read further to learn more about Andrew's work.



How did you get started with music and what were some of your first experiences with composing?

I started playing drums when I was 14, playing in a high school fusion band called “Aquarius” and going to jam sessions at Smalls in NYC. After that I studied drums and percussion at NYU and began playing around NYC and touring. That time (the late 90’s - early 00’s) was a flourishing environment for the downtown jazz scene in NYC. I went out to see gigs every night at clubs like Tonic, The Internet Cafe, Knitting Factory, 55 Bar… and many others. Most of these places no longer exist, or no longer program that music. Eventually I began playing at these clubs with my contemporaries. It was a wonderful time, I had access to my influences, and could see them play every week, hang out with them - it was great.

This went on until the mid 00’s, when the clubs began to close, and the scene started to shrink a bit for many reasons. I became less interested in playing, and slowly drifted away from the music. It was at that time that I became interested in what some of my close friends were doing with thru-composed music. I had already been playing with my colleagues in Ensemble Pamplemousse, and the music was really inspiring. Eventually, they asked me to write something. The first piece was called “T.T.T” for sine waves with snare drum modulation. I was quite happy with it, and people liked it. Most importantly, I really enjoyed working independently, composing on my own. Around that time a friend told me about graduate programs in composition, and that there were fellowships. I could not believe it, and after some research, saw this was true. I applied to Wesleyan University in 2008 because Alvin Lucier and Anthony Braxton taught there, both artists who I respected immensely. I got in… that’s when I really began composing seriously.



How did your background in jazz influence your creative work in more experimental music, both as a performer and in your compositional work?

I was always working with interesting musicians who had unique ways of approaching their instruments. I saw and heard what they did, and somehow it seeped into my own thinking about how instrumental playing could be approached from a performance practice point of view. Additionally, dealing with notation as a percussionist, and seeing my colleagues deal with the like on their instruments, I developed an ethos about the function of notation, what worked, what did not work, etc. I guess what was most important was understanding that each musician is unique, and writing for instruments was really quite an open field for exploration.



Alvin Lucier - your advisor during your master’s studies - is a composer whose name is synonymous with experimentation and exploration of sound. Did your time with Alvin foster your interest in exploration of sound and possibilities of sound production in your early compositions?

I learned so much from Alvin. We never had lessons, or talked about music that much. We just spent a lot of time together, talking, having dinner, driving around. I was his assistant, so I got to really understand his personal narrative through music, the way he worked. It was like being a family member and an apprentice. The most important thing I learned from Alvin was how to be an artist, not how to compose. I arrived at Wesleyan without a lot of experience, but to him I was a composer, and he would take my opinions and suggestions seriously. It was essential for my confidence. He taught me to follow an idea through to its conclusion without interfering in the process, and to take the work seriously, but not to take myself seriously. We do very different things, but he genuinely enjoyed and supported what I did. His support was familial. He became close with my colleagues in Pamplemousse, and we have worked with him on many occasions since. I ll never forget one interaction: I got a call from Alvin at 7am on a Tuesday in late January 2010. I had applied to doctoral programs, and he was as nervous as I was about it, truly empathetic. I called him back when I woke up a bit later, he was frantic, telling me that he had been called by a certain professor at a place I had applied, asking for some additional info because this person wanted to convince his colleagues to admit me. It just so happened that I had gotten a call from Stanford the night before admitting me to the program.  Stanford was my top choice, so I was really happy and went out celebrating with my friends the night before. So on the phone I gave Alvin the information he needed for the Professor, and then told him not to worry about it - I had been admitted to Stanford, so my mind was already made up. He knew that this was where I had wanted to land. Instead of congratulating me, he tersely asked me why I had not immediately told him! He was right, but it showed just how invested he was in my success and life generally. I went to class to TA for him shortly after the call. He was so happy, proud… It really meant a lot to me.

P.S - I cannot help but also mention my advisors at Stanford: Brian Ferneyhough and Jonathan Berger. They have both been equally influential on me as a person, academic, and composer. Their dedication, involvement and investment in me as a person has had such a deep impact on me on so many levels. They each deserve long salutations from me here, but to boil it down to the barest of essentials:

Brian showed me just how high the bar could be set in dedication to the act of composing. To expect the highest of craft from oneself at all times. To be humble and fearless in the act of composing, and to forge your own path. His warmth and friendship remain a place of comfort in times of difficulty, and my feelings for him are familial.

Jonathan showed me how to think analytically from a panned-out vantage point. He consistently gave me feedback and suggestions that brought my own work into focus, articulating for me what I could not put my finger on when addressing musical issues in my own compositional practice. He would say things clearly and directly, often in one short sentence. That sentence would invariably be responsible for some of the most important steps forward in my own work. His selflessness as a pedagogue and true belief in the academic process are a personal model. Additionally his mentoring through good and bad times in my own academic experience was unwavering, and essential. I could not have done the work I did at Stanford without his support.



Your music has a very characteristic notation, visually and functionally. Could you discuss how you came to your particular system of notation and maybe a little on how it developed over time?

It developed incrementally. All of my compositions are on my website (now that I have a publisher, Edition Gravis, there are only excerpts in some cases).  One can see the gradual development from piece to piece. I had a very distinct sound-world in mind. It was a matter of finding the most direct way to translate that information to the performer most efficiently in order to have those sounds be replicated from performance to performance. I really made a giant step forward when composing Sofrut - a piece for violin, piccolo and percussion. I spent a couple of months just envisioning how to dispose of the information on the page. Once I began work on the piece, it became clear to me that I had stumbled onto something important. After the piece was performed, I knew I had found what I needed notationally. Since then, it has been a gradual paring down of the information on the page to the bare essentials -  so much of what is important for the performer to know from the notation is shown by what is not there on the page.




You told me in a previous discussion that your notation is not really a decoupling of independent streams of activity, but a descriptive notation of what is conceived of as an instantaneous sonic idea. Can you discuss that in more detail?

There is not really any decoupling in most of my music. Multiple staves are only utilized when I need to denote certain actions which necessitate additional information in order to produce a specific sound. I am not interested in setting up a set of possible sonic results, rather simply the most direct way to access a specific, replicable sound. To me, it is a descriptive notation. The notation is there to provide the direct path to the sound, not a prescription for action.



