Pride Month 2022: A Queer Composer Guided Playlist

Happy Pride Month everyone!

Hi, I’m Stephen Ryan Jackson, a composer who’s working with Loop38 through the 2022 Texas Composer Collaborative. As a featured composer on the upcoming 610 Composer Showcase, I was invited to be a guest on the Loop38 blog, and I decided to make you a playlist of a few pieces I love, by queer people that I love. I hope you enjoy these works as much as I do!

An important note. This blog/playlist focuses on only a few of the many emerging LGBTQIA+ composers writing music today. It is in no way all encompassing but instead is intended as an invitation for you, the reader to further explore the music of queer artists. Pride and Allyship is something that happens year round, not just during Pride month so I encourage you to listen to these pieces and other music by LGBTQIA+ composers all year round. 

View the whole Queer Composer Guided Playlist, which includes the six pieces below AND many more!

(Click on piece titles below for individual video links.)

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Greg Nahabedian [they/them] - “SpacePants Visits Cheap City”

(for voice and viola)

Greg Nahabedian is a gender non-binary composer, performer and writer whose projects range from operas, films and chamber music, to spoken word, free improvisation, and punk rock. The descendent of an Armenian refugee, Greg uses a diverse range of influences and musical experiences to create works that simultaneously interact with politics, spirituality and comedy. 

More info on Greg here.

SpacePants Visits Cheap City tells the story of when SpacePants and THE TUBE decide to pay a visit to Cheap City. When I first saw that the duo SpacePants and Greg were collaborating together, I immediately knew that I was about to witness something whimsical, queer, and full of a complex lore that I admittedly don’t 100% understand. I however, was NOT prepared for the sequinned sock-puppet narrated by Greg themself, telling a story of an alien sentient tube befriending a rat candy crime boss and getting arrested. Much of Greg’s work revolves around the town of Cheap City (which is described as “a real life city somewhere in America”) and I think of their performances as little episodes or windows into the life and happenings of Cheap City’s people. Some of the characters that walk Cheap City’s streets include “Rat Jenkins”, “The Witch in the Alley” and “The Junk Luggers”. I’m in love with the worlds that Greg creates and I hope you enjoy your next stop in Cheap City. 

More info on SpacePants.

More info on Cheap City.

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Yaz Lancaster [they/them] - “intangible landscapes”

(for flute, bass clarinet, violin, piano)

Yaz Lancaster is a Black transdisciplinary artist. They are most interested in practices aligned with relational aesthetics & the everyday; fragments & collage; and liberatory politics. Yaz performs as a violinist, vocalist & steel-pannist in a wide variety of settings; and their work is presented in many mediums & collaborative projects. It often reckons with specific influences ranging from politics of liberation and identity to natural phenomena and poetics. Their ongoing independent studies navigates prison-industrial-complex abolition, Marxist theory and internet/social media cultures.

More info on Yaz.

In intangible landscapes everything feels simultaneously distant and within arms reach. Repetitive motives come in and out like the sound of passing vehicles. These motives transform over the course of the piece, blooming into a pulsating tutti (introduced in the piano) that’s persistence is heavy and attention seizing. At the climax, the original motives return, fragmented and emotionally transformed by the material that came before. Yaz writes, “intangible landscapes deals with the growing feelings of ennui and isolation I encounter[ed] living in New York over the past six years, and how perceived landscapes of memory shift, breathe and transform over periods of time. Many people I love no longer live here. I question whether a home is a tangible, real place, or if it exists in the intangibility and quiet intimacy of created and/or remembered landscapes that can only exist ephemerally.”

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Phong Tran [he/him] - ./f a

(electronics)

Phong Tran is a Brooklyn-based composer, electronicist, and visual artist. His works are heavily inspired by the sound of early synthesizers, late night wikipedia dives, simulation theory, RPGs, and vaporwave eccojams. Phong performs in MEDIAQUEER, a synthesizer and violin duo formed in 2018 with Darian Thomas.

More info on Phong.

