Things continue to wind down, here at the Bennington Chamber Music Conference.  It’s going to be really hard to leave tomorrow and return to the day-in/day-out.  But, onwards we must go…

Today I took another little jaunt into the city of Bennington.  I wrote about my first excursion in my Day 4 post, but today I got to experience just a tad bit more.  In town, there’s the quite impressive Bennington Battle Monument.  It’s over 300 feet tall, shaped very similarly to the Washington monument, and you can take an elevator up to the very near top.  And at the top you can see some really very staggering views of the city, and if you’re looking eastward, you can actually see the hills of New York.  My knees felt a bit weak as well while I was up top, due to a fear of heights.  The actual space for viewing couldn’t have been more than 15 feet on each edge, and while visitors are quite enclosed in stone walls and a ceiling, foot wide windows in the walls that stretch from floor to at least 10 feet high, you can look down quite a ways.  And if, like me, you have a fear of heights, things feel a little dicey, that high up.

I also got to explore the cemetery of the Old First Church.  And it just so happens that Robert Frost is buried in this very cemetery.  Always sureal, really, going to a famous person’s grave.  I think the first famous person’s grave I ever visited was JFK’s, and there’s just something very strange about that, being so close to a famous person’s body.  As it was the same with visiting Robert Frost’s grave.  Very strange.  I just can’t explain with better words how strange a feeling it is, doing this.

Still, very nice all the same.  I haven’t set any of Robert Frost’s poems to music, but seeing his resting place inspired me to start to get to know his work a bit better.

Following all this, I got to have a nice chat with Donald Crocket.  We looked at my Wind Quintet and my reed trio, Le triangle d’or.  I’ve really treasured these moments, from working with the string quartet yesterday to my chat with Don today, to gain insight into another person’s insight into my music.  I’ve got notes taken, and I can’t wait to get back home (even though earlier I said it’ll be hard to leave tomorrow), to review them all again, to make some little tweaks to everything to make the music work just a little bit better.

As the day came to a close, the wonderful Janet Johnson organized a reading of my aforementioned reed trio, so we got to enjoy a kind of mini reunion with Hilary Major on oboe and Abby Wells on bassoon.  I conducted, as it’s a tricky piece, and Laura Schwendinger attended, too.  Throughout the whole thing, I explained how looking at this music didn’t seem so much a reflection of me, but more a window into a me of the past.  There were so many things that I simply just wouldn’t write today, like a ridiculous time signature like 2+3/5 when 2/4 followed by 3/4 would be so much clearer.  There were also some quite difficult arpeggiations in all three parts that were quite awkward, even on page, let alone under the fingers of those playing them.

Abby was very kind, though, when I told her about the things I wouldn’t write now.  She said, “You know what that’s called?  Growth!”

Indeed it is!

S0 here we are, on the eve of my final day here at the Bennington Chamber Music Conference in the beautiful state of Vermont, and I shall miss this terribly.

Until the time comes to leave, though, I don’t need to worry and rather instead enjoy this moment now.  So, I shall enjoy one last drink in Bingham to celebrate a glorious time!

There’s a different scent in the air, on this fifth day.  I already miss working with Martha, Hillary, Barbara, Abby, and Janet on my wind quintet.  They were such a fun group.  Still, the slightly slower pace is rather welcome.  I enjoyed a very relaxed morning, working on the blog a bit, catching up on email, and before I knew it, it was time for lunch.

At lunch I met up with some other fellow musicians who invited me to a rehearsal of their Dohnanyi sextet for clarinet, horn, violin, viola, cello, and piano.  It’s a wonderfully lush piece of music, perhaps a tad on the melodramatic side, but it’s a melodrama that wouldn’t be out of place in a silent film or anything by Alfred Hitchcock.

Following this, I was in for a real treat.  The first piece of music I wrote back in 2005 after starting grad school in Madison was my String Quartet subtitled “For a New Latitude,” a title that not only indicated I was working in a brand new city, but also because it represented a clear shift in my sound world.  Everything previous had been, well, pretty basic, square, and conservative.  But, now I felt that there were no limits, especially after becoming acquainted with the work of Ligeti, Crawford, and Crumb.  The problem, though, is that my name isn’t Ligeti, Crawford, or Crumb, so this terribly difficult piece has sat on the shelf since I finished up the fourth movement in early 2006.