Your approach to notation and the sound world you create is one that I have always associated with experimentation and a forward-thinking approach to instrumental writing. At the same time, you also mentioned in our previous conversation that you approach instrumental writing from the standpoint of traditional performance practice in Western music. What are some of those concepts - in terms of expression, performers’ interactions with the score, etc. - that you incorporate in your own music?

I consider my work to be historically discursive. As such, I have a reverence for traditional performance practice. I believe in a balance between compositional intention(score) and the interpretation of the performer. That is what I mean by the importance of what is left out of the score. What is absent directly informs the performer of the priorities of the composer, and his expectations of the performer as interpreter.
Any musical movement develops its own performance practice. I firmly believe this to be crucial to unique work. It has been a conscious goal of mine to create a performance practice for my work, and have been so privileged to have the support of my colleagues in Pamplemousse. They are the carriers of this information to other performers who commission me. Subsequently the circle grows, including more people who add their own interpretive talents. There is so much historical precedence for this way of working. It becomes a language and a discourse. I owe so much to individuals Joshua Modney, Austin Wulliman, Yuki Numata Resnick, Elizabeth Weisser Helgeson, Ryan Muncy, Seth Josel, Severine Ballon, Matt Barbier, as well as the JACK quartet, Mivos quartet, Line Upon Line Percussion, Ensemble Adapter and Talea ensemble for contributing to this discourse.



In addition to composing you are also active as a performer with your new music collective Ensemble Pamplemousse. How have your experiences as a performer with this group over the years shaped your compositional output and/or approach to instrumental writing?

My experiences with Pamplemousse continue to be the most influential part of my musical and personal life. I really cannot put it into words. It is my family. To boil it down to compositional output and instrumental writing would just be way too reductive, irresponsible of me. Natacha, Jessie, Dave, and Bryan (as well as former members Kiku Enomoto and Rama Gottfried, and new member Weston Olencki) are responsible for so many of my personal and musical memories. There is no Andrew the composer or - more importantly- the person without these individuals.



Without giving too much about your process away, can you talk a little about your approach to form and materials, both in terms of large-scale processes and micro-structural gestures? How much pre-planning goes into one of your pieces and how much, if any, is done more intuitively?

This is a big question, with a long answer. To be succinct: My work has been broken up into 3 series for the most part (All now completed):

1. Sofrut - These works were about discovering material and developing a syntax for them. I was inspired by the scribes (Soferim) in the Jewish tradition, transcribing the torah as an act of devotion. This is done by hand, with strict rules for the validity of the product. The work is done in ink, no mistakes are acceptable. If made, the entire scroll is deemed invalid, and the work is thus lost.

2. A Thing is a Hole in a Thing it is Not - These eight works were written over five years. (2012-16). I was inspired by the writings of artist Carl Andre, those by Hans-Jorg Rheinberger on experimental systems in the philosophy of science, and Subrata Dasgupta on epistemic complexity. The same 64’’ of material were treated much like a subject in a lab experiment. Each successive piece acted as a type of experimental setup, with the goal of learning just how the initial material (subject) reacted to singular changes in the algorithm used to generate the initial piece in the series. This algorithm would then be mapped to a variable not explored in the preceding piece, generating the next work. In this way I was able to gain great insight into how hierarchies could be formed, thus gaining control of traditional concepts of tension, repose, cadence, etc… within the context of my own musical language. This was the research that went into my doctoral thesis: What Makes Speculative Coherence?

3. [Words] - This series of works was written more or less concurrently with the “Thing” series. It took the formal precepts I developed from that series, and mapped them onto sounds that I was not attached to in the same way. In some cases, the materials were found sounds- improvisors on youtube, wind dyad charts… material I had no attachment to. The goal was to see if my algorithms could function in the same fashion when mapped to other material. Would they successfully create the same hierarchies?

In summation, my work is almost 100% pre-planned numerically, then transcribed. Intuition is used when ‘problems’ of conflicting systems necessitate a weighted, and therefore aesthetic decision on my part. These are almost always the key moments in the piece, and the ones I am most drawn to. I often solve the issue in a way I would never have imagined on my own.


Who have been some influential composers (or individual pieces) that have had a significant impact on you

There are so many, the majority being the work of my friends, contemporaries and mentors. For that reason I will keep the list short, only mentioning some older works that are important to me. If I allowed any of the aforementioned contemporaries, the list would be endless, and I would not be able to live with myself if I left anyone out…

- Haydn :  String Quartet in D, HIII No.34, Op.20 No.4 (Hagen Quartet recording)
- Schubert: Piano Sonata No 21 in C minor, D 958
- Schubert:  Schubert's Quintet in C, Op. 163, D. 956.(Cleveland Quartet with Yo-Yo Ma recording)
- Beethoven: String Quartets NO. 59 (any) (Artemis Quartet recording)


And the necessary “desert island” list. What are the top five pieces (in any order, from any genre) that would you say have had the biggest impact on you as a musician?

I do not think I could come up with a list of albums, songs or pieces… but there are certainly individual sounds I would need to bring along. All of them trigger memories, emotions, responses that I would not want to leave behind on the mainland. In no particular order, and drastically abbreviated:

- Elvin Jones laying into a riveted cymbal at full force. There is so much music in there… like ice on fire
- The timbres of the Bozzini and Hagen quartets
- Blossom Dearie
- Miles Davis on the Prestige era recordings
- Levon Helm singing “The night they drove old Dixie down” from The Last Waltz recording
- Tony Williams playing on “Nefretiti”
- Judee Sill
- Steve Jordan’s backbeat
- Art Blakey’s ride cymbal
- The English free improvisors in the 70’s (Evan Parker, Paul Lytton, Tony Oxley, Barry Guy…)
- Jim Black’s sound
- Joey Baron’s bass drum and ride sound in the 90’s
- Ahmad Jamal’s touch
- Sviatoslav Richter playing Schubert
- Sonny Clark’s comping w/ Art Taylor or Philly Joe Jones
- Donald Fagen
- J Dilla
- Warne Marsh
- Alice Coltrane
- Gerry Hemingway’s Tubworks
- Rachel Price on “Rental Love”
- Bridget Kearney’s songwriting
- Anthony Braxton (the quartet in particular (San Jose Recording especially))
- WKCR (Bird Flight with Phil Schaap, as well as the general programming)
- WFUV (On Saturdays from 4-11pm EST)



For more information about Andrew and his music you can check out his website.

