Transition from Austerlitz

"How was your residency?" I hear you ask. My response comes in a series of posts beginning with a small taste of the sweet productivity I experienced.

One Journey is a new piece for choir, soloists, and piano quartet. Rather than transmitting a message to an audience, it demands the performers themselves to fragment and to explore alternatives to their collective and personal experiences of home, travel, yearning, bodies, and death through improvised drama nested in the through-composed score. In addition to rehearsals of the music, I would co-facilitate preparatory theater games as indicated at the bottom of instructions for each improv. Here is a sample of the draft.

fan mail

Your correspondent is working hard at scoring these days. Think zombie... scoring is possibly my least favorite part of composing.

Thanks to nat/Erika in Philadelphia for making me laugh in the middle of it.

NNM shorts released

All five are here on Network for New Music's channel. Get out your best headphones or plug in the speakers and start with this one.

WTC

Thanks to Gabe for sending this to me. I do listen to NPR mornings but not for hours like I do out there.

Steve Reich's WTC is presented as a 9/11 tenth anniversary tribute. As I said to my feedback circle, take a deep breath and probably don't have anything more to do the day you listen to it.

Initially I was put off that he would write a second Different Trains (1988), as if in service to fans, but it's an original work. I don't study Reich so can't analyze it in terms of his development over intervening years, but WTC is original. Not having family members who were involved in WWII, I think I took Different Trains abstractly or idealistically. But the composer worked from his own experience, however distant, of the time and with survivors to reconcile apparent disagreements of the truth. That work infuses the sounds with meaning and energy; that's what impacts me.

It's interesting to note Reich's choices of trains and Ground Zero for the subjects of these string quartet and tape pieces are both tiny frames of the conflicts referenced. Yet their poignancy as sensations and memories firmly recall those upheavals of our world.

Residency mailing address

I'd love to get mail from you in the next 3 weeks at my residency:


Millay Colony, PO Box 3, 454 East Hill Road, Austerlitz, NY 12017


Use the street address for non-USPS deliveries... hint. Good loose leaf tea, spices, and vegan chocolate are especially welcome.

Request for prayer & donations

My teacher's son Putu Putrawan is severely ill and hospitalized in Bali. He's my age and a celebrated musician who has himself taught and performed gamelan internationally. Please send funds (personal checks are fine, just include the name and bank info) to the address below; the goal is currently US$3750.

Stichting Taksu

Sarphatistraat 80 HS, 1018 GS

Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Bank: Triodos Bank
Account number: 390248843
BIC (= SWIFT-code): TRIONL2U
IBAN: NL94TRIO0390248843

Please mention 'Putu Putrawan'

On genius and perfection

My first guest post is by Jeri Lynne Johnson, Founder and Music Director of the Black Pearl Chamber Orchestra in Philadelphia. Please join me in gratitude for her contribution by commenting and sharing.

Arthur Koestler an early 20th century British novelist, journalist and critic said “The principle mark of genius is not perfection but originality, the opening of new frontiers.”

Criticism is a vital phase of the creative process. It helps us analyze our mistakes, identify areas for improvement and refine our process to better bring our inspirations into reality. But for musicians and artists pursuing something new and different, criticism of the work into which they have poured so much of themselves can be especially painful. Negative, unhelpful opinions from people who cannot understand or are threatened by anything new and different can bring visionaries soaring on the wings of inspiration crashing back down to earth. As artists we eventually learn to shrug off or shut out external criticism and many even regard a growing number of what the modern vernacular terms “haters” as a sign of true genius and often use this to fuel their creative fires.

Unfortunately, however, we are sometimes our own worst critics. When the criticism comes from within, when we cannot externalize and therefore dismiss criticism as jealousy or fear from other people, when criticism stems from internal insecurities, habitual thinking or ingrained attitudes, it clips the artists’ wings so that they cannot even get off the ground, let alone soar. This kind of criticism stymies inspiration and can even become so destructive that it consumes the creative process destroying it entirely. For many frustrated artists, what lies behind this cancerous form of criticism is the pursuit of perfection. Perfection is static -- an impossible concept that connotes completion, totality, finality. Whereas creation is dynamic -- artists striving with new ideas, thriving in the potential and kinetic energies that make this world go around. As long as something is in motion, it cannot be perfect because it is moving toward something. So I agree with Koestler and feel that creative dynamism is truly at the heart of a genius. For in using healthy criticism to fully realize her dreams, the true genius does not seek a perfect end to her struggles, but the opportunity to realize bigger and more beautiful new dreams.