60 Minutes is by far my favorite thing to watch on television. I rarely miss an episode and a few of my pieces were triggered by reports I first saw on 60 Minutes. Below is the history of their "cover"/logo/theme song of sorts. 2 things...
1) Did it take CBS a minute to figure out the whole quarter note = 60 thing? (re: first tick tick tick)
2) That metric relation between the first and second ticks is amazing. Someone do some Elliott Carter metric math on that.
As I walked out of the opera house tonight, I couldn't help but notice that I left with somewhat of a bad taste in my mouth. Maybe it was the two guys next to me that had, noting several of my senses, had smoked a fair amount of marijuana before the opera began. But that wasn’t it. Something about the production, perhaps? The singing was spectacular. I had known the Indiana University opera program was top notch but I was quite literally blown away by the sheer sound and maturity of all the voices. The orchestra as well was at the top of their game playing, of all things, Mozart, the composer that casts a spotlight on every single individual player to perform at their best or take down the entire orchestra with them. But as I walked back to my apartment around 10pm on a particularly dark path, I noticed a blue light from one of those campus emergency poles. And all of a sudden it seemed to click for me. This odd feeling I had when walking out of Mozart’s Don Giovanni had to do with the fact that I had seen a production that was firmly planted in antiquity. How could a production of Giovanni on a Big Ten college campus of all places be so unaware that we live in the age of Brock Turner, Donald Trump, and Betsy DeVos who is currently putting an end to Obama’s policy on campus sexual assault investigations? How can we still portray the Don as merely a suave ladies man when the very opening of the opera depicts a rape and eventually a murder? In 2018, sexual assault, rape, and consent are major topics on college campuses and even though I don’t believe the point of a production is to preach or shine a light on a hot topic, I do believe this complex issue was in the mind of both Mozart and his librettist Da Ponte at the time of the operas conception.
Mozart has long been one of my favorite composers. After hearing the overture to Cosi Fan Tutte in high school, I was immediately hooked on the sense of cleanliness in the music. Every time I look at a Mozart score, I am amazed how something so simple like two instruments descending in parallel 3rds turns out to be the best musical idea. I at times compare Mozart to a great burger or sandwich that has just the right amount of everything but never too much. There is never any bacon, no triple patties, no queso or some other outrageous Guy Fieri bastardization slammed between two buns. This Mozart burger is clean and simple and satisfies beyond measure. He was, and this doesn’t seem like a wildly controversial statement, at his very best when writing opera and especially the three Da Ponte operas; Le Nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Cosi Fan Tutte. All three of these hold a special place in my heart. Musically speaking, they are, on the surface layer, simple and beautifully lyrical. Maybe equally as important is the political drive in all three of these operas. Each deals masterfully with sexual and social politics in unique, terrifying, comical, and ingenious ways. However, none of the three have more black comedy in it than Don Giovanni.
Let’s get one thing out of the way to start off, Don Giovanni is a serial rapist. I feel as though throughout at least in the 20th century, Giovanni was always been shown in the light of a ladies man. Any LP cover always shows this handsome ladies man with eyebrow raised with the clear intention to win you over. And it’s charming. Most productions run with this Pepé Le Pew characterization in order to a) get maximum laughs from the audience and b) not really tackle how dark the humor truly is. Don’t get me wrong, the libretto is hilarious. However, it should sting a bit. Like in all black comedy, the shock and aw that one feels when laughing at something that is clearly terrible is, in most cases, the best part and the point. De Ponte and Mozart are working at a very deep comedic level. The Catalog Aria, for example, is Leoporello bragging about the number of women Giovanni has “seduced” with heavy scare quotes. By observing the opera so far, the “seducing” we have observed is far more along the lines of sexual assault than winning some woman over. The music in this aria is comical; it imitates fanfares after exclaiming how faithful the Don is, the music parodies Catholic sacred music when discussing the women of Spain, and the sound of hunting horns lets the listener know that all of this seducing is like hunting for Don Giovanni. It is a brilliant glimpse into the character. This aria, which tallies up thousands of women that the Don has interacted with should be shocking and, in turn, laughable. But the laughs should not come easy to the audience. The same way it’s difficult to laugh while watching a man struggling to put his friend into a wood chipper at the end of Fargo. One can be sure that both Da Ponte and Mozart knew the works of the great satirists like Jonathan Swift and knew how to set up a laugh and twist the knife at the same time.
