A Change of Scenery

After two great years of working with department head and composer (and friend) Anthony De Ritis at the Northeastern University Department of Music in Boston, I am pleased to announce that I will be moving southwards and taking a position as professor of jazz studies at Five Towns College on Long Island.

This is a great situation for me since I was relocating back to New York City anyways. Although I was originally planning on commuting to Boston a couple of days a week to continue teaching at Northeastern, Suffolk University, and at the New England Conservatory Preparatory and CE Schools, this offer given to me by Five Towns College was too good to turn down. And needless to say, the commute is much, much shorter…

In my new position, I will teach performance studies (clarinet and saxophone), graduate courses and seminars in jazz composition and arranging, and I will be directing College’s jazz orchestras/ensembles. Five Towns College’s music program focuses exclusively on jazz and commercial music, and it is home to the John Lennon Center for Music and Technology–how cool is that?

Onwards and upwards!

Demetrius

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An Affirmation

There are periods in one’s life when uncertainty and doubt about one’s paths and actions seem to take center stage of everything one does. You may work towards a goal–in career, in life–and wonder whether all of your dedication and work has been for nothing.

But, when one receives an answer, a positive answer, to some of those questions, one can not but be filled with not only joy, but with relief.

Let me tell you a story.

In 2007, I was invited to be a guest composer and performer at the Omnibus Composers Laboratory in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. This was my first (of many since) journeys to Central Asia. I didn’t know what to expect. Living in Russia at the time and speaking to Russians about their former Soviet comrades, I heard nothing but arrogance and dismissal, “why would you want to go there?”, they asked, “there is nothing there but uneducated masses and dust!”

How wrong they were.

I was a guest of the Omnibus Ensemble–the only contemporary music ensemble in all Central Asia–and the Ilkhom Theater, which was the only venue for free speech (supported, and protected, heavily by Western powers, mind you). Both were fantastic, professional, and top-notch.

The Theater’s founder, an American named Mark Weill, had just been murdered days before my arrival. The word on the street was that it was a ‘government job’, trying to force the Theater’s closure, thereby ending any venue for free speech. One has to realize that Uzbekistan is considered one of the most, if not the most, oppressive country in the world. If you have read the post on my visit there in February 2009, you would’ve gotten a glimpse into some of the extents this government will go to keep control.

But that isn’t this story.

This story is about a wonderfully talented young composer, Lily Ugay.

Lily was one of the composers–and at 17, by far the youngest–in attendance at the Omnibus Composers Laboratory. She was given by the Laboratory’s director a very honorable–and frightening–distinction for a young composer: she had to write a piece for me to premier.

You have to understand the situation here. This is a young female composer in a male-dominated Islamic society in a horribly oppressive regime that has to not only write a new piece for an internationally known American soloist, but to also have it torn apart in master class after master class by her peers, her teachers, and yes, by me…on top of that, her father had just passed away.

Well, guess what? She did just fine.

So much so in fact that I really wanted to help her. Her career choices were, needless to say, limited in Uzbekistan. In these countries, they are in a vacuum: they have so little interaction with the outside world. Their writing and playing levels, although decent and even excellent for the region, were generations behind the standards in the West…she eventually got this, and through our interaction and my continued mentoring (via email, mostly) she became determined to study in the West.

So…I connected her with my friends and colleagues here in the US, including my former teacher Chinary Ung at UCSD. Scholarship money is very hard to come by for composers in undergraduate school, and money is practically impossible to find for an international student–grad school is different, but undergrad…very unlikely. Chinary and the composition faculties at Oberlin, New England Conservatory (my alma mater), Curtis, and the Manhattan School of Music were all very impressed, but money couldn’t be found.

She did, however, get many invitations to come as a grad student. Well, that’s all fine and dandy, but what happens in the four years between? She decided to stay in Uzbekistan and attend the State Conservatory, even though she had been taking courses there for years–it was free.

But she was determined to keep trying–she continued to study both composition and piano beyond expectations, and even became the pianist for the Omnibus Ensemble–which leads me to today.

I received an email from Lily on my Blackberry this morning. She just received notice that she was given a Woodruff Award (full scholarship plus stipend) to study piano at Columbus State University in Georgia (ours, not the one in the Caucuses) to study with a Van Cliburn winning Russian pianist. She was coming to the U.S., and thanked me for making her believe that everything was possible.

My reaction was a bit surprising…I was standing in the middle of Starbucks, weeping, and muttering “I saved one, I saved one…”

But I didn’t, really. Once the hysteria subsided–I believe much to the pleasure of my fellow Starbucks customers–and I started breathing somewhat normally again, I changed my thoughts. No, I didn’t save her; she saved herself, by herself, with her own power and determination. I merely opened her to the possibilities, but that is more than enough for my affirmation.

Is this what a proud parent fells like? Considering the fact that my lineage will most likely be carried on–Platonically, mind you–through my house plants, I will probably never find out. But, it’s more like the warmth you feel when you know that someone who had no choices, now has a future of their own creation. Moving from the worst possible situation to the country that is ripe with endless possibilities. She saved herself…

…I’m still weeping as I write this; mostly uncontrollably…

Thank you,
Demetrius

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KAZAAM!
love songs, recollections, and contemporary improvisations

Demetrius Spaneas, winds; Jeffrey Goldberg, piano

Dear Friends,

Please join me for what may be my final Boston-area concert for quite some time. I have the pleasure of performing with my good friend Dr. Jeffrey Goldberg, who is currently visiting the U.S. from Germany where he is currently the pianist, vocal coach, and conductor of the State Opera of Chemnitz, and has studies with artists as diverse as Joe Maneri (whom we have in common) to Leonard Bernstein, and has worked with Yo-Yo Ma and Bobby McFerrin.

This concert should be fun; a celebration. Jeffrey is a lot like me in that during his improvisations he switches from Viennese Classical to Jazz, to pop to ethnic, usually in the same phrase. We don”t know where the concert may lead us musically, but it will be an adventure to say the least.

Looking forward!

The Lily Pad

1353 Cambridge Street

Inman Square

Cambridge, MA

7PM

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