Paul Hembree | composer

Upcoming Premiere at IRCAM's ManiFeste (formerly Acanthes)

2012-01-19T10:23:00.000-08:00

I just received word that I have been selected to compose an electronic work to accompany the dancers of the Zoo Company, at IRCAM's ManiFeste (formerly Acanthes). I believe that this is the concert that will feature the works - I'll be sharing the program with other student composers, and Salvatore Sciarrino's Tre notturni brillanti pour alto. This will be my first European premiere.

Nimbus (2011) for Chamber Orchestra

2012-01-01T11:11:00.000-08:00

Fall quarter was quite busy - after ten months of work, three compositions, Nimbus, the UCSD Nosferatu Project, commissioned by the UCSD German Studies Program, and Grapple, for Dustin Donahue, all came to fruition within a month of each other. I had the rare opportunity to write for chamber orchestra, UCSD's Palimpsest ensemble, which, as its name might suggest, arose from the partially erased remnants of UCSD's former new music ensemble, SONOR.

(At least this is my fanciful take on the matter. SONOR was actually a faculty ensemble, but after its "death" many of those faculty performers undertook the responsibility of curating concerts of ensemble works performed by a mix of graduate students and community performers. Steve Schick suggested that student composers create palimpsests upon companion pieces on each concert, hence the actual title of the ensemble. But I like to think that the resonances of SONOR are still there...)

Aleck Karis was conducting the Fall 2011 concert, and asked me to write a piece with a similar instrumentation to Stefan Wolpe's Chamber Piece No. 2, a short chamber orchestra work that passes rhythmically charged motives between the instruments. I took the idea of a companion piece to be the creation of a complementary work, that is, one which is different enough from its partner work, so that the ear would not tire of the same types of material if they were on the same program together.

The main body of Nimbus consists of continuously bending material that is atmospheric, yet structured, as layered strands of glissandi converge and diverge from articulated tutti attacks. I think of this as a twenty-first century update on the mensuration canons of Johannes Ockeghem and Josquin Des Pres - the nod to Conlon Nancarrow's incisive temporal structures comes in the second section, which is really an attacca second movement. This movement returns to the rhythmically charged material that defines the Wolpe, although my material is substantially more groove oriented (unabashedly so - Wolpe uses contiuously varied rhythmic material, while I rely on repeated rhythmic cells that slowly expand to reveal longer and longer segments of melody). Much of the this attacca second movement steals from my film score to Nosferatu - the opportunity to hear my climactic material scored for orchestra was too good to pass up.

As the namesake might suggest, the impetus for the work was the behavior of clouds - certainly a sublime stimulant for composers since Liszt's forward-looking Nuages Gris, Beethoven's Sixth Symphony, or even Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, if not earlier. Thunderstorms have effected me in various ways over the years, particularly because of my work outdoors in trails. Nimbus is certainly autobiographical in some sense.

When I was still working for the Northwest Youth Corps, my Backcountry Leadership crew weathered a torrential thunderstorm in the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness Area one evening (really we were just south of that wilderness area, but I love the name). The next day, we were forced to hike as fast as possible out of the wilderness to avoid the Rankin Creek Fire, which the thunderstorm had started. This event is certainly still with me, as is living in Boulder Colorado for three years, with a west-facing apartment.

Watching the summertime thunderstorms build up over the Arapahoe Glacier (the only really substantial glacier in Colorado) and come down from the Indian Peaks to inundate Boulder was a regular occurrence. But the focus on cumulonimbus clouds is not really representative - maybe any vaporous activity is the inspiration. I vividly recall decending the Renfrew Glacier on the Middle Sister in Oregon in a white-out fog - luckily, my brother and I had traversed it earlier and found no crevasses aside from the Bergschrund, though there was always the danger of a hidden crevasse. But it was pure white surroundings - white ground, white air.

The realism of nature never becomes boring for me, though I suppose that writing pieces about clouds could be considered banal and pedestrian by some. There is always something abstract about nature, such as the way water etches nested curves into a landscape, the results of which pop into relief when illuminated by the evening sun, with high contrast between light and shadow. There are some very interesting updates on landscape art in the visual field afoot - we are not confined to the works of the Hudson River School any longer, and Georgia O'Keeffe has been dead for twenty-five years. What is happening now?

Rainy Days in St. Louis

2011-12-15T14:32:00.000-08:00

It is amazing how slow coffee shop internet connections can be. And don't get me started on T-Mobile's not-so-aptly named Unlimited Wireless Broadband - such a scam. I finally found a reliable internet connection in St. Louis - the graduate teaching assistant room in the German Studies department at Wash U. After watching broken pipes stop my upload progress for both Acanthes and a set of Red Fish Blue Fish concert videos, I uploaded several half-gigabyte documents in minutes on a protected network.

An Open Letter to Trader Joe's

2011-11-13T14:28:00.000-08:00

I was in a letter writing mood so I contacted Trader Joe's about their refusal to deliver groceries, which I believe contradicts their goal of community involvement.

"I've been an avid Trader Joe's fan since I did my undergrad in Eugene Oregon, where I could get great prices on the sprouted flourless wheat bread that was (and is) my staple. However, of late I'm concerned with your refusal to do online ordering and local delivery, justifying the refusal as an "old fashioned" way of doing things. I realize that running a lean business probably requires focus, but I think that not offering online orders and delivery flies in the face of your stated goal of community involvement. Seniors, disabled people and others with limited mobility may not be able to get out of the house easily and may not be able to afford the expensive upgrades necessary for a handicap converted car. These people need grocery delivery options. I realize that your clientele is probably mostly young people, who you might presume are all healthy, but there are people with limited mobility in all age groups. You are alienating them by refusing to do deliveries. Please rethink this stance if you continue to tout "community involvement" as part of your mission."

A Provocation

2011-10-17T23:28:00.000-07:00

I recently received an email survey from the Entrepreneurship Center for Music at the University of Colorado. I took a class on music entrepreneurship through with their former director in 2007, and it certainly shaped my view of the arts and business borderland in many ways. I did a feasibility study on starting a new music ensemble as a non-profit, thought about wind ensemble music publishing, and read a ton of material on the financial state of classical music.

One of the survey questions in this recent email provoked me strangely, and I'm hoping my post will provoke you too. I don't write about politics very often on my blog (unlike my facebook wall). The question was, "What is some advice you would give to young musicians?" I immediately thought that they should become more politically involved in trying to sustain the arts. Here is what I wrote (slightly altered and expanded):

"This is probably not the answer you are looking for, but I would say that they need to become more politically involved, if they are not already, and fight to sustain support of the arts and humanities (and education of these subjects) in the U.S. There are elements at work in politics today that seek to sacrifice education of these "useless" subjects in favor of "useful" subjects such as hard sciences and mathematics.

Even if you agree with this judgement upon their utility, it has been shown in numerous studies that music and art training improves faculties in other areas such as mathematics. However, that is beside the point - the arts should be supported for their own sake.

One principal reason for this is that culture, the product of the arts and humanities, is the refuge of outrageous, unlikely and uncomfortable ideas, ideas of what could and ought to be, even if they violate the norms and taboos of civilization as they currently stand. Without constantly re-imagining the possibilities of life in our society, civilization could not progress. This is the charge of the arts and humanities. This is our moral responsibility to the future.

Young musicians should think of this when they see politicians slashing budgets for art in and outside of educational settings in favor of spending elsewhere. Though I fully support our troops, and I would not like to see them ill equipped, I think the following statistic shows a severe mis-allocation of priorities, or at least a fundamental imbalance in our world: in 2011, the U.S. spent $985 million dollars on bullets alone, in just the Army. This is approximately three times the combined budgets of the National Endowments of the Arts and Humanities, which come to a total $332 million."

My statistics come from my favorite yearly info-graphic, Death and Taxes. Its creator gets its statistics "directly from the President's official budget request and the comptroller of the Department of Defense."