Below are some selections of Andrew's work.


A Thing is a Hole in a Thing it is Not (I) - performed here by JACK Quartet

A Thing is a Hole in a Thing it is Not (III) - performed here by Ensemble Pamplemousse and Ensemble Adapter

Trailer for "This is the Uplifting Part" by Ensemble Pamplemousse

CLICK HERE to listen to "A Thing is a Hole in a Thing it is Not (VII) for 2 cellos - performed by Jessie Marino and Severine Ballon

Thanks for reading about Andrew and his work. Stay tuned in the coming weeks for interviews with composers Leah Reid, Dan Tramte, Eli Fieldsteel and Megan Beugger as well as discussions with Bowling Green State University's Kurt Doles to talk about the BGSU New Music Festival.

This week I'm very excited to present my interview with the New York-based new music collective of thingNY. The group consists of Jeffrey Young, Dave Ruder, Erin Rogers, Paul Pinto, Andrew Livingston and Gelsey Bell, and together they create and perform works that combine elements of avant-garde music, theater and multimedia.

Their new album "minis/Trajectories" was just released 2 days ago on September 20 by Gold Bolus Recordings and can be purchased here. 
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Can you explain in a few words exactly what thingNY is and what you do?

Paul Pinto : thingNY is a New York-based collective of composer-performers (Gelsey Bell, Andrew Livingston, Paul Pinto, Erin Rogers, Dave Ruder and Jeffrey Young) who collaborate frequently on projects of a non-pop variety. This often includes composing music collaboratively, but also includes performing each other’s work, works of contemporary classical composers, theatrical and sonic improvisation, and performing avant-garde, experimental and classical works from the last 50 years (or so). Over the last year we’ve performed over 40 shows across North America in festivals, on tour and in our self-presented concerts.

Gelsey Bell: thingNY is also kinda like a family and we enjoy making each other laugh.



What is the history of thingNY? What initially brought the six of you together?

PP: We coalesced over many years. Initially, I put up a craigslist ad asking if anybody wanted to be friends and make a new music band together to play (mostly) our own chamber compositions. Andrew and I played a few shows before Erin, Jeff, Gelsey and Dave joined in the following years. The group turned radical: choosing improv, sound art and theatrical pieces over straightforward chamber music.

GB: There is also a way in which we were moths to Paul’s flame. The group has also had other members in the past, but in the last few years the six of us became more serious about the group and its membership has been a little less fluid.



How important is the element of theatricality in your performances? Do you ever do concerts with less of a theatrical component that might be more similar to concert hall performances?

PP: I like to think we all start from sound, and then add in the elements needed to make that sound mean something. Most times that means live bodies on stage making those sounds, and most of those times, we also explore extra-sonic elements: including visual elements like staging and intention. Some of those times, this leads to things like costumes, characters and scenery.

GB: The work of the group is often the kaleidoscope influence of our six distinct voices as artists, so I would actually disagree with Paul a little here (now you’re starting to see a little of our polyvocality at work) in terms of my own compositional methodology. I was trained as a theatre director and have spent a lot of time with one foot in disciplines outside music (primarily theatre and dance), and so a lot of my own composition - and thus also work I do with the group - is strongly influenced by theatrical mode of thought and practice. So sometimes my work starts with a body position or a physical gesture or a object that has some sort of theatrical or poetic resonance, and then finds sound from that. Or I think about relationships between people, or even the social hierarchies set up in musical performance, and find musical material from that. Sometimes I see a staging before I have a sense of how big or small or reverberant a sound should be. Throughout my history with the group, I have often used this aspect of my creative process and I think it has encouraged us all to a more theatrical place. I’m not actually sure if other folks in the band realize how often I think this way or how much it influences my ideas for our composition, interpretations, or even just what we do when we’re finally in a performance space. I also think that we are all theatrical performers in our own ways, whether we are conscious of it or not. Because I’m a songwriter, I often work with text. Because I come from a place of text, story, and thus a kind of theatre, can easily emerge without even looking for it.



You are a collective of six incredibly talented composers and performers with a wide variety of skills you all bring to the table. Are all or most thingNY projects handled in-house as far as composition, preparation and performance goes, or do you ever find outside performers and composers to collaborate with? Do you often perform other important avant-garde works by composers of the 20th and 21st centuries?

PP: We definitely have a knack for performing our own work and that’s our focus. Sometimes we equally spearhead a project. Sometimes two of us do it. Sometimes it’s one person’s baby. We each have different relationships with and commitments to improvisation, collaboration, commissioning, etc. Many projects, like our operas ADDDDDDDDD and ...Patriots... are conceived start to finish by the group, including staging and all visual elements. Others, like This Takes Place Close By (our newest work, premiered at the Knockdown Center in Sept. 2015) was developed with the help of an outside artistic design team including Daniel Neumann, Brad Peterson, Sarah Abigail Hoke-Brady, and Jesse Greenberg, all captained by director Ashley Tata. We’ve also collaborated with high school composer-performers Face the Music, with Phoenix-based Orange Theatre and with performance art troupe Panoply Performance Laboratory. Occasionally we just do some pieces that just speak to us, including Kenneth Gaburo’s Maledetto and Vinko Globokar’s Un Jour Comme Un Autre. We’re working on new works by Rick Burkhardt right now for performances at JACK in Brooklyn on July 17, 2016.



I had the fortune of seeing an excerpt of “Thomas Paine In Violence” summer of 2015 and it was really incredible. I’ve also seen video excerpts of “This Takes Place Close By” and “Patriots,” all of which show an awareness of current social and political issues. Do you feel it is important to focus on these kinds of issues in your theatrical works?

PP: Thanks. The excerpt thingNY did of Thomas Paine in Violence is called “Hack It!”. And though not a piece commissioned by thingNY, we (and other groups) have performed this scene as a piece of repertoire. We’re all involved in non-musical social awareness (through activism, political campaign support, scholarship) so it follows that our work (because it is written and developed and produced by the six of us) will have that awareness. Sometimes works are just about the sound, but because we deal so often with text, it’s hard not to attempt to write something worth saying. This Takes Place Close By examines the guilt of privilege during natural disasters. Patriots lampoons the dialogue (or rather overlapping stump-speeches) in the political debate over immigration. Our upcoming album minis/Trajectories is full of text works that speak about our ideas on consumerism, money, diet, etc. told in thingNY’s distinct style.