This is all to say that I found this lacking in this production and in many productions. A director does not need to necessarily update the action. That’s not always the answer (the Peter Sellars’ production is great though). I feel that a director’s choice on how to depict Don Giovanni’s “seducing” should push the boundaries and the comfort zone of the audience just as the original creators did with the opera itself.
It’s getting ever increasingly cold up here and the closer to autumn the better. Talk to me later when I encounter my first Indiana winter, but the colder weather is a relief after a summer jam packed with North Carolina humidity. The best things come with autumn, in my humble opinion; sweaters, smell of stuff burning (leaves), the start of concert season, long hikes, (this seems to be morphing into an e-harmony profile), and most importantly, the food. I compiled a list this summer of everything I wanted to make come fall so the very second the weather changed to something resembling fall, I busted out my dutch oven with haste and began making soups. Summer does have it’s pros in terms of what to cook especially meals that can be made outside with friends, but now tis the season to slow cooking, hot food, and laboring over day long cooking experiments. Autumn food, in some cases, does the thing I love most which is working on long term food projects like making sourdough bread or, my goal this year, making real corned beef. My life as a graduate student is mostly spent mulling over a piece I’m writing at a desk so any reason to get up and stir something for a few minutes is with worth celebrating. Cooking is also a great time to get some much need listening attended to. Every so often, I will jot down a piece someone mentions and try my damnedest to get around to listening to it but never do. Cooking in the evenings or throughout the day is a great excuse to throw on, as it was last night, the Britten Holy Sonnets of John Donne.
So on this, the first brisk weekend of the school year, I made a big ole pot of Caldo verde, a popular Portuguese soup containing sausage, collard greens (they use kale but I’m doing my part to stop the kale trend), and potatoes. Poor man’s recipes usually turn out to be some of the best food once people start recognizing it as legitimate. We will all hold our breath for the day microwavable taquitos are on the Eleven Madison Park menu. The soup turned out great and there is plenty for the week.
Some music news: October 4th at 8 o’clock, McKayla Phillips will be killing it on the first new music concert of the year playing my new piece for solo snare Abu Ghraib.
Read MoreI’ve been living in Bloomington for roughly three weeks now which means I am drawing closer and closer to that 21 day habit myth. We shall see if things magically fall into their neat spaces in a week or so. On the plus side, the important things have been taken care of; the bookshelf is up and stocked, I’ve made a few good meals (still trying to cook something that is distinctly “Indiana Summer Food”), and I’ve found a place that sells great coffee beans (a must; shoutout to Hopscotch Coffee). Doing the unscientific field research of where the best coffee is has to be one of my most favorite things about moving to a new place. This basically entails myself drinking copious amounts of coffee and getting to work as a sort of consumer reporter. I would be lying if I said it's wasn't hard to say farewell to my longtime 'dealer' Counter Culture due to the fact that we went through a lot together. But, there is a season turn turn turn. The other great thing about settling in is learning the local NPR station schedule by heart and boy is it hard with, count ‘em, TWO WFIU’s in Bloomington. It’s almost a benefit of riches; on one station this weekend, they were playing John Corigliano’s brilliant The Ghosts of Versailles, and on the other, this week’s episode of The Splendid Table. Too much to handle. Since I spend a good deal of time in my apartment, I like having the radio playing throughout the day to function as both entertainment and white noise when need be.
I’m working on a solo snare drum piece (!!!) for my friend McKayla Phillips (fellow Greensboro → Indiana pilgrim). There is a long list of things I don’t want to do with this piece primarily not making it some Nick Cannon braggadociuos snare off. The work will of course be virtuosic but I want it to be dramatic and function more as a monologue than a dog and pony show. I can’t help but write a piece about the military when using a solo snare. I’ll let it work as a “I know, I know” and move on from there. I’m also in the midst of writing a big ole’ flute sonata for Noah Cline which deals with the natural world and how water specifically can be the cause of both great beauty and great terror. This choice was made a week or two before this flood in Texas and now seems to hold greater significance for me. More to come about both of these.