Nosferatu Project - Coming October 21

2011-09-18T20:00:00.000-07:00

Here is the latest preview of the work, this time setting Lacu Miseriae where it occurs first in the film - in the castle as Orlock stalks Hutter.

Main Sections of Nosferatu Project Composed

2011-08-26T14:47:00.000-07:00

I recently completed the main sections of music (not the score) for the Nosferatu Project. These are the bodies of thematic material that accompany most of the scenes in the film, and between them there are some transitions of ambient music that will serve as mental rests for both the musicians and the audience. The main sections of music will come in acoustic and electronic varieties, the later of which I'm calling "specters." There is a fair amount of repetition, more than I normal use, but I believe the repetition will be helpful in clarify the origins of the material.

Unfortunately, I don't have time to export the newest material in mockup form tonight, but stay tuned this weekend for the last installment of previews on YouTube. From here on out I'm working on just the score for the musicians, which will allow me to dig into the orchestration a little deeper (though I love Reason for doing mockups, it still lacks samples for the most interesting techniques on many orchestral instruments). I won't make the final sections of the electronic parts until October, because of a chamber orchestra piece I have to finish in the mean time (Nimbus, for UCSD's Palimpsest ensemble).

Below is an image of the Final Cut Pro file I've been working with...

Pisaro's Hearing Metal 3 performance reviewed in New York Times

2011-08-14T11:31:00.000-07:00

Last May I had the opportunity to carefully bow and dribble rice on a suspended cymbals for forty-five minutes, during a performance of Michael Pisaro's breathtaking Hearing Metal 3. This experience, combined with my analysis of John Cage's Concert for Piano and Orchestra (which occurred during the same quarter) has altered my view of what composition is - though the shock-waves are traveling quite slowly through my practice.

I just heard from Greg Stuart, the organizer of the event, that the recording of the performance was recently reviewed in the New York Times. With these links you can check out the review, and Michael Pisaro's blog (including excerpts).

Lacu Miseriae

2011-07-23T19:53:00.001-07:00

Working on the Road - St. Louis Logistics:

The Nosferatu project has gone well since my last post earlier this month. Despite the crippling heat, I haven't slowed down much, partly because my workstation is directly in front of an air conditioner. Petra's Roland digital piano serves as instrument and desk, with my main computer sitting on it. It is an older keyboard, and so is only equipped with MIDI I/O - no USB port. This is fine - I find usually that MIDI over USB incurs an unacceptable amount of latency in older products. Instead, I use an EMU 0404 as an intermediary. No perceptible latency with this USB device, and it receives the MIDI from the keyboard. This makes improvising to the moving images on the computer directly in front of me quite easy, though I honestly hardly ever keep a complete improvisation (why, for good or bad, that I do this, could be the topic for my dissertation). At any rate, I like the EMU because it is so small, but don't get me started on Creative Labs' terrible Snow Leopard support - despite their good quality products, they are most certainly a PC driven company.

Updates to the Score:

After the my last post, I chose to tackle the most difficult sections of the live score - the climactic final Act of Nosferatu, and the "masculinity in crisis" introduction, when we first meet the characters. These are difficult in different ways.

The climax of the film has a complex series of potential hit points, in my analysis, combined with a complex contour of anticipation (tension) and realization (release).

The introduction of the film is bizarre in that the uncanny, slightly excessive frame rate, combined with Hutter's boyish, Dandy-like antics, push the envelope for what is acceptable in a male protagonist. Of course, this view of acceptable male acting, now almost one hundred years after this film was made, is anachronistic - the actor playing Hutter was perfectly within the norms of acting at that time. His histrionic style, as was popular then, communicates emotions more through body language, rather than through dialogue and the "grain of the voice" (Roland Barthes' essay of the same name is surely applicable outside of music, to speech in acting).

Another section that I completed was the epic journey up Borgo pass, as it is known in Dracula (the pass is unnamed in Nosferatu). In this section, I tip my hat to Werner Herzog (and Richard Wagner), whose 1979 rendition of the Nosferatu / Dracula tale is influential to me, despite being another anachronism in relation to the Murnau version.

I will present the three new sections of music in the order they appear in the film. First we will see the rather plainly titled "Hutter and Ellen's Waltz," wherein the seeds of their destruction are already evident. This is a fairly plain Waltz, without (many) metric eccentricities, because these are saved for later developments in the music and plot.

Then, we will see Hutter's march, onward and upward to the top of "Borgo Pass." This motoric music is thickened greatly by the use of delay lines at regular metric intervals, which give the illusion of four contrabasses and four bass clarinets.

Finally, I will present some of the music from the final act, under the title "Lacu Miseriae," Latin for "Pit of Misery." This will be accompanied by stills, rather than the moving image, for I do not want to give too much of the score away (come to the show in October!). These are "double" stills - artifacts of oversampling the older, slower frame rate with the faster NTSC 29.97 fps. They depict scene transitions that are half the pixels of one scene with half of another - and they are almost always eerie in the their implications. There is always hidden beauty in the accidental artifacts of our technology.

Hutter and Ellen's Waltz

Borgo Pass

Lacu Miseriae

Sehnsucht

2011-07-07T12:58:00.000-07:00

"Sehnsucht" - Credits and Introductory Intertitles (from the UCSD Nosferatu Project)
Paul Hembree, composer

About this scene and the music:

This is the first music the audience will hear in the theater. These are the original credits for the film, in addition to the introductory intertitles, which provide the background to the story.

My favorite intertitle: "Nosferatu: Does not this name not sound like the deathbird calling your name at midnight? Beware you never say it - for then the pictures of life will fade to shadows, haunting dreams with climb forth from your heart and feed on your blood."

The last line is particularly telling. Is Nosferatu a real person, a corporeal menace who murders his victims with claws and teeth? Or is he a dream, the product of a fevered mind, haggard from disease and the aftermath of war? Does he come from afar, a with the gaunt countenance of foreigner, or does he come from within - does he "climb forth from your heart?"

The idea that a part of Nosferatu is our own dark desires manifested is a driving force within this music. It is constantly searching, yearning for something which it cannot find.

Shoptalk:

Though I haven't uploaded anything in the last week, I've been busy with the project. Logistically, composing for an 84 minute film, with no dialogue, is quite difficult and exhausting. With dialogue, foley and background noise to dodge around, music for the "talkies" is less dense. And I'm a composer who usually writes dense concert music.

All of the harmonic material for the score is based on a core repertoire of tortured neo-expressionist harmonies that are none-the-less flexible in that they can evoke many moods. Here, open, neutral intervals within the harmonies are emphasized, though they compress as the dire mood of the introductory intertitles sets in.

The exercise of rarefying a core set of materials in different has been enlightening. I've been relying on traditional techniques of variation, in addition to simply taking more time between events.

One interesting technique used in this excerpt is "pedaling" a single harmony by using smooth voice leading to traverse between several inversions of the same chord. Of course, this more accessible within my music than in traditional tonal music, because the harmonies here predominantly have five or six distinct pitch classes in them. These "extended chords" have nearly as many notes as regular scales in western music. To a certain degree, this contributes to the sense that the music is perpetually modulating between keys, because the total repertoire of pitches continually shift. I'd like to think that the smooth voice leading and directionality of the lines combined with the lack of a "home" creates a sense of yearning in the music.

A Backdrop For Ellen's Premonitions

2011-06-22T13:00:00.001-07:00

"The Sonambulist"

About this scene and the music:

I've begun to test out musical "pads" to set the mood for each major scene in the movie. Currently these pads are mostly acousmatic, that is, they are composed of acoustic sounds that have been altered with the computer. In the October performance, live performers will intermingle with these prerecorded sounds.

