Photography by Tom Hayes

The blog responses to Justin Davidson’s provocative piece, “The New New York School” from March 20, 2011 in New York Magazine—an appraisal of the music of several young New York composers—are so far coming down almost unanimously against Davidson’s thesis that our contemporary inclusiveness gives young composers nothing to rebel against, leaving their energies scattered and ultimately diluted, no matter how much energy the pieces exude on their surfaces. He is called out as being an old school modernist, entrenched in a decrepit idea—that making something new requires rejecting the formerly new.

More mixed is the response to the assertion that much of the music from the New York composers in their thirties, which he dubs the “New New York School”, ultimately sounds the same. Depite challenges to Davidson’s ability to evaluate this sameness, I think it can be said that determining a salience of similarity is more of a statement of personal perspective than literal fact. All composers and pieces are obviously literally different, but generally they can also (eventually, at some reductive level) be seen as similar too. In Davidson’s case he’s interested in the similarities of the music of this particular scene. And one similarity he hears is a neither-here-nor-there absence of motivational direction. He says, “[the] composers seem muffled, bereft of zeal.”

He then connects this personal reaction to a conundrum in our current lives: we have access to and openness towards everything, which is sometimes like having everything but sometimes like having nothing. He says this group of composers “seems disoriented by its own open-mindedness“ and that the results of their “nonsectarianism” are “shockingly tame.”

Critics are supposed to connect dots to a bigger story and if Davidson feels that something is missing in the musical zeitgeist of this time he is supposed to point it out. Of course the composers are supposed to refute and ultimately ignore this. But the critic’s assessment is not based upon the composers’ opinions, or even their intentions, but rather his or her experience. In his follow up comments, Davidson admits he was expecting to write a ringing endorsement but he actually, as a listener, found the music somewhat lacking. It may not be your feeling, but it was/is his.

The one line that probably sparked the biggest reaction was the last: “What they badly need is a machine to rage against and a set of bracing creative constraints.” And the blogosphere heaves an eye-rolled sigh, exclaiming rhetorically, “Aren’t we past this kind of thinking?”

—–

The blowback from this, I think, interestingly highlights a significant cultural paradigm shift. The thirty-somethings of today (of which I am one) are the second generation of the everything’s-okay, no-style-can-hold-us ethos. For us this thinking is more normal than revolutionary, though we don’t take it for granted—I think we still own our omnivorous tastes with (probably unnecessary) pride and even a sort of left-over fervor that our parents’ generation has relaxed on. If the next generation ends up taking it for granted, it will be because the core ideal of nonsectarianism has almost complete ascendency now, even in the stodgy, unfashionable halls of academe.

My undergraduate composition teacher, David Vayo, told us that when he was in school the composition students would get together and do their own thing away from the presumably close-minded gazes of their teachers. I think he was disappointed when he found out we weren’t secretly meeting in such cabals, developing our own rebellious faction. But how could we? He was leading us in improvisational games where people crawled around on the floor and blustered lip-raspberries into the wrong end of a euphonium. There was nothing off the table left to be secret about.

His mild disappointment in our lack of conspiritoriality somehow lines up with Davidson’s thesis in my mind. I’m sure that David’s experience of the bond between young composers having to strongly and vividly assert their view point was a powerful experience. Whatever conflicts (real or imagined) existed to them must have helped sharpen their focus and redouble their conviction. Ironically the power of their vision led to the open-minded future they wanted and subsequently (unintentionally) denied their students the opportunity to similarly respond.

There is something different about this world where everything goes. We, the thirty-somethings, seem to largely be ardent believers of the new order and we readily shoot down dissent, but, as with anything relatively new, there are aspects and consequences of the changes in culture that we can’t yet fully anticipate or understand.

—–

In his follow up comments, Davidson says that today is, “one of those scary and exciting transitional periods when conventions have fallen away and are difficult to replace.” In other words, the last ardent rigor (which one was that now?) has dissolved into transition. And Judd Greenstein, one of the composers under discussion, couldn’t be happier to agree in his response. He sees no problem in this dissolution and in fact welcomes the end of this historical narrative which perhaps never really existed in the first place. Greenstein’s blog and others as well form a kind of chorus of agreement: “We don’t need to invoke a separate Other in order to define ourselves.”

