Category Archives: Young Composer Project

More beginnings

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

This week marks the beginning of several new things in my life:

1) Tomorrow is the first day of my last semester of classes at CCNY. I’m particularly excited to be finishing up my degree, for any number of reasons. One of the particularly nice things about this semester is that it’s an “All David” semester – I have my weekly composition lesson with David Del Tredici, a weekly orchestration course with David, and an independent study with David.

2) I’m starting work on a new piece: Long Barn, a set of three songs on poetry by Idris Anderson. This is the other of my “exciting announcements”, because the songs will be premiered in June as part of the 2009 Virginia Woolf conference at Fordham University near Lincoln Center. I’ve begun living with the poetry and will probably start putting pencil to paper in the next two weeks.

3) My independent study with David is the beginning of a larger project that I’ll be talking about a lot more in the coming weeks. For now, suffice it to say that our sessions will involve lots of interviews and me riffling through David’s papers. The project will spawn a new series of posts here (which will hopefully be a little more regular than my current posting schedule!), along with some video, audio, and possibly photographic materials.

Beyond this week….

Kaity Volpe and I will be starting back into our photo project very soon, which will certainly spill over into the independent study project.

I’m hoping to finally relaunch the Tobenski-Algera Concerts in the next two months, even though I said we’d have a concert back in December. We’ve encountered stumbling block after stumbling block these past few months, and it’s been beyond maddening. Finding a suitable performance space for the relaunch has been difficult, though I think we may have finally solved that issue. Now we have to deal with scheduling….

And it’s application season! Nearly every award and artist colony has applications due in the next few months, so I’ll be spending hours upon hours filling out applications and spending insane amounts of money printing and binding “pseudonymous” and “anonymous” copies of my scores. I’m sure I’ll be writing about the process soon enough.

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Page Turning Photo Shoot

Friday, December 5, 2008

Last night I turned pages for two song cycles by David Del Tredici: Miz Inez Sez, and My Favorite Penis Poems. It was an all-day affair, really. Rehearsal started at 2.00, and I finally got home somewhere around 1.00 in the morning.

I’m a huge fan of turning pages for concerts. I know that some people look on it as something of a grunt job – you’re doing a menial task and don’t get to relax -, but I’ve always enjoyed it. I get to watch the score go by. Granted, I don’t get to study it in any detail, but I have to do a lot of on-the-spot analysis in order to make sure that I’m following properly: I have to choose a line to follow and keep an eye on its relation to the rest of the score, and I have to be aware of texture changes and registral shifts (sometimes, in denser passages, these are the only things that tell me where the performers are!). I see things I wouldn’t necessarily be aware of had I just been sitting in the audience: inner voices, relations between voices, cool little compositional devices and tricks. Plus, it’s incredibly performative. Just as there’s an art to projecting one’s persona to the audience during a performance, there’s an art to not being seen (“Mr. Bradshaw, will you stand up, please?”). One has to exude a level of confidence for the sake of the pianist (else they’ll get nervous that you don’t know what you’re doing), but also put everything else on ice, as it were, so that the audience isn’t aware that you’re constantly standing up and sitting down on stage while infinitely more interesting things are going on mere feet away. It’s killer on my lower back, though! Sitting that straight for so long, and leaning forward just so so that I’m ready to stand up and get my finger around the page corner. Whew! Plus, the constant low-grade terror that you’ll accidentally grab two pages instead of just one!

In this case, there was the added anxiety of turning for manuscript. Half of the Penis Poems are engraved, and the other half are still in manuscript form; so just as one gets accustomed to turning for engraved music, it switches to manuscript, and the reacclimation process begins anew.

A composer’s hand-written notation is illegible at best. Add to that varying numbers of systems per page and staves that only reach half-way across the page, and my job was cut out for me! But it’s an adventure, to be sure!

Kaity arrived shortly after 3.00 and got some fun shots of the rehearsal. She generally documented the whole day – shooting the entire rehearsal, some backstage moments, and even a bit of the performance itself. I’ll admit, she’s so good at being unobtrusive that I continually forgot that she was there! I’m, of course, used to Kaity’s presence at various events at this point, but I know that others can be super-aware of the fact that there’s a camera in the room. It’s always entertaining to watch someone suddenly turn – while trying to be subtle about it – so that their “good side” is toward the camera. David and I joked about the phenomenon a few times – we’d immediately stop what we were doing, adjust our postures to be more “picturesque”, and continue as stiltedly as possible, glancing constantly at Kaity.

The concert itself was a lot of fun, for various reasons. And it was great hearing the audience’s reactions to the whole concert. Everyone loved the whole thing.