./f a is track 7 from Phong’s second album “The Computer Room”. The sonic world in The Computer Room is inspired by vaporwave, video games, virtual spaces and a nostalgia for his childhood, where hours were joyfully lost behind the glow of his screen. While purely electronic in its sound sources, “The Computer Room” is very much about human interaction with the internet and the emotions, nostalgia, and joy that a young child and a computer can have together. Phong writes “I began thinking about how much of my life has been shaped by virtual spaces. I began seeing those bygone virtual spaces—games and forums—in a physical way. They’re like ghost towns from a pre-MySpace internet; these sites still exist, but no one visits them anymore. I miss them. As a closeted gay Asian kid raised in white suburban Georgia, the computer room was where I could escape, where I could be anything I wanted to be, and, eventually, where I could accept who I was in reality”.

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Ryann Daisy Swimmer [she/her] - “I Can’t Teach You Empathy”

(for guitar and pedalboard)

Ryann Daisy Swimmer is an American composer, performer, and curator from Minneapolis, Minnesota, whose musical ethos focuses on the in-between, the blurred lines, and the insignificant. As a composer, Daisy brings her knowledge of theory-heavy composition and instinctive popular music together to create music that could be categorized as classically-influenced experimental music, “indie-classical”, or something else entirely.

More info on Daisy.

I Can’t Teach You Empathy this piece to me evokes the world of bands that shaped my teenage self such as, “Explosions in the Sky”, “This Will Destory You” and “Scale the Summit”. I see this kind of music like a warm blanket of nostalgia, a feeling, a place in my memory. Daisy layers this world of clean ambient delays with a virtuosic, distorted solo line that interacts, interrupts and even argues with the opposing material. Daisy writes, “The title I Can’t Teach You Empathy has become a mantra to me. As much as I can learn from the experiences of others, I am not able to force people to see the humanity in others’ experiences. The subtitle of the piece is A Conversation; however, the structure of the conversation yields no significant progress in changing another’s views. The loops and solo guitar never come to a significant agreement and instead fizzle out. Despite attempts to inspire compassionate individuals, there is only so much that one person can teach.”

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Luke Ellard [he/him] - “haven’t yet”

(for clarinet & string trio)

Clarinetist, composer, and new music collaborator Luke Ellard strives for art that is intentional, personal, and intersectional. The heart of his music is sharing stories, experiences, amplifying the voices of others, using music to bring communities together. Luke draws inspiration from broad experiences in hopes of communicating the every day to important topics of our time. His works have been internationally performed by ensembles such as the New Trombone Collective, the University of Texas Symphony Band, Michigan State University Concert Band, Barkada Quartet, Mother Falcon String Quartet, and the North Texas Wind Symphony.

More info on Luke.

Luke writes, “haven’t yet is a deeply personal work for me about relationships, thought life, and patience. For myself and many other queer people, the kind of relationships and openness cisgender, straight people experience is often delayed (if we’re lucky to experience it at all). There is a pervasive feeling of being behind, having such formative experiences occur later in life. Yet it is difficult to convey these circumstances in a meaningful way to those in more relationally privileged positions. 

This piece is about how the longing to find that “someone,” even if you have never met, can quickly turn toward negativity and doubt. In our most vulnerable spaces, insecurities can take over and sometimes it is hard to come down from that ledge. I have felt this. Yet we cannot remain in these space, trusting that what hasn’t already occurred does not mean it won’t in the future.”

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Xenia St. Charles Gilbert [she/her] - “Shout This Love Song At The Mirror”

(for three low instruments, megaphone and electronics)

Xenia St. Charles Gilbert is a composer, violinist, singer, and improviser who is obsessed with integrating love, social identity, politics, and the collaborative spirit with music to make the world a better place. Her personal identities and experiences as a trans woman are integral to her music, and she hopes that by being open and honest about her life, she can foster more love and acceptance of trans people and trans experiences.  Xenia is frequently inspired by recklessness: the reckless beauty of nature, the reckless musical stunts of Rushad Eggleston, the reckless virtuosity of performers, the reckless fabulousness of Richard Bobo’s bizarre-instrument-making, the reckless desire to try new things, and the reckless kindness of her friends

More info on Xenia.

** Content Warning [Transphobia & Profanity] **

Shout This Love Song At The Mirror is a depiction of the disastrous possible scenarios that can go through a trans person’s mind while trying to live their everyday life. It should be noted that these scenarios, while taking place in the mind of the narrator, are very real scenarios for many trans individuals. The piece is divided into episodic scenarios each beginning with the phrase “Oh sorry, you weren’t listening”. The instruments almost always play in rhythmic unison mimicking a large synthesizer, accompanying the narrator using a megaphone, literally shouting and pleading with her inner self to love herself.  