This is, as I was saying, the essential reasoning of our generation and I, for one, can’t fault it. But I can also appreciate that resistance and conflict can be a powerful crucible not only in helping one define oneself, but also in inspiring urgency in that self-discovery. I think becoming the best composer you can be is, to some degree, a process of uncovering yourself and maybe it’s true,to an extent, that it’s hard to get as deep inside yourself as you want to go without some external pressures to reckon with.

But, just to take one example, in today’s composition teaching, everyone that I know teaches toward the student’s core individual aesthetic and not towards a single, universal aesthetic. As a teacher, the goals of [1] challenging students to grow while simultaneously [2] being receptive to whatever it is they are trying to do (whether you like it or not) aren’t contradictory, but sometimes there is some tricky balancing. The point is that teachers today work hard to reach around significant aesthetic differences with their students rather than lean into them.

That’s not going to change soon and I personally wouldn’t want it to. And I don’t think Davidson is advocating that either, but his central point—that composers of my generation haven’t met with substantial resistance in terms of defining their voice—still has a ring of truth to me.

I think the push-back assumes that Davidson is advocating some kind of reactionary return to days when teachers forced students to write a certain way and powers-that-be shut out promising young artists. But I don’t read his article that way. I see him starting from his experience in recent concerts and extrapolating to a larger question about how we arrive a vital sense of who we are such that we can powerfully express that sense of self in today’s new cultural environment. Granted this could have been done more circumspectly, but he wasn’t writing a book: he was wrapping up a 1000 word column filled mostly with review-type specifics. And beyond being a passive Chamber of Commerce-like spokesperson or assuming a sort of patronizing role as interpreter between a supposedly inarticulate artist and a supposedly unimaginative public, what is the critic to do other than speculate broadly about things that point to larger cultural issues?

I could be wrong, but I prefer to assert my own version of reality and read his text in a way that makes sense with my world vision. Let’s chalk it up to my generation’s mandate to be both self-absorbed and radically inclusive.

—–

In adding my voice to the online response to Justin Davidson’s, “The New New York School” I considered his suggestion that composers face new challenges in the recently evolved paradigm that he calls nonsectarianism—the oppression of too much freedom. My initial (conditioned?) response of disagreement was in-step with other writers, but further reflection led me to feel that the issue isn’t entirely obvious and there was at least sufficient reason to pose the question. After all, as I asserted in closing, posing challenging, provocative broad cultural questions would seem to be a critic’s most important job.

But I think critics get into trouble when they move from assessing into advising, and Davidson’s closing line about artists needing a machine to rage against reads to a composer like unwanted advice, whether or not it was intended that way. At the Musik der Jahrhunderte festival in 2009 in a public panel, my wife, composer Karola Obermueller, got into it with a critic regarding collaboration in contemporary opera. The critic had constructed a narrative that said that “real” collaborative opera would look radically different from what we see today and that no one was actually doing what he thought should be done (which he then tried to specify). But I would assert that laying out blueprints for the future is the wrong approach for a critic. He envisions some kind of magical “newness” and wants to be the forward-thinking guy who predicted it would happen before it did, leading the artists by the hand to the pot at the end of the rainbow.

But if anything that’s antagonistic to the creative process. Creators have to stumble onto things on their own. Otherwise they can’t totally own it. So we can critically access all we want, but if there is a problem in the musical culture it’s up to the musicians to fix it, to find a way through. They’re the ones who have to imagine, write and perform us into the future. And they’ll have to do it on their own time as it comes.

