Sympho Concerts

Sold out!

2012-01-29T17:57:00.000-08:00

Just got back from the Green Lama concert at the Rubin Museum. Absolutely incredible performance by all, and I've gotta say...I really loved the experience. Creating sound effects and composing music, as well as choosing music by (mostly contemporary) composers and, uh, mashing it all up proved to be great fun. It didn't hurt that we had stellar performers, both musicians (MAYA) and actors (including Linus Roache as the Green Lama and Brian Cox as Willie the Sleeper). Food for thought - it certainly was a new direction for Sympho, and the audience was really receptive to it. Very happy.

Green Lama today!

2012-01-29T06:09:00.000-08:00

Today's the big day! Yesterday all the actors came together, Elliott Forrest and I coached them on their roles, and we put it together with the soundtrack. Amazing. Everyone involved in this, from the musicians to the actors to the tech crew, is incredible, and the whole piece is wildly exceeding my expectations. If you're reading this, please help me spread the word. This is a one-time event and seriously not to be missed. If you want to link to the Facebook event page, here's that link.

Too much fun in Green Lama rehearsal?

2012-01-27T17:37:00.001-08:00

Well, I'm a big believer in accomplishing a lot in rehearsals, and also in highly-detailed time management. That said, I love it when you hit a rhythm in rehearsal and have a great time. Today was one of those days: MAYA and I rehearsed The Green Lama for four hours this afternoon, and we had a blast. John Hadfield (percussionist) had worked with me earlier to set up our electronics, and today was the rehearsal where we put the "soundtrack" together, playing all the musical snippets and various electronica elements in order, along with a reading of the script from the Green Lama comic book. I'm not sure what it was about this piece - perhaps it's just such a crazy mish-mash of styles, times, and places - but we were, ahem, ROFL the whole time. MAYA plays brilliantly, and it's incredibly rewarding to be able to work with them on such an intimate level.

The actors are WQXR’s Elliott Forrest as narrator, with Law and Order's Linus Roache as the voice of the Green Lama, and Brian Cox—who opens in "Coriolanus" this week opposite Ralph Fiennes—as master crook Willie the Sleeper. Darrell Larson will also be joining us.

Tomorrow we put together the entire Green Lama multimedia project. We'll do a tech run-through with the video projection element (devised by Elliott Forrest), and then the actors will join us for a full-cast rehearsal and then run-through. Should be a great day!

Then Sunday's the big day. Dress rehearsal at 2:30, and the performance at 4pm. Get your tickets here.

Kapow!!!

2012-01-23T07:35:00.000-08:00

In just under a week (Sunday the 29th at 4pm, to be exact), Sympho will be collaborating with the extraordinary MAYA Trio (Sato Moughalian, Bridget Kibbey, and John Hadfield) to create a somewhat composed, somewhat improvised soundtrack to a screening of panels from the 1940's cult comic book "Green Lama". Yes, that's with only one "l". A superhero who spends time in Tibet, amassing mysterious powers during his sojourn...not your typical comic book, but certainly a fun one.

I'll be working with MAYA during rehearsals starting this Wednesday, putting it all together, and then we'll join with a wonderful group of actors (Linus Roache, Brian Cox, Darrell Larson, and WQXR's Elliott Forrest) on Saturday to put it all together. This is a first for me, because I'll be performing on laptop instead of conducting. It'll be a wonderful chance to hear some live chamber music in a crazy mash-up of artistic genres (visual art, music, and theater, to be precise). The "soundtrack" portion will be about 15 minutes, followed by an artist discussion. The remainder of the concert will be a mixture of chamber music and electronica, primarily composed of source material for the soundtrack in extended form.

Should be a good one, and I'll hope to see you there! Details here.

Great Phone Call!

2011-10-07T13:09:00.000-07:00

I had a wonderful conversation with Ann Hamilton yesterday. Ann is the acclaimed artist creator of the Tower, the 80-foot-high, 16-foot-diameter venue with double helix staircases in which Sympho will perform next June in California. The concert is entitled, appropriately enough, TOWER. I'll share some of the tantalizing details:

• She met Steve Oliver, the man who eventually commissioned the Tower, through a friend who knew that 1) Ann needed some live sheep for a current project, and 2) Steve happened to be raising sheep.

• The double helix staircase is modeled on a specific well in Orvieto, Italy - sheep descend to the water via one staircase, and they ascend via the other.

• OK, enough about sheep! More intriguingly, the Tower is designed to connect the sky and the ground, and Ann conceptualized it as a throat. (Funnily enough, one of the first images that came to mind upon entering the Tower was the vibrating column of air inside the throat or in a woodwind instrument.)

• It's a very INTERIOR space, even though it's outside. You won't get this until you're standing inside, but it's very true.

• Rhythmically, the staircase looks very regular, but it's not. The stairs get narrower and narrower as they ascend - this compression in ascension and relaxation in descent was integral to Hamilton's design.

• The primary experience was intended to be about movement. The stairs have a nice "gait" to them, though I wouldn't recommend walking them for extended periods of time, unless you're going for a great workout!

• You can look very intimately at the person opposite you on the other staircase, but you can't reach them.

• Finally, given its location in an earthquake zone, there is at least as much built UNDER the ground as there is above ground. During the construction, the team brought in workers from a bridge-building company with airtanks to go underground and make sure the concrete pillars penetrated into bedrock.

For more pictures of this singular venue just click here. The Sympho collaborative team is off to experiment in the Tower for a week, starting on October 17. Can. Not. Wait.