For this scene, I'm drawing upon the book on which this film is based: Bram Stoker's Dracula. As the protagonist Jonathan Harker (roughly the same character as Hutter in Nosferatu) lies paralyzed on a couch in a remote wing of Castle Dracula, three female vampires approach, ready to drain him of life. Harker comments upon their voices:

"They whispered together, and then they all three laughed - such a silvery, musical laugh, but as hard as though the sound never could have come through the softness of human lips. It was like the intolerable, tingling sweetness of water-glasses when played on by a cunning hand" (Stoker 1897, 38).

This scene does not occur in Nosferatu, because there are no female vampires in Count Orlok's castle. However, the idea of a sweet siren song, calling over great distances seems appropriate as a back drop for Ellen's premonitions of Hutter's impending doom.

Finished Marking Hit Points in Act I; Investigating Occult Markings

2011-06-13T21:32:00.000-07:00

Today I got some repairs rolling with some M-Audio equipment I use for my main research assistantship (not related to the Nosferatu project). Avid, the parent company of M-Audio, doesn't have a great track record of customer service, but I was able to get through to a human over the phone pretty fast, and was pleased with the results. Avid normally makes you troubleshoot hardware problems over the phone before issuing a return authorization number. This would be fine, but you actually have to purchase a ticket from Avid to do this troubleshooting. I managed to convince the tech I spoke to that I needed no troubleshooting, because I did it myself and isolated the problem using an identical piece of hardware that actually worked.

After all that, I was able to work on marking up hit points and major transitions in Act I of Nosferatu. In the process, I started looking for fuel for composition. My approach to composition frequently involves puzzles from the very beginning as a way to prompt a musical response. Though the main prompt for my musical response is the event structure of the film itself, it is handy to have other sources of Otherness to respond to. Knock and Count Orlok both read notes, presumably sent to each other, that supposedly detail the impending real estate transaction they are going through. However, the notes filled with arcane, occult markings. I took stills from the film and enhanced them a bit:

The front of Knock's note from Count Orlok.

The back of Knock's note from Count Orlok.

Count Orlok reading Knock's reply.

These are really quite striking and fairly complex. Of great interest to me are the magic squares, the boxes with number like symbols in them. There are also some pictograms (snakes, crosses, a skull) as well as traditional Zodiac signs, but most are probably gibberish. But what if they aren't...

...

Well, I just spent about an hour wandering around the Internet to see if people had already figured this out. Apparently, the set designer for Nosferatu, Albin Grau, was an occultist and friend of Aleister Crowley. The Wikipedia article notes that the symbols on these letters resemble Enochian, the language invented/discovered by 16th century English occultists John Dee and Edward Kelley . So there may indeed be "real magic" in the letters between Knock and Count Orlok. The investigation will continue, later, as well as solutions to the real problem - if these are spells, how do they sound?

Summer is here - time to get to work!

2011-06-12T19:15:00.000-07:00

Now that summer is here, it means less time writing papers, teaching or researching, and more time composing. My main summer project is writing a film score for the 1922 silent film Nosfertu, by F. W. Murnau. The work will be performed live in Mandeville auditorium at UCSD, on Friday, October 21st, at 8 pm. This event is sponsored by the UCSD German Studies Department.

I'll be providing updates on the project in both this blog and the related UCSD Noseratu Project blog, which is embedded in our main website: http://www.thenosferatuproject.org/

After touring the auditorium and discussing the technical aspects of the performance with the Mandeville staff, we've decided on screening the film with digital video. Though we were prepared to screen the film with the 35mm reels from Kino International, the problem of synchronizing the musicians with the analog reels was too much. Kino authorized us to screen the video with a DVD, so I'm using their video and a custom sound track.

In the live performance, I'm currently planning on using amplified clean and processed acoustic sound from my four musicians, synchronized with a click track, along with some fixed and live electronic sound.

I've started the process of analyzing the film, using Final Cut Pro. I'm making exact measurements of all of the scenes, along with the locations "hit points." This is an interesting an somewhat agonizingly slow process of watching each scene a few times before moving on, deciding what are the important points, and marking them with FCP.

In the process, you get a sense of what signifiers and signifieds lie hidden in the composition of the shots and in the non-verbal cues of the actors. For instance, the introduction exhibits signs of "masculinity in crisis," indicated by Hutter's insane, childish antics. Furthermore, in many of the early shots, Ellen stands almost a foot taller than Hutter because of some kind of step she is standing on near the window sill. This height difference is eventually reversed as Hutter is packing his clothes to leave for Transylvania, but his boyish face betrays the manliness of his sudden embrace of Ellen.

Though the crisis mentioned above is interesting, it is difficult to make scoring decisions based on it. What is maybe more important is the broad "going off to war" feeling of the entire introduction, while Hutter is still in Wisborg. This film was shot two years after the end of World War I, and three years after the 1918 flu epidemic hobbled much of the German military. In the film, we see the obvious connection to the plague, but less so to military conflict. For more on the connection between World War I and film in the Weimar Republic, check out Shell Shock Cinema.

Trumpet Performances This Week

2011-05-31T10:41:00.000-07:00

As UCSD finishes up Spring Quarter, I'll be performing on trumpet more than I have since my undergrad. This week, I'm playing:

- In the UCSD Chamber Orchestra, Schubert's Symphony No. 8 and Schumann's Overture, Scherzo and Finale. Tuesday, May 31st, 8 pm in CPMC Room 122.

-With fellow graduate students in Fausto Romitelli's An Index of Metals (conducted by Martin Hiendl with Leslie Leytham, voice). Thursday, June 2nd, 8pm in CPMC Room 122.

- For the undergraduate composition juries (3rd year) on Barry Lockwood's The Truth is Coming Out. Saturday, June 4th, 10 am in CPMC Room 100.

An Index of Metals is a diabolical, often hallucinatory chamber opera with some jazz and rock influences. The former is readily apparent in the trumpet part. Here's a preview by the Ictus Ensemble, a bad-ass group that has been influential on our interpretation:

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All this trumpet playing is part of a push toward becoming a self-reliant "complete" musician, rather than just a specialist composer. When interacting with musicians in a community, the role of composer specialist is frequently reduced to "virtuoso engraver." This, of course, only works in musical communities that rely on notation, and even then, competing with the artifacts of dead, two-hundred year old superstars is daunting. Over the next year I'll be putting together a show of mostly my own music for trumpet and electronics, alone or together. The intent is to create a self-sustaining musical space capsule - one that can tour through a wide range of musical communities.

Last performances of The Carpetbag Brigade's Vanishing Point, coming up soon!

2011-05-11T08:45:00.000-07:00

I just heard news from The Carpetbag Brigade, a physical theater company that briefly passed through Boulder in 2007, that they will soon stop performing Vanishing Point. Their last performance in San Fransisco will be May 21st and 22nd at the International Arts Festival, and the very last performances will be in Prescott Arizona, June 17th and 18th, at Tsunami on the Square. This show is quite amazing - it has toured both North and Latin America, as well as Europe, and has been performed over 200 times. If you are in either city on these days, I wouldn't miss it.

In 2007, a group of University of Colorado acoustic and electronic musicians had the wonderful opportunity to work with them, creating a version of their incidental music that was unique to the Boulder performance. This was one of the defining collaborative events from my time at CU Boulder. The group was lead by Michael Theodore, and included several dear friends of mine, Curtis Peel, Steve Snowden, and Chris Rippey. At the time, I was working with SuperCollider and a Yamaha Silent Brass mute as a microphone (!), playing trumpet. Here is an excerpt...

Moonlighting on the Trail, or The Other Paul Hembree

2011-04-30T19:56:00.000-07:00

I was rummaging through old photos today while doing some spring cleaning. While the title of this blog is "Paul Hembree | composer," I'm somewhat uncomfortable representing myself as only what my college degrees and artistic ambitions say I am. I remember doing some research for an arts entrepreneurship class in 2006 or 07 and finding that most artists (not just musicians) of various types "moonlight" in other professions to pay the bills (not exactly a surprise, but the National Endowment for the Arts had some interesting hard numbers on the subject). Frank Zappa's Step Number 5 in "Simple Instructions [to be a composer]" is "get a part-time job so you can continue to do stuff like this" (Zappa & Occhiogrosso 162).