As a composer I feel I can’t legislate innovative pieces out of myself any more than I can promise myself I’ll write great masterworks. I have to write the piece in front of me and see what happens. I’m not saying that the composer is without any agency at all, but I do think composers (at an artistic level) are largely powerless to determine the cultural relevance and impact of their work. The one aspect of control I think a composer has is her ambition. But ambition isn’t at all synonymous with progressivism or experimentalism or grandiosity or really much of anything, I guess, other than work ethic, determination and bravery. I think the composer has to write her passion with wild unashamed intensity and let the chips fall where they may.

As an audience member I feel like I don’t ever expect the “next great thing” to happen out of a new piece, but I’m hoping it might happen anyway. I’ll not be surprised when I feel like a piece is only okay, or that it’s like other stuff I’ve heard before. I’ll not be surprised if it’s muffled or lacking zeal. But there is always the opportunity for remarkable things, lovely things, audacious things to burst through, often in fits and starts, sometimes even a whole piece front-to-back. And the possibility for the extraordinary remains tantalizing. I’ll bet Justin Davidson feels the same way.

Photography by Tom Hayes | www.tom-hayes.com

Casting a Rolls Royce Silver Cloud from 1956. Photo by m:con Agentur Mannheim

By Paul Michael Coleman

Paul Michael Coleman: I am delighted to have Marios Joannou Elia with me here at the Royal Festival Hall in London. Marios, an internationally acclaimed composer for his pioneering and visionary works, composes not only for concert halls and opera houses, but also for large-scale multimedia events. Marios, I read in the press that your guitar music has been recently performed in two festivals in Poland, in Nysa and Wroclaw, in fully booked concert halls ending with standing ovations. Last Monday you had a piano piece performed by Michael Finnissy during the “New Works Festival” in Southampton. You are now here in London working in the studio for a new composition that is going to be premiered beginning of January. Afterwards, end of January, follows a premiere of your work “Cicadas” in New York City, at the Steinway Hall. And of course, you have being continuously working on the huge spectacle “autosymphonic” for 250 musicians. For this 2-Million-Euro event, you are the general music manager as well. This is just an example of what you are currently doing – how do you manage all this?

Marios Joannou Elia: It is a matter of self-organization and endless working process. The projects I am especially interested in, like “autosymphonic”, have a high-qualitative musical character that is eminently motivating. Moreover, I am interested in bringing music, in an unconventional and contemporary way, towards a responsive audience. In the case of “autosymphonic”, 16.000 spectators are expected, which is a huge responsibility for my team and myself. This requires an active engagement, both in creating the music but also during its realisation.

Paul Michael Coleman: Your signature is that you use vehicles in your music in a highly extensive manner. Is it difficult to work with such ‘instruments’ and how did all begin?

Marios Joannou Elia: I employ vehicles in a very systematic and musically complex manner. The machinery alone does not provide me with a particularly artistic per-spective. It has to be extensively investigated before being applied in the music. Be-sides, this is how the works are composed – in juxtaposition with, for example, a symphony orchestra and a choir. In 2003 I was working on a composition specifically written for the space of the Volkswagen Transparent Factory in Dresden. I wanted to use the entire main hall of the factory in the music, thus providing a number of practical difficulties, such as the coordination of the musicians that were placed everywhere in the space and in dif-ferent heights. Then, I thought that the VW Phaeton car that is manufactured there was the perfect machine to achieve this. So it was primarily applied as an assisting component for the conductor, but also for a variety of musical applications. Furthermore I make use of bicycles, Harley-Davidson motorcycles, shipping and aviation elements. In 2008, in the opera “The Hunt”, I have employed six cars such as an Aston Martin, a Jaguar and a Ford Mustang as part of the plot as well as part of the musical instrumentarium.

Paul Michael Coleman: Tell us about your music that you are now developing here in London.

Marios Joannou Elia: These days I have been working in the studio with audio pro-ducer Nick Elia creating a trio for cars: a Mercedes-Benz SLS-AMG from 2010, an old-time Aero 6218R from 1934, and for the first car ever built, the patented tricycle by Carl Benz from 1886. This is the most complex musical piece I have to date com-posed, in which the interactivity between the automobiles and their performers is highly coalesced. The three automobiles will be performed by an ensemble of 14 percussionists. The car trio is an integral part of “autosymphonic”. It will be premiered on January 6th 2011, celebrating the New Year in the city of Mannheim in Germany, in Rosengarten Concert Hall.