TOWER Beginnings

2011-08-23T14:51:00.001-07:00

Just a quick note to our fans: after an intense period of reflection over the past months, we are ready to launch into the beginnings of the artistic development of TOWER, commissioned by the Oliver Ranch Foundation and following in the footsteps of artistic luminaries Meredith Monk and Kronos Quartet. The concerts will take place on June 16 and 17, 2012 in Geyserville, CA. Artistic Director Paul Haas and collaborating artists will be in residence in Ann Hamilton's 80-foot-tall structure for an entire week this coming October. Stay posted for further developments.

Conversation with Sympho Artistic Director Paul Haas

2011-02-15T06:40:00.000-08:00

A conversation with Sympho Artistic Director Paul Haas as he talks about the ambitious scope of ARCO, what it's like to develop a site-specific piece for the Park Avenue Armory, the confluence of the old and the new in both the venue and the music, and how the themes of struggle, aggression, protection, ecstasy and revelation are treated by and shared among the three composers of ARCO.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW

Tomorrow we go in!

2011-02-14T18:43:00.000-08:00

We've been rehearsing the orchestra for two days now, and I've got to tell you - this is one incredible band. I feel like I'm driving a Lamborghini. They can do absolutely anything - crazy mixed meters, the whole range of dynamics, colors, and styles, and it's almost as if they're able to intuit what I want. Really phenomenal.

Tomorrow night, we move in to the 55,000 square foot Drill Hall to put this concert in its home. Up until now, we've been in a gorgeous historic room in the Armory, but what we've heard bears little resemblance to how it will actually sound in the Drill Hall. Luckily, Bora Yoon, Paul Fowler and I have done tons of research in the Drill Hall, figuring out its acoustics, even before we wrote a note of music.

This may be the last post I write before ARCO. It's gonna get pretty crazy.

Seriously...come to ARCO.

And it begins

2011-02-12T15:05:00.000-08:00

Rehearsals for Sympho's ARCO start tomorrow at the Armory - long days on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, including the performance at 7:30pm. Believe it or not, the first time we'll actually be in the enormous Drill Hall as an ensemble is Tuesday night. Paul Fowler, Bora Yoon, and I cannot wait to hear this music live in that fantastic venue, and we can't wait to share it with YOU.

As you can imagine, the next few days will be packed with activity for everyone involved in this production, so I'll try to get all the important details out right now, before it all hits:

1) Come. You will not want to miss this one. Wednesday, February 16 at 7:30 at the Park Avenue Armory's 55,000 square foot Wade Thompson Drill Hall at 643 Park Avenue, New York City. Buy your tickets here.

2) Read the program notes, beautifully written by Ruth Pongstaphone, ARCO's Staging and Visual Design Director. I can't stress enough how much this piece rewards deeper levels of knowledge.

3) Come to the 6pm pre-concert talk at the Armory, free for ticket-holders. You have to pre-register for this, though.

That's it for now. I'll try to post between now and the concert, but...no promises.

Addendum

2011-02-08T08:38:00.000-08:00

For those of you who want to geek out on the nitty-gritty, here are the instruments/singers involved in ARCO:

Instruments:

14 Violins
5 Violas
4 Celli
3 Basses
3 Flutes/Piccolos
3 Oboes/1 English Horn
3 Clarinets/1 Bass Clarinet
3 Bassoons
4 Horns
3 Trumpets
2 Tenor Trombones
1 Bass Trombone
1 Tuba
2 Percussionists, playing all sorts of interesting instruments (10-gallon water jugs, anyone?)
2 Laptops
1 Harp
2 Pianos
1 Celesta

Singers:

1 Soprano (Bora Yoon)
1 Bass-Baritone (Charles Perry Sprawls)
New York Polyphony (early music quartet)

And...a partridge in a pear tree. I think that's it.

One Week Out...

2011-02-08T08:18:00.000-08:00

A lot has happened since I wrote my last post. The score to ARCO is completely done. We've constructed and printed the orchestral parts. We've devised the movement paradigm - i.e., who plays what from where (did I mention that the Armory takes up an entire city block?). We've recruited yet another fantastic addition to our team, in the person of Ruth Pongstaphone, who is acting as our Staging and Visual Design Director. The orchestra has been hired.

Basically, we're ready to go. Supremely exciting. We're very honored to be the opening night of the Armory's Tune-In festival, which New York's WQXR is calling the Top New Music Event of 2011.

Our program notes are up and ready for download here. We definitely recommend reading them in advance, as this concert rewards the listener for entering successively deeper levels of understanding.

Tickets are still available, but reserved seats are becoming scarce. Once you've bought your tickets, don't forget to register for the 6pm pre-concert talk with Paul Fowler, Bora Yoon, and me. We'll be discussing the evolution and work process of ARCO, along with getting into more detail even than the program notes.

Things are about to get hectic, as rehearsals commence Sunday. I'll try to keep you posted as we go along. See you at ARCO!

Happy New Year!

2011-01-03T12:33:00.001-08:00

So here we are in the brave new world of 2011, and it's been a couple of months since my last posting. Paul Fowler, Bora Yoon, and I have been writing music and creating the structure for our next project: the vast ARCO. At this point, the score is almost finalized, and the three of us are a little giddy with anticipation. As you can see on our website, this concert attempts to translate into music the course of a human life. I know, I know...you're thinking, who does something like that? It's a staggering undertaking, and one that has certainly humbled us as we went about doing it. I suppose you could even say IT did US, rather than the reverse. On the flip, if you're looking for inspiration in an artistic undertaking, well...what better subject to delve into than the raw human experience?