Are your theatrical projects and operas typically composed as a collective or are they typically written by a subset of thingNY?

GB: If we look at some of our biggest projects, ADDDDDDDDD, Patriots, This Takes Place Close By, there were written by the people who perform them. Those pieces were all written collectively by the people in them but that can take a lot of forms. Some folks are more prolific than others. Some parts are clearly within the compositional voice of one member, while others have been massaged by all of us in such a way that we can’t remember which idea came from who. Once upon a time we did large SPAM projects and those were always arranged by all of us. We divided up who did what and that polyvocality of our interpretations really gave the shows an epic range.

Dave Ruder: There’s a complicated series of chickens & eggs here, too.  We all have our individual work, most of which would not be out of place for thingNY (as we’re all performers of our own work and it’s idiosyncratic work).  And then there’s the group voice, which is a real thing at this point, which comes from a series of decisions made by various members of the group over the years.  I think individually we can all always shed light on the expansive/nebulous nature of group voice.  I also think it’d be tough to take work written by one or more group members for thingNY and do it with others.  I suppose this is the reward of sticking together with people over a series of years.  We’re not the only ones this is true for, but it’s always nice when you get there collectively.



Do you have any current or upcoming projects in the works?

PP: Our new album, minis/Trajectories is a sort of double album with text works by myself and Erin Rogers. We’ll release it in September on Gold Bolus Recordings, a local genre-bending label.
​
GB: I’m also in the process of writing an opera for the group called Rolodex. It contains a lot of structured improv and relies on players that can make quick decisions about arrangment on their feet. We’re performing some new excerpts in July, but it is a rather massive project so I don’t imagine I will be finished with it until 2017.


Below are some selections of thingNY performances, including Patrios, "Call Center" from This Takes Place Near By (Erin Rogers, with Dennis Sullivan on percussion), and Story Binge from Gelsey Bell's "Rolodex"

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Patriots by thingNY

"Call Center" from This Takes Place Close By, performed by Popebama (Erin Rogers and Denis Sullivan)

Story Binge, excerpt from ​"Rolodex" by Gelsey Bell

What originally led you to being a musician, and more specifically what made you choose composition as an artistic outlet?

My parents listened to both classical and non-classical music a lot when I was a kid. We sang a lot at home and my mom occasionally played the piano, so music felt like a normal part of our lives. When I was around seven, two things happened that impelled me to participate in music more intensively. The first was a school demo of the instruments available for private lessons; I came home demanding to play the cello. The second was watching the Ingmar Bergman film version of The Magic Flute, which became an obsession. I didn’t know what composing was, but I knew I wanted to somehow participate in this kind of storytelling. Composing started soon after cello lessons, just as a thing I did alongside practicing the cello. My mother attributes this to my having absorbed an elementary school mantra that encouraged students to view themselves as authors: “if you read, you write.” So naturally, if you play, you compose.


In your bio you write that your music is “often intertextual, opening dialogues with existing pieces of music, historical styles, and other cultural artifacts.” What are some ways in which you engage with the past? Does it come in the form of musical quotation, deformation of long-standing forms, or does it manifest in a more personal way that might not be audible on the musical surface?

I have done all of the above - it really depends on the piece. But there are some recurring techniques that I use when dealing with historical material. I usually start with an artifact - sometimes a quotation, or sometimes a harmonic progression, or melody, or other clichéd object that doesn’t come from any one composer or piece. Then I time-stretch the artifact. It might become so slow that it will never be recognized, or I might turn an imaginary time-stretching fader up and down, pulling the artifact between the extremes of too-slow-to-hear and its original tempo. I’ll then use this time-stretched artifact to generate other musical information. There are a lot of different ways I’ve used deformed artifacts as generators, but one relatively consistent thing is that I’ll expand upon their pitch information using spectral techniques. In addition, when the original object is made maximally slow, every new event is a big deal because events happen relatively infrequently. So each new event in the slowed-down original acts as a trigger for big changes on the surface of the music, or for chain reactions that continue triggering other things.


I’m always interested in the idea of engaging with and/or grappling with music of the past. While this is an important element in your work, I find that your music always sounds very fresh and new. How do you balance your interest in engaging with history in a way that is clear and meaningful while also creating artwork that speaks to 21st century ears?

Well, first of all, thank you! I can’t say I have a simple-to-articulate, actionable philosophy for achieving this balance successfully, but my engagement with historical material does take this problem as its starting point. When I hear or play historical music that I love, I always wish I had made it, but there’s no way I could have made, say, Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo because I’m not a man living in northern Italy around the turn of the 17th century. In fact, if I had been living in northern Italy at that time, I probably would have been actively discouraged from composing because I’m female. So if I want to engage with these historical objects as a composer, I have to acknowledge the vast gulf, the incongruity, between their contexts and my context. My pieces that deal with historical material are usually some attempt to bridge this gulf, but the bridges are inevitably rickety and fragile, because the gulf is vast and one can’t actually put oneself back in 1607. I think that these uncertain attempts at connection are actually a very modern theme. It’s not about nostalgia and it’s not about alienation; it’s about the difficulty and vulnerability and messiness (but not impossibility) of building meaningful relationships and communicating in a mind-bogglingly complex world where everyone’s reality is shaped by their own micro-context.


You have done some great research on the topic of musical narrative, specifically your doctoral research on narrative in Chaya Czernowin’s opera Pnima…ins Innere, an opera without words. How has your research in musical narrative informed your work as a composer? Do you plan on continuing your research on the concept of narrative?

My study of Chaya’s opera and musical narrative has been incredibly influential. I worked on it slowly for several years, so at this point it’s hard to tease out everything I gained from it, because it is so infused into my thinking and hearing and creating. When I first heard Pnima I found it both devastating and magnetic, and I think this research began as a way of trying to figure out why the opera made so much sense to me despite it being wordless and, at some level, intentionally and inherently indecipherable.