Paul Michael Coleman: Tell us bit more about “autosymphonic” and the employment of the automobiles…

Marios Joannou Elia: It is a one-hour symphony, consisting of a large orchestra, choir, two vocal ensembles, percussion ensemble and electronics. In addition to this, I am employing a car orchestra of 80 automobiles, including old-timers, super sport cars, limousines, tracks, busses, tractors etc. Since May I began casting numerous types of automobiles all over Germany. To date I have cast circa 120 cars of all types and ages, including Rolls Royce, Ferrari, Mercedes-Benz, Porsche, Maserati and Cadillac. The music will involve a scenery construction of laser, lights, videos, urban screening, LED projections, etc. The symphony is especially commissioned for the 125th anniversary celebration of the car in Mannheim, Germany and is going to be the highlight event of the so-called “Automobile Summer” in Baden-Württemberg.

Paul Michael Coleman: So Marios, when and where will “autosymphonic” be pre-miered?

Marios Joannou Elia: On the 10th of September 2011, in the central square of Mannheim. It will be an open-air production in which the latest technological devel-opments will be applied, but also new ones have to be specifically developed, in order to enable a three-dimensional acoustical irradiation. For example, the 360-degree spatialization system will produce a holographic effect of the music projection. Hence, the square will be transformed in an ‘arena’ of musico-visual events.

Paul Michael Coleman: Is it a central feature in your work to reflect the technological development within music in respect to the evolution of the car as a burgeoning multimedial functional apparatus?

Marios Joannou Elia: I do follow the developments of the automobile culture in the conceptual sense, however I reflect it in an idiosyncratic artistic expression. The issue of interaction between humans and machines is of central meaning in my work and it also finds multifarious application in “autosymphonic”. Current and future-oriented technological developments show the high degree of amalgamation between the two elements. On the one hand, the automobile behaves autonomously with human mannerisms. On the other hand, humans adopt machine-like features. In both situations a form of hybridism occurs. In this context, the aspect of hybridism is essential in my music.

Paul Michael Coleman: Thank you very much, Marios, for a highly enlightening dis-cussion.

Herr Oswald, warum ein Festival für Neue Musik in der Abgeschiedenheit der steirischen Berge? Woher kommt die Motivation, was sind Ihre Ziele?

Peter Oswald: Das Gesäuse ist eine magische Region, ein fantastischer Ort dessen musikalische Implikationen bereits im Titel anklingen. Als ich zur Programmierung des Festivals eingeladen worden bin, habe ich sofort ja gesagt.

Inhaltlich spannen die Konzerte des Festivals einen weiten Bogen um ein Repertoire, das vom Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts bis in die unmittelbare Gegenwart reicht. Welche Schwerpunkte setzen Sie als künstlerischer Leiter in der Zusammenstellung der Programme?

Peter Oswald: Das Arcana Festival ist ganz bewusst als Festival konzipiert, dass zur Repertoirebildung der Moderne beitragen will. Wir verzichten nicht auf Uraufführungen (fünf Werke werden für das Festival geschrieben), wollen aber ganz bewusst Werke, die wir als unverzichtbar empfinden programmieren. So ist eine Komposition von Edgar Varèse, der das Festival seinen Namen verdankt, auch heute noch moderner als viele Kompositionen, die 2010 uraufgeführt werden.

Ihr Festival ist Teil der Regionale10, ein größeres Festival für zeitgenössische Kunst im Bezirk Liezen der Steiermark. Über den konkreten Bezug auf das “magische Gesäuse” hinaus, inwieweit bezieht das Arcana Festival auch lokale und regionale Musiker und Komponisten in das Programm mit ein?