But of course, we only give concerts so that we can go out afterward for dinner and drinks. You didn’t know that? Well, it’s true. We don’t do this for the music, we do it for the food and drinks. And the international super-stardom and piles of cash. Ok, at least the food and drinks….

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Prepare for Video!

Friday, November 28, 2008

I’ve finally got some decent videos in my grubby little mitts, so I’ll be spending the next few days prepping those for upload.  And that, of course, means that Dennis 4.0 is nearly ready to go live!

I’m hoping at the very least to get up some excerpts from the Staunton Music Festival.  There are a few other videos lying about that I may be able to upload, as well.  We shall see!  After that, we’re in the process of hunting down all of the Tobenski-Algera videos.

In other news, I make my triumphant page-turning return to Symphony Space on Dec 4 for Del Tredici’s Miz Inez Sez and the premiere of My Favorite Penis Poems.  No one turns pages with such élan!

Kaity Volpe and I have also decided to extend the photo project beyond 2008, and leave it somewhat open-ended.  We’ll, of course, find a logical stopping-point, but in the meantime we’ll just have fun with it.

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Permanently and photo shoot

Friday, November 14, 2008

This afternoon, I began work on “Permanently”, the middle song of at least a moment.  Kaity Volpe came to get some composing “action shots”.  Despite the general silliness that we were both infected with, and the gloomy weather, we both managed to get something accomplished.  Since my piano is still broken (more on that later), I used the piano in my boyfriend’s parents’ sunroom.  As usual, once I started working, I essentially forgot everything else in the room.  Kaity, though, assures me that she had the camera inches from my face at times, and that she was climbing all over the furniture to get shots.  At one point, we had all of the lights on to chase away the gloom, and opened two of the sliding glass doors to the terrace so that she could get direct shots of my face as I sang and pounded my way through some accompaniment ideas.  (We put everything back in place when we finished!)

The site transfer is closer than ever.  It may, in fact, take place this weekend!  I’ll be doing little tests this weekend.  Then Dennis 4.0 will launch as soon as I’ve got some video content for you!

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Tobenski-Algera Relaunch and more photos

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

I think that the blog here is in its nearly-final form.  It echoes the bulk of the site nicely, now.  For anyone wondering, I modified the wonderful theme “veryplaintxt”, which took some doing, but turned out nicely, I think.

This, along with some other work soon to be unveiled, opens the door for a lot of the impending changes to take place rapidly.  The reworked Works will be unveiled as soon as the data entry is finished (there’s a lot of information for only having written 27 works!).

Another thing to look forward to is the relaunch of the Tobenski-Algera Concert Series.  We took a short hiatus, and will be relaunching in December 2008 with a program of art song by young and emerging composers.  We recently put out a call for scores, which we’ll also put on the website.  We may have a special treat on the concert, so stay tuned for more details here and at www.tobenskialgera.com.

Kaity Volpe and I had another photo session on Thursday afternoon during my weekly composition lesson with David Del Tredici.  She was the fly on the wall while David and I went through “To You”.  My lessons have been particularly kinetic of late, and Thursday was no exception.  Since I’m working on songs at the moment, we structure the lessons so that I sing while David plays.  This format gives us both a very clear sense of the piece.  In non-vocal music, I may hack through the piece myself at the piano (a rare occurrence since I’m not a very great pianist), or David may play through it (a much more common possibility), or with some works, we listen to the Sibelius MIDI playback.  With the singing/playing format, though, David sits at one piano (his office at CCNY has two baby grands) while I stand at the other to plunk out notes every so often to make sure I’m right.  (As Ned Rorem would point out here, just because I wrote a piece doesn’t mean that I’m qualified to perform it.  Nor does it mean that I remember how it goes.)  We went through the song a few times, making minor editions along the way (“You keep slowing down here – you should add another tempo marking there.”  “You should inject the augmented sixth from the A section into the recap to make it a clearer echo.”), and Kaity got some really spectacular shots.  The lighting was ideal – the sun was just right, and made for some beautiful lighting effects.  Each session makes more and more excited about the project!

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The Life of a Young Composer

Monday, October 27, 2008

Separate from the upcoming vodcasts on the artistic life, is another project that has sprung up in the most wonderful way: through the end of the year, I’ll be working with photographer Kaity Volpe on an interesting photo project.

Kaity approached me a few weeks ago about the idea of following around a young composer with her camera for a few months, snapping photos of the writing process, meetings with colleagues, and hopefully catching a performance of the composer’s work.  I thought it was a fantastic idea – and a very fun one, too! – so we decided to team up.

