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.

Katie’s Concert List 2017

Happy New Year! Every year I keep track of all of the concerts I attend so that at the end of the year I can sit back and think about all of the good music I am so fortunate to be able to experience here in the Twin Cities. In 2017 I attended over 30 concerts, so, without further ado, here’s my list:

Jan. 6: Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra (SPCO) feat. Pekka Kuusisto
Jan. 8: Schubert Club presents Gil Shaham performing Bach solo violin suites
Jan. 14: Steven Hobert and Issam Rafea jam session (piano/accordion and oud) at Studio Z
Jan. 21: SPCO Beethoven/5 premiere of Sally Beamish’s City Stanzas
Feb. 3: imPulse at Lake Monster Brewing
Feb. 4: SPCO feat. Claire Chase
Feb. 12: Schubert Club Music in the Parks Series: Danish String Quartet
Feb. 18: Live from Here with Chris Thile, feat. the Avett Brothers and Jesca Hoop
Feb. 19: Premiere of Adam Conrad’s bassoon concerto, The American Defense
Mar. 11: SPCO Liquid Music Series: Sarah Kirkland Snider’s Unremembered
Mar. 14: Accordo at Icehouse
Apr. 15: Dessa with Minnesota Orchestra
Apr. 28: Mu Daiko
May 5: SPCO feat. Pekka Kuusisto
May 13: Live from Here with Chris Thile feat. Josh Ritter and Jon Batiste
May 13: SPCO feat. Pekka Kuusisto, Gabriel Kahane, and Sam Amidon
June 16: Minnesota Orchestra performing Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, “Resurrection”
July 21: Live from Here with Chris Thile live script reading (I’m counting it as a concert because he was taking requests in between scripts)
Sept. 22: SPCO Beethoven/5 premiere of Salvatore Sciarrino’s Piano Concerto
Sept. 29: Miss Myra and the Moonshiners at Rummage
Oct. 5: SPCO Happy Hour Concert
Oct. 7: Live from Here with Chris Thile feat. Chris Stapleton
Oct. 7: MPR Block Party (I caught the sets by Dessa and Chris Thile)
Oct. 12: Schubert Club Mix: The Alehouse Sessions with Barokksolistene
Oct. 14: Live from Here with Chris Thile feat. Preservation Hall Jazz Band and Margaret Glaspy
Oct. 19: El Asopao Benefit Concert for Puerto Rico
Oct. 21: Live from Here with Chris Thile feat. Randy Newman and Margo Price
Oct. 22: Sphinx Virtuosi
Oct. 26: SPCO Liquid Music Series: Patricia Kopatchinskaja performing Luigi Nono’s La Lontananza Nostaligica Utopica Futura
Oct. 27: SPCO feat. Patricia Kopatchinskaja performing Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire
Nov. 12: SPCO feat. Pekka Kuusisto
Nov. 14: Nautilus Rough Cuts
Nov. 15: SPCO feat. Pekka Kuusisto and Zachary Cohen at the Turf Club
Nov. 16: SPCO Liquid Music Series: Emily Wells’ The World Is Too ___ For You
Dec. 1: SPCO feat. Francisco Fullana performing Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 3
Dec. 11: JT’s Jazz Implosion at Icehouse
Dec. 16: Joyann Parker at Hood and Ladder

Phew, that’s all of them! I don’t even know how I can pick a favorite, since they were all pretty amazing. Here’s to more amazing live music in 2018!

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

On Music Tastes and Judging Others’ Tastes

There’s been an interesting article floating around my Facebook feed over the last couple weeks or so that I highly recommend checking out. It discusses the subconscious classist and racist influences from history and continuing now that make people say they love “every type of music except country and rap.” There weren’t any major arguments that exploded when I shared it on my personal Facebook page, but I saw a few other friends share it and find themselves in the middle of some heated discussions. It’s made me sit back and reflect on how I talk about music as a self-proclaimed music snob.

I think anyone who studies music these days, especially popular music trends, would tell you that the lines between genres are far more blurred than they were fifty years ago. Musicians are taking elements of various styles that they like to make their own thing. An unfortunate side effect of this, of course, is a fair amount of cultural appropriation, but that is a topic for another post. The point I’m trying to make for now is that it’s silly to say that you hate one entire genre of music, because chances are that genre has about a dozen sub-genres, and at least one of those sub-genres will fit your music tastes. For example, I realized I can’t say that I hate country music anymore, because I love Dolly Parton, Carolina Chocolate Drops, and you could count ALL of the bluegrass I listen to (these links will basically give you the standard Katie’s Saturday morning playlist, by the way – if you had showed this to me ten years ago, I wouldn’t have believed that this is what I jam out to now). What I don’t enjoy listening to is the mainstream pop country that often dominates the radio waves in rural America, but even then, there will likely be exceptions. I’ve grown far more open-minded over the years after I realized I was in love with bluegrass.

