Concert-tastic March

Remember that time two years ago when I went to a bunch of concerts in the month of April and called it, “Concert-tastic April?” Well, March 2018 has absolutely put that to shame. It has been an amazing month for concerts in the Twin Cities! I’m still dealing with plenty of FOMO for the ones I missed, but I do have to squeeze laundry and sleep in at some point, right?

(I realize there are still two days left in March, but I won’t be attending any other concerts this month)

Okay, friends, here’s a summary of Concert-tastic March 2018:

• March 1: I’m With Her at the Fitzgerald – UGH, their harmonies are so tight. They played three encores, and I still didn’t want it to end. Seriously, check out their new album and go hear them live if you can!
• March 2: 113 Collective Festival – Honestly… I wasn’t super impressed by most of the pieces on this program. However, I was a huge fan of Tiffany Skidmore’s piece that involved laying chainmail over piano strings. It created a really cool sound! The others, I felt, could have used a bit more editing. Or maybe I’m just getting old-fashioned now, who knows…
• March 3: Live from Here with Chris Thile, feat. Caitlyn Smith and Väsen – LFH is always such a blast! I always leave the show with a huge grin on my face. I especially enjoyed Väsen (Scandinavian folk music, how shocking that it was my favorite part…)
• March 4: SPCO feat. Martin Fröst – It was a double-Mozart program, but it was nice and light for a Sunday afternoon show. Also, Fröst’s control of dynamics and silky tone on the clarinet are glorious.
• March 13: Accordo performing to silent movies (presented by the Schubert Club) – These shows are always cheesy in a fun way. The Cinderella film was equally dark and charming, with a score that fit perfectly. The Buster Keaton film was a delight, and every time I glanced down at the musicians, it looked like they were having an absolute blast performing to it!
• March 14: Liquid Music Series feat. Nathalie Joachim performing Fanm d’Ayiti – This whole work was beautiful. The work celebrates past and present female musicians of Haiti, and Joachim included sound clips of interviews with these women. And by celebrates, I mean really celebrates – Joachim encouraged us all to join her in a dance party during the last piece!
• March 22: Zeitgeist Early Music Festival, works by Julius Eastman – What an absolute treat to finally hear works by Julius Eastman live! Unfortunately, I could only make this one day of the festival, but it was amazing. I loved Zeitgeist’s interpretation of Buddha, which has a score with very little direction, and there doesn’t seem to be any recording of it with Eastman’s blessing that survives (if one resurfaces, though, I’d love to hear it).
• March 27: Schubert Club Mix Series feat. Colin Currie – Solo percussion recitals are always super fun, and this concert absolutely blew my mind. The program was pretty perfect for me, including works by Xenakis and Stockhausen, as well as some composers whose works I really need to check out!

I also squeezed in some time to attend a play that a friend of mine directed (Rocket Man at Crane Theater, if you’re reading this before April 1 when it closes!), as well as have an Irish jam session on mandolin with friends who play mandolin and fiddle for St. Patrick’s Day! Of course, I also worked on The Song Cycle That Was Promised (yes, that’s still its title), which is almost finished! I had been shooting for an April finish, and with only one and a half songs to write, I could actually stay on track, assuming the inspiration well keeps flowing. Get ready for some atonal silliness about dog memes and dating apps.

The Song Cycle That Was Promised

Guess what, y’all. I’m actually writing the song cycle. Like writing the text, too.

The plan is to make it as weird as possible, and it’s going to be about Internet culture in 2017. That way, I actually have to write it in a decent amount of time, before the jokes all become irrelevant. For example, there will be a song about dog memes that includes the phrase, “boop of the snoot.”

Yeah. We’re doing this.

In lieu of writing a new novel for NaNoWriMo this year, I will be touching up my sci-fi two-parter and writing this song cycle. The goal is to finish it in December for an early 2018 performance, assuming I can decide on the instrumentation by then (piano and voice isn’t weird enough). I’m excited that a friend of mine who loves new music and is a super talented singer is willing to perform this thing. I think she was sold on the dog memes.