One thing that I find incredibly important about narratological analysis is that it ideally is a hermeneutic process that takes into account the context of the work and that of the analyst in constructing a reading of the piece’s story (in the most abstract sense of the word “story”). I also appreciate that in narratology, musical ideas can be heard as agents or protagonists that interact and have agency without needing an extra-musical program to explain them. A narratological analysis of a piece is thus the story of interactions among musical ideas. Writing my dissertation helped me articulate these and other concepts that had previously been an intuitive part of my composing and my approach to analysis. Now that I’ve articulated those ideas, I have more freedom to decide where else to take them.

At the moment I’m most excited to think about narrative as a composer and work more consciously with narratological concepts in my music, but there are also some analytical papers I’d like to write in the future.


Your music is very rich in timbral color and gestural language regardless of the size of the ensemble you’re working with or variation in instrumentation. Even in solo/duo works such as This Time Finer (Bb clarinet) and Shaked Graces (violin and cello) you get so much mileage out of the instruments in terms of instrumental color and gesture. Can you talk about this a little more in terms of where this interest comes from and how it relates to your other interests as a composer and artist.

I’ve always loved sound and the details of sound, but when I was a very young composer I didn’t really connect my experience of loving sound in the world with the practice of writing music on paper. Then I discovered Scelsi, Grisey, and Xenakis all around the same time in undergrad, and it felt like I had found elements of music I’d been needing for years. Worlds of color, texture, and microtonality exploded for me at that point, though it took a few years to figure out how to inhabit those worlds in ways that felt right. Sonic detail tends to correspond to physical and emotional metaphors for me - different sounds are closer or farther, heavier or lighter, more vulnerable or more confident, etc. So incorporating a richness of sonic detail is a way to construct multi-dimensional spaces or environments in sound.

I think my gestural language comes from the fact that I experience emotions and thoughts as things that have materiality and motion - different weights, colors, densities, and qualities of motion. Similarly, I associate musical gestures with literal bodily gestures, facial expressions, etc. When I’m reading through my drafts-in-progress sometimes I’m also performing those faces and motions; it’s probably pretty funny to watch. So the gestural language in my music is a translation of different kinds of inner monologue into sound, passing through the filter of physical gesture along the way.


You have written a lot for voice and have also written a number of opera and theater works. What do you like about working with the voice whether in a theatrical or chamber setting?

Well, if my music as a whole has this aspect of externalizing an inner monologue, then the voice is the most direct, literal manifestation of that phenomenon. So maybe my music is always trying to be a kind of expanded voice, that can express internality both with and without words. I think the voice in my pieces acts as a kind of tour guide that leads the listener, like Dante’s Virgil, through a mysterious underworld of inward thought, emotion, and sensation. There is a tension between mystery and plain-spokenness in my music, and it is centralized in the voice. On the one hand, there is a clarity of expression in the voice because you can see emotions depicted on a singer’s face, or hear the semantic content of a text, or hear vocal qualities that humans use in everyday communication; these things seem clear. On the other hand, singing can also be a sound event that has no clear, communicated content, and that lack of clarity is all the more mysterious from a voice because I think we have an expectation that voices, of all things, will communicate; we’re uncomfortable when they don’t. So voices, and the bodies and faces and minds of the singers who shape those voices, take on this huge responsibility of centralizing all the questions about meaning and communication in a piece. I love working with singers because they are constantly thinking about and working on these questions which are essential aspects of my music.


What are some current projects you’re working on?

I’m in the middle of a big piece for soprano Jessica Aszodi and Ensemble 20+, the new music ensemble at DePaul University which is conducted by Michael Lewanski. The piece is called A Soundwalk With Resi and it will be premiered at the Ear Taxi Festival in the fall. It weaves together an instrumental transcription of a soundwalk I took at Lincoln Park Conservatory with two heavily time-stretched excerpts from the opera Der Rosenkavalier. “Resi” is the childhood nickname of the Marschallin, one of the opera’s central characters. I’ve adapted some of her text from the opera’s libretto where she talks about the strangeness of time, how unreliably we perceive the passage of time, and how odd it is to watch one’s body change over time.

Once that piece is done I’ll write a string trio for Network for New Music, who are based in my hometown of Philadelphia. They’re doing a project where several composers write chamber pieces in response to the same poem by Susan Stewart. The poetry has a lot of great sounds and images to work with and writing string chamber music always feels like coming home, so I think that piece will feel really good to write.  


And the inevitable desert island list. What are the top 5 pieces (from any genre and in any order) that you would say have had the greatest impact on you as an artist and composer?

I don’t think the things that have had the greatest impact on me are also the things I would want on a desert island, so this list answers the impact question (or tries to - choosing just five is really hard!) If I were on a desert island, assuming it was more of a vacation than a life-or-death situation, I’d just want people to sing campfire songs with.

1. Complicite, Mnemonic (Complicite is a devised theater company)
2. Lee Hyla, We Speak Etruscan
3. Chaya Czernowin, Pnima
4. Hans Thomalla, Albumblatt
5. J.M. Gletle, Ave Maria (This one’s very difficult to find...so: https://youtu.be/_ueTPUESMRg?t=3m14s)

To listen to some of Eliza's music check out the embedded pieces below. You can also check out her website at http://www.elizabrown.net/

What got you started on the path of composition? Was it an avenue of music you’ve always explored?

Hmm, I guess it's the only medium (i.e. concert music) that made sense to me creatively. The controls and parameters attributed to it seemed more malleable than the other musical endeavors I participated in over the years. In my youth I was heavily involved in electronic music and record spinning but I couldn’t really connect with the plethora of tools the latter offered...it wasn’t that electronic music was too vast but rather my capacity to utilize it fell short.


On your website you describe your ambition as composer as wanting to “produce a tactile exploration based on one’s physical awareness and elements of allurement.” Could you talk about that in more detail?