Starting last Thursday, Kaity and I have met with some regularity for a series of candid photo shoots.  Our first session was at my apartment almost immediately after one of my weekly composition lessons with David Del Tredici.  I did a little bit of tidying (despite Kaity’s admonishment not to) waiting for her to arrive – taking care of laundry, making sure that nothing potentially embarrassing was left lying about – and made a “plan of attack” so that I wouldn’t be left wracking my brains trying to find something to work on.  Photos of me thinking don’t sound too terribly exciting!  When she arrived, we chatted for a bit (on the election, new projects, and some idle gossip), then launched into the first official shoot.   I did my best to ignore her and get some writing done on “To You”, which is no mean task when someone else is in the room. I was at the particular stage of composition where I rely on Sibelius’ MIDI playback, so after a few times through one short passage, I joked that she’d be sick of the song long before it was ever premiered!  (She was already humming the tune by the time we were finished!)

The majority of the shoot, though, was of my apartment itself.  Of particular interest to Kaity were by near-overflowing bookshelves.  I pride myself on my book collection – my New Year’s Resolution (I rarely make resolutions, but decided to make a silly one this year) was to buy at least one book a week.  I’ve fallen behind schedule, but I think that I’ve more than made up for that in my several book shopping sprees.  I’m a major fan of used books, largely because they can be so inexpensive, but also because they have a little more life and history than the glossy-covered kind with unbroken spines that you find at Barnes & Noble or Borders.  (I also aim to spend no more than $3 per book if I can manage it, and will gladly pick up second or third copies of a book I like if I can get it for a dollar – they make wonderful gifts!)

Some other fun photos that Kaity ended up with were of two of my quirkier (I guess) organizational tools.  I keep a tin painted with violins on my wall near the door to collect receipts for anything I can claim as expenses on my tax returns.  As someone in the arts, a lot of my purchases end up being expensible, so I end up with a lot of receipts.  There are so many for this year so far that the overflowing pieces of paper look like a bizarrely beautiful bouquet.  I also keep a bulletin board with two groups of note cards pinned to it: the middle of the board is full of index cards with ideas for pieces that I’d like to write and who I might like to write them for, and the right edge is a column of index cards that list the various commissions I’ve currently got lined up.

We met again at the City College Musicians Accord composer readings on Thursday for some shots of me working with the ensemble and David Del Tredici.  For the readings, I had two short pieces played, and also sang for two of my colleagues.  There are some really nice shots with David Del Tredici – we’re clearly having an intense conversation about an orchestrational detail (he suggested that the strings be given random pizzicato A-flats throughout the arrangement of “In the dark pine-wood”, the effect of which was stunning).  At another point, David and I are both making strange faces at each other – a passing moment of silliness whose trigger I’m sure I’ll never remember.  She also captured a studious moment between me and Eric Taxier, one of the composers who I was singing for.  I’ve often thought of a photo that adorns the wall of one of my former teachers, Daron Hagen.  It’s of a twenty-something Daron sitting in an armchair near Leonard Bernstein, probably during one of Daron’s lessons with the maestro, each lost in a different orchestral score – a moment of quiet and concentration, really a lovely photo – and I always wondered how photos like that happen.  This project has answered that question for me.

The next day at noon, we met at “my office” – the 77th St Cosi.  Particularly since having been laid off from my day job (anyone know of a job opening anywhere?) in mid-September, I’ve taken to spending my afternoons, and sometimes evenings, with my laptop and an iced tea (soon to be hot chocolate in the impending winter months), working on a new piece, or designing/refining/updating one of the many websites that I designed and operate for various clients.  Kaity made it very clear from the beginning that she absolutely had to have some photos of me working at either Starbucks or Cosi.  (Ironically, I can write in such an environment with astonishing ease, in contrast to my inability to work with only one other person in earshot.)  Cosi or Starbucks (on rare occasions) or the NY Public Library have become working havens for me – I sit with my laptop and my sketches done at the piano, and do the heavy-duty, nuts-and-bolts composing work.  Again, I did my best to tune out Kaity’s photo-taking, so I can only speculate on the crazy looks we got when she pulled out her camera and spent at least 20 minutes taking photos of me staring at my computer screen.  Admittedly, the possibilities here were probably limited (though I’ll see the proofs soon enough), but it’s where the majority of my work gets done!

I’ll post more about the various shoots as they happen, and maybe even pop up a teaser picture or two on occasion.  Kaity and I are brainstorming ideas for what to do with the finished product.  In a few weeks when the project is further along, I’ll create a new page on the site for some of the shots, with some statements and writings by both Kaity and myself.

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