Peter Oswald: Das Arcana Festival bezieht regionale Musiker in zwei konkreteten Projekten mit ein. Zuerst in dem Musikvermittlungsprojekt “Von Sternen, Nebeln und Galaxien…” der Firma Georg Fischer, des größten Arbeitgebers der Region. Hier erarbeiten drei professionelle MusikerInnen mit MitarbeiterInnen der Firma (und somit auch regionale MusikerInnen) ein neues Werk. Bezug nehmend auf Iannis Xenakis “Pleiades”, und beim zweiten Projekt “Schwarzer Peter” begibt sich das Arcana Festival auf die Spuren eines legendären Wilderes, der Ende des 19 Jahrhunderts in einer konspirativen Beziehung mit den Bauern der Region gestanden ist. Bei diesem Projekt, dass in einer atemberaubenden Naturkulisse, nach 550 Höhenmeter Aufstieg zu erleben sein wird, nehmen Blasmusikkapellen und Chöre der Region teil. Auch werden MusiklehrerInnen der Region eingebunden, die den Aufstieg in mehreren Stationen musikalisch in einer “Klangpromenade” gestalten.

Ein wichtiger Teil des Arcana Festivals ist der gesamte Komplex der Musikvermittlung. Sie bieten unter anderem Workshops zur Komposition für jedermann, Konzerte an untypischen Orten, musikalische Wanderungen, eine musikalisch-kulinarische Performance, sowie traditionelle Einführungsveranstaltungen an. Zusätzlich gehen Sie in einem “Labor” der Frage nach dem Verhältnis von Neuer Musik und den Naturwissenschaften nach. Wieviel Vermittlung braucht die Neue Musik? Ist das alles unter dem Aspekt des Marketings zu sehen oder tut sich hier eine neue Kultur des Erlebens auf, die das Erfahren der Musik durch das Publikum in den Mittelpunkt des Interesses rückt?

Peter Oswald: Ich bin überzeugt davon, dass jede Musik Vermittlung braucht. Der Vermittlungsgedanke ist dementsprechend in den letzten Jahren immer mehr in den Vordergrund getreten. Ich habe in meiner mittlerweile 25-jährigen professionellen Tätigkeit die Erfahrung gemacht, dass die Lebenswirklichkeit des einzelnen in einem direktem Verhältnis zu Neuer Musik, zu deren Struktur, zur Wahrnehmung stehen, und dass Neue Musik nicht ein “Spezialisten-Medium” ist. Deshalb sollte die Musikvermittlung den Menschen dort abholen, wo er sich in sozialer, bildungsmäßiger und psychologischer Hinsicht gerade befindet. Natürlich ist ein Quäntchen Marketing dabei, da wir volle Hallen sehr schätzen, und dies wesentlich auch zur guten Stimmung bei den Künstlern beiträgt. Entscheidend ist aber die Neue Kultur des Erlebens, die, wie Sie ja schreiben, die Erfahrung von Musik durch den einzelnen/einzelne HörerIn in den Mittelpunkt des Interesses rückt.

Auf Ihrem preisgekrönten Musiklabel Kairos veröffentlichen Sie zusammen mit Barbara Fränzen seit über zehn Jahren Neue und Neueste Musik. Wie empfinden die zahlreichen Komponisten mit denen Sie zusammenarbeiten diese neue Erfahrungs- und Eventkultur? Ich könnte mir vorstellen, dass der eine oder die andere diesen Entwicklungen eher skeptisch gegenübersteht und darin eine “Verflachung” der Musikkultur sieht.

Peter Oswald: Sämtliche bei Kairos veröffentlichten Komponistinnen empfinden aufgrund der spezifischen Kairos Philosophie die publizierten Werke nicht als Eventkultur, sondern als einen spezifischen und originären Zugang zu im sonstigen Musikleben verschütteten Aspekten einer Partitur (das sinnliche Erleben von Musik!). Deshalb kann von einer Verflachung der Musikkultur keine Rede sein, sondern von einer perspektivischen Vertiefung.

Vielen Dank, Herr Oswald, für das spannende Gespräch.

Das Gespräch führte Matthias Röder.