It was marvelous returning to it, however.  The JACK Quartet had read through the second and third movements some years ago, but that was under very limited time without much time for questions and comments.  But, I was terribly grateful for that moment to at least finally hear some of it.  Today, however, I got to work with Andrea Schultz, Masako Tanagita, Kate Vincent, and Maxine Neuman, and I had a chance to listen to them read through all four movements.  And what a treat it was!

It was somewhat strange returning to this music, though.  It was like looking through a window rather than seeing a reflection in a mirror.  There are so many things in the music that I wouldn’t do now: using so much Italian, for example, in favor of just indicating metronome markings over allegro non tanto, frenetically switching back and forth between col legno, arco ord., and Bartok pizz. within the space of a couple measures.

Speaking of the Bartok pizz., my how I was in love with it!  So much so, in fact, that I feel I overused it, Don Crocket himself saying, “I think it’s better without the Bartok pizz.”  And I agreed absolutely, that it would be better if used sparingly and only at more dramatic moments.

But, again, what a treat it was to hear this music, and how fantastic it was to receive such helpful feedback from the performers.

So, that’s it.  Things are clearly already starting to wind down, sadly.  This isn’t to say there’s nothing left to do, only that the end is near, and we’re preparing for the moment.

I neglected in my post for Day 3 to mention how I took a moment to enjoy the quaint little town of Bennington, which is a few short miles outside Bennington College.  I was pleasantly surprised at how vibrant the downtown area was.  I enjoyed lunch at a wonderful little coffee shop called South Street Cafe and Bakery, ordering a curried chicken sandwich, cream of celery soup, and a latte.  There were also a number of shops along the main stretch, and as I walked by Jay’s Cards and Gifts, I noticed that they had displays of maple syrup.  Before I even arrived in Vermont, I was already on a mission to make sure to buy maple syrup while I was here.  (Because that’s obviously what you do when you come to Vermont.)  I decided to purchase a grading sampler of four syrups (Vermont Fancy, Grade A Medium Amber, Grade A Dark Amber, Grade B… basically a sampling going from lightest to darkest), and I can’t wait to give them a taste at breakfast some day.

A pleasant little town, Bennington.  It’s often nice to “get away from it all,” by escaping the large city for a jaunt into a country town.  Some of the locals seemed to think Bennington wasn’t something to write home about, and while I would agree that I don’t think I’d be able to stand the smallness of everything, the town’s definitely worth a visit.

The big news from my fourth day at the Bennington Chamber Music Conference, however, was the premiere of my Wind Quintet and Laura Schwendinger’s Wet Ink.  Both groups performed absolutely splendidly.  It was an interesting challenge, writing music for so-called amateurs, as it was a delicate balance of writing music that fit this order while also making sure that the music still sounded like me.  Even still, I was happy to discover that the music I wrote still stretched the performers.  While I could have chosen to write music that had nothing but quarters and eighths, for example, I felt that that would have been more of a kind of disrespectful dumbing down of the possibilities, and the musicians who performed would have probably just been bored.

At the same time, this whole project got me thinking about what it means to be an amateur musician.  I suppose it could mean that they are musicians who don’t make their living by being a musician.  Many of the performers at this conference are of really very high grade and could very easily make a living out of being musicians.  Instead, they’re doctors, lawyers, financial assistants, teachers, and so on.  It seems the wrong word to call them amateurs, though, as it seems like a pejorative.  I was speaking with someone who preferred the word non-professional, and that seem to sit better with me.  Still, it’s annoying to have to call these people by something that puts them on a scale.

Anyway, though, the performances of the Wind Quintet and Wet Ink were absolutely rock solid.  They performed with such confidence and grace and musicality that it would astound individuals everywhere.  I would have loved to have continued working with my performers for the whole week, to see how detailed we could get with the performance and how solid we could make the ensemble be, but I’m just still so impressed with the music we did make together in three short days, a total of 4-1/2 hours of rehearsals.  Many thanks to you all: Martha Somach on flute, Hilary Major on oboe, Janet Johnson on clarinet, Barbara Folb on horn, and Abby Wells on bassoon.