Ahh, it’s been so long since I last wrote a ridiculous piece.

#GETHYPE

It’s Finished! IT’S DONE!

My piano sonata is finally finished! In what was probably an appropriate twist of fate, I finished it on the evening of July 4th, right as the official fireworks were starting up over the Mississippi and various nearby lakes of Minneapolis. I’ve been working on it for a little over a year now, but the majority of the work happened between the election and now. When you start writing a piece with the concept of the loss of innocence, it seems only natural that it turns into one of your main forms of therapy during a time of political turmoil.

The end of 16 minutes of emotional ups and downs.

Now it’s been sent off to the friend I originally planned to write it for during a conversation two years ago that started with, “Do you have any piano sonatas I could look at?” and has ended with a sixteen-minute-long meditation on growing up in the 21st century. It’s out of my hands for the first time, like sending your angsty child off to college.

The piano sonata is finished, and for once I don’t actually know what I want to write next. I’ve been toying with the idea of writing an oboe sonata for years (you know, the instrument I actually play but never write for…). I have also come up with vague concepts for a song cycle. Considering that I’ve never really written for voice before, that would be a good challenge (and there are a million talented vocalists here in the Twin Cities, where choral music reigns). But that means I have to find a libretto, and I don’t even know where to start with that. I guess that is the luxury of having a full-time job unrelated to composition – I can really write whatever I want, since I don’t have to rely on commissions for income. The downside is that I never have deadlines, and I have to carve out time to write in between working and making dinner and trying to get eight hours of sleep a night so that I can deal with Twin Cities rush hour traffic in the morning (insert daily rant about zipper merging).

Finishing the piano sonata is one of the most rewarding double bars I’ve reached since I finished my first string quartet back in 2012. It helps when you already have a performer and potential premiere opportunity lined up, I suppose. Unlike with my second string quartet, I know people will be hearing this piano sonata some time later this year. I’m sure I will be more intimidated by that thought later on, but at the moment it’s very exciting for a composer who’s been taking her sweet time getting her music out there.

For now, it’s time to take a brief break from writing music so that I can go back to playing it. It’s been over two months since I was in a regular habit of practicing oboe, and I casually fiddle around on my mandolin (pun intended) about once every few weeks. It will also feel nice being at a social function and not having the “you should be writing” guilt in the back of my brain.

But one questions remains: does the piano sonata have a title yet?

Hahaha.

Of course not.

Writing Your Feels

People who know me in real life know that I’m generally a pretty positive, upbeat person. However, I am also pretty in touch with my emotions. I’m not much of a crier, but I definitely spent a whole day feeling down after seeing the last Hobbit movie because of all of the sad character deaths (it wasn’t even that great of a movie), and don’t even get me started about the genre of stories/movies/video games I jokingly refer to as “Things That Ruined My Life,” because I still get emotional when I think about them (like the ending to Final Fantasy X). This also tends to play out with more serious situations, such as the events of the recent election…

So for someone who can be a giant bundle of emotions, it’s been an interesting challenge to write this piano sonata. The vast majority of the music I’ve written before is either happy in the end or depicts something in a more intellectual way. And then I started writing Piano Sonata No. 1, which is an exploration of coming of age in the 21st century (among other things). It’s a bit dark, and I’ve found that my usual composing snack has switched from beer to dark chocolate out of necessity (writing a sad piece while drinking beer was just making me feel sadder). I usually write for 1-2 hours at a time, and after up to two hours of expressing some intense emotion, I really need something light to take my mind out of that place so I can go on functioning as a human in society (which is why there is now usually a dark chocolate bar of some sort from the local co-op on my desk at all times and an endless supply of candles in my apartment).

