This semester, the Center
for 21st Century Music’s graduate composition seminar focused on the
crucial but often pedagogically underemphasized activity of composer-performer
collaboration. Eight graduate students worked with “The Composers’ Workshop
Band” to rehearse compositions:
Daniel
Gostelow
Igor Coelho A. S. Marques
Jessie
Downs
Alex
Huddleston
Tomek Arnold
Kenneth
Tam
Derick
Evans
Brien
Henderson
The band
presents its first concert Friday, December 8, at 2pm, in Baird Recital Hall
(250 Baird). The event is free and open to the public.
 |
| SUNY Distinguished Professor David Felder |
The Composers’ Workshop Band
is a project initiated by SUNY Distinguished Professor David Felder, with the
great help of ensemble manager Hanna Hurwitz, conductor Edo Frenkel, and ensemble
members:
Emlyn Johnson - flute
Michael Tumiel -
clarinet
Steve Solook -
percussion
Rosy Moore - harp
Hanna Hurwitz - violin
Daniel Ketter - cello
Megan McDevitt - bass
The Center
congratulates them all for their stellar efforts bringing this unique project
to life. The Band is a truly exceptional artistic endeavor, as opportunities
for extended, in-depth composer-performer collaboration are rare, both in
educational institutions and in the broader professional new music world. Very
often in the new music world, intensive contact between composers and
performers is possible only in final rehearsals, preventing meaningful
long-term dialogue and relationship building. For young composers, this creates
a difficult situation where the possibility of changing pieces in response to
performer feedback is somewhat limited; in turn, seeking to avoid risk, composers
in this predicament often end up neglecting musical possibilities that might
lead, longer term, to the creation of new performance practices. This is why a
project like the Band is so important, particularly for the young composers
participating in the project, who have been given an ideal incubator to help
them hatch musical ideas that might not be welcome in certain professional
situations but that in the long run might lead to important compositional
breakthroughs and influential new performance practices. The new music
specialists who make up the Band have optimal skills and experience to assist
the graduate composers in this endeavor.
As an educational
framework, the Band overcomes a common limitation of much composition pedagogy.
Frequently composition teaching focuses primarily on the creation of a score;
upon completion of a score, the musical work is seen as finished. However, in a
performing art like music, the piece’s reality is in live performance, and the
task of translating score into performance is a complex and challenging one,
particularly in new music where one cannot meaningfully depend upon
conventionalized interpretive rules, as is the case in standard repertoire classical
music. In addition to mastering “compositional technique” in a more orthodox
sense, successful composers must also learn rehearsal technique, and how to
best communicate their ideas through notation and performance instructions. Creating
meaningful performance practice for one’s compositions means creating a
multi-tiered strategy distributed between these four aspects of a piece.
Composition students
at the Center are extremely fortunate to have numerous opportunities available
to help them hone their ability to translate musical idea into performance
reality. Between special projects like the Composers’ Workshop Band, guest
performer residencies at the Center, and June in Buffalo, the Center’s graduate
programs provide ideal circumstances for emerging composers to mature
artistically. David Felder’s renowned pedagogy, with its astute emphasis upon
students’ ability to mediate between conception and performance, is an enormous
asset in this respect as well. It is thus no accident that numerous graduates
of the Center have gone on to make music that asks ambitious questions about
the nature of music’s performance, questioning conventions of performative
possibility, instrumental and electronic technique, notation, and more.