It's amazing to me that this is actually happening. We're going to be in the Armory's cathedral-like Drill Hall, with a 53-member orchestra, a bevy of phenomenal singers, a production team to die for, with our vision laid out on the table. Enormous. Can. Not. Wait.

Some things that are going to happen:

• orchestra members will be playing together and separately from everywhere (and I mean everywhere) in the Drill Hall - balconies, über-balconies, stairwells, interior rooms. You name it, we'll be using it.

• pieces will be played where the singer is singing backwards. That's right, like those old LP's where some message reveals itself when you spin the record player backwards. You know what I'm talking about if you're an old man like me.

• you will hear, at key points, 3 or even 4 pieces played simultaneously, layered over one another.

And that's just for starters. More to come, of course, but hopefully this gives you a hint of what's in store.

We've been busy...

2010-10-01T12:42:00.000-07:00

Sympho has been busy cooking something up over the past, oh, 5 months. Co-conspirators Paul Fowler, Bora Yoon, and I have been dreaming up something on a previously unimagined scale. Picture, if you will, a performing space that takes up an entire city block, with multiple performing levels and galleries. Now, add to that an orchestra twice the size of any Sympho has ever used before. That's all I'm going to say for now, but this is going to be tremendous. We cannot wait to share this with you. Stay tuned...

The Cubes

2010-05-22T06:44:00.001-07:00

From Paul Fowler: This year I'm using my new favorite toy for the laptop work that I'm doing. They're called Audiocubes and they're made by Percussa - www.percussa.com. They're an extremely intuitive performance interface for the computer. Through the use of infrared sensors on 4 of the sides, controller information and note information are sent to the computer. There's much more to it, but this is the gist of how I'm using them in the concert.

I sought these out after doing a fair amount of live laptop work in which the performance aspect, when compared to a violinist's or percussionist's movement, was extremely weak — if not completely uninteresting — "Yeah, I play faderbox!" Ha! With the cubes, the audience can see how the sound is being shaped while they hear it... For example, if I strike one side of the cube and then move my hand back, a sound is triggered and then gets quieter and the color of the cube becomes lighter. It's as if one could carry around a computer screen with all the sound wave and volume graphics and then use their hands to shape the sound.

Despite the parlor trick attractiveness, I am astounded by the usefulness of these little cubes and look forward to exploring more ways of playing with them....

At Last

2010-05-21T17:12:00.000-07:00

From Paul Fowler: Once the contest songs were in, I chose to arrange At Last...you know, the Etta James tune that Beyonce performed at our president's inauguration, and Christina Aguilera performed regularly during one of her tours. That song that gets hollered through a Martini laden mic at karaoke — just about every torch singer on the planet has done it. It's one of those tunes that everyone knows, even if they don't know: they know. And that sort of cultural saturation is the beauty of the "standard." We've all got some emotional history with the song, and it makes for a richer, more saturated, communal experience.

In my years as a jazz pianist I'm sure I've played this tune hundreds of times and it's been requested way too often. I can count on the audience singing along, or the mental vinyl spinning the original recording. So I didn't want to obscure the melody. And due to the fact that it's nestled between the quartet from Verdi's Rigoletto and an amazing aria by Monteverdi, it seemed most fitting to take advantage of it's placement...it became a mashup of sorts. The final chord of Verdi's quartet is resampled throughout the piece, as a kind of memory that forces it's way into the sentiment. The bassoon "sings" the famous aria during the trumpet's second statement of the tune. When the bridge hits, the arrangement weasels it's way out of the Verdi and the final recap of the tune is strong and perhaps too bold, with the classic 12/8 piano riff a la 1950 played by the winds and thick arpeggios from the strings. I hope the piece has a kind of humor and richness.... As that seems to be my experience with standards. We mustn't take ourselves too seriously for too long.

WNYC Soundcheck on Thursday!

2010-05-18T14:40:00.000-07:00

Paul Haas and Emeline Michel will be interviewed in advance of the Tweetheart concert this Thursday, May 20 at 3pm by John Schaefer on WNYC's Soundcheck program. Emeline will also sing with members of her band - check it out!

It's heavy...

2010-05-16T10:47:00.000-07:00

The magic moment has arrived. I'm holding the full score for Tweetheart in my hands, just printed. It's 11x15 inches, about 3/4 inch thick. Weighs a pound, maybe a pound and a half. Very exciting. 24 pieces in total, the longest of which are 7-8 minutes in duration. Most are shorter.

The singers and I started working together about a week ago. The orchestra meets for the first time this Wednesday, which is the day that all the lighting and video production equipment gets delivered to Church For All Nations. Special thanks to the Park Avenue Armory for letting us rehearse there.

It's a 32-piece orchestra, which is fairly standard for us. Unique instruments abound, including a bass theorbo and multiple laptops. Harp too.

Can't wait for the performance. Get your tickets by clicking here.

Student Tickets Available

2010-05-16T10:41:00.000-07:00

Student tickets for Tweetheart are now on sale - $10 each. You can buy them here. Please note: you will be asked to show your valid student ID at the door.

Done!

2010-05-03T12:44:00.000-07:00

OK, sorry for the slight hiatus there. We are back in contact! For the past month and a half, my co-conspirators and I have been composing new works for the Tweetheart concert. For my part, I've written a 10-minute work called "Coming Home", as well as multiple arrangements of pieces by composers as diverse as Monteverdi and Jonathan Coulton. Wynne Bennett has written "Swimming for Johnny" and arranged Prince's "Nothing Compares 2 U" (that's right, Sinead O'Connor made it popular). Paul Fowler wrote "On Compassion" and arranged Etta James' "At Last", and Grayson Sanders wrote "Shards" and arranged Bjork's "Cover Me".