In my work communicative engagement is consequential. Just as speech changes meaning through context, so do instrumentalists and composers when communicating with one another – whether through musical material or direct interaction(s). There is a natural elegance that seems to derive from the inconsistency of individual artistic processes and ideologies even when said processes seem to fully contradict one another. This delicate balance requires a level of stamina and patience, while provoking a disturbed intuition from myself, the performers, and ultimately the listeners. The apparent and not-so-apparent tensions in my work are ever-present, desiring reconciliation through a purging that can only be attempted in live performance. These anxieties or rather delicacies surrounding the physical exhaustion and execution of pitch/intonation/gesture etc, are not always aurally realized. However, the embodiment of such exhaustion is not for the listener but for the performer, solely. By indulging/wavering this aspect I feel it provides an intrinsic value to the realization of my work. I tend to avoid blatant extended techniques but they are inevitably there. And the abundance of timbral options are present but need little coaxing to bring to fruition.

I tend create a music based upon involuntary bodily gestures, focusing on physical or psychological responses through neurotic repetition and the negotiation between reflection and agitation before repose. The intention of my work is to reveal these patterns of inconsistency through notational direction. I feel this is a wonderful opportunity to promote a truly collaborative effort between composer and performer. Directed (not distributed) subjectivity is a common theme in my music and though, controlled more and more, I try to refrain from imposing more than is necessary on the performer and their interpretation of my music. What derives from this are dualities of reality. A sense of control and a lack thereof, ultimately revealing that tranquility only suspends chaos it does not negate it.



Would you say that the concept of physical gesture is an important compositional element in your music? In other words, are you concerned with the way a performer moves in order to create a sound, or more interested in the resultant sound regardless of how it may be produced?

Yes, yes, and no? I guess that depends on the work itself. At times I indicate very specific physical/bodily gestures to create the “sound” I am aiming for. With that in mind I am fully aware that all bodies are different and the way one achieves said gestures will be altered at some point. My biggest concern is the mind-set and physicality of any given gesture attempted. I want/hope for the performer to engage in that way.



I saw on the Spektral Quartet’s website there is a write-up about your music in which you talk about exploring the “latent instability of seemingly fixed gestures” and the use of improvisation in your music. Where does the instability come from, and how does improvisation play into this idea?

I use a lot of repetition in my work and through notational direction (variation and nuance) I hope to evoke a sort of individual pathos from the performer through directed subjectivity. Whether this is conscious or not is of no concern to me. The improvisatory aspect usually presents itself as fixed specific gestures that the performer has the agency to decide the order of given pitches, the duration of rest, the frequency of dynamic change, etc. I’ve also presented audio scores to performers to internalize/memorize and reinterpret.



This is kind of a 2-part question, but in that same write-up on the Spektral Quartet website you also mention the importance of the interaction of the performer and the score (in relation to the instability of gestures mention above). I think that’s a really fascinating approach to notation. Could you talk a little more about this interaction? Part 2, how is the interaction you’re striving for different from the way a performer would interact with other scores? Is it through complex notation, improvisation (mentioned above) or something else entirely?

I “try” to break away from the traditional discourse between performer and score. As a composer the various indeterminate processes and the implementation of those processes through said compositional choices, and the performers’ interpretations of those choices create a specific psychological interaction between the performer, the score, and the performer(s) and at times the conductors’ compositional role. This produces an aural palette that is not inherently dictated by the score itself. The loose limitations and the demands of the score through notational choices create an interdependent relationship between the score, instrumentation, and the performer(s) interpretations, enabling a finite number of possibilities prescribed in the notation. On the one hand, the composition promotes an unregulated encounter between instrumentalists. On the other hand, this encounter shapes sonic realizations that may only occur based on the nature of the gestures themselves. These sonorities only come into being through the pre- performance and the interpretive work of the performer(s). The latter pushes performers to apply the given notation to an external context; they must draw meaning from seeming chaos and discern that the notation is not the only parameter they must interpret. Through their investigation they discover specific sounds and musical actions. The notation demonstrates an inherent “theatricality,” and at times the placement/staging of the gestures about the page encourage the performer(s) to turn away from the wider environment in search for meaning. They must wander around within the proverbial “box” to unlock the nature of the work. Again, consequently there is a great deal of subjectivity that is necessary for my compositions to progress.

In essence, every performer has a unique perspective resulting from their individual experience, background, aesthetic preference, and circumstantial specificities surrounding the performance. But there is a limit to this potentially infinite musical range, and that is a limit that can be attributed to the properties of the music itself. However, it must be understood within a certain shared cultural context. This further posits the idea that implication is entirely contained within the objective structures of the work, meaning that all possibilities are and always will be present in the score. That is not to negate the fact that the performer(s) response or engagement with the work does not wholly shape the general character and outcome of the final product.



Your pieces often have evocative and poetic titles. Beyond what has already been discussed, where do you find inspiration for your music? Also, more generally, what is the connection of the title to the concept of your pieces?

The more I am asked these types of questions the harder it is for me to keep my self-serving artistic integrity, hah.

My titles derive from my poetry, from poets I revere, or from explicit definitions of individual words. I guess I would call myself an amateur poet? Poetry is the one medium that I can still call my own even though I am using my poems more and more in my compositions. Full circle, right? Now I’m exposing myself, however, I stand by this, my music is a way to deal with and purge personal trauma of all kinds. It’s a very painful, tedious, necessary, and fulfilling process nonetheless. Meaning, I compose things that are deemed aurally beautiful for the most part but from my perspective, the sources of material that create the work and how I ask the performer to engage is ugly, taxing, and awful. In that way, I win. Does that make sense?

I find it more and more difficult to compose now because of multiple deadlines and expectations. I compose intuitively. I muse over an idea in my head long before I put the pen to paper. When I finally reach that point not one note or rhythm is dictated. It’s all text. Once I feel I’ve convinced myself what the work is to be then I attempt to translate that into musical notation. The idea/concept is either there or it isn’t. If it isn’t the performer(s) and I have nothing.

As for the connection to the titles of my work and the work itself, the literal connection is for me, solely. I don’t care to share that publicly or to anyone who is not performing my music. Mind you, they have to ask before I offer that information. To go further, I don’t want to blatantly dictate a listener’s experience by giving them too much insight toward my personal intentions. That’s for you and them to decide.



What are some current projects you are working on?