The other highlight of the day was the faculty concert in the Greenwall Auditorium.  The concert opened with the Hanns Eisler Duo for Violin and Cello, Op. 7, a cute little two-movement work.  I haven’t listened to much Eisler, but after listening to this performance, I must seek out more of the composer’s work.  The duo was well crafted, colorful, and a surprisingly wonderful treat.  The first movement was a capricious little mischievous bugger, finding a perfect balance between high drama and light hearted comedy between its fortissimo double stops to its pianissimo pizzicatos.  The second movement a kind of fughetta of sorts, both lines alternating between a jagged subject and a soaring countermelody.  This was followed by a perfectly splendid performance of the Eugene Bozza Contrastes II written in 1977.  I can’t praise the performers enough, but the less said about the actual music the better.  Bozza is just so, so square, and this music wasn’t worthy of the caliber of the performers.  Let’s just leave it at that.  (Well, I’ll just add that one of the movements was the boxiest tango I’ve ever heard.)  Fortunately, the program closed with Schubert’s “Trout” piano quintet, and what a treat it was to listen to this!  Such energy, such delicacy, such a tight ensemble.  This piece is just one of the pieces that’s difficult not to love.  And if you don’t love it, then frankly something’s wrong with you.

The evening closed with a wonderful little party in Bingham hall.  Simple hors d’oeuvres were available, and a sampling of beer, prosecco, and wine.  It was wonderful to catch up with many of the performers, and I was so happy to have the chance to try some local Vermont beers.  The state does rank #1 in craft brewing in the nation per capita, which is exciting.  So naturally, I’ve done two of the most important things here: buy some maple syrup from Vermont and try some beer from Vermont.

So, that’s excellent, then.

 

We creators of art tend to have, shall we say, colorful ways of saying things. I sometimes become aware of the language we use to describe certain musical ideas to the point where I suddenly understand how ridiculous things might sound to outsiders.

But, all too frequently, the words we do use to talk about what might be happening are absolutely spot on.

I was turning pages for Laura Schwendinger’s Wet Ink, and there are sections of the music where the instruments will perform one line of music, but the line is dispersed amongst the instruments. Schoenberg called it Klangfarbenmelodie, literally sound-color-melody. It’s basically an eloquent way of describing what I just described. Imagine, for example, taking your favorite melody (let’s just pretend it’s “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” for simplicity). A flute plays the part that goes, “Row, row, row your” (i.e. do, do, do, re) and a clarinet joins the flute on “your” and then continues the melody with, “boat, gently down the” (i.e. re, mi, mi, re, mi, fa) and a soprano joins the clarinet on “the” and finishes the phrase with, “stream” (i.e. fa sol). (She might continue on until, “Merrily, merrily, mer-,” and an oboe might join in on mer- and continue with, “-rily, merrily, life is but,” but hopefully you get the idea.)

Anyway, so there are these things in the Schwendinger where this sort of thing happens, except all in quick succession. The piano starts with a sixteenth note F-natural on a downbeat (or something, I can’t remember), the cello plays a sixteenth note C-sharp on the second sixteenth of the beat (or something, but you get the idea), the viola picks up the following sixteenths with G-natural and B-flat, and the violin finishes the following downbeat with an F-sharp. So a microcosm of the music, but imagine something like this happening for at least three beats or so, or sometimes for about one and a half measures.

We kept returning to rehearse these types of gestures, and whenever they came up, we started referring to them as “cascade things.”

Suddenly I feel like I’ve told a really, really long story in the hopes that the story would have a really, really funny punchline. But, I think that this is one of those moments where I’ve now realized that the story isn’t very good, as it now just comes down to, “Oh! By the way! I was sitting in rehearsal, and we kept calling Klangfarbenmelodie ‘cascade things’, and I suddenly become ultra aware of how funny that might sound to outsiders who just walked into the conversation, except I’ve just now realized that it’s actually not very funny at all.”

And now I’ve just realized that I’ve spent the better part of 45 minutes formulating everything up to this point in print, only to discover that this story isn’t very good, but that I’m going to post it to the blog anyway. I hope you’re not too disappointed.

So, anyway. Moving on.

Today saw another fantastic day at the Bennington Chamber Music Conference. Wet Ink is coming together marvelously, and today in rehearsal of my Wind Quintet, I was absolutely impressed with how quickly the music has started coming together. Yesterday we were all worried about trying to figure out where the beat was with notes tied across barlines and nothing happening on downbeats, but today there was a real, organic pulse that all the performers felt.

And real music began to develop today, too! They are all listening to each other, finding the perfect length for staccatos, learning how to comfortably fit five notes into a single beat without making it feel anxious, placing the mordents expressively, finding the most wonderful ways to play distant horn calls, and so much more. I really couldn’t be happier. It all just suddenly feels like so much has just gelled very quickly overnight.