The project Querklang – Experimental Composition at School reveals precisely that. It has seized this question and encourages pupils of various schools to create an entire composition as a group, using only their own everyday sounds. This might be a bicycle, newspaper, balloon or watering can.

In the context of Berlin’s international festival for current music MaerzMusik 2010 the world premieres of the self-created group compositions will finally be performed in public. Visitors of the MaerzMusik have every reason to be curious – the QuerKlang concerts have evolved into a highlight and insider tip of the festival over the last years.

Since 2002 the QuerKlang project has been inspiring and motivating various schools in Berlin to fill the hole in conventional musical lessons, approaching music passively, by actively creating music and dealing with experimental and contemporary music.

Within about ten teaching units of 90 minutes each, the classes work on the creation of their compositions and presentations. The quality of everyday sounds is identified, the impact of silence examined and the contrasts between chaos and organisation becomes part of the composing process. Self-built instruments are used and unusual ways of playing usual instruments found. All imaginable sounds become part of the process and the final composition. In this composing process, seriousness, eagerness and a tremendous dose of motivation, passion and fun are constant companions.

QuerKlang: “Klangwirbel” by Kultkom

Each participating class is supported by a professional, contemporary composer, one or two students of music from the University of Arts in Berlin as well as their familiar music teacher. The connection of the different working fields opens up new ideas, give chances to gain new experience and broadens the horizon of all partcipants.

Due to the experimental concept, QuerKlang is able to bring all kids of different age, various types of school, different social, cultural and musical background together. This circumstance results in extremely multifaceted and miscellaneous compositions.

For more information and upcoming concerts please visit the MaerzMusik website.

– Anne Schumacher

The University of Music and Performing Arts in Graz announced a three-day symposion on Bodily Expression in Electronic Music.

Speakers include Isabel Mundry, Georgina Born, Federico Celestini, Andreas Dorschel, Deniz Peters, Alva Noe, Simon Emmerson, Pauline Oliveros, Gerhard Eckel, and Kendall Walton.

Keynote by Jonathan Sterne from McGill University: “Is Music a Thing?”

Composers’s Roundtable with Lou Bunk (Brandeis University), Maxwell Dulaney (Brandeis University), Davide Ianni (Boston University), and Adam Roberts (Harvard University). Moderated by Jean-Francois Charles.

Details at http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/gradmus/program.php

When I wrote my enthusiastic review of Daniel Panner’s performance at the first Fromm Concert Series on February 21, I should have mentioned, that the other great violist of our time, Garth Knox, was performing in the very same hall just one week prior to the Fromm concert.

Knox, who was invited by the Harvard Group for New Music, performed a stunning program with pieces by Tolga Yayalar, Dominique Schafer, Bert van Herck, and Jean-Francois Charles amongst others.

One of the pieces that struck me most during the performance was “Catalyst” by the Mexican composer Edgar Barroso. “Catalyst” is a very energetic piece that employs a wide variety of sounds and engages the performer not only in traditional playing techniques but also in an activity that is best described as “air fencing!” As you will hear in the free recording that you can download from the composer’s website, at some point during the piece the performer is wildly batting around with his bow (starting at 1:35), creating a sharp zipping sound that contrasts nicely with the whorled crawling of Knox’s fingers on the fretboard.

If you like the piece as much as I do, take a moment to browse the multimedia page on Barroso’s website which contains videos as well as free mp3s of his fabulous music.

Mobtown Modern

Matthias Röder speaks with the founders of mobtown modern, saxophonist Brian Sacawa and composer Erik Spangler, about recliners and drinks at New Music concerts, how alternative listening environments and video projections create remixes of well-known repertories, and what’s coming up next in Baltimore’s most innovative New Music series.

Zeitschichten.com: Erik, together with Brian Sacawa, you are curating mobtown modern, a new music series at the contemporary museum in Baltimore. What’s the concept behind mobtown modern and why are you teaming up with a museum?