1. “Slightly Rearranged”
Tonight is my last night in North Carolina for awhile. North Carolina has been my home for my entire life and functions as the tree trunk to all my 23 years of memories. Besides it’s insane politics, this place currently has and always will have a special place in my heart. Tomorrow morning, I head up to Bloomington Indiana to begin my graduate studies in music composition at Indiana University. I have (and I assume most people have as well) a fear of change. Fear of the domino effect that ensues when one thing changes, fear of losing people, etc. Being in my early twenties, I move around a lot to “further my career” by which I mean to logically move to the next step. From Greensboro for my undergraduate work, to Raleigh for my first public school teaching job, and now to Bloomington for graduate school. I long for the day when I won’t have to think about packing and settle down somewhere.
Ultimately, my focus gears towards the things that stay the same. Oddly enough, NPR is my consistent through line to making change a little more familiar. Hear me out, being able to hear the Morning Edition theme wake me up and listen to Steve Inskeep read the news while I sip my morning coffee is just enough of the nostalgic bliss I need to feel comfortable in a new environment. Needless to say, without getting too preachy or “The More You Know”-y, the more I move the more I realize that nothing really changes all that much. My family stays the same, my relationships, friendships, etc. Also my Morning Edition and All Things Considered.
2. “…But then what if he knew who I am when I know that I'm not what he thinks that he wants?”
As artists, we, for a fact, know our own work better than anyone ever will. We are there from initial conception to birth to adolescence (performance?) and maybe even to death (pulling a work from the catalogue). Each work takes a great deal of emotional and mental work, accessing both the left and right side of the brain to full capacity. This being said, we also know every aspect of the piece that just plain doesn’t work. We know the passages that we finally shrugged off and said “it will be what it will be” and clicked print. Most people (with the exception of a few who won’t admit it) are their own worst critic.
Since I’ve been writing music, I’ve had this nagging critical voice in my head that of course pokes it’s head out when the writing process is in full swing…but also has begun to show up when I should been happy. Whenever I received any sort of praise or achieved any sort of long/short term goal, I believed it was a fluke or a mistake. In one way or another, it’s that feeling of when you cheat at something on a small or large scale. You get a little panic-y and glance around to see if anyone caught you. In my case, I am waiting for someone to find me after a concert or during a lesson, take me aside, and tell me… ‘I know you don’t have a clue.’ But of course, we know ourselves better than anyone. We know what we struggle with day in and day out. My aural skills are not nearly as strong as my knowledge of music history or theory and to me, that comes through clear as day in my music. I myself know this better than anyone and deep down inside, I’m waiting for someone to hear my music and find out that I indeed don’t deserve to be doing what I’m doing.
My dream and goal in high school was to go to a good graduate school and, now that I am (in my view of things), it is a blessing that is now causing me a great deal of anxiety. It is the answer, or peek of an answer, to the question “what happens when you get what you want”? Is everything really solved once you get the things you want in life? The imposter complex says that when you get what you want…you don’t deserve it. It is difficult to take a step forward when everything tells you to take two steps back.
It took until this year for me to finally find out that this so-called imposter complex was an actual mental process. It is defined as ‘a concept describing high-achieving individuals who are marked by an inability to internalize their accomplishments and a persistent fear of being exposed as a “fraud”’. Even though it feels like a bit of a humble brag to define myself as a ‘high achieving individual’, it helps to know that this is a common thought pattern. I’m not quite sure what this means though…taking this major step is going to happen in a little over 12 hours and I haven’t a clue what’s going to happen. But, as many people have done before me, I’m going to go and work as if I know what I’m doing…because I’m beginning to figure out what I’m doing.
3. “Move On, Stop worrying where you’re going, Move On”
Read MoreA couple quick updates from LIFE™.
1. This summer, I will be back at what feels like my home away from home or enlarged Mahler Hut, the Brevard Music Center up in the North Carolina mountains. I'm going back as the composition studio's Teaching Assistant which includes making sure the new music ensemble runs as smoothly as summer festival new music ensembles can...
2. Very excited to head up to Bloomington, Indiana to begin my master's degree in composition this August at Indiana University. For the past 5 years or so, I've had this Clark Kent/Superman relationship to composing. By day, I was teaching (or learning to teach) music at the K-12 level and by night, I was composing with the spare time I had accumulated. These next two years are especially exciting for the simple fact that composing and learning to compose will be my main focus instead of having to juggle it with a bunch of other things. I've also had this special place in my heart for composers that just seem to be "learned"; John Harbision talking about studying every Bach cantata or Elliott Carter talking about Boulanger's counterpoint lessons. Those stories have always excited me simply because, not formally studying myself, I have immensely looked up to composers (and people from other fields) who have gotten the most out of an education.
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