Some trivia:

All of our pieces use laptop, sometimes to sample and process live what the orchestra is playing, sometimes to insert pre-recorded/manipulated material.

Each of us took about a quarter of the concert (using the pre-existing works on the program as a skeleton) and composed material to "sculpt the flow" of the experience.

This was pretty insane - so much material to complete in a VERY limited timeframe (we started composing in mid-March). However, the end result is astonishing, if we do say so ourselves, in that...it really works. We set out to traverse an entire lifetime musically, viewed through the lens of love, in its many and varied forms. The result is absolutely, and organically, that. A big thank you to Wynne, Paul F, and Grayson - very excited to hear the results somewhere other than in my mind!

Comments

2010-04-05T10:18:00.000-07:00

I just did something I hate - I deleted someone's comment. I deleted it because I didn't know whether it was spam or a legitimate comment. It was in a language I do not speak or understand. From here on out, here are the rules for comments:

1) please write them in English if possible

2) if not possible, then write them in German, French, Italian, or Spanish

3) if none of that is possible, please get someone to translate for you

4) if a comment is in a language other than those listed above, it will be deleted

Thank you, and I'm sorry for deleting that comment. It killed me to do it, but we have to make sure we're all playing by the same rules. Whoever wrote it, feel free to do so again in English.

How cool is this?

2010-04-04T16:07:00.000-07:00

So here I am, arranging Jonathan Coulton's "You Ruined Everything" for Tweetheart. I have to connect Bjork's "Cover Me", which Grayson Sanders is arranging, to the Coulton...somehow. I'm thinking about re-arranging the order of the program, because the "Gloria Patri" by Monteverdi fits in beautifully between Bjork and Coulton. It's also excerpted from the Magnificat of Monteverdi's Vespers of the Virgin Mary, which - for those of you not up on your Catholic liturgy - is all about Mary thanking God for her son, Jesus. Since "You Ruined Everything" celebrates the love of a parent for his child, it seems wholly appropriate to pair the two together. And Bjork's "Cover Me" seems to me to be an exhortation from one lover to another to prepare for the beauty and wonders (and dangers) of the unknown. Being a recent father myself, it's easy for me to experience that song and think back to the days just before my daughter was born. Not that Bjork was intending that to be the meaning, but - like all great works of art - it can mean something different to each observer.

To me, this is part of the joy of Sympho: to have a forum where these totally different works from different ages and cultures can bounce off each other, and where we can contextualize great art using far broader parameters than those to which we have become accustomed.

Emeline Michel

2010-04-01T19:10:00.000-07:00

I've just finished working with Emeline Michel - an incredibly rewarding experience. She and I had a session at her apartment (we are neighbors, it turns out!) where she serenaded me with Haitian songs, both old and new. We decided which ones would be perfect for Tweetheart, and I recorded them on Garage Band (plug for Apple!). Even using the built-in mic, it sounds phenomenal. Such an unbelievable time. She sang about Haitian "boat people", neighbors who sing out invective against their neighbors (not to their faces, but to the wind, which they hope will carry the message to the rightful recipient...), and old voodoo priests explaining mysteries. Hard to summarize in a post, but I hope you get a sense of the magical time we shared. To get more of a sense, come to Tweetheart! There you'll hear the songs we chose, sung by the incomparable Emeline Michel - one of the great living Haitian artists.

Tweetheart Tickets on Sale

2010-02-26T08:49:00.000-08:00

Tickets for Sympho's Tweetheart concert (NYC on May 22) go on sale today at 12 noon Eastern Time. Click here to purchase.

Caveat

2010-02-25T05:37:00.000-08:00

To our readership: one thing about creating Sympho concerts is that it gets crazy during the process. I'll do my best to keep you up-to-date as we go, but please be understanding if there are holes in the communication. First priority has to be creating the work! All of us can't wait to share Tweetheart with you on May 22.

Tweetheart: The Game Plan

2010-02-25T05:27:00.000-08:00

A brief update - I've been working with composers Wynne Bennett, Paul Fowler, and Grayson Sanders to figure out exactly how to "create the flow" of Tweetheart. Each of us are taking a love song (winners of our social networking contest earlier in January 2010) and creating an orchestral arrangement. We'll also each create original works for the concert, based on one or more aspects of the concept of love. Then - as if that weren't enough - we'll work together to create material that connects all of the pieces together. The result will be an eclectic yet organic experience, one we're all very excited to hear (and perform!).

Upcoming "Tweetheart" Concert

2010-01-21T07:14:00.000-08:00

Sympho unveils its newest concert concept on May 22, 2010 in New York City.

In a collaborative spirit, Sympho is teaming up with multimedia dream team Aytia | Matia, as well as a group of stellar artists and singers, to present the premiere of "Tweetheart". Singer-songwriter Jonathan Coulton and Haitian pop star Emeline Michel to perform cameos.

Paul Haas | Artistic Director and Conductor -- Wynne Bennett, Paul Fowler, and Grayson Sanders | Composers -- SymphoNYC | Orchestra -- Aytia Matia | Lighting and Video Design

An evening unlike any other - blending art, music, and space. A limited number of tickets will go on sale in the near future. Stay tuned for more information.