Current projects are:

cantos for oboe: for Vinicius Klos (Ensemble entreCompositores) August 22nd Paraná, BRA III Bienal Música Hoje closing concert

the presence of slumber:  for soprano and electric guitar: Amanda DeBoer Bartlett and Jesse Langen (Resonant Bodies Festival) September 10th, 7:30pm  Abrons Arts Center - Underground Theatre, NYC

the other is contained in the one (divisions of opacity): for string quartet w/ Austin Wulliman, Clara Lyon, Doyle Armbrust, and Russell Rolen (Spektral Quartet)  October 16th & 17th Chicago, IL

new work: for Ensemble Linea TBA Evanston, IL

i am the women of sabine. i no longer fear abduction.: for solo cello: Amanda Gookin TBA

new work: for International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) w/ New Music USA TBA



And the final question, the desert island list, what are the 5 pieces/composers (regardless of genre) that you would say have had the most impact on your life and career as a musician?

In no particular order:

Mahler- piano quartet 
Bartok-  music for strings percussion and celesta
Black Sabbath- megalomania
Leon Russell- stranger in a strange land
Lenny Williams- cause I love you

PS this was a very hard and unfair question ;)

Stock question, what made you decide to go into composition, and what led you to your particular aesthetic?


Growing up, I wanted to be an architect.  I played piano from an early age; looking back on it, I think I read music before I could read words, but I never considered myself a musician.  Despite my ego as a pianist, music was just an outlet for...something...but I never entertained the idea that I could pursue it with any seriousness.  I wanted to design buildings and houses and things that stood in the ground and space and lasted the test of time...

Following a hand injury in high school, I started writing music to fill the time while I couldn’t play piano.  Something clicked, and -- a bit on a whim -- I decided to apply to a few conservatories.  I think it was by accident that I fell into Oberlin.  I was never conditioned to be a composer: sure, I had a mentor teaching me the basics in high school as my hand healed, but I never quite reconciled how I arrived at that conservatory...

Designing structures in space, I think, wasn’t too different for me than writing music in time.  Once I understood that music has its own multiplicity of dimensions -- similar to, but stretching far beyond, architecture’s length, width and height -- I think that same urge to see structures exist in space drove me to compulsively write music.

I took quite a bit of time to find the voice that I write with now -- I was woefully unprepared for a life in music from the outset.  But, I can definitively point to those instrumentalists who supported me and guided me as the catalysts for my aesthetic direction.  Just like understanding the stresses and forces at play in designing a building, it took the passionate, open-minded, and patient players in my life to “show me the ropes” -- and then they showed me how to fight with the mitts off, too...these wonderful musicians have been (and continue to be) some of my closest friends and creative firestarters.



Your website describes your music as having “structural fractures,” which I think is an interesting description of form. Can you talk a little bit about what you mean by structural fractures why it is often an important element of your music?

This comes back to space for me -- in the same way an architect might think of it.  Time (and music’s particular demarcation of time: form) is analogous to physical space.  “Structural fractures” are exactly the same as those that might exist physically: cracks that disconnect two continuous parts, radical juxtapositions of materials, oblique connections of dissimilar facades...

In music, these “structural fractures” manifest in any number of ways.  Much of my music contains sudden “jumps” to similar-but-different material in a non-developmental fashion.  This is because many of the pieces I write realize huge portions of developmental material to “connect,” say, A to F in a logical fashion, but I’ve edited out steps C, D & E.  Sometimes I write minutes of music that I know from the outset will never make into a final draft of the piece -- they will be left on the cutting room floor.  Sometimes I sketch out huge chunks of music, but never realize portions of those sketches and move discontinuously between arbitrary points within them.

This is because I still have an obsession with following my developmental procedures.  I’ve never given that up; I think it’s my version of “being a good Catholic” -- I still hold some educational guilt (the “right” way to do things).

But, to chop out parts and sew the furthest reaches together?  That creates any number of interesting effects: drama, perplexity, frustration, sometimes apathy…

Lately, you’ll see some instances of these “structural fractures” represented in my music as “REDACTED” chunks within the scores -- huge silences that awkwardly bisect sections of my pieces.  Just like the institutionalized form of censorship (thick black lines blotting out sensitive portions of a document), the redactions in my music represent fully-realized materials that have been...well, censored.  The information is somewhere, but neither the performer nor the listener are privy to it.  Instead, silence stands in as an aural version of a black sharpie pen.


You also describe your music as having “striking dissonances” and “complex arrays of color.” When I listen to your music I often hear the pieces as transformations of clouds or blocks of timbres and colors, similar to Lachenmann’s musique concrete instrumentale or Varese’s use of timbral blocks of sound. Have these composers influenced you in any way, or do you feel that your use of timbre, color and dissonance as handled differently than Varese and/or Lachenmann?



I have always loved Varese; Lachenmann and I have an altogether more complicated relationship...

I think that Lachenmann’s obsession with history is inhibitive. He is a European who, as far as I can realize, sees himself as a reincarnation of Webernian ideals -- so many of his ilk are concerned with their place in the arc of some artificial (and highly territorial) history.  I hear it in his music; I think we all hear it in his music.  But, the sounds themselves are SO attractive that we’ve collectively ignored the restrictive qualities of his “historical consciousness.”  That is because, well...the sounds in his music ARE so attractive.  His music does so many things that others haven’t, and (more importantly in his mind) that others hadn’t.

Varese, on the other hand, was a character who decided to play with chaos.  He was a musical alchemist: methodically portioning out rationalized measures of X, Y or Z and seeing the reactions they produced when mixed together.  Structurally, I took many cues from him: “juxtapositional development” is, really, a fetal version of my “structural fractures”...but Varese also ventured to encapsulate the complex entirety of reality in a completely artificial medium: music.

When I think of the “complex arrays of color” and the “dissonances” in my music, I think of those bits that pick up a small handful of chaos and try to manipulate it, to replicate it, to forget and move against it.  There is an intrigue -- but also, maybe, a terror -- in building highly complex and unstable timbral profiles and, like Varese, attempting to repeat them, quickly retreating from them, and setting them in opposition to one another.

Varese often chose to repeat his chaos like a scientist: with subtle variation, thereby showing the multiplicity of the colors he pulled from the flames.  I take his cue at times, but more often these days I choose to repeat my chaos directly, identically, obsessively...

When playing with fire, though, you’ll never fully control the burn -- one cannot truly replicate chaos.  Still, in attempting to do so, I think that I’m trying to find the same complexity of color and shifting dimensions of sound that Varese sought to uncover...



