Composers' Forum Spring 2019

As composers, the concept of social relevancy in our music comes up often. For film composers, we are often asked to underscore films that carry social commentary. It seems that art must be created to raise awareness for some social issue, always. at least to me, that is how it feels. Because of these art projects based in social change, often, people like to associate creators with the social extremes of the world. but what does this have to do with Jonathan Bailey Holland? I feel Mr Holland is an eloquent, and beautiful story teller, taking advantage of the music world to make his social commentaries the most effective.  This takes me to the piece “Synchrony.” While he never labeled it as a social commentary, the subject matter, performance, and mixture of live and recorded audio tells a different story. Sadly, in today’s world many people fear being labeled an “activist” as it is a heavily stigmatized word. Even I, if labeled an activist, would probably push back just a li...

ANNA CLYNE by Mikhaila Alyssa Smith "My passion is collaborating with innovative and risk-taking musicians, film-makers, visual artists and, in particular, choreographers. Creating new works through a fluid artistic dialogue has consistently fuelled my music from new perspectives and has maintained a fresh and exciting creative environment. Inspired by visual images and physical movement, my intention is to create music that complements and interacts with other art forms and that impacts performers and audiences alike." - Anna Clyne. Part of my personal creative process as a composer almost always involves having an image in my mind or having an image quite literally in front of me - whether it be through film, visual arts or literature. I have always been influenced by other art forms and I have always been absolutely fascinated and thrilled by the joining of those worlds to  convey a greater sense of meaning in music, so it was an absol...

deep data for real connection Since shortly after its inception, the computer has been used for nefarious means, whether it be calculating the launch of a torpedo with moving targets, or predicting what kind of advertisements will sell a product the most effectively. Data is naked and thanks to a computer, we may compile and organize data in such a way that its nakedness is illuminated. This illumination has been used to bring harm to others because it exposes necessary information. It becomes the responsibility of the computer engineer to decide what information is necessary to illuminate. Luke DuBois believes that good data elucidates and bad data anesthetizes, but all data reduces people to numbers. Remember, data is naked, and that nakedness exposes people as numbers, which may in turn illuminate patterns in their behavior. In a wonderful presentation by Luke DuBois, he cycles through a few different artistic representations of data which remind us that these illuminations c...

                  The visit from John Zorn was super interesting, and it was a nice change of pace to hear is rather raw, off the cuff, honest answers to the questions that he gave no matter what it was. He said a few things that were super interesting for me, and that was that he writes for friends because he wants the players that he knows for sure will give the most honest and intense emotional commitment to the music that they can and that the first performance of the piece is only the beginning, not the end of the process of shaping and molding the piece.                    The fact that he writes for players that he knows as opposed to players that he doesn’t know, is something that I think is very important. His preoccupation with getting the absolute best performance out of the players is not uncommon, but I believe it can be somewha...

How can music provide healing if it does not have the ability to heal its composer? How can music make a difference when money and politics are the only governing forces? How can music last for generations without the impacting ones feelings in some way or another? These are questions I have asked myself as a composer and songwriter. These are questions I have also asked of those who perform my music. During John Zorn’s lecturer, it was comforting in knowing that I am not the only composer who seeks to have others understand the emotional and intellectual side effects of music. Don’t get me wrong, while money and politics are very much needed for a work to be performed and to even establish a certain level or impact on the world, it is the feeling, energy, or vibe of the composer and performer that does most of the work in making a piece of music, a piece of music. Without energy, music means nothing. Because of this, in my opinion, while the composer may write a wonderful pi...

Josie Brechner What are the costs of 'irreverence'? I had a difficult time at the John Zorn lecture last week. Reflecting on it after the fact, I decided that it was principally because his views and approach to making art are so diametrically opposed to my own. From a basic standpoint, his general tenor and attitude were so dismissive and abrasive. So much so that at least one student felt uncomfortable enough to walk out. He dismissed entire groups of musicians as "lazy" and "weak", complained about unions in one breath while saying musicians need to stand up for themselves in the next, and said that his Masada performers were only playing his music correctly if they were straining or hurting themselves. Zorn never claimed to speak for anyone else but himself, but one can't help but wonder how less-than-receptive the industry would be to an artist acting in all these ways if they weren't a cis white man. When challenged on the privilege he ...

Go beyond your comfort zone I really enjoy the talk by Jonathan Bailey Holland on Monday. The works he presented to us are really diverse. I learn a lot from all of them. From his website, I read that Jonathan likes to get inspiration from classical, jazz, hip hop. I totally agree with it. I think being an composer, especially as a film composer myself. It is important to have a wide range of style in your portfolio and never stop exploring the other genres and try to go beyond your comfort zone. The first piece Jonathan shows us reminds me of the composer Alfred Schnittke, who are famous for polystylism. I love how Jonathan adapts different styles in the piece. He blends the atonal and tonal contents smoothly. The orchestration is colorful. There are some certain degrees of comedy aspect in the piece, which is quite different from the other stuff he shows in the class. The second piece, Radius Ensemble (2015) is my favorite one. He explains the concept of incorporating so...