Back from the Huddle

2009-06-29T14:44:00.001-07:00

I've got a couple of tidbits for our readership:

First, we've decided to tour FLECTION. Right now the most likely scenario is that we'll be bringing a ramped-up version of FLECTION to San Francisco in early 2010. Very exciting for all of us here at Sympho.

Second, we're hard at work planning our next full-scale concert production in New York City, scheduled for Spring 2010.

Third, we've been working very hard on creating more digital content for our fans, including video interviews with our artists and full-length streaming of past Sympho concerts. All of this will be coming soon, but ONLY IF YOU ARE ON OUR MAILING LIST! Please join by emailing us at info@SymphoConcerts.org. And stay tuned for more info here at the Sympho blog.

Wrap It Up

2009-05-11T18:52:00.001-07:00

So that was FLECTION. For everyone who went, you know what it was. For everyone else, hopefully you got a chance to see the live video streaming last Wednesday night. If not, we'll be streaming it again at some point soon. Stay posted. For this post, I wanted to give you a blow-by-blow of what actually happened from Monday morning, May 4 through Wednesday evening, May 6.

May 4:

• 11:30 a.m. - our first rehearsal. SymphoNYC and I went to Studios 353 in midtown Manhattan to rehearse the Barber Adagio for an hour and a half, after which we had a lunch break

• 2:30 p.m. - our second rehearsal. SymphoNYC rehearsed at Le Poisson Rouge until 5:30. During this time period, Paul Fowler worked with the sound/tech guys at LPR to make sure his laptop rig would be able to function as we had envisioned. Also during these 3 hours, Suzette (my wife) worked with the LPR lighting guru, Jonathan Talley, to implement the lighting design for FLECTION

May 5:

• morning - crazy ticket sales, both for Tuesday and Wednesday. The staff worked hard to accommodate all requests, making sure we cut off sales when the concert sold out (it did both nights!).

• 2 p.m. - dress rehearsal. SymphoNYC and I rehearsed with lighting and sound for the next 3.5 hours. This concert is an exercise in concentration for the players, so much of our time was spent making sure the roadmap was clear in everyone's mind. The orchestra was absolutely terrific, and I was actually able to let them go a little early, which made everyone happy. No one really thinks about this, but the players have to go get dinner, get changed, and warm up prior to playing the concert, and it's nice to be able to give them more rather than less time to do that.

• 5 p.m. - setup. Suzette and Amy Maguire (Sympho's crack Production Manager) directed the LPR crew in setting up tables for the patrons and generally getting the place ready to receive the onslaught of ticketholders for the evening. Paul Fowler and I worked last-minute to fine-tune his laptop rig, as the Fates had seen fit to cause his MIDI interface to go up in smoke during our dress rehearsal. Paul was ultra-prepared, of course, and had a backup interface ready to go within minutes - all we had to do was dial in some balances (i.e., how loud his music would be compared to the live sounds the orchestra was playing).

• 6:45 p.m. - doors open. Our guests started to arrive and eat their dinner. The orchestra and the crew were busy up to the start of the concert with last-minute preparations, while Suzette, Amy, and our wonderful volunteers made sure our guests got to their tables with no problems.

• 7:30 p.m. - the concert started. Amazing. After a year of preparation, there is no better feeling than seeing it all fall into place.

• 10 p.m. - the concert ended. The after-party commenced. People bought our TRACES CD, which we pre-released for these concerts.

May 6:

• 1 p.m. - recording. SymphoNYC and I met at Church of the Holy Trinity on the upper east side to record FLECTION for posterity. We stayed there for 3 hours, breaking at 4 p.m. to get ready for the night ahead.

• 5:30 p.m. - soundcheck/tech. Paul Fowler and I met at LPR to go over our respective checklists. I met with lighting to go over some issues from the previous night and make some changes. We ended up adapting the concert a bit for the second night, given what we'd learned from the first night, and that meant the lighting design needed to be tweaked a bit. Paul F set up his laptop rig, and then he and I went over balances again between his sampled sounds and the orchestra's contributions. He continued to work at a feverish pitch until the concert started, but I was able to pull away and visit with the guests as they arrived. LPR actually moved our dressing rooms that night, so there was quite a bit of mayhem - but we were pretty sure nobody in the audience noticed anything amiss...

• 6:45 p.m. - doors open. Again, the ticketholders streamed in as the doors opened. Everything ran even more smoothly this evening, especially as everyone knew much more what to expect.

• 7:30 p.m. - the concert started. If anything, this concert was even more fun than the previous one, with a real sense of play that comes from knowing the music and the concept incredibly well.

• 7:30 p.m. - live streaming of the concert began on Sympho's website. This was a first for us, and - despite our having decided to do it relatively recently - it came off without a hitch, and we had viewers both in the U.S. and abroad. The very positive reactions gave us the idea to stream the concert again in the near future, just so more people can see this extraordinary concert.

• 9:30 p.m. - the concert was over. After some post-concert greetings and settling up with LPR, we went out to a celebratory dinner (late!) and then off to bed.

May 7:

• 9 a.m. - cogitation. The ideas started flowing for the next Sympho concert... More on that later.

On Obsession

2009-04-30T10:18:00.000-07:00

I think of Samuel Barber as the last of the great Romantics in music. He lived well into the period where younger composers (starting with George Rochberg, and going from there) were already doing the post-modern version of Romanticism, and his own music was certainly colored by modern styles and techniques. But at his core, he was a Romantic, and the music always brings us to that Romantic place. One of the hallmarks of late Romanticism is an obsessive quality - not the modernist obsession with the Machine, but the Romantic obsession with human yearning and isolation. Barber fits neatly into that tradition (though he did dabble in explorations of the mechanical), and the Adagio is probably the most dramatic example of that obsessive quality.