From 1998 to 2003 I worked almost ever summer doing trail work for either the Student Conservation Association or the Northwest Youth Corps, and in 2009 I worked for the Boulder County Youth Corps. In both 2003 and 2009 I was a crew leader. It is considerably different dealing with high school age kids, as their boss, in a manual labor setting, compared to dealing with college undergraduates, as their instructor, in music technology or theory education settings. Both are extremely rewarding, but in different ways. I still haven't quite figured out how to convolve these paradigms... maybe manual labor in the morning and music education in the evening? An arts education / trail work summer gulag?

I'd like to scan some of the best photos over the next several months, if only to bathe in the nostalgia and remember some truly incredible people. Below are some of the highlights of NYC's Backcountry Leadership Program, 2000, on the West Fork of the Yankee Fork of the Salmon River, in Idaho. Though the main work-site, where we built the large retaining wall pictured below, was outside of the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness Area (which allowed us to use small power-tools - a drill and a chainsaw), we were still eight miles in the backcountry, only accessible by foot. The Rankin Fire, pictured at bottom, was in an adjacent valley, and started after an incredible thunderstorm the previous day. We hiked out those eight miles very quickly, but once we reached our van, our exit route down the Yankee Fork to Stanley was blocked by the fire, forcing us to take a long way around through Challis. Luckily none of our work was destroyed in the fire.

Harkins-Larson [THE] Performance at UC Irvine

2011-04-28T15:24:00.000-07:00

Edwin Harkins and Phil Larson are at it again, this time at UC Irvine last night. Check out their website:

http://www.harkinslarsonthe.com/

I had pleasure of helping Ed resurrect some of this lost material in Final Cut Pro and Dreamweaver. He compiled numerous video clips from their 30+ years of performing together. These guys are truly one of the most amazing (faculty) products of what was once known as UCSD's Center for Music Experiment.

"Total deligHt thE.

iT's just wHat you neEd.

whaT makes you tHink you can gEt along without it?

iT's a just wHat it's a onE.

you'll love iT wHat is it its a thE."

- john cage

Photos from Mills CEMEC

2011-04-26T12:10:00.000-07:00

Chemical Oscillator and the spectacular interior of Littlefield Concert Hall at Mills College, in Oakland California. Courtesy of Chen-Hui Jen, who performed with Jacob Sudol.

Four UCSD Composers make NPR's 100 Composers-Under-40 Mix

2011-04-21T11:08:00.000-07:00

I just heard from one of our faculty members that four UCSD doctoral composers, Ben Hackbarth, Charlie Wilmoth (who recently graduated), Clint McCallum and Nick Deyoe made NPR's crowd-sourced 100 Composers-Under-40 mix. Also, one of my former mentors at the University of Colorado, Carter Pann, made the list.

The list appears to be fairly eclectic, ranging from ASCAP Morton Gould winners to a number of popular music notables, including Jonny Greenwood and Richard D. James. Tyondai Braxton of Battles was also featured (I certainly have a soft spot for prog-rock), and there was also a connection with the Wet Ink ensemble on the list. Since it was crowd-sourced - I wonder how the word got out about the poll?

NPR: 100 Composers-Under-40

Poster for CEMEC

2011-04-11T12:09:00.000-07:00

Here is the poster for the Mills College edition of CEMEC. This will be the second concert at Mills featuring my music; the first was the New Keys Festival in 2008, when Kate Campbell played Jökulhlaup.

Sound Check Five

2011-04-05T11:50:00.000-07:00

Here are a few stories from various sources about Sound Check Five... the only CD release of my music that is shrink-wrapped.

UCSD Department of Music News

This Week @ UCSD

Download Sound Check Five here.

Chemical Oscillator to be featured on CEMEC @ UCSD & Mills

2011-03-02T12:42:00.001-08:00

My latest work with cellular automata, Chemical Oscillator (CA Study No. 4ish) will be featured on a CEMEC (California Electronic Music Exchange Concerts) events at UCSD and Mills College. Below is blurb on my CA work and an improvisation with the Chemical Oscillator system. The other images in this post are what a physical realization of the CA system would look like, as an instrument similar to a pipe organ.

"My work with cellular automata (CA) started with an implementation of John Conway's Game of Life, unfolding upon a pitch torus designed after Roger Shepard's "Melodic Map." Cutting and unraveling this pitch torus allowed for a 2 dimensional model of the psychological distance between pitches in the equal tempered system, and the result was essentially an experiment in voice-leading arising as emergent behavior from the local rules of the CA. Since that time I have primarily been inspired by CA as a form of timbre generation by physical modeling, using the same map as background structure, but with many different types of CA rule sets. Instead of treating each node of the map as a "note," I chose to view them as "open pipes" with fundamentals tuned to that pitch. Furthermore, instead of a confined 7x12 grid, with one cell per pitch, my current version uses 20x20 cells per "pipe," with 7x12 pipes. As the number of cells alive in each 20x20 grid space (assigned to a node/pipe) increases or decreases, I use a two-cosine carrier signal to cross-fade upward or downward in the harmonics of that pitch, thus "overblowing the pipe." The artificial physics, the CA birth and death rules and the neighborhoods on which they operate, can be altered on the fly, creating a synesthetic improvisation system."

Blue Sky Catastrophe; Score Preview Links Still Empty

2010-12-29T18:52:00.003-08:00

Greetings and happy holidays! First I have to apologize, because I still haven't included score previews for my works. The links are still empty. However, I'm updating my website before winter quarter kicks in again, when I will be slammed with 18th century counterpoint instruction and a digital signal processing class, not to mention a huge project for percussionist Dustin Donahue and a mobile piece (after John Cage and Marcel Duchamp) entitled Canned Chance.

It has been a busy holiday break for me, traveling between St. Louis and San Diego, while trying to finish a trumpet piece for the International Contemporary Ensemble's CalIT2 residency in 2011. Peter Evans will record my piece, which I'm calling Blue Sky Catastrophe, after a particular kind of bifurcation behavior in dynamical systems. The piece has been fun to write because trumpet is my native instrument, and it has allowed me to further refine my technique on the instrument, while exploring relatively new ground in brass writing.

The piece is a study in double-buzz multiphonics - one difficult but rewarding method of achieving multiphonics on a brass instrument (the other method is singing and playing simultaneously). I would posit that double buzz can be considered the "true" multiphonic brass technique because the same lip-reed/air column acoustic system is responsible for both pitches produced by the instrument.

Exciting two different partials in the cylindrical bore of the instrument by vibrating the top and bottom lips at different speeds is the key in this case. There is feedback from the vibrating air column back to the lips, which seems to contribute to the unpredictable nature of double-buzz multiphonics. When first learning to produce them, there is a tendency to flop back and forth between partials, with only one excited at any one time. However, with practice, a trumpet player can "ride" the system, preventing it from snapping into a single stable state, usually with two adjacent partials excited at a time (occasionally with a harsh "grinding" noise, presumably an amplified sum or difference tone).

I would hypothesize that the acoustic system involved is dynamical, and that it has bifurcation properties, though probably unlike the mathematical Blue Sky Catastrophe itself (but what a great name!). Instead it is probably similar to something like the bifurcation properties of the Logistic Map, with its bifurcation diagram below. Normal buzz is characterized by one stable state excited, double buzz by two stable states excited, and "cracked" tone by many stable states (perceived as noise). Of course, this is all speculation, but it seems intuitively plausible.

Fall Quarter Deluge

2010-10-19T13:23:00.001-07:00

I'm again inundated by Fall quarter madness, even though I'm keeping my course load below 20 credits. I seem to fill the available space by simply blowing my teaching and course work out of proportion, through a vicious process of perfectionism.