Your music often has incredibly poetic titles (color boundaries and plastic action/red ground behind your eyes). What is the origin of these titles, and do your pieces have any programmatic undertones? Or do you view your titles as an abstract element of your music with little or no direct connection to the aural result?


For a few years now, I’ve collected words from various sources: poetry, literature, theory, etc...some of these have a very direct connection to aural components, but mostly this collection further abstracts my music.  Words and language operate in similar ways to music -- syntax, context, inflection -- but they also offer strengths and subtleties that differ as well.  I think what I’m after aesthetically rests somewhere between words and music as these nebulous, fleeting connections that don’t cleanly translate into either medium.  Each piece I write offers me an opportunity to attach a latticework of words (in titles, section headings, inscriptions, etc.) that may be considered with or against the sounds as they are.  Sometimes, like I said before, they go hand-in-hand; other times the words are dissonant or obstructive…

The poet Matthea Harvey’s work really started this practice for me.  I first found her collection Modern Life while aimlessly perusing the university library in Bowling Green.  The first poem in that collection hit me like a bus.  Honestly, it still does -- every time I read it.  I decided to begin stitching Matthea’s words into my music in a number of different ways, which led to a number of loosely-related pieces that all borrow from her poetry.  Altogether, seven pieces of mine directly reference Matthea’s work, with two of those pieces (as if to hold the hemispheres of their own heads together & the future of terror) actually setting entire poems.

Other poets have captured my attention since then -- Rochelle Hurt, Andrew Maxwell, Alan Gilbert -- and I even find myself pulling from novels that I am reading and noteworthy articles that pop up here and there.  Really, anything that propels the on-going monologues and commentaries in my music...


You’ve written, or are currently working on, a series of pieces that have similar titles, that being “__________ species.” Is this part of a cycle you are working on and is there a recurring theme between these pieces?

This is my “bestiary.”  It’s not a cycle in the traditional sense of the word, no, but all of the pieces do share common threads: animalism, hybridism, identity, ecology... There are currently five “species” in the bestiary -- invasive, flickering, carnal, radiant, and captive -- I don’t know if there will be more…

I tend to work in groupings or taxonomic collections of pieces that explore similar ideas and characters -- I think this is an extension of my word-collecting habit.  In particular, this bestiary is where I found myself after finishing my (only half-jokingly named) “meat cycle,” which consists of three complementary works for strings and examines the slaughterhouse from various points of view: process (machine), material (meat), identity (animal/beast), decay (waste).  I also confronted notions of “genre” with these pieces since each was written for a particular icon of instrumental chamber music: the string quartet (as antibiotics climb the blood’s bowl within the silence of no), the string trio (as a family of civilian ghosts phase-shifts through the fog lights), and the solo bass (the way of all flesh).

The bestiary is much more illustrative and, at least in its subtext, moralizing than the meat cycle.  Overall, the “species”-pieces tend to be less genre-conscious and more self-contained despite being concerned with many of the same themes as the “meat”-pieces.


Other than the “species” pieces do you have any upcoming collaborations or projects you’re working on?

I am just rounding out a large series of projects for trombonists Matt Barbier and Weston Olencki, who have become two of my closest friends and fiercest musical allies since moving back to California.  Additionally, Andy Costello and I will re-confront words in a musical way with a lengthy piece for speaking-pianist; I then undertake another major project, this time for the elusive gnarwhallaby paired with my most-respected and -loved partner-in-crime, Elise Roy.

For now, I have no idea how each of these future projects will relate to one another -- or even if they’ll relate...I’m just thrilled to work with this amazing line-up of young, ravenous players.



How would you describe the LA, and even more generally, the west coast new music scene in terms of activity and opportunities for performances and collaborations?

LA is a bit of a puzzle, in general.  It’s a city of immigrants, pilgrims, and other transplants that all seem equally at home and clearheaded in laying claim to the city.  More than any other place I’ve ever been, LA is a city that seems to belong to everyone simply because it belongs to no one: no common ancestry, no common accents, no common terrain.  Musically, this is the city that Schoenberg and Stravinsky both inhabited, as well as a nascent John Cage (...hell, Schoenberg taught Cage at UCLA and, himself, even died in LA).

Yet, at best, the city is only a footnote in music history because it has no singular history: it is too many things at once.

LA’s new music community today is the same: everywhere and everyone, nowhere and no one.  There are the conservatives, the minimalists, the experimentalists (in many senses of the word), the tonalists, the microtonalists, the noise-makers, the academics, the misfits...and even these borders are never clear.  Cross-breeding is endless as performers straddle the divides between each of these territories, and the city’s new music scene is seemingly less-and-less defined by its major institutions (universities, orchestras, etc.) as each day passes.  Most of us are relatively young and tend to gladly shrug off the stuffy politics of “tradition.”  The shows that I am most eager to attend generally take place in galleries or “DIY” spaces (a few are even literally underground).  After living here for only a year, the idea of the “concert hall” now makes me more than a bit uncomfortable...

...it’s also increasingly difficult to look in from the outside.  Many still seek to define LA by importing figureheads from New York and abroad -- by trading in “prestige” -- and, lately, they’ve been gaining traction.  However, this behavior is expected of the anachronistic organizations that underwrite LA’s cultural trade; they are a sort of rank-and-file old-guard: the critics, the orchestras, the foundations, and the blue-haired donors.  Despite how trendy these organizations try to be, I always feel like they’re spinning their wheels in this city by trying to put LA into a different place and time...

Maybe things will calcify in the future, maybe not...for the time being, everyone around to me just seems happy to listen.


What is your favorite bourbon?

Basil Hayden’s.

...are there others?



Desert island list, what are the 5 pieces/composers (regardless of genre) that you would say have had the most impact on your life and career as a musician?

Tobacco & the Black Moth Super Rainbow
Fausto Romitelli’s Professor Bad Trip series
Rebecca Saunders’ Molly’s Song 3
Underworld’s Second Toughest in the Infants
George Crumb’s Night of the Four Moons

[...and I’ll have you know that this last question damn-near killed me.]


For more information about Kur Isaacson and his music check out the following links:


webiste:kurtisaacson.com 
soundcloud:  https://soundcloud.com/k-isaacson


And listen to some of his tasty jams below

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

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.