I’m guessing that for some composers, this isn’t a new thing. Plenty of composers have come before whose music is highly emotional, and they’ve had their own ways of dealing with intense emotion (some probably in healthier ways than others). Writing music, or really creating any sort of art, that is an expression of an intense emotion you are feeling can be as taxing as it is therapeutic. On one hand, you’re letting all of those feelings go into your art, but on the other hand, you’re requiring that you face those emotions in the first place. That can be a huge challenge for some people who have been pushing their emotions aside in an attempt to look “normal” or “adjusted.”

I think that being in touch with your emotions and expressing them in a healthy manner is important. Keeping them bottled up inside is so much harder on a person in the long run (I know this from experience – I tried it in high school). The helplessness, anger, fear, etc. that I have been feeling since the election have all been channeled into this piano sonata, along with the feelings I had when I first started writing it back in April 2016 (oops it’s been almost a year now, hasn’t it…). It helps on the days where I feel like I can’t do anything, and it makes me feel more empowered on the days when I can do something.

I guess what I’m really trying to get down to here is, use your art to let out the feelings you’re having, whether they be positive or negative. But be careful about letting it take too much of a hold on you when you have to snap out of that intense creative time and go on with your life. Have that chocolate bar or candles or whatever you need ready to go after you have spent some quality time with your feels.

Time Management as an Artist

Once upon a time I read about how Charles Ives had a full time job as a salesman and still managed to compose a bunch of amazing music, and I thought, “yeah, I can totally work full time and still write music and practice and do my 80 other hobbies!” Umm, yeah, no. Not as easy as it sounds, Chuck.

I work two jobs, take on occasional gigs, and go to as many concerts and other social things as I can to fill my extroverting needs, which means that finding time for practice and composing is tricky to do. I’ve tried 30-day challenges (so far it’s only really worked with yoga), I have like 3 calendars and a small planner, and I have a whiteboard in my room where I write down the last time I practiced my instruments or composed, and for how long. All of these have helped, but I still haven’t managed to get back into the regular sort of routine I had in undergrad. And of course, this was also easier in undergrad because I didn’t have to take time to cook meals, clean up from those meals, clean the bathroom, and other “adulting” sorts of things that take up time during the day. Sleep and health are still top priorities for me, so I try to fit in around 7 hours of sleep a night and cook my own meals (I really love cooking). Also, DID I MENTION I’M A HUGE EXTROVERT AND I HAVE A HARD TIME TURNING DOWN SOCIAL THINGS WHEN I SHOULD BE PRACTICING? IT IS SO HARD. (capslock felt necessary)

These are the times when I envy my freelancing friends who do their music full time. They make their own schedules and are able to fit in all their practice time every day. Does this mean it’s time for me to go to grad school at last? I don’t know, but what I have been trying to incorporate into my life is how my freelancing friends manage to schedule their down time. When most of us get home from work, what’s the first thing we do? Check Facebook, or watch Netflix. The Internet is lovely, but it can also be such a huge time-suck, when you could actually be spending that Facebook time working on your piano sonata that you’re hoping to finish by the end of April, instead of stewing over yet another racist post from someone you haven’t seen since high school (I don’t unfriend people and at times it is draining).

This week I’ve started something new: as soon as I get home, I’m going to either practice oboe for a half hour to an hour. No Facebook, no Twitter. Going straight to music. Otherwise, if I wait too long into the evening, I won’t feel like practicing, or it will be too late and I’ll worry about waking up the neighbors with my loud instrument. With composing I’ve gone into my planner and looked ahead at the week to see which nights I’m mostly likely going to have a large chunk of down time to work on the piano sonata, and I’ve blocked those off for composing time. This week I’ve set aside two nights to work on the piano sonata, and if a third night opens up, then bonus composing time for me!