Xenia writes “In the nearly 700 days since coming out as a trans woman, I have slowly been coming to peace with myself. But in spite of that, my mind often tells me I should be doing the opposite, and takes me to dark places, either real or imagined.

Therefore, this piece is a few things:

An embodiment of the chaotic inner ramblings of my brain.

A theatrical event.

A loud and open telling of some deeply personal stories.

A piece of trans art.

A coming out, of sorts.

A reminder.

A celebration.

A love song from myself, to myself.”

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Thank you for listening!

- Stephen Ryan Jackson

A little about me…

Stephen Ryan Jackson [he/him] is a Boston-based composer and trumpet player who’s work examines and recreates seemingly indescribable sensations. His music often draws inspiration from careful observation of everyday phenomena; stretching, distorting, and reexamining them in order to create works that avoid the concept of narrative and allow audience’s to reevaluate and find beauty in aspects of daily life that they might overlook. 

More about Stephen.

Stephen wrote this blog post to help celebrate the upcoming 610 Composer Showcase! If you like his curated playlist, be sure you don’t miss his featured composition in our virtual event on June 12th.

Summer Sessions 2021

I think every member of an arts organization can say they’ve learned a lot over the past year, and I’m certainly no exception! I’m so thankful that we were able to perform some live, in-person concerts in our 2020-2021 season, but we also had lots of virtual adapting to do, and new bridges to cross.

We found the perfect way to end this season with our Summer Sessions. Four of our favorite pieces were transformed from the live concert to a fully digital experience, and we’re now able to enjoy them as long as we’d like! After all of the learning and hard work we put in this season it feels great to see this project come together as lasting proof of all that we were able to accomplish.

Check out our four videos and let us know which is your favorite! I think mine is the Sarah Kirkland Snider… but I might be biased ;)

- Caitlin Mehrtens

Luminescence and lyricism

Shiner was written for an unlikely cast of characters: trombone, harp, viola, and marimba. It is about finding beauty in unexpected places.

-Sarah Kirkland Snider

Composer Sarah Kirkland Snider

It’s always fun when we get to play smaller works with instruments that don’t often get paired together. The blending of these four unique voices creates a sumptuous quartet evoking luminescent clusters and glowing lyricism. Throughout Shiner, the harp and marimba serve as the entrancing rhythmic drive, while the trombone and viola exchange high soaring melodies.

Shiner’s minimalistic swirling gestures could easily fit into the score for something cinematic, perhaps even an animated motion picture.

-Sergein Yap

Stasis and Momentum

Composer Missy Mazzoli

I wasn’t familiar with any of Missy Mazzoli’s music prior to approaching her work Ecstatic Science, but I had heard her name floating around here and there in various conversations in programming over the past few years. She definitely seems to be one of the more intriguing and prominent names among American composers that has emerged over this past decade, at least from what I’ve seen as a clarinetist who admittedly isn’t as well-versed in contemporary classical repertoire as I might like to (or should?) be. In getting to know just this piece of hers over the past weeks though, I can’t say that it surprises me that she’s gained the acclaim that she has so far.

To me this piece explores the two concepts of stasis and momentum and how they engage with one another. Its trajectory is relatively straight-forward- we start from a point of static harmony in the strings that builds up to a flurry of activity by the half-way point that gradually settles back down. The way we get there is through string glissandos which sound as is they’re emulating that “charge-up” noise you hear in electronics from movies, burblings in the flute and clarinet, and subtle expansive phrases by the trumpet. There are also our tried-and-true scalar passages, broken chords, and arpeggios that send us forward in an almost classically minimalist manner. For a piece that Mazzoli herself says is constructed using a lot of math, there’s also a lot of visceral, almost primal gestures. Explosions of sound and heavy-hitting vertical chordal punches that run perpendicular to the horizontal stillness of sustained harmonies. 

 It might seem a little simplistic that I’m describing the piece this way.