Ugh, seriously, Dolly Parton is a gem. I’m ashamed at how long it took for me to get into her music.

Taken a few months after the moment I realized I was in love with bluegrass.

Another trend I see popping up on the social media feeds is the occasional meme that boils down to, “I’m cooler than you because I don’t like Beyoncé/The Beatles/Taylor Swift/insert other popular musical act here.” I’m all about being counter-cultural, but this irks me for multiple reasons:

1. Unless your distaste for a musical act has to do with who the musician is as a person or about the content of their music (i.e. Elvis stole all of his hits from black musicians, Taylor Swift’s brand of feminism is problematic, etc.), you’re not cooler than anyone else because you hate that musician. While you’re judging the kids these days for liking Bruno Mars, someone else is probably about to post about how they think your favorite musician David Bowie was overrated.
2. Music taste is an intensely personal thing for everyone. Beyoncé’s Lemonade album was incredibly important to the black community. Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony reminds me of a powerful music history lecture I heard in undergrad. My parents love the Billy Joel song that was playing when they got engaged. Just like you have a reason for hating something popular, your neighbor might have a reason for loving that thing that goes beyond what chords the musician used.
3. All pop music is terrible when it comes down to it. You might think you’re cool because post memes about how much you hate Despacito, but if you’re in my generation, you grew up jamming out to the Backstreet Boys and the Spice Girls at the roller skating rink. We’re not cool, y’all. We’re really not. (quick note: I unashamedly still love 90s boy bands and I regret nothing)
4. Let people enjoy things. I feel like this could apply to multiple aspects of what people do for fun, but seriously, just chill. As I said above, unless your dislike of the musician has to do with something other than the music itself, just… chill.

Finally, I feel like there’s this perception that classically-trained musicians only listen to classical music, and that composer only listen to new, avant-garde music. That may be true for a few musicians, but definitely not all. Remember at the beginning of this post when I talked about how musicians today are pulling influences from a variety of genres? I know an orchestral cellist who loves old-school hip-hop, a heavy metal guitarist who loves bluegrass, and one of my composition professors in undergrad once spent the first five minutes of a composition lesson gushing about how much he loves Gangnam Style. Don’t be afraid to admit liking music that might not fit your “image.”

I’m writing this article while listening to old-school Panic! At The Disco, by the way. I’m a classically-trained oboist and composer planning a semi-atonal song cycle, and here I am jamming out to emo rock from 2005. I’m definitely not allowed to judge anyone for music taste anymore.

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.

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!

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.

Concert-tastic April

In my last post I talked about my goal of attending more concerts in the year 2016. A large part of that goal has been fulfilled by my personal Concert-tastic April project. It mainly happened because a lot of concerts I was interested in attending all happened to fall in the month of April. With a week left in this month, I can say that this has been one of the best ideas I’ve ever had!

The project is simple: attend as many concerts as my schedule will allow in the month of April. Now, I had some work events in April that made it a little difficult, but so far this month I have been to five concerts (links included because I highly recommend any of these artists):

• April 1: Pekka Kuusisto with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra
• April 5: Gabriel Kahane and Timo Andres through Schubert Club Mix
• April 10: the St. Olaf Band premiering works by Egemen Kesikli, Luke Simonson, and Joseph Schwantner
• April 17: the Chiara String Quartet through Music in the Parks
• April 19: the Arianna String Quartet

Each of these concerts has been an absolute delight because they featured at least one contemporary work on the program. It’s been so inspiring to me that I’m back to working hard on finishing String Quartet No. 2, and I’ve started a piano sonata. I feel like I’m incredibly lucky to be living here in the Twin Cities, where there are so many opportunities to hear new music.

This week I’ve had to back off a bit for concerts due to some work travel, plus other social obligations (this blog is called “The Social Composer” for a reason). However, next week Punk Ass Classical will be presenting another show of mostly piano music, which I’m very much looking forward to!

Get out and go to concerts, my friends. I know that time and money are things that can be hard to work around, but music is such a refreshing outlet for the soul.

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!