I'm teaching 16th century counterpoint this quarter, which takes quite a bit of time to grade. However, it is the pedagogical crux of Western Classical composition, and is thus constitutes extremely valuable teaching experience. Furthermore, it is interesting to pair teaching counterpoint with studying music cognition, particularly because of how the older language of music theory informs that of music cognition. Many of the concepts around attention that are made explicit in cognitive theories are implicit in traditional contrapuntal music theory. However, there are still questions of how ethnocentric musical cognitive science is toward Western Classical music, or even simply diatonic music built on the twelve-note equal tempered system, because so many experiments have been conducted on subjects that are musically acculturated in the West.

In other news, my juried premiere of mUTTERANCEs was a huge success, thanks to the amazing ensemble, conducted by Steve Schick. I will soon have audio and hopefully video available from this performance.

Introduction to Music Technology

2010-08-25T21:14:00.001-07:00

I'm teaching a course at the San Dieguito Adult School this Fall, in the Mac lab at Canyon Crest Academy in Del Mar. For only $93, students get seven, two hour sessions, Mondays, 7 - 9 pm, starting September 13th. That comes out to less than $7 per hour, which, compared with $40+ per hour private lessons, is pretty awesome.

Learn the basics of music technology through creative projects. Topics include analog synthesis, digital audio and MIDI sequencing, software instruments, looping, and a variety of remix techniques. These topics are presented in an easy to understand manner, and are related to real musical examples from popular and experimental electronic music. Students will be guided through the use of free and open-source software, available for both PC and Mac users. The class will be taught in a MAC lab, and all that will be required is a pair of headphones. This course will provide students with the foundation necesary to use more powerful commercial packages such as Logic, Ableton Live, Reason, or ProTools.

Check out the SDAS website to register.

Recent / Upcoming Performances

2010-04-21T19:25:00.000-07:00

Unfortunately I didn't get to advertise for this concert on the blog, but the Four Eclipses from The Antikythera Mechanism (my first stabs at visual music, if you will), were featured on the UCSD edition of the California Electronic Music Exchange Concerts. Which was a fantastic show, no thanks to me, but rather thanks to the organizers Cooper Baker and Dan Shapiro, and the wonderful artists from Cal Arts, Mills, UCSB, and Stanford. The show was April 16.

Another upcoming show, featuring mUTTERANCES, embedded in an installation called "the Unsafest Space," and a super late night improvisation with German DJ Ignaz Schick, will occur at around 7:30 pm this Sunday, April 25. It is in a secret place, an unsafe space.

Keeping Busy

2010-04-21T18:58:00.001-07:00

Spring quarter is off to a blisteringly intense start. So intense, that I'm just now writing about it four weeks in.

Taking too many credits for my own good, but it is hard to resist with so many attractive course offerings. The meat of the quarter is centered around Roger Reynold's analysis seminar, though Mark Dresser's improvisation ensemble class is equally demanding. I'm also tasting a bit of music cognition and computation outside the department, in addition to group composition lessons.

In Roger's class, my main topic is depiction in the John Cage Concert for Piano and Orchestra, which has a famously beautiful and baffling score. We are treating this document as a catalog of compositional methods, or species of composition, most of which entail some kind of creatively powerful ambiguity.

I'm returning to trumpet for the quarter in the improvisation ensemble, primarily to strengthen my improvisation chops on my native instrument. I've always felt more comfortable improvising on keyboard instruments, primarily because of an attachment to resonance and harmony. Furthermore, there is a powerful magnetism about learning Robert Erickson's Kryl, whose original interpreter is UCSD emeritus faculty Ed Harkins.

I'm attempting to exchange energy between my improvisation and composition efforts at the moment, with an interesting intermediary - I've been writing a bunch of software in Pd with the intent of having a palette of improvisation aids, the first of which I'm calling "mUTTERANCES" for now. George Lewis blew my mind with his machine improvisation tools in performance when he visited campus last quarter. Modeling intuitive processes is extremely revealing, and powerful, not only in what you create on the computation side, but also in what you learn about your own faculties through reflection.

More website changes

2010-03-13T15:00:00.000-08:00

New and improved look!

Still working on making downloadable .pdfs of my scores. I continue to debate how I should publish my scores - obviously, self-publishing is increasingly prevalent among young composers of concert music, so there is really no debate there. But I do wonder which would be more effective:

- Scores / parts available for download and printing, no restrictions
OR
- Scores / parts available for download but printing is password protected (maybe charge $5 for the password?)
OR
- Scores / parts available for download and perusing but not for printing (focus on physical copies, which would be priced based on reproduction costs)

Computerized score readers could potentially threaten the efficacy of password protecting printing, since that wouldn't be necessary.

I'm leaning toward the middle road. I retain more control over my intellectual material while still making it available for quick download. Essentially I just want people to play my music, but at the very least I would like them to email me and tell me when and where they are playing my music, and I want them to send me a physical copy of the program. I could at least collect a small amount of royalties through ASCAP that way. I need to collect some benefit from my creations, since they have taken a great deal of time and effort to create, but I also want them to have a life of their own. I suppose I need to find the right balance.

New Website Look & Content

2010-03-02T15:09:00.001-08:00

I've been using one of the ICAM suites in CPMC to do a bunch of video editing, and the setup has been fairly productive - I can multitask by rendering, or log-&-capturing, while working on my website with Dreamweaver on a separate machine in the same room. So I've completely changed the look of my website, though the structure is the same. I'm also adding some downloadables, specifically previews of the scores and possibly parts. Just as a warning, some .pdfs may not be available immediately.

Mile High Voltage Festival

2010-02-19T10:32:00.000-08:00

Here are some links to articles on the Mile High Voltage Festival back in Denver, which my friends the Playground Ensemble are part of:

Here is Today's Post article about Voltage.

Here is the brief phone interview Conrad did with Westword last Friday.

And here is what they wrote to plug the Playground's last concert.

Thanks to Conrad Kehn for the links!

High-speed Photography of Lightning

2010-02-10T00:00:00.000-08:00

I found an interesting gallery of high-speed lightning videos on Wired. I love the arborescent quality of the "negative stepped leaders" as they spread-out and search for the ground. It would be interesting to model this behavior and sonify the results.

Foco Theory: Guerrilla Art

2010-02-08T21:46:00.000-08:00

I love this place. Funny thing is you can see my landlord in the background of one of these.

Lachenmann vs. Ligeti

2010-02-07T22:33:00.001-08:00

Random finds from the internet: A few political essays by composers... especially interesting are the completely different takes by Ligeti and Lachenman. Also, a bit of information worm-hole action - Wes Blomster, who interviewed me a few years ago, wrote a bit of commentary on Ligeti's essay. Judging from the logo, it appears to have been in Perspectives of New Music at one point.

Lachenmann vs. Ligeti

I'm not even sure who has been collecting these essays, but here is a link to all of them. They are on a server at the Mississippi University for Women.

Example of the Score for Voltage Controlled Passacaglia

2009-10-31T10:50:00.000-07:00

If you were wondering what the players were looking at during the performance, check out an example page of the score below.

Each player is assigned to a panel on the synthesizer, except for the spatializing player, who performs on a laptop. The potentiometers on each panel that are used in the patch are assigned names (such as LFO-A-1), based on their function in effecting changes in the perceived sound of the patch. In the case of LFOs (Low Frequency Oscillators), frequency modulation was their most common use. Generally speaking, LFO 1 was very slow, used for large shapes such as glissandos, LFO 2 was medium speed, used for things like vibrato, and LFO 3 was in the audio range, and was perceived as FM distortion.

The players then look on the score as the piece progresses and adjust their parameters according to quantitative and qualitative instructions, using stopwatches for synchronization. On the color scores, numbers and a "depth of color" express the changes in parameters. These players are executing control "envelopes," in the same fashion as automated parameters in Reason or ProTools.