Strictly scheduling one’s day isn’t something that comes naturally to most artist-types, but I’m finding that if I don’t try to come up with a routine, then I won’t be able to get my oboe chops back up to where I’d like them to be, and I’ll never finish this piano sonata. I’ve written about time management before, but that was back when I was working fewer hours per week. I’m hoping that this new schedule for the rest of March works out, and that by summer I’ll have a great routine in place where I can stay fit, stay musical, and still feel like I’m not running out of time every night.

Website Changes are Coming!

I’m in the thick of busy season at my day job, and my laptop is slowly dying, but I have found a rare moment of free time and laptop-working to say that I’m going to be updating this blog in the near future! Now that I’ve been writing music fairly regularly again for the last year or so, I’m going to work on getting updated versions of my scores ready to put out there (contests, hello!). Also, thanks to my lovely photographer friend, I have some pretty new headshots on their way. It’s been a while since I have been blonde, after all…

A composition update: I set a goal for myself to finish the first movement of my piano sonata in the month of January, and I did it! As in, there’s a pretty solid first draft of it completed, and now I’m letting it simmer for a bit while I work on the other two movements and do some research on a possible song cycle (what??) that will be written concurrently with the last movement of the piano sonata. Shooting for late spring to finish this piece, which would be record time for me in recent years (how did Ives work a day job and have time to write?).

I have decided that String Quartet No. 2 is finished… for now. I may make a few minor tweaks after I hear a live quartet run through it, but otherwise, that three-and-a-half year endeavor is finally at a close. There’s now a listing for it on my “Compositions” page, and it’s got a title: A Meditation of Time. Because that’s literally what it is. Titles are my least-favorite aspect of writing music…

Hey, friends, things are rough for a lot of us, but don’t forget to support your local arts if you can. Next weekend here in the Twin Cities is the next Punk-Ass Classical show! I will unfortunately be out of town, but it looks like an awesome show. Get out there and support new music!

On Taking A Hiatus

As I mentioned in my last post, I’ve been taking a hiatus from Facebook since last Thursday (so as of writing this post, 11 days). I love social media as much as the next millennial, but there are times when Facebook really stresses me out. I have friends and family all over the political spectrum, and I try not to filter out my newsfeed to only show things that I agree with, because I want to more fully understand all sides to an issue. However, during this election season, I’ve been finding that every time I get on Facebook, I leave feeling frustrated and angry. During my annual “Hell Week” (the first week of May when, without fail, I will always have several commitments and not much time to do them), I can’t afford to be feeling angry because someone shared yet another inaccurate and polarizing meme. Last year at this time I took a week where I only checked Facebook once every other day or so, just to see if there were any important notifications. This year, I’ve only been on for work (I edit a Facebook page) and once to double-check the time of an event. I haven’t looked through any notifications or scrolled down my newsfeed in 11 days.

Let me tell you, I feel great.

I don’t have my daily “Arghh this social issue is happening and people are being irresponsible/rude and I can’t do anything about it because if I comment it will devolve into an unproductive argument!” that I normally get when I check Facebook, and just that little bit of negativity taken away has given me the boost I needed to get through this past week without any meltdowns.

I’m going to clarify that I do thrive better off of being busy than I do with having too much free time, but there comes a point where not getting enough sleep, eating out constantly because there’s no time to cook, and quickly driving from one thing to the next can wear on a person. When you add the stress from Facebook arguments to that, it’s not a fun combination.

I have allowed myself to a few breaks from things that I love since finishing undergrad, and every time I’ve come back feeling far more refreshing and with a renewed passion for that thing. For example, right after I graduated, I took a long break from playing oboe because I had “burned out” from playing so much. I would practice every once in a while to keep my chops going, but otherwise, I didn’t do any regular practicing until the summer of 2015. At that point I finally felt ready to play more, and now when I practice oboe, it doesn’t feel like a chore. The same goes for swing dancing. I regularly back off on swing dancing, because at times I feel like I’m going because I have to, not because I want to. There are people who would never miss a social dance or a lesson, and that’s great for them. I am not one of those people. Too much of something makes me appreciate it less, and I slowly stop enjoying it as much as I used to.

