Upcoming Concert in NYC

If you're in New York on November 22nd, please come and hear this marvelous trio (Eight Strings & a Whistle - flute, viola and 'cello) perform at the Tenri Cultural Institute. They will perform "... and nothing remains the same." More information about the concert is available at this link:

http://eightstringsandawhistle.com/in-concert/upcoming.html 

Another Primitive YouTube Video

This is a digital demo performance of my recent work for orchestra, completed in early 2013. It is an eight minute piece in one movement. Samsara is a concept common to Hinduism and Buddhism; it is the realm or cycle of suffering in which all beings in the universe participate and which can be escaped only through enlightenment. Samsara is presided over by Yama, the wrathful god of death. Beings are driven by the three poisons: delusion (ignorance of their true nature, represented by a pig), attachment (desire or greed, represented by a bird), and aversion (anger or hatred, represented by a snake).

There are seventeen photos used in the video. As far as I can determine most are in the public domain and appear in numerous sites on the internet without attribution. Here is the list of exceptions, which are used under the indicated Creative Commons licenses:

Photos 5 & 6: BY-NC 3.0 by RigpaWiki.org, site of Rigpa Shedra  -- Nepal
Photo 7: BY-NC-ND 2.5 AU by ccdoh1 (Flickr name... can't determine the actual name) -- Australia
Photo 8: BY-NC 2.0 UK by Wllcome Library -- England
Photo 9: BY-NC-SA 2.0 by Maren Yumi Motamura -- Brazil

If anyone can demonstrate that a photo has been used improperly please contact me via my web site (johnnewellmusic.com). I will be happy to make any necessary changes.

Reflections on Summerkeys 2012

Summerkeys is a music program for adult students, located in Lubec, Maine. I just finished my first summer on the faculty as piano teacher, coach and accompanist. What an experience! Students come from all over the country (and a few from Europe as well) to study and practice intensively for a week or more.

Summerkeys was founded and is directed by Bruce Potterton, who began it twenty years ago as a program for piano students. Since then its scope has expanded quite a bit. Programs are offered for string and wind instruments, voice, composition, and even celtic harp and mandolin. There are programs in photography, visual arts and creative writing as well. Program details are at Summerkeys.com.

The level of Summerkeys students ranges from beginner to advanced. No audition is necessary, and students of all levels are welcomed and valued.

Bruce has put together an incredible faculty of top notch musicians who are dedicated to teaching. They do a wonderful job of identifying each student's needs and presenting ideas and techniques that students can work on in their studies during the year. For more information visit summerkeys.com.

All Summerkeys students bring a love of music and a high level of motivation. It is quite inspiring and gratifying to work with them. Each week it was great fun to meet and work with students of an incredible variety of backgrounds and experiences.

New students should come prepared for an intense week of lessons, practice and music making. Some returning students now spend more than a week in Lubec so that they can enjoy the local sights and other activities like hiking, whale watching, relaxing by the bay. Also, I've discovered that students form quick bonds with each other. Quite a few return year after year to be with the friends they have made at Summerkeys. A piece of advice to students: set reasonable goals as to what you would like to accomplish during the week.

The closing Friday night performance class (we do not call it a recital) is always very inspiring for me. By the way, the audience (your peers) is always incredibly supportive. Everyone is in the same boat! Some students are performing for the first time ever. Playing a solo in the performance class is not required, but I found that it is a good opportunity to try out what one has learned during the week.

The faculty concert on each Wednesday evening is another highlight of the week. I had a great time performing with fellow faculty members cellist Kathleen Collison and violist Margret Hjaltested.

My training in composition

What was my training as a composer? I've tended to think that it was pretty traditional (I mean, traditional for the time). Was that true? Actually, no. Was I self taught? In some ways, yes.

The most traditional academic part of my training was as an undergraduate at Duke, where I studied theory, history, piano; but with only a semester of orchestration and two semesters of conducting. I really don't remember if I formally studied composition with Iain Hamilton. Upon reflection, I think that the answer is no. I was on my own, and completed a couple of pieces as an undergraduate, a piano solo work and a piece for brass quintet, inspired by Stockhausen's Momente.

Instead of pursuing the Ivy League (Yale, Columbia, Princeton -- post-Webern) or the Conservatory (Eastman, Juilliard -- more traditional craft-oriented) paths, I went to CalArts, then in its second year of existence. California… that was a different experience. Interestingly, my composition teacher was Mel Powell, from Yale and a member of the Ivy League school. I rarely had lessons. Mel was too involved as Dean of the School of Music in organizational issues. I have great respect for him, but remember mostly his classes in analyzing Webern works. I do remember hearing for the first time music of Steve Reich, Terry Riley and Phillip Glass at CalArts. "California" composers Harold Budd and Jim Tenney were also on the faculty, but I didn't formally work with them. In fact, I didn't formally work with anyone -- just absorbed a lot. Students were pretty much on our own. It was tough for the undergrads, but having gained the basics in theory, piano, etc. it was much easier for me as a grad student, especially as I was fairly self-directed. I have always felt that, at its heart, education is about growth, exploration and learning, not about preparation for a career.

Then SUNY at Buffalo. Mel was evidently a friend of Morton Feldman, one of the ultimate non-academic composers. Morty had just been named Edgard Varese professor at SUNY. The piece that got me into SUNY, I believe, was what one might term a "minimalist" piano piece - it was a study in changes of register and density, based on a simple scale and chord set. Morty was what I consider my only real teacher. What I learned from him:

listen, and trust your ear. (The "urgency of now." I'm not sure where that phrase comes from, but it is on my mind this morning.) One of the very profound things I remember him saying about composition: "choose your poison."