What makes something obsessive, in music? It's not just repetition - it's the kind of repetition. In other words, the repetition of what? In this case, Barber repeats phrases that "cadence", or conclude, with the next repetition as the answer to the one that came before it. But the repetitions are all slightly different; they are refractions of the same idea. If they were all the same, the music would not have the obsessive quality that I hear in it, because it would not suggest the effort to "move on" that the changes imply. The material itself strongly suggests a pathos and a longing, or perhaps a resignation. It's always dangerous to assign specific moods to pieces, which is perhaps why I focused my response on this general idea of "obsession."

My own pieces in response to the Barber are obsessive in a more modern context. The musical landscape of the two pieces is comprised of a series of wandering musical objects and narratives; they seek their own resolutions. Ultimately, and unlike the Barber, it's an outside element - itself with an obsessive quality - that thrusts the broader narrative forward. Given that so much of my music deals with heavy repetition, it was interesting to work with repetition of a very specific kind. I'm not sure that I can capture the lost Romanticism of Barber and the composers who preceded him, but it is always fascinating to put on another composer's shoes, even in a specific and limited fashion such as this.

Laptop with orchestra?

2009-04-29T14:20:00.000-07:00

It's an interesting thing for me, imagining how to use a computer as an instrument within the orchestra. I've not been that satisfied with what I've seen in other works. I'm not a huge fan of "tape" pieces, where the performer plays along with prerecorded material. It always felt too disparate to me. Imagine a clarinetist standing on stage with a huge PA backing him up, pumping out prerecorded material. Visually you have these two imposing structures and then this lone clarinetist and sonically you have someone playing music with the inherent risk of live performance and then this "tape" thing which just spews out exactly what it was intended to do regardless of an audience or not. For me, if there's prerecorded material in a piece, I'd rather hear the whole thing on a recording. That way, both the live player and the tape have equal standing within a permanent medium, and the two elements are voiced by the same sound making device, i.e. headphones or speakers. I find the value of live performance is in its impermanent nature and the risk that exudes from the performers and the stage. One of my acting teachers always said: "Risk is everything." We could substitute this with "vulnerability." Granted, I love hearing a commanding performer whose natural tone and flow is uncanny and perfect, but there's still risk, there's still vulnerability in the emotional investment and in revealing that investment to hundreds or thousands; regardless of their relationship to the performer, each other and their judgements. So when there's a CD player in the back playing music for someone else to play along with, it's just not worthy of the "live" experience for me, [emphasis: for ME]. So for me to perform laptop with an orchestra, I've got to find a way to do with the laptop what everyone else is doing. I have to turn the laptop into an instrument that is capable of making a mistake and can be performed with expression; and somehow the performance of it must include risk or vulnerability.

The other piece of this involves the kind of sound that one generates with the tape or laptop. If I return to the clarinet and tape piece, let's imagine that the sonic world of the tape material is entirely electronic; meaning it isn't sampled in any way and was generated solely through electronic means. Again, we have a very disparate relationship between the two worlds. That divide between entirely electronic and acoustic can be very cool, and has been exploited throughout the last 4 decades of electroacoustic music, but I've always found difficulty in truly enjoying these works...they're just not for me...not in the concert hall. On a CD, sure, its easier for me to enjoy the music, but in the concert hall I have a hard time allowing those opposing materials to meld in my ear...I want to feel a sonic relationship between the two instruments that implies a sort of harmony (even if the characters of the duet are at war). I want there to be a reason that these two instruments are playing together, after all, I rarely make music with people who I am not resonant with in some way.

All this over-explanation and over-thinking has lead me to live sampling. It retains the kind of risk that I prefer, and I'm working with material that has only just existed in the last few moments, performed by those with whom I'm collaborating. Like a jazz musician quoting the final bits of the previous soloist before moving into his own improvisation. And this is an obvious thing to an audience, especially when there are inconsistencies and imperfect things that come back through the sampling. The whole artistic experience is then housed within that container of the performers and what they can do in that moment; in that venue. I'm not reaching into a hard drive to grab sounds that were recorded worlds away, and the sounds, or rather, the music that I'm creating with the laptop is directly related to the orchestra...it is the orchestra.

In order to make it something that I enjoy performing, I have to use a good deal of sound manipulation, and it can't all be written out. Ideas are there, plans, and the like, but I like to think of things as an acoustic musician: Where do I want the tone to go? What is the push and pull of the phrase here? How can I make this shift into something one wouldn't expect? How can I make this my own? These are things that are rarely written into a score for a performer, but these things are perhaps the most important part of the performance and that's what I like to focus on with the laptop; I like to amplify the quality of shaped phrases and tone color shifts in a way that isn't possible with acoustic instruments. I wouldn't say that what I'm doing is incredibly complicated, I'm no "controllerist" guru, (look up controllerism, you'll find people like Moldover and the like) I just have a great love for technology and also simple, acoustic sound......

Student Tickets Available

2009-04-29T14:15:00.000-07:00

Just a quick note to let you know that Student Tickets are now available for FLECTION (May 6 concert only). They are selling fast, so we recommend that you act now! Click here to go to our tickets page.

I'm a co-composer. What?