I also got a chance to meet some of the other conference goers at a little get-together over sushi and prosecco. It was really very nice. I spoke to several individuals about their week thus far, told stories about bad page turning incidents (fortunately, I’ve never caused any major disruptions whenever I’ve page turned), learned about where some people were from and what else they do beyond music, and listened to stories about travelling to Venice and Turkey. It was also a nice opportunity to meet the board for a chance to thank them for a really wonderful week. And really, thank-you… for a really wonderful week.

Tomorrow in the Carriage Barn at 4:00pm shall see the premiere of my Wind Quintet and Laura’s Wet Ink in addition to performances by other groups on campus.It’s going to be a great show!

I’m not a morning person at all, as it happens (but this is nothing new).  I set my alarm for 7:00, thinking I’d wake up to have a proper breakfast and enjoy cups of coffee, mindful of how the bitter taste awakens the mind.  But, after over an hour of snoozing later, it occurred to me that breakfast was not to be.  So, when it really was time to get moving, I quickly made my way to the cafeteria, toasted a bagel and spread peanut butter on it, poured myself a cup of coffee, and ate my breakfast as I made my way up to the Carriage Barn for the first rehearsal of Laura Schwendinginer’s Wet Ink, for clarinet, violin, viola, cello, and piano.  The bitter of the coffee awakened me not over eggs and bacon, but over sonorous sounds of an expressively romantic cello and a violin whose pizzicatos were so beautifully resonant you could slap them between two pieces of bread and eat them for lunch, not to mention the quiet aggression of the viola, the anxious kvetching of the clarinet, and the expansive colors of the piano.

It’s really quite marvelous to be sitting with Laura again after my years absence from the UW, listening to her music in rehearsal.  It’s as if no time has passed at all.  Of course, lots of people say that about lots of things, but this is a case where such a statement shouldn’t be as empty as an actual cliche.

In addition to listening to the rehearsal of Wet Ink, I also got to work with Martha Somach on flute, Hilary Major on oboe, Janet Johnson on clarinet, Barbara Folb on horn, and Abby Wells on bassoon for my Wind Quintet.  I’ve mentioned on several occasions in previous posts how much I adore collaborating with others.  Frequently, it’s one of the most beneficial ways of learning how to do my own job just a little bit better.  It’s also just a wonderful way to interact with other people who share in our passion for creating.

And today’s interactions with these wonderful performers continues to reaffirm my love of collaborating.  First of all, it’s always quite rewarding to take a moment to come out from behind the piano to talk about the music I created (and in this instance I talked about the two characters in the piece: the nimble, mischievous gnome, and the floating, delicate faerie, even though these were merely analogies to help describe the secco lines introduced in the bassoon and the delicate grace notes introduced in the flute).  Second of all (but by no means in second place), it’s also so intriguing listening to what performers have to say about the music I wrote.

On this occasion, I had to giggle a bit when they all commented on my music about how there rarely are moments where things happen on the beat, to which I responded that that’s kinda my shtick.  I absolutely admired Martha’s attention to detail as she wrote into her part various cues and reminders for herself in order to help keep the ensemble together.

What absolutely impressed me, though, was how quickly the ensemble came together.  They were working with some relatively difficult music, but they all seemed to find the pulse very, very quickly.

Seriously.

It felt like they had been playing together for years, and I was so surprised to discover that they had only just arrived together as a group for the first time mere minutes before I arrived.

But, what I learned on this occasion was that I make my parts too small.  I frequently forget that poor eyesight has yet to fall upon me (and it will), so I frequently assume that if I can read the part, then everyone can read the part.  It may also have to do with the fact that when I create parts that I stare at them pretty closely (stooped over them, rather, with back bent horribly archlike toward the desk), and I forget that cellists tend to have to look at parts at somewhat of a distance.

So, good to know.  And I must remember this for next time.

Terribly excited to see what tomorrow brings!

(I do see time blocked off in my schedule for sushi and prosecco, so that’s enticing, to be sure.)

I’m writing now from Bennington, VT, and it’s the end of the first day at the Bennington Chamber Music Conference held here at Bennington College. Getting here was a bit of an adventure, but it was all worth it in the end. Fortunately, you can remove any fly from any ointment, and the ointment still works fine. While well over half my day was spent trying to arrive, sometimes the adventure is in the chase…

I was supposed to leave Minneapolis by 5:50am this morning, but my United Airlines flight from MSP to O’Hare was nearly an hour late due to a tardy inbound crew. Unfortunately, this mean I would miss my connection in O’Hare to Albany, NY. So, as soon as a man arrived at the ticket counter, I got right in line to figure out what I could possibly do. There was a lady in front of me who beat me in the line, but thankfully a second person arrived at the counter, and she was able to help me. To my astonishment, however, the lady who beat me in the line had the exact same problem I had.