Everyone is different, but I will always highly advocate for taking a break from a hobby you love if it doesn’t feel as rewarding for you as it used to. It’s like if you ate your favorite food every single day. For the first three days, it’s the best thing ever, but after a while, it doesn’t taste as good to you, and soon you get sick of eating it. Don’t force yourself to keep doing a hobby if it feels more like a chore than a hobby. It’s okay to take breaks from hobbies! Give your mind and body a break and a chance to reset once in a while. I took almost two years off from regularly playing oboe, but I still came back to it eventually and fell in love with it again (as much as I joke about how much I hate the oboe).

Now I do love Facebook. It’s a chance for me to see what friends from all over the world are doing, and a great way to share news of concerts or other events that are going on. I’m not giving up Facebook entirely; I’ll be hopping back on after I get back from an out-of-town conference at the end of this week to check the 99+ notifications that are waiting for me (the above picture is real). But for now, it’s nice to have a break from an overload of news, opinions, and event notifications so that I can focus on other things.

Oboe Improv?

May is here, which means a busy month for me, but I still make time for music. Concert-tastic April finished strong with the Punk Ass Classical show, featuring new piano works, including an incredible 10-minute solo piano work by my dear friend Sam Tygiel. I love hearing new music, obviously, but it’s even more fun when the works you’re hearing are written by your friends! The next Punk Ass Classical show is at the end of this month, so expect some heavy promotion from me in the next few weeks…

My focus for May is oboe playing. I’m getting back into a regular practice routine so that my face stays in shape, but right now the only music I’m practicing is stuff I’m doing for fun (Gordon Jacob’s anything for oboe. Love his oboe music so hard). So on Sunday I found myself looking at my calendar and realizing that the next Potted Meet was on Monday. For those of you who don’t know, Potted Meet happens once a month at a bowling alley in Northeast Minneapolis, and it serves as a conversation between music, visual artists, and community organizations. I’ve always talked about bringing an instrument to it and jamming with Improvestra (the “house band,” you could say), but I didn’t actually get around to it until this month. Instead of bringing my mandolin (which I’m used to jamming on), I brought my oboe and decided to try oboe improv. Yeah, jazz oboe isn’t really a thing, so I haven’t had much practice doing improvisation on oboe. However, it came pretty easily to me since it’s A) a tonal improv orchestra and B) a lot of 12-bar blues progressions. I never thought I’d find myself jamming on oboe with friends at a bowling alley bar, but it happened, and it was awesome. I’m looking forward to bringing Gilbert the oboe to more jam sessions in the future! Don’t worry, mandolin will get some love this summer, but my face needs more of a workout than my fingers do at the moment.

I just finished working on String Quartet No. 2 some more this evening, and I’ve decided that I need to rewrite the second movement. I’ve rewritten it twice already, but I’m so happy with the rest of the piece that I need to make sure I’m in love with the second movement before I start showing it to people to read. New goal is to finish it in May (might be hard with all the extra oboe-playing), or at least get it to a point where someone can read it and give me feedback.

Finally, I will mention that I’ve been on a Facebook hiatus for about a week now, and it’s the best decision I’ve ever made. I’ll dedicate a more thorough blog post to that once my hiatus is over next week, but wow, I never realized how stressed out I was getting just from my Facebook feed! It’s an interesting place to be in as someone who loves social media… Right, as I said, more on that next week.

Let the music play on, friends, and take a moment to look at the flowers this week. Spring is here, and it is beautiful.