After all, one could probably argue that a lot of music is essentially made up of parts that move and don’t move. However for me I suppose Ecstatic Science is a little more explicit in tackling these ideas, almost as if it’s using these core concepts in seeking to be one of the answers to the question of “how do you move a piece forward in a way that doesn’t rely on well-established practices and devices but still sounds genuinely expressive and exciting?” Now I’m obviously projecting my own thoughts and feelings here and it’s very possible that this isn’t a question that she’s concerned with at all, but as a 21st century classical musician that’s generally been wary of a lot of 21st century music that’s composed for our classical instruments, I feel like it’s a question that does inevitably work its way into the music that comes from our time whether or not we intend for it to.

In discovering the piece and now in writing about it, I’ve been thinking back to a short clip of physicist Richard Feynman that I first saw many years ago that’s resonated with me ever since. In short, he talks about a sort of stereotypical dichotomy between artists and scientists, where artists see the “beauty” in things and scientists make these same things dull with their meticulous analysis. For him though, he contends that he very much is able to appreciate the beauty in something such as a flower through understanding its structure at a molecular level, and perhaps is able to appreciate it even more so than the artist is able to. By looking at something through a scientific lens, it only adds excitement, mystery, and awe to something as aesthetically pleasing as a flower. Coming back to Ecstatic Science, I think it’s a perfect example of this sentiment, and if this piece alone is any indication or representation of where our genre of music stands and where it has the potential to go, I think I can safely say that I’m optimistic for what comes next.

 -Roy Park

Homage and Memory

I first came across Elliott Carter’s Four Lauds a few years ago, when searching for some new repertoire. Initially I was interested because of their subject matter: Many solo violin works explicitly or implicitly pay homage to their precursors (pieces by Bach, Paganini, Ysaÿe, etc.), and Carter’s pieces fit into this tradition in a unique way. Each one of the Lauds is dedicated to a friend, mentor, or colleague of his. All of the dedicatees are musical luminaries in their own right: the quintessentially American composer Aaron Copland, the Italian composer and pedagogue Goffredo Petrassi, the American composer and iconoclast Roger Sessions, and the American violinist Robert Mann. Carter dedicates works to friends/mentors/colleagues fairly often, but in the context of the solo violin repertoire it struck me as especially meaningful.

So I learned them!

In the process, I discovered more and more about Carter’s musical language and how he sculpted the notes to fit each dedicatee’s personality. For instance, “Riconoscenza per Goffredo Petrassi” is made up of three distinct types of musical material: a medium-loud lyrical and dolce singing line, calm and hushed double stops, and fast, loud, and brash sixteenth notes. These are juxtaposed in quick alternation, representing Petrassi’s tendency—he was a loquacious talker—to switch moods and subjects seemingly at the drop of a pin.

Or take “Rhapsodic Musings,” which you’ll hear during the virtual concert today. Carter dedicated it to Robert Mann, who as first violinist of the Juilliard Quartet championed many of Carter’s works. Note the correlation between the name and the title: Rhapsodic Musings, Robert Mann (I see what you did there, Elliott). Carter composes this into the piece itself, too. In the very first bar, we hear a D–E motive which Carter repeats and transforms over the course of the piece. In solfege, D and E are represented as “Re” and “Mi.” Coincidence? I think not.

The Four Lauds were published in 2000. Yet as it turns out, Carter was not done with the solo violin genre. On December 9, 2013, several musicians he had worked with for many years put on a tribute concert in honor of his upcoming 103rd birthday. Remarkably, Carter wrote five (!) new pieces for the program, among which was “Mnemosyné.” Decidedly a miniature, the piece is classic late Carter: rhythmically complex on the page but lyrical to the ear, full of expressive gestures, timbral contrasts, and subtle winking humor. The title refers to the Greek muse of memory; appropriately, Carter dedicated it to his late wife, Helen, who had passed away in 2003. Yet this is no elegy—it is lyrical, expressive, and ultimately celebratory. Rather than mourning a loss, Carter is fondly remembering what used to be. I like to think it is an appropriate piece for a composer near the end of a long, full life, and an appropriate work for us to enjoy as we remember the past while looking forward to the future.