Voltage Controlled Passacaglia finally on YouTube

2009-10-28T00:28:00.001-07:00

After languishing in obscurity on MySpace video for nearly three years, Voltage Controlled Passacaglia has finally defected to YouTube... where it will presumably continue to languish in obscurity, but at least it now takes its rightful place in my channel, PHIntermedia. More importantly, this also means that you can view it in the Videos tab on my website. I had to cut the video in half to make it fit within YouTube's draconian ten-minute time limit.

I'll also post the NWEAMO version of the piece, which was performed in October of 2007, at some point in the near future. Unfortunately, I failed to train one of the three cameras on the projection during the NWEAMO performance, so the visual aspect of the performance is only augmented by Autumn Bjugstadt's excellent lighting.

Notes on Descent into the Amygdala

2009-10-15T19:13:00.000-07:00

I presented Descent into the Amygdala to a class at the University of California at San Diego last week, and more recently I submitted it to a festival in Miami. Writing and thinking about the piece has produced something that may be of interest to visitors to my blog or website:

"I often wish to capture the essence of the sublime in my works. In previous centuries, the sublime experience required pitting the insignificant human observer against the beautiful, awe-inspiring, yet horrifyingly powerful effects of nature. This type of experience fascinated artists and philosophers of the nineteenth century, and in particular, landscape painters often attempted to reproduce the experience of the sublime. Many of my works focus similarly on the sublime in relation to the natural world; in particular, my works Nyx & Eris, Archaeopteryx and Jökulhlaup deal with fleeting human experience in relation to the incomprehensible time and space scales of astronomy and geology.

A new era of the sublime has dawned, as humans have gained the ability to transcend the boundaries of the natural world with technology and machines. Now, manifestations of our great technological strength, such as the hydrogen bomb or space flight, instill the observer with the same feelings of insignificance once reserved for the apprehension of natural phenomena. The essence of the technological sublime is the foundation of Descent into the Amygdala.

Musical precedents in artistic manifestations of the technological sublime include George Antheil’s Ballet Mechanique, and Conlon Nancarrow’s Studies for Player Piano. Some works use existing performance technology (ie. acoustic instruments) to relate the composer’s experiences of the technological sublime with an audience, an example of which is Arthur Honegger’s Pacific 231, a symphonic work about a steam engine. Others actually use technology itself to induce the sublime experience in the listener directly, as if the applied music technology was the steam engine. This is my approach. Nancarrow’s music, when played on the original pneumatically driven Ampico player pianos, certainly falls into this later category, also.

Descent into the Amygdala is sound about sound. It is inspired by the visceral and sublime impact of a pervasive form of music technology: overdriven tube-amplification. Using complex tempo-relationships, grinding dissonances, extreme loudness and distortion, this work descends into the fear producing parts of the listener’s brain, directly producing an experience that is both beautiful and horrifying."

New Videos Tab

2009-09-19T13:08:00.000-07:00

I've finally added a videos tab to this website. Within you can find a YouTube video player containing all of my major works within the last three years. I had to sacrifice the aesthetic pleasure of having a slightly transparent website, and I also had to shrink the labels of my tabs down quite a bit.

The next step in development of this page will be to find some better file hosting so I can put all of my recorded compositions in the player at the bottom of the site.

Settling into San Diego

2009-09-13T17:25:00.000-07:00

I'm settling into my new place in Cardiff by the Sea, a neat little neighborhood of Encinitas California, which is about 20 minutes away from the University of California, San Diego. Orientation mercifully starts on Wednesday, which allows me a few days to fix my car and start the process of becoming a California citizen.

I am looking forward to a productive semester, though I am sad that I can't take Shlomo Dubnov's Musical Information Processing class, because it conflicts with my main composition seminar. UCSD gets it right when they give you 6 credits for composition, which is about half of the minimum load. I also can't take an introduction to critical studies, for the same reason, which is disappointing because I have been very interested in getting to know the major works in Critical Theory. I suppose I'll just have to read The Culture Industry on my own.

Hopefully sometime in the near future I will be able to either finish linking to all my YouTube videos on each of my composition tabs, or alternately insert a new tabbed panel with all my YouTube videos. I am still pleased with the efficiency of the Spry widgets in this page and the aesthetic appeal of the slight transparency of the page. However, in order for embedded objects to work properlly (such as YouTube videos), I'll have to make this page opaque again, or at least have the tab that contains the videos turn itself opaque. Yay web design.

Videos from The Antikythera Mechanism on YouTube

2009-07-08T20:40:00.000-07:00

Finally I'm getting some videos up on YouTube from my master's thesis composition, The Antikythera Mechanism. Check them out at http://www.youtube.com/PHIntermedia/. More will hopefully be up within the next two weeks. Furthermore, all the audio from the concert is available in the media player at the bottom of my website.

It has been an extremely busy summer, as I have returned to trail work to weather out the recession (and save up money for my move to San Diego). I'm crew-leading for the Boulder County Youth Corps after a six year hiatus in trails, and I have a fantastic crew of teenagers who are slowly but surely absorbing a work ethic. It is great to be in the outdoors again, if only for a summer!

Modern Miscellanea

2009-02-10T13:28:00.000-08:00

by Paul Hembree

Two weeks ago, my work Nyx & Eris was performed in a new version by the Playground Ensemble in Denver, and I am pleased with the changes I made from last year's version, as well as the excellent performance. Most of the changes stemmed from a composition seminar last year, during which there was quite a bit of constructive criticism, mostly lead by Brandon Vacarro. I find generally that composers are too soft to each other (in many of the contexts I've experienced that involved numerous composers interacting with each other - festivals, master classes, seminars, etc), and in order for us to grow as composers we should both give and take constructive criticism effectively. Though it might not have been a Paul Hembree love fest at the time, the criticism I received, particularly on the Eris movement, encouraged me to continue crafting the work into the improved version that now exists (I'll post a video when get all the material - check it out!).

Eris was changed extensively in the new version. That movement particularly suffered from a lack of breathing points - something have been prone to in recent years. Part of this stems from my almost obsessive-compulsive urge to fill all the staves on the page with some kind of material at all times, preferably contrapuntally independent material. However, considering the size of the Nyx & Eris ensemble (woodwind quintet, piano, and string quartet), this type of textural saturation was not as viable. The new version uses gaps in the texture for breathing points. Furthermore, I believe the orchestration is much more successful in the new version - typically only three layers are in play at any one time, and though those layers may each consist of many different components, they are united in gesture to form a single nuanced layer, with an "inner quality."

(A long tangent: The term "inner quality" I first heard from Wayne Vitale, a composer for and director of Sekar Jaya, the highly successful Balinese gamelan ensemble. My take on progressions or gestures with an "inner quality": they have an internal structure which reveals nuances that are perceptible only on the periphery of consciousness, while their entire outline is apprehended in the foreground of consciousness as a Gestalt unit. Debussy seems to be good at both this type of gesture, an example of which might be the opening chords of Nuages, and a much more "flat" gesture: "planing," that is, simply using successive, identical quality chords.)

The other main change to Eris that was a drastic improvement was the rhythmic simplification of sections of the piece that did not require a vigorous "aksak" feel (an asymmetrical rhythmic feel composed of chaotic alternations of groups of 2 or 3 eighths, creating a kind of kaleidoscopic Eastern European / Balkan dance). While the aksak rhythms created an appropriate intensity for some of the jarring chromatic lines of the movement, it was not appropriate for the "Tapestry" sections, during which the performers should feel much more relaxed and expressive. Though not tonal, the Tapestry material was certainly conceived of as being beautiful. The new version ironed out the aksak rhythms during these sections, instead employing a lightly mixed, pervasively compound meter throughout. The conductor, Jonathan Leathwood, described these sections as moments of "sanctus" - I feel that this is certainly an appropriate analogy. I love the balance of heavenly and hellish sound worlds, sometimes even simultaneously, because to me it is one of the best ways to express the feeling of apprehending something sublime in the cosmos.