It all was very genial, though. The U.S. Airways staff were very accommodating, booking us on a different itinerary and on planes that were actually booked to capacity. While the lady who helped me told me the wrong gate number for the new outbound flight (and since I have a difficult time trusting people anyway, unless I know them very well, I made sure to double check the gate number), I managed to arrive at the correct gate number.

The lady–whose name I later found out was Laurie (perhaps it’s spelled Lori?)–marveled at the predicament and how quickly United solved it. While the woman at the counter of our new carrier, U.S. Airways, seemed a bit annoyed that United booked us on a now oversold flight, she seemed happy to help us out, mainly because, I imagine, we were organized and arrived quite early and had our stuff together.

What was all so wonderful about this whole set of circumstances, however, is that I had the most wonderful conversation with Lori (or is it spelled Laurie?). We spoke about what I did, and we spoke about what she did. I said I was off to a chamber music festival, and she said she was off to a yoga class. Turned out, she was into the exact kind of yoga that I’m into: the kind that treats yoga as a mind/body experience, rather than just a body experience… a kind of mindful yoga where instead of using the breath as your anchor, you use whatever muscle groups you’re using in a certain pose as your anchor.

We talked about how I’m not very religious, but how we both admire certain Buddhist beliefs, partly because they’re not necessarily beliefs, more scientific facts that indicate, without a doubt, that mindfulness has the same rejuvenating power as sleep. (Yes. A fact. Look it up.) Buddha was essentially an atheist anyway, so Buddhism seems a perfect philosophy for atheists like me to delve into. (Granted, some sects of Buddhism do get a bit weird, though, as in large tenets of Islam and Christianity and a host of other bizarre persuasions, but I’ll stick to the portions of Buddhism that actually do make logical sense.)

It was all very nice, though, this conversation. And it would never had happened had that United staff been on time to their jobs. A wonderful coincidence, naturally. The universe is so massive and so large that of course improbably things like two Buddhists (or whatever we were… two people of similar minds, I suppose) bump into each other in a way such as this. Some people call it fate. But, it’s just chaos happening.

Anyway, our new itinerary took us from MSP to Philadelphia, and then from there to Albany. And Philadelphia (where it’s always sunny, apparently) has a much nicer airport to Chicago’s awful, horrible, sprawlish O’Hare. Plus I’ve only been to Philadelphia once before (whereas I’ve been to Chicago several times I’ve lost count… I do love that city, mind, I just never want to live there), and that was only very briefly, so it was nice to see Philadelphia’s skyline again to reacquaint myself with a city that I have a feeling I would adore.

It was also so nice because Lorrie (or is it Lory?) and I rode the shuttle to the correct terminal together, sat next to each other to wait for our flight to Albany to board, shared cookies, and just generally had a wonderful time becoming acquainted. I gave her my card, she shared me the names of some yoga resources in the Cities, and she became the most “single serving friend” (as Tyler Durden would say).

If that wasn’t perfect enough, I organized a ride from Albany to Bennington via an individual named Erin, who was equally interesting, very easy to talk to, who had remarkably similar political beliefs (it’s rare to bring up politics so early on in a relationship of any kind), and who spoke in the most natural tangents conceivable. Remarkable.

And if this still didn’t just make my day, the campus on Bennington is just absolutely gorgeous. I’ve been yearning for quite some time now to have serious, uninterrupted time to compose and work with musicians, and this campus is a perfect place to do that. It’s a campus unlike any other campus I’ve ever set foot in. It feel more like a kind of old military base that quartered soldiers, complete with open lawns for various routines for them drill. (I don’t mean this pejoratively, by the way.) The buildings in the area of campus that I’m spending most of my time are old, wooden, house-shaped buildings, painted white, like old homes on farmsteads. There’s definitely something very New Englandish about this place. I could possibly imagine a campus like this existing in Minnesota. It just wouldn’t fit. Bennington’s campus is a campus for Vermont.

And the views of tall hills! The smells of crisp, late summer air!

But most importantly, what a wonderful group of musicians! So genuine, kind, warm, and welcoming.

It’s also so wonderful to see my old teacher, Laura Schwendinger, again.

I’m really looking forward to this week of music making and music creating, in the hills of rural Vermont. It’s the first time I’ve set foot in Vermont (it was also the first time I’ve set foot in New York), and it’s absolutely splendid.