-Jacob Schafer

Photo by Tim Holt

The Merry Modernist

Partially thanks to his prolific output and partially thanks to my own enthusiasm, Elliott Carter’s music shows up on my stand relatively frequently. Learning a piece by Carter really challenges that old cliché about celebrating the journey, not the destination. First comes a period of mind-numbing rhythm study. As a student learning Retracing, I was convinced that only a computer could accurately perform the ever-shifting beat subdivisions, so I entered the piece into music notation software to “teach” me to count it. Next comes the bizarre physical training phase in which the performer must practice lightning-quick shifts in technique, one instant honking out broad, forceful notes and the next pecking lightly (for a bassoonist, this is great core training with facial contortions to match!). Any remaining brain cells can be used to increase the tempo until it tests the limits of the possible.

I had to warm to Carter over time.

The music is perplexing. It’s certainly not tuneful, and it goes by in a flash, before you can really get a grip on the experience. The more time I spent with this music, though, the more I enjoyed that perplexed feeling, and the more I started to bring out the surprises in the composition. The more I emphasized the surprises, the funnier the music got. And the funnier the music got, the more I felt like I had understood it. This is why I’ve come to call Carter the Merry Modernist.

Perhaps the most famous fact about Carter’s career is that he continued to compose until his death in 2012, at 103 years old. Any person with the energy to compose—with increasing productivity, mind you—past his 100th birthday must by default have had an agreeable personality, and the music confirms this. The parts are riddled with wordplay and double meanings, and the articulations are notated so strictly and with such diversity that the music resembles speech--chattering, mumbling, and slurring along like the telling of a joke. I’m not the only person to zero in on this prevailing cheerfulness in Carter’s work. Daniel Barenboim has compared him to Haydn, saying, “Carter's music is always in good humor, you feel its high spirits, the tongue-in-cheek, the recklessness.”

This season I’ve learned two of Carters’ 21st-century compositions that feature the bassoon. Retracing for solo bassoon premiered in December of 2002, with a performance by Peter Kolkay at Carnegie Hall. The piece is an excerpt from Carter’s Asko Concerto for chamber orchestra, written for the Asko Ensemble and composer/conductor Oliver Knussen, with whom Carter had a longstanding friendship. Knowing that the material was originally composed with a larger group in mind, I ask myself what makes it characteristically “bassoonistic,” and I think the answer lies in the huge interval leaps, the clipped shortness of certain notes, and the expression marking for the piece: con umóre. Which translates to, of course, “with humor.”

Au Quai, pronounced “OK,” is a duet for viola and bassoon, named for an appearance of the French-English pun in the short story “To the Wharfs” by Arnold Schoenberg, who is better known as one of the twentieth century’s most influential composers. Carter’s notes relate a moment in the story in which some fishermen thought lost at sea return to their village, inspiring shouts of “to the wharfs, aux quais, O.K.!” Members of the London Sinfonietta premiered the work in June 2002.

Through the challenges of the past year, I’ve found myself gravitating toward Elliott Carter. Perhaps I am, in fact, looking for something lighthearted to cheer me up, but the modernist aspect appeals to me, too. There isn’t much room for interpretation in the markings; you play the piece as he wrote it, or you don’t. At a time when many things feel uncertain to me, this offers me comfort.

-Kara LaMoure

Photo by Robin Gould

Air and Resonance

The contemporary music tradition has a complicated relationship with the horn…

…or is it the other way around? The horn has a sound unlike any other instrument because it relies so heavily on reflective surfaces and acoustic environment. As a horn player, I have a biased perspective of why the horn’s sound is so great, but I will admit that this non-directional element can present problems for the modern composer. Unlike other brasses and woodwinds, the horn must go backward before traveling forwards, putting the poor hornist at the mercy of whatever materials and surfaces (or lack thereof) are behind them. Combine this with a shared negative view of all things contemporary by many horn players, and it leads to a general lack of meaningful commissions. In my opinion (stemming from hours of research) this has led to many composers writing sparsely for the instrument, using its enveloping quality to act solely as a sonic glue in ensemble works. 

Composer Jörg Widmann

I first learned about the piece Air a few years ago and it’s been on my playlist for quite some time. Jörg Widmann’s works are well known in the music world; he was the third most performed contemporary composer in 2018. He writes in a wide variety of compositional styles, ranging from musical commentary on earlier artistic eras to absurd avant-garde theatrics (his viola concerto calls for the soloist to scream in the middle of the concerto!). His piece Air dances between two characters, one involving the slow development of haunting melodies, the other incorporating jagged lines and quick dynamic and timbral changes. The title references both the Baroque and Classical airs, which were lyrical instrumental works, and also the literal air that must be blown into the instrument. 