Revisions, improvements and upcoming performances

2008-10-12T21:39:00.000-07:00

This has been a busy weekend for me. I completed most of the work for a port from PsyCollider (the Windows variant of SuperCollider) to MAX/MSP of the software for the live electronics part to The Doppelgänger. That took over 12 hours of work on Friday, but it was great because I acquainted myself with more MAX objects, including Dan Trueman's munger~, a granular pitch shifter. I'm going through with the conversion primarily because programming GUIs is impossible in PsyCollider and very difficult in SuperCollider, and a reliable and easy-to-use interface is absolutely necessary for portable electroacoustic pieces. This port is in preparation of an upcoming contrabass clarinet performance of The Doppelgänger by Detroit clarinetist Shannon Orme.

I also just finished several months of revisions to the Eris movement of Nyx & Eris. Since mid-summer I've been making the rhythms more ensemble friendly... the "countdown" style processes that ravage the texture of the piece incessantly have been contained to the sections where they were absolutely important (the Introduction, the Ritual Dance of Echidna: Mother of All Monsters, and the build-up to the Catastrophic Failure of Celestial Mechanics). I rather like the idea of pitting shifting accents against semi-regular pulses, because I think the sense of rhythmic conflict and syncopation can be just as interesting as dense mixed-meter rhythms. This now occurs during the more romantic, triadic and melody driven Lunar Light and Starlight Tapestries, which have been given more regular compound time signatures. Also, the cheap "micropolyphony" that previously formed the tapestry texture in those sections has been replaced with more carefully woven counterpoint. The rock/kecak texture of the Dance of Eris: Goddess of Discord has been applied to the texture of the Dance of Dysnomia: Goddess of Lawlessness, allowing the winds to get in on the kecak like percussive effects (slap tongue, tongue pizzacato, etc), while the strings go even more insane with bow pressure changes that strive for subharmonics and other interesting anomalous low frequencies. These revisions were completed in anticipation of the January performance schedule by the Playground Ensemble.

More on the exact details of these performances later!

Videos of performances available online

2008-09-27T14:34:00.000-07:00

To any visitors interested in viewing them, I have a few videos of my performances available online. I will soon have them embedded in a new video tab on this page, but the links below are available for now:

Archaeopteryx (2006-2007):
An excellent performance of music inspired by the late-Jurassic proto-bird, performed by the Playground Ensemble, artists-in-residence at Denver University's Lamont School of Music.

Voltage Controlled Passacaglia (2007):
A humorous concert/performance-art piece for vintage Moog synthesizer, four performers, 8.1 channel surround sound and video projection. Longer than YouTube's time limit, so this one is up on MySpace.

Nyx & Eris (2007-2008) (two separate videos, one for each movement):
The Arundo Winds, Tasman String Quartet, pianist Alex Maynegre and conductor Brandon Houghtalen performing the premiere of Nyx & Eris, CU's 2007 Edward Levy Commission. This piece is inspired by astronomy, the Greek goddesses of Night and Discord, and the discovery of the largest dwarf planet in the solar system.

Commissioning Grants

2008-09-06T11:15:00.000-07:00

This list is focused on opportunities that would work for small ensembles, with a section focusing on Colorado opportunities.

Major gateways for composers and new music ensembles:

Meet the Composer
American Music Center
American Composers Forum
Society of Composers, Inc
Music Vista
Association of Performing Arts Presenters
Colorado Council on the Arts
Music Teachers National Association

Commissioning Funding Sources:

Meet the Composer related programs:

Commissioning Music / USA - for single commissioner or consortium, offers between $10,000 and $25,000 in support of the composer’s commissioning fee and copying expenses.
Deadline - March 2009.

MetLife Creative Connections - provides support for American composers to participate in public activities related to specific performances of their original music. Guidelines PDF.
Deadline - April 1 for events July-August / June 1 for events September - December / October 1 for events January - March / January 7- for events April - June

Support for Performing Ensembles:

Aaron Copland Fund for Music, Inc. / American Music Center related programs:

Performing Ensembles Program - supports performing organizations whose artistic excellence encourages and improves public knowledge and appreciation of serious contemporary American music. In general, grants range from $1,000 to $20,000.
Deadline - June, 2009.

Supplemental Program - supports non-profit organizations that have a history of substantial commitment to contemporary American music.
Deadline - September 15, 2008.

Recording Program - helps to document and provide wider exposure for the music of contemporary American composers; to develop audiences for contemporary American music through record distribution and other retail markets; and to support the release and dissemination of recordings of previously unreleased contemporary American music and the reissuance of recordings that are no longer available.
Deadline - January 15, 2009.

American Composers Forum related programs:

Encore - grants from $500 to $2,000 are made to performers to play a work at least three times during an 18-month period. Ensemble/Performer must not have previously performed any of the composer’s music. The work being proposed must not have been commissioned by the performers. It may have received a premiere or a few performances at most (1-4) by other ensembles, or may be as yet unperformed. Performers and composer must not be based in the same state. Application with guidelines.
Deadline - October 1, 2008

Innova recordings - innova Recordings and the Recording Assistance Program support the careers of composers and performers by removing many of the usual barriers to releasing and distributing their recorded works -- without giving up the copyright to their sound recordings. Together, the program and label provide manufacturing, international distribution, and marketing support for all releases.
Running application process.

Continental Harmony - Since 2001, 35 communities across the country have been selected to host composer residencies and mount musical celebrations expressing important aspects of local life. A panel organized by the Forum selects host communities from proposals submitted by coalitions of community groups. The Forum staff then assists selected communities in developing plans for the commission and residency, identifying local performers, and developing residency activities. Composers are invited to apply to the communities with ideas for turning their plans into realities. Local selection committees choose the composer with whom they wish to work, assuring matches that meet each community's needs. ACF listing.
No current calls for communities or composers.

Other organizations or sources:

Association of Performing Arts Presenters - Arts Presenters is the nexus for the performing arts community and the innovators in the field. Our over 1,900 members bring performances to over 2 million audience-goers each week. No other association membership rivals the breadth of creative expression, representing disciplines ranging from all forms of dance, music, theater and family programming to puppetry, circus, magic, attractions and performance art. Resource library open to members contains information on funding sources.

Music Vista - access to eight of the nation's leading music service organizations all in one place. Click on one of the six main areas to begin or use the search box at the top of the page.

Music Teachers National Association - this commissioning program allows MTNA and state affiliates to pool resources to commission new works. All states have the opportunity to commission a composer and apply for a matching grant from MTNA. States can combine and commission a composer together or commission a composer on their own. States initiate the process by choosing, approaching and commissioning a composer. For information on becoming a commissioned composer, please contact the president for the state in which you live. Within MTNA, individual state associations retain a great deal of autonomy and, therefore, each state approaches the challenge of selecting a composer differently.

Colorado opportunities:

Colorado Council on the Arts - The Colorado Council on the Arts, a state agency, combines state funds with federal funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, and invests in communities across the state to ensure that the cultural, educational and economic benefits of the arts are enjoyed by thousands of Colorado youth and millions of Colorado citizens and visitors every day.

Colorado Association of Funders - a nonprofit regional membership organization for grantmakers throughout the state. CAF's mission is to bring people, information and resources together to promote effective and responsible philanthropy in Colorado. Basically a directory of foundations.

CCA - Grants for Artists & Organizations - Includes Colorado Masterpieces (2009 is for a major dance tour), Small Steps Awards (First come first serve after - July 1, 2008), and general Grants to Artists & Organizations (Next deadline will probably be in March, 2009).