Erik Spangler: The main purpose of mobtown modern is to introduce a wider audience to a range of new music that we personally find inspiring, and to shape a total experience for the listener that is more welcoming than the academic concert hall. We are working in partnership with the Contemporary Museum because we have a shared understanding of new music as a vital form of contemporary art, and they are generously donating a space to us in which we can design our ideal listening environment.

Zeitschichten.com: What constitutes such an ideal listening environment?

Erik Spangler: When I say “ideal”, I should clarify that it is not acoustically ideal for everything that we are doing, but that we are able to consciously shape the environment to our purposes. It is a blank space that we are able to redesign ourselves, thinking consciously about setting the general atmosphere. We typically create a lounge type of environment, with some very comfy recliners in the first few rows of our semi-circular seating arrangement, and some cocktail tables set up behind the rows of chairs. We set up a bar at the back, next to my DJ table, where people can grab a drink at any point during the event. How many times have you wished for that during a classical music concert? Behind the performers we have two large screens where our video artist, Guy Werner, projects his visual interpretations of the music. Guy also does unique lighting design for each of our shows. There are many different ways that you can experience this space as a listener, and I think it welcoming to a wider variety of people than the traditional concert hall.

Zeitschichten.com: The mobtown modern concert programs are always structured around a central theme. Last year’s October concert, for instance, was entitled “Sound Ecology” and featured music that was inspired by environmental sounds. The series’ first concert was dedicated to non-academic compositions (“To Cool For School”) while “Man vs. Music” showcased pieces that are extremely difficult to play. What is your aim in presenting themed concerts? Do you think that New Music needs mediation in order to be understood or enjoyed by the public?

Erik Spangler: We have organized each of our events around a central theme because we like to program the music very intentionally, like a “concept album,” in a way that creates links between the pieces. The flow from one piece to another, the dramatic arc of the event, is also really important. I personally think that anything we can do as presenters of challenging new music to draw an audience in, to create meaningful connections, should be looked into. New music doesn’t necessarily need mediation, but we see it as another opportunity for creativity.

Zeitschichten.com: When you say “creativity,” do you imply that the act of listening requires a creative mindset and that this mode of listening is fostered by a non-traditional performance venue?

Erik Spangler

Erik Spangler: We do see the non-traditional performance venue as a way of fostering a listening mindset that encourages you to hear the music through the lens of today’s culture, rather than through assumed concert-going traditions of the past. This specially designed listening environment automatically creates a “remix” of the music by presenting it in a different social context than the one in which it was probably envisioned by the composer. We also remix the musical compositions by presenting them in relation to new visuals. Sometimes the music is more directly remixed with the addition of new electronic layers, new instrumental arrangements, and DJ interludes between pieces.

Zeitschichten.com: Erik, as a composer you connect classical contemporary and hip hop styles, working mostly with electronic media. What are your main influences when it comes to electronic music?

Erik Spangler: I continue to work with both acoustic instruments and electronic media in my composition work, although electronica has become more central for me since it enables me to regularly perform my own music as a DJ. During my last several years as a composition graduate student I was inspired to start sampling from my acoustic compositions and to incorporate these sounds into instrumental Hip Hop, Dub, and Drum & Bass beats. My biggest influences in this area of composition have been DJ Krush, DJ Spooky, Blockhead, Prefuse 73, and Amon Tobin.

Zeitschichten.com: Many of your past concerts featured a prominent visual component, for instance in the form of special lighting or video projections. Brian, as executive director of the concert series you are – among other things – in charge of hiring musicians. Are musicians generally happy about the visual component of the concerts or do you need to convince them that the visuals do not distract the listeners but rather enhance their understanding and perception of the music?

Brian Sacawa

Brian Sacawa: We’re lucky to have the opportunity to be working with very open minded musicians who share our desire to enhance the listening experience through multimedia means. So far, none of our musicians have objected to the use of video during our shows.