2009-04-26T10:33:00.000-07:00

No, I didn’t stutter. The whole premise behind Sympho’s FLECTION concerts on May 5 and 6 is that composing can be a collaborative enterprise. Just as Mozart worked closely with Da Ponte, his librettist, to come up with Don Giovanni, Così fan tutte, and Le nozze di Figaro, why couldn’t three different living composers work together (with one dead one) to create a large-scale piece? The answer, of course, is that they can. And have.

When I approached Paul Fowler and Judd Greenstein last fall about collaborating on Sympho’s latest adventure, I think all three of us were a bit in the dark about what it would take to make this happen. But I choose my compatriots wisely…

The first thing we did was to lay out the ground rules. Each of us was to write two pieces, about 5 minutes each. Those pieces are required 1) to be inserted seamlessly into Barber’s Adagio for Strings at pre-selected “points of inflection” (see “So why the Adagio” entry below) and 2) to be extractable from the Adagio and performed one after the other as movements of a large-scale symphonic work.

Since FLECTION is a concert about the reactions people have had listening to Barber’s Adagio for Strings, the three of us agreed that each of our 5-minute pieces would embody a personal or universal reaction to the Adagio.

The next step was to determine exactly where the “points of inflection” would be – i.e., where we would insert our reactions into the Barber. We may have quibbled a tiny bit over the placement of one of those insertion points, but – surprisingly – the locations were intuitively obvious to each of us.

Once we knew the music before our piece and the music after our piece, there really was nothing left to do but…write our pieces. We kept up a fairly steady dialogue during the composition process (around three months total), comparing notes, techniques, and motivic material.

Unexpectedly, it became clear during the actual composition that our email and phone correspondence was almost besides the point. The very fact that our pieces grew out of the Adagio connected them with each other very organically. Each composer’s two pieces are motivically and stylistically related to each other, by virtue of the fact that each composer has his own style. The connection, though, between each composer’s pieces and the other composers’ pieces is harder to explain. Our pieces do not overtly share any melodic or harmonic material, but they are most definitely parts of the same whole. The connection just is. That, for me, was one of the most incredible parts of the whole project.

The hardest part, I had convinced myself, was going to be figuring out how to extract our short pieces from Barber’s Adagio and making them work, one after the other, as connected movements of a large-scale piece. My expectations were totally wrong, once again. We had an entirety of two email exchanges on the subject before it became apparent that the pieces fit together perfectly, in the order composed. In one place we had to take out a pitch from a string chord to make the ending of one movement mesh with the next beginning, but – other than that – it just worked. I can’t rationalize it, except to suggest that, since our pieces followed the same architectural arch as the Adagio, we ended up with a great dovetailing effect as we laid our pieces end to end.

I, for one, am greatly relieved – but not surprised – at the happy ending of the FLECTION saga. Judd, Paul, and I are all people who instinctively go for the unknown and the unknowable. It’s certainly one of the reasons I work with them as often as I do. After a few experiences of going out on an artistic limb (with a 1500-foot drop to the canyon floor) and having it work out better than you had thought possible, you just start to expect it. It’s a great place to be, and all three of us are looking forward to sharing the results with you at the FLECTION concerts on May 5 and 6.

On the word "Adagio"

2009-04-22T17:08:00.000-07:00

Does Adagio mean slow? Most people think so. But no, it doesn't. It means "at ease" in Italian (ad="at", agio="ease" or "comfort"). So there you go. Learn something new every day.

Seriously, though, people's different takes on the meanings of Italian words have plagued music interpreters throughout the ages. Mozart - a fluent speaker of Italian - certainly meant "at ease" when he wrote adagio in his scores. (What that actually means in terms of performance is another debate, of course...) When Tchaikovsky - a lover of all things Italian, no doubt (wink!) - writes adagio in his scores, does he mean "slow"? When Barber wrote a piece called Adagio for Strings... well, what did he mean by using that word? Considering that he wrote the piece (actually it originated as the slow movement of Barber's String Quartet no. 1) while he was living in Rome, it's tempting to think he was cognizant of the literal meaning of the word adagio. But was he really? And even if he was, did he already have a different/slower meaning for that musical term deeply ingrained?

The truth is: we don't know. It's impossible to know, unless the composer in question is alive. Even written testimony to what a composer thought is usually suspect - meetings can be faked, people can mishear. Think back to when you played a game of "telephone" as a child... Is there a recording of Barber conducting it? Not to my knowledge, though if anybody knows of one - PLEASE tell me!

Given the fact that there's no way of knowing how fast Barber intended his Adagio for Strings to be played, it's easier to understand just why there are such marked differences in tempo between performances of the same piece. The shortest recordings clock in at around 7 minutes. They sound sprightly to my ears. The longest recording I know of is a live Bernstein recording that tips the scales at over 10 minutes. It sounds absolutely desperate, pleading. Which way is right? Both! Neither! (Insert your opinion here.)

When you think about it, a 3 minute difference between performances is colossal. Bernstein's performance is almost half again as long as the fastest versions out there.

So what's my point? For me, it all goes back to the ambiguity of written language. Words are symbols, deriving meaning only through the filter of the person doing the writing or the reading. Think music is written down unambiguously? Think again. Sure, we know approximately what pitch the composer wanted at which approximate dynamic level, and played for approximately how long. But really not much more than that.

[With Mahler, more than any other composer, you really get a sense of how frustratingly inadequate musical notation is to convey one's ideas in a precise way. Just look at one of his symphonies in full score, and you'll see - there's almost a running commentary of what is supposed to be happening, all written out in German (and sometimes Italian). This was a man who saw very clearly that musical notation can never be eindeutig, or unambiguous.]