I had lessons at his apartment. My strongest memory is of him hunched over the piano (his eyesight was very poor), looking at the music paper in front of him, playing and listening intently to chords and single notes at the piano. He lived in the world of each piece as it unfolded. As he completed a page of score he would tape it to a bedroom wall, in sequence with the previously completed pages, so that he so he could stand and "walk through" the piece, looking at it closely, to see it unfolding. His trust in himself was terrific. As he completed composing a page of music he would immediately copy it (in ink and on vellum). Actually, I now do somewhat the same in many works. When I trust what I have done, which is usually pretty quickly, I begin "copying" it. Today that means putting it into my notation software. And yes, I still have my ink pens and black ink, even many pages of blank vellum that I will probably never use (never say never).

I have never belonged to any "school" of composition. There are so many these days. In our world it is almost impossible to escape the multiplicity of styles and approaches. Yes, I was influenced by Morty's style for awhile; my own style evolved, though I think that my works still reflect his intuitive approach, of using the ear. It may be hard to pin down my "style" if you listen to more than one of my works, or even more than one movement of a given work. There might appear to be different styles being used in the same work. But it is always a question of my intent, my inspiration, and using what I need in order to accomplish my intent at a given moment. The variety in my works displays different aspects of my sensibility, identity and experience.

If one asked, I would say that these are the composers who have made the greatest impression on me:

Stravinsky

Debussy

Schoenberg

Feldman

Hildegard von Bingen

Beethoven

And now Schubert

There are of course many more.

A Composer's Journey Into Technology

This is an article I wrote in October, 2010 for The Advocate, a weekly newspaper in Berkshire County, Massachusetts. It describes briefly my experience with music technology. The original title was A Composer's Descent Into Technology. Moments of joy, moments of rage, moments of glimpsing the way into what may become a new path for me.

The Classical Beat

By JOHN NEWELL

A COMPOSER’S JOURNEY INTO TECHNOLOGY

My friend Stephen Dankner invited me to share with you the tale of my recent journey into technology, and the questions that it raises about music and our experience of it.

Last fall I presented a concert of my works, and had planned to feature a recently completed string quartet. I learned, though, that it’s tough to get four string players together to rehearse and perform a challenging piece unless they already play together as an ensemble. The concert proceeded without the quartet.

But I really wanted to hear my quartet. So I decided: I’ll perform it and record it myself – digitally. Some background: I am a 60ish composer who still uses pencil and manuscript paper. I wasn’t particularly drawn to “electronic music.” But I’m aware that technology has indeed progressed. Could I create a performance that would satisfy me and that others could appreciate?

So I went back to school, taking an online course through Berklee College of Music in digital music production. Immediately I was in another world. My teacher was a composer for TV and movies who lives in LA. Fellow students included an Italian guy with his own rock band and production studio, and one in Tokyo whose class project was a potato chip commercial.

Keep in mind that digital music production is the norm in commercial music. For example, when watching Nova or nature documentaries you’re not hearing real orchestras. You’re hearing digitally produced music. What makes the sounds realistic, at least to the casual listener is that they use libraries of “samples,” recorded snippets of real instrument sounds.

Composers who make their living creating this music invest many thousands of dollars in software and hardware to get the most realistic sounds. They don’t use pencil and paper to “write” the music, but largely play into the computer using a digital piano keyboard.

My final project wasn’t the quartet, but an arrangement of a favorite gospel tune. First I laid down the piano part; then the drum track (a first for me), and had to decide from among dozens of choices which drum sound I wanted. I chose a straightforward acoustic-sounding drum set – not the ones dubbed “Crack” or “Mongoose.” Then the electric bass track. I sang the vocals myself, and jazzed it up with an alto sax line.

Recording the parts and editing them (e.g. altering tempos, dynamics, note lengths) were easy. Next came the audio production, all the things that real recording engineers do. I was astonished at the jargon and the mind-numbing number of options available for getting the right mix, reverb and “plug-in” effects. I learned to ignore what I didn’t need. Then there was equalization, compression and mastering, to achieve the right acoustic presence. OMG! My learning curve was steep, and included the realization that I needed a more powerful computer, really.

Now I've launched into the quartet. I create the performance by playing each instrument on the keyboard and then, often with a digital pencil tool, drawing and shaping elements like volume, attack, and tempo. Various randomize functions serve to "humanize" the performance, in terms of variations in tempo, tuning, and note lengths.

I’m having fun. Why? Because my ears enjoy the workout. Since I’m also a performer I take pleasure in getting just the right attack on a note or making a diminuendo in the cello sound just how I would actually play it. Plus I have control. I get just the tempo I want (and I’ve discovered places where I wrote the wrong tempo in the score). Everyone plays in tune to the degree that I want.

But there are questions. Is the effort worth the cost? No denying, hearing a digital performance is not the same experience as sitting 25 feet away from group of accomplished musicians. But can a digital realization stand on its own? I at least have a decent representation of the work, but how satisfying might it ultimately be for the listener?

How far am I willing to go in terms of both time and money to get as close as possible to the sound of live performers? As a composer of concert music I think there is a limit, and I don’t intend to stop working with musicians. For I’m a musician myself, not just a “composer.”

How do listeners hear it? Is it worth listening to? It may depend on your ears as well as your expectations. I’ve posted sample audio clips of the string quartet movements on my web site. Click on Catalog of Works, then on Chamber Ensemble. The quartet is the first work on that page. I invite you to listen and tell me what you think.

John Newell is a composer living in Pittsfield. Send your comments to him at jnewell384@gmail.com. His web site is www.johnnewellmusic.com. Stephen Dankner will return next week.