There has been one instance when a composer objected to the addition of a video layer to his work and we were happy to accommodate him. I can understand this perspective and realize that some composers may want their works to stand alone and not be enhanced or “polluted” by a video presentation. I’ve definitely been to concerts that combined music and video poorly; I’m thinking of particular instances when the music, which should be the main focus of the evening, becomes subservient and almost like a soundtrack for the video being presented. That’s definitely not what we’re after. We try to overcome this issue by having our video mixed live during the performance so it’s more reactionary to the music, making the VJ an active participant in the performance as he improvises a video layer to the music. We’re fortunate to have Baltimore-based video artist Guy Werner working as our primary VJ. Prior to each concert, Guy listens to the pieces and gets a general idea of the theme and images he’ll use as source material. He then prepares banks of samples for each piece—just like a DJ bringing a big record bag to a turntable gig—and then improvises a new video layer live during the performance. Using this method for the video, we could perform any piece several times and never have the same exact visual material.

Zeitschichten.com: You have frequently participated in the mobtown modern concert series as a performer. Do the video projections have an impact on your interpretation of a work? Is there a dialog between musical performance and video projections?

Brian Sacawa: Since the projections are always done behind the performers, I can’t say that they have any influence on my interpretation of any given work. However, there is definitely a dialog between the video projections and the musical performance, but that comes exclusively from the video end. As I mentioned, our video artist Guy Werner, prepares banks of samples based on the feeling he gets from listening to a recording of the work prior to the concert. So he has a general “theme” of what his video will be though everything he does during the performance in terms of mixing and effects is purely improvisatory and influenced by the dynamic of the live performance.

Zeitschichten.com: In terms of the equipment needed for the series, what is the biggest challenge of not staging the concerts in a traditional hall?

Brian Sacawa: I think we’d have the same types of challenges in terms of equipment even if we had our concerts in a traditional hall. Not many concert venues have the sort of video and audio capabilities that we require for our series. If anything, having the shows where we do, in a kind of loft-like space, makes things easier for us; we’re not locked having thing in a certain space and so on. It’s more flexible and gives the option of changing things around if we feel like it.

In terms of the equipment that we do use for the concerts, again, we have some very dedicated people who contribute their own gear along with their services for extremely reasonable fees.

Zeitschichten.com: As a performer you have premiered many pieces for saxophone and live electronics. What are the skills that one needs to have when performing electro-acoustic music? Is it different from playing with other musicians?

Brian Sacawa: There’s definitely a different type of skill set involved when performing electroacoustic music as opposed to performing with other musicians. First, you really need to know every detail of the electronic part. Often, the only way you know if you are synced up properly is through subtle cues in the electronic part. In some pieces, like Erik’s “pastlife laptops and attic instruments,” this isn’t a huge concern since there is a prominent beat-based layer, while in others, say “Images” by Milton Babbitt, being attuned to shifts in timbre and register can really make or break a performance.

Second, unlike playing with other musicians, an electronic track is completely unforgiving. If you make a mistake the CD playback doesn’t adjust to you. Also, your sense of time has to be ultra-precise. For example, I have performed several compositions by Jacob ter Veldhuis and these pieces are quite rhythmic and sometimes have the live saxophone as much a part of the texture as the electronic part. Being able to blend in both timbrally as well as in perfect tempo is extremely important to the success of a performance of one of these works.

And finally, the most dangerous aspect of performing electroacoustic music is the technology aspect of it. Computers don’t like to work when you want them to. And you have to have good audio equipment to have a great sound during performances. So there’s an added aspect that is often out of your control as a performer, especially when you travel and play in different venues all the time.

Zeitschichten.com: Can you tell us something about upcoming concerts in the mobtown modern series?

Brian Sacawa: We have two concert left this season. Our next concert is the Sequenzathon, a marathon performance of Berio’s Sequenzas. We’ll end this season with a show we’re called “Out To Lunch”, which will feature music be composers who have at one time or another in their careers been called “crazy.” On this concert we’re programming music by Edgard Varese, Eric Dolphy, Frank Zappa, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Alvin Lucier. We’re also very, very excited about what we’ve got programmed for Season 3, though that’s a secret for now!

Zeitschichten.com: Thanks to both of you for this interview!

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