Is that so bad? Of course not. It's beautiful. It cements, in fact, the partnership between composer and performer, since neither one could create without the other. In the case of Barber's Adagio, the simple fact that the one word adagio does not mean the same thing to all people yields incredible fruit, in the form of countless different (more or less) valid interpretations of the same piece. The very idea of there being a "correct" interpretation finds itself ignominiously shuffled off to where it belongs: freezing outside in the cold.

Speaking of which, is anybody else here in NYC ready for spring to arrive? What gives?

So why the Adagio? (...and further ruminations)

2009-04-22T15:28:00.000-07:00

What drew me to Barber's Adagio for Strings as a possible cornerstone of a concert?

The Adagio has become ubiquitous in contemporary American culture. It’s safe to say that the vast majority of Americans would recognize it upon hearing it, regardless of whether they could identify the piece or its composer by name. More importantly, almost everyone who hears Barber’s piece has an intense emotional reaction to it – whether of sadness, peace, longing, or any other emotion under the sun. And that reaction – or rather the multitude of possible reactions – is endlessly fascinating to me.

Paul Fowler, Judd Greenstein, and I have come together to share our own reactions to Barber’s Adagio and the feelings it evokes in us – intensely personal reactions, yet connected to other, similar feelings experienced by others over the years. The pieces we have written were designed to branch off from and return to the Adagio at predetermined “points of inflection,” to become a part of the piece while commenting on it in real time. At the same time, our compositions are designed to exist apart from the Adagio, coming together as movements of a large-scale piece called FLECTION. Still a part of the Adagio, this Fowler/Greenstein/Haas work can – and should – be viewed outside of that context as well.

OK, now: What does that mean – “point of inflection” – in this context?

When Judd, Paul, and I went about the process of getting inside – literally inside – the Adagio, it made sense to find places in Barber’s piece that felt simultaneously like points of arrival and departure. Those moments are full of potential energy, and – as we composers found out – Barber’s “points of inflection” are infinitely flexible, allowing us to arrive and depart in myriad different ways. Stylistically speaking, it’s the departing from and returning to Barber’s music that relates each of the commissioned works to each other, far more potently than the actual musical material used.

What is FLECTION?

2009-04-19T08:55:00.000-07:00

So, FLECTION. Describing a live concert experience is somewhat akin to taking notes on a glorious sunset, but - despite the obvious limitations - I will give it a go. It's really important to me that concert-goers have all the information they need well in advance of the concert itself. There's so much to say that I'll limit myself to contextualizing FLECTION within Sympho's concert output in this entry, saving more of the nitty-gritty for later posts.

Sympho has always been about redefining what it means to experience an orchestral concert, both on the side of the audience and of the musicians. The only way to do that in a meaningful way is to experiment – with different ideas, concepts, and delivery systems – after which you keep what works and jettison that which doesn’t.

We turned the whole idea of an orchestral concert on its ear with REWIND and TRACES. They were both 90-minute continuous concerts, with no breaks at all. The music began before the audience entered the hall, and it was still playing when the audience left. Composers linked pre-existing pieces with newly-commissioned connective material, and the effect was that of an unbroken arch of music – one large piece of music that developed throughout the course of an evening, instead of a smattering of pieces interrupted by applause and uncomfortable silences. To this musical foundation we added other disciplines from the theater, such as lighting and staging, and we collaborated with talented installation artists.

As successful as these concerts were, Sympho decided to chart a new course for our next concert. After all, just because our new concept worked didn’t mean it was the only way to recreate the classical concert experience. So we came up with FLECTION, which is Sympho’s way of addressing many of the issues and concerns that came up in our earlier concerts. FLECTION will have an intermission, giving people a chance to think about what they’ve just heard. The audience will hear the same music twice in the same concert, but it will be reorganized in such a way as to affect the listener in vastly different ways. The concert takes place in a real live club. With a bar. In fact, Le poisson rouge is a perfect vehicle to allow Sympho to continue its drive to push performers and audience members into the same space, tearing down the wall that has divided them through centuries. The venue is very intimate, and as a result it forces players and listeners to occupy the same ground, to great effect.

Of course there are aspects of REWIND and TRACES that fans will recognize in FLECTION: the subtle use of stage lighting, the positioning of players throughout the performance space to create a “surround” effect, and – most importantly – the sense of adventure, of being present at an event where you look forward to the next surprise.

Sympho has a concert coming up...

2009-04-19T08:33:00.000-07:00

Very briefly, just wanted to let you all in something: Sympho's FLECTION concert is coming up in NYC on May 5 and 6. OK, so that may not be news, but it means that the blog will be almost exclusively dedicated to FLECTION between now and then. Have patience, non-New Yorkers. Or...come to New York! I'll be back shortly with my first *real* post.

The Blog - Sympho goes 2.0

2009-04-19T07:04:00.000-07:00

Dear Sympho Friends and Fans,

At this very exciting time, as Sympho prepares to premiere our FLECTION concert on May 5 and 6, we unveil the Sympho Blog. It's our way of keeping you up-to-date with everything Sympho is doing, giving you behind the scenes access to everything that's going on. Please check back with us regularly to hear from my fellow artists and me on all kinds of topics, ranging from the composing process to thoughts on the future of the classical music concert. We'll have everything from the strictly factual to involved discourses, and everything in between.

Please feel free to be in touch with us whenever you have something to say in response. We look forward to a lively exchange of ideas into the future.