I’ll be honest, I struggled with the piece in my initial workings. The resonance needed to maintain musical line through the long pauses just wasn’t possible in any small venue. However, as I listened to lots of different interpretations, I noticed that many of them had a soft residual ringing after the horn plays, which I soon recognized as a piano with the sustain pedal depressed. After I tried it out on my own, I found that the added resonance of the piano created the precise ambiance that I was looking for. Thankfully, First Congregational Church of Houston provided a beautiful venue (with a piano!) that suited the piece’s largely prayer-like atmosphere. I hope you enjoy the piece as much as I enjoyed unpacking what it has to say!

-Maxwell Paulus

Interpretations & Reverberations

The trombone’s role in 21st century music fascinates me.  Given its wide range of textures and techniques – from the most singing to the completely inhuman – it provides a remarkably flexible voice for both ensemble and solo playing.  On top of that, the signature directness and depth of the trombone sound create a unique potential for interacting with different acoustical spaces. 

I was finally able to realize this potential when I joined Loop38 last spring.  I already knew this ensemble would be a perfect opportunity to expand my musical boundaries, and as such I had compiled a substantial list of repertoire ideas for the group.  This preparation was mostly owed to my recent discovery of an exhaustive online database of modern trombone-related chamber and solo works – talk about an opportune find!  I researched each listed work one by one, selecting those which appealed to my ears as well as my musical goals.  A particular standout was Solos (2010), a work for trombone and electronics by composer Julian Stein. 

Naturally, this would be my first foray into performing with any sort of electronics.  Solos in particular is built around a series of delays, triggered throughout the piece and overlapping with each other to create textures of varying density.  The music itself is unhurried, simple yet melodic, with a range confined to just over an octave.  Rather than relying on the technical, Solos instead emphasizes the textural capabilities of the trombone; how do the inherent vibrations and overtones in the trombone sound interact when layered upon themselves?   Due to the randomness built into the Max patch controlling the delays, this question gets answered differently each time Solos is performed. 

After initially performing Solos in November on the outdoor stage at First Congregational Church in Houston, I began to brainstorm venues around the city that would lend themselves well to a second performance.  One aspect of Loop38 that really drew me in initially was its history of performing in unconventional spaces, exploring acoustics that couldn’t otherwise be found in a concert hall.  Concerts at the Silos at Sawyer Yards or the Rothko Chapel were favorites of mine, and through the same vein, the doors were opened to us utilizing another unique Houston landmark: the Buffalo Bayou Cistern. 

The Cistern, a former water reservoir built in the 1920s, is a hidden Houston gem.  Its architecture is mesmerizing in its simplicity and repetition, providing a wide palette of visual textures as light bounces around all 87,500 square feet of the concrete chamber.  And, thanks to its system of 221 concrete columns and glassy-still water at its base, the Cistern touts a reverb that lasts up to 17 seconds long.  Call it an acoustical wonder of the world – I’ve never experienced anything quite like it before.  

Now, imagine how I felt when I stepped into the Cistern for the first time and played a few notes on the trombone.  As I mentioned earlier, the trombone’s sound is incredibly directional, and as a result it already carries very naturally.  In this space, it was almost like I could see my sound bouncing off the back wall, zig-zagging through the maze of columns, reaching my ears, and going back for a couple more passes before finally dying out.  Each time a note left my bell, it took on a life of its own that lasted long enough for me to appreciate even its finest details.  I soon realized that the same question Solos poses with its electronic delays – how do the inherent vibrations of the trombone interact when layered upon themselves? – could also be posed by the natural reverb of the Cistern.  This revelation allowed me to view Solos in an entirely new light, as each phrase layered itself note by note, leaving behind dense chords from which the next phrase would emerge.  The recording we created thus eschews the electronics in favor of letting the Cistern’s resonance shine.  

The process of recording Solos has led me through many firsts – collaborating with a composer, interacting with electronics, exploring unique spaces/acoustics, to name a few.  I’m very excited to share the results! See them live next Sunday, March 14th at our concert Loop38 Up Close.

- Cameron Kerl