Spring Cleaning

Phew, it’s been a while! A new year is upon us, and 2016 is already shaping up to be pretty fabulous. In the last three months I’ve met two of my musical heroes (composer David Maslanka and mandolinist Avi Avital), and I have a stellar lineup of concerts scheduled on my calendar through the beginning of the summer. One thing I noticed toward the end of 2015 was how many concerts I’d attended, and from how many different genres: classical, bluegrass, rock, blues, jazz… So one goal I have for 2016 is to get out to more concerts! Friends, take advantage of those reduced prices for 20-somethings that most orchestras and other arts orgs have. I want to take a moment to put in a quick plug for the SPCO’s club2030. $10 tickets PLUS happy hour? Seriously the best. MN Orch has a similar group as well (obviously I hit up the SPCO more often because it’s closer to me, and I have the worst weakness for chamber music).

With all of this going on, it’s no wonder that I’m STILL working on String Quartet No. 2… There was a good rush of creativity in January, but then February got super busy between playing oboe on a friend’s piece for a Punk Ass Classical show and tabling at the MMEA Mid-Winter Clinic for work. Now we’re at the end of March, and I’m so close to being finished. I just need one more transition, and then cleaning up the score. I’m going to be so pleased with myself when I’ve finished this piece that’s been almost three years in the making!

In non-musical news, I’ve realized how much I love month-long challenges like NaNoWriMo, so I’ve decided to take on a few more. In February I completed a 30-day minimalist challenge, which has been incredibly rewarding in how much cleaner my room feels (see the above picture). I’ve been dragging so much stuff I didn’t need around with me since college! And once I drop off these last few boxes to Goodwill, it’s all going to be gone. Yes, there are all those studies that talk about how messy people are more creative, but having a simpler-looking place to come home to every day has been incredibly therapeutic for me, which in the long run will help my creativity. To each their own, right?

In April I’ll be starting a new challenge: 30 Days of Yoga. Nothing to do with music directly, but man, that desk job life and playing three instruments have really taken a toll on my body. I also like yoga because it forces me to not think about other things for a while, since I’m constantly reminding myself to breathe and focusing on balance. Well, I guess there is a musical aspect to it: working on deep breathing is good for my oboe breath control!

In summary, I’ve taken the first part of this year to clean up my life a bit, and I already feel so much better! April is going to be packed with concerts, yoga, and hopefully finishing a string quartet. It will be busy, but at least I’m going into it with a refreshed mind!

The Ticking Room Premiere

I meant to write this back in November, but life got busy. I finally had a premiere again for the first time in well over a year! Some good friends and new friends (thank you Greg, Tessa, Ben, and Baylen!) performed the third movement of my upcoming string quartet at the second Punk Ass Classical Basement Show in Minneapolis on November 19. The third movement, currently titled “The Ticking Room,” is a minimalist, rhythmic movement based on the idea of having multiple clocks in one room, and they’re all slightly out of sync. It was very well-received, and I’m delighted with how the performance went! I do have a recording of it that I hope to put on my SoundCloud in the next few days or so. Since it was in the basement of an old house, there’s a bit of creaking floor sound in the recording, but I feel like that makes it more authentic. Sort of. Work with me here.

This was my first Punk Ass Classical Basement Show, and I had a wonderful time! Besides my own work, my friend and fellow composer Michael Betz also had a premiere that night, a haunting work for solo flute that was masterfully performed by Joshua Weinberg. And the turnout for the whole show was amazing! I don’t know how we fit so many people into one tiny basement, but it worked. My only regret was that I had to leave early to get down to Iowa for a work conference. Bravo to everyone involved in the show! I’m already looking forward to the next one!

Now that NaNoWriMo is over (I finished at a little over 58,000 words!), I’m back to working on String Quartet No. 2. I think it’s safe to say that the first movement is finished and ready for a read-through. The second movement is getting some final touch-ups. And then the fourth movement… I have a concept, and I’ve started it, but I think my concept might be a little too abstract to properly convey through sound. However, I’m determined to make it work. My self-imposed deadline for a double-bar on this piece is December 31. It would be so lovely to finally finish a piece again!

That’s it for my quick update. Back to writing!