Adoph Coors Foundation - ensembles would fall under the following category: Civic and cultural programs attracting the Foundation's attention are typically those that enhance our culture and heritage, demonstrate our creativity as a people and are likely to be of economic benefit to and broadly used by the communities they serve.
Deadline: March 1, July 1 & November 1.

Colorado Common Grant Application - apply in one place for a number of Colorado-based funding sources.

The Anschutz Family Foundation - supports Colorado nonprofit organizations that assist people to help themselves while nurturing and preserving their self-respect. The Foundation encourages endeavors that strengthen families and communities and advance individuals to become productive and responsible citizens. There is a special interest in self-sufficiency, community development and programs aimed at the economically disadvantaged, the young, the elderly and the disabled. The Foundation is also dedicated to funding efforts in rural Colorado.
Deadlines: January 15 and August 1.

The Bonfils-Stanton Foundation - a private, non-profit corporation created to enhance the quality of life for residents of Colorado. The mission of the Foundation is to advance excellence in the areas of Arts and Culture, Community Service, and Science and Medicine through strategic investments resulting in significant and unique contributions in these fields.
Deadlines - July 31, 2008 / October 31, 2008 / January 31, 2009 / April 30, 2009.

The Denver Foundation - awards hundreds of grants annually to nonprofit organizations in the seven county Metro Denver area -- Adams, Arapahoe, Boulder, Broomfield, Denver, Douglas and Jefferson counties. In 2007, the Foundation awarded $5 million to hundreds of nonprofit organizations. Grants are typically awarded to organizations in four major focus areas: Arts & Culture, Civic & Education, Health, and Human Services. Nonprofit organizations must be a 501c3 organization to apply. Read more about our Community Grants Program.
Deadlines - June 2, 2008 / October 1, 2008.

El Pomar Foundation - is one of the largest and oldest private foundations in the Rocky Mountain West, with assets totaling more than $550 million. El Pomar contributes over $25 million annually through grants and community stewardship programs to support Colorado nonprofit organizations involved in health, human services, education, arts and humanities, and civic and community initiatives.
Trustee's meetings - February 20, 2008, April 25, 2008, July 10, 2008, September 22, 2008, November 19, 2008 (applications should probably be sent in at least a month in advance of any of these dates).

The Gates Family Foundation - invests in Colorado-based projects and organizations primarily through capital grants which have meaningful impact and enhance the quality of life for those visiting, working and living in the state. The Foundation seeks to promote self-sufficiency, excellence and innovation in education, healthy lifestyles, community enrichment, connection to nature and stewardship of the state's natural inheritance.
Deadlines - January 15, April 1, July 1, October 1.

NEA - American Masterpieces - Chamber Music - Grants are available for chamber music performances in conjunction with educational activities that will highlight specific repertoire by American composers and enable ensembles to engage with communities in a variety of settings. The Arts Endowment is particularly interested in projects that have at least one performance and two educational activities.
Deadline - October 10, 2008.

Electro-Acoustic Juke Joint

2008-08-16T10:31:00.001-07:00

I recently received word that my electronic work Meditation on a Spent .38 Shell will be performed on the Electro-Acoustic Juke Joint, a three day festival of computer music at Delta State University in Mississippi, November 13th through 15th.

The Playground Ensemble

2008-08-16T10:24:00.000-07:00

I recently was invited to join the board of the Playground Ensemble, artists-in-residence at the Denver University Lamont School of Music, and the foremost new music ensemble in Colorado. I'll be heading up research of commissioning grants, something that I've been doing for a while (in an attempt to be proactive as a composer), although I now get to see the process from within a 501(c)3 organization.

One more improvisation

2008-07-29T13:45:00.000-07:00

In contrast to the extremely dark improvisations I posted recently, I just created a very bright improvisation based loosely on the harmonic fields from my upcoming orchestra piece Nimbus.

New improvisations

2008-07-27T13:52:00.000-07:00

There are two more new improvisations available via the ReverbNation banner above. Both are expressionistic. The first I'm naming after Erebus, the Greek primordial god of shadows (son of Chaos), just to fit the generally dark mood of the piece. The second features a dissonant and foreboding clock marking the constant passage of time, and is named after Chronus, the Greek god of time.

More real-time compositions

2008-07-05T13:52:00.000-07:00

I've uploaded four new "real-time compositions" on piano, improvised today in various keys. Two are in minor, one is in major, and the last is fairly non-tonal, and is in a more expressionist style (though it ends strongly in C minor).

Click on the link above to my Reverb Nation page to hear the new improvisations.

Improvisations available online

2008-06-12T13:24:00.000-07:00

There are four "real-time compositions" (to quote my friends in the Cincinnati Real-Time Composers) available for your listening pleasure via the Reverb Nation banner above.
Two of the improvisations are in a "classical" style on acoustic piano and two in an experimental/rock/IDM/noise style.

Comments are welcome.

Technically, the "classical" style is really more in the vein of expressionism. The core ideas and melodic memes might be thoroughly rooted in common practice tonality, but the development sections are expressionistic, with an occasional touch of the blues, which gives it a jazzy sound. I would not say that I am a jazz improviser in any sense, however.

If I had to categorize the experimental electronic improvisations, I would say they fit somewhat in an IDM-noise-prog rock hybrid world. They almost always involve tension between a standard 4/4 back beat and a more complex odd-numbered meter or a mix of odd-numbered meters, or maybe they are rhythmically rooted around polyrhythms.

Cherokee Ranch

2008-06-08T20:56:00.000-07:00

I just returned from the incredible Cherokee Ranch, a bucolic estate in the rolling hills near Sedalia Colorado, crowned with a medieval style castle. The occasion was a chamber music concert, in which I turned pages for my mentor, pianist Hsing-ay Hsu, who accompanied violinist Yumi Hwang-Williams and cellist Judith McIntyre.

The acoustics of the main hall with a piano trio was excellent, and the program was composed of classical and romantic era music - Beethoven, Massenet, and Chausson. The playing was outstanding, and of the three pieces, the Chausson trio was my favorite for some of its innovative harmonic progressions (for late 19th century music): in this case, chromatic mediant relationships - a favorite technique of modern film composers and others (notably Philip Glass).

It is venues like the Cherokee Castle & Ranch that provide vital support for the western-classical art music tradition in the Western United States. I was impressed by the castle-bound concert, which harkened back to the true origins of chamber music, with music taking place in the great halls of wealthy patrons of art. It is also great to see that their performing arts series, now in its third season with twenty yearly concerts, is expanding, and may soon include a popular music series. Furthermore, as a composer, I would be ecstatic to see them continue to enrich the tradition of chamber music not only by hosting amazing concerts in their castle, but hopefully by commissioning new works from living Colorado composers.

This is a tangent to an experimental place - but speaking of castles, one of my favorite compositions dealing with the physical dimension of space took place on 1984 in Rohan Palace in Strasbourg: "Fête galante et pastorale" by Polish composer Zygmunt Krauze.
His website is here: http://www.zygmuntkrauze.com/index_eng.htm
You used to be able to find Fete galante et pastorale on musicologist/composer Kyle Gann's webradio, Post-Classical Radio: http://www.live365.com/stations/kylegann

News Blog

2008-06-03T23:38:00.001-07:00

I've been obsessing over a way to include a news blog in my website, and I just discovered that the "minima" layout on Blogger, set in an inline frame in my site, works fairly well with the transparent body of the my page. Thus, I can include my blog and we can still see the sublime winter sunrise on the Flatirons above Boulder Colorado behind the text.

Stay tuned for news on my various projects. Some interesting things that are running currently:
- Rebuilding the Pendulum New Music series website
- Uploading the entire 07/08 Pendulum season to YouTube
- Revising Nyx & Eris for a proposed performance in the 08/09 Playground ensemble season
- Working on a full orchestra piece called Nimbus throughout the summer
- Playing with the experimental improvisation group known as the Invisible College Quartet
- Arranging some King Crimson tunes for groups of CU composer/performers