Hello All,

So, here’s an interesting thought: I just spent two days at my composer residency and didn’t write a note of original music. It wasn’t writer’s block, believe me–I don’t believe in writer’s block because I believe that a professional composer relies upon craft and technique far more than any ethereal concept of ‘inspiration’…not trying to sound cynical, but really, do instrumentalists suddenly have a block and can’t practice or perform? No. They may not be in ‘the zone,’ so to speak, but their technique and experience can always compensate, period.

For me, however, this was a weekend of exploration. Having to consider how all of the varied aspects of Roots Music (Chinese, Classical, Jazz, Irish) will fit together, I began exploring some American roots music, most especially Blues. Blues is wonderful…it is so simple yet at the same time filled with the infinite variety of creativity. I don’t know any other art form that can create so much variety from such limited material. Having my saxophone on Thursday (which was my first day at the residency this week do to a schedule change) instead of the Chinese and European flutes allowed me more freedom in my exploration of Blues; remember that the ‘American’ part of this piece will be on saxophone, and more than likely derived from Blues, Gospel, and/or Spiritual rather than Jazz. I need to find American music that will both blend and contrast with the Chinese…complimentary, but not completely harmonious. This is tricky…the piece, if I’m not careful, could fall into ‘camp’…there is already plenty of ethnic-music camp out there in the ether; I need to create something that doesn’t only borrow and patch together, but achieves unity both aesthetically and spiritual with respect to all cultures involved. A tall order…

For this reason, I have connected with a well-respected Chinese musician and educator, Dr. Hsing-Lee Chou, who teaches Chinese culture at CUNY. We met today for an extended period and spoke about my project and my artistic goals for wanting to speak with him. We had a wonderful conversation, getting to know each other and our musical heritages. The conversation morphed into a lecture (fine by me!) on Chinese poetry and music, comparing and contrasting the different dynasties and how music and poetry (which should be considered one and the same, not unlike in Ancient Greece!) evolved over the centuries.

Then, we decided to play to see what our communication was. I had my alto flute, so I began to improvise; he came in with a Sung Dynasty poem, following my lead and musical contours. It was lovely. We then tried again with me playing piano (mostly inside the piano, mind you) with the same poem done differently; again success. I came to find out that he is actually very well known performer in Taiwan, but hasn’t done anything here in NYC, where is known primarily as an educator. I suggested the idea that he join me on my Flushing Town Hall concert on February 18th. We agreed to see what we could do by playing more together over the coming months. I think that a music/poetry improvisation would balance my other music, especially Autumn Yearning, beautifully.

Interestingly enough, at that moment, a group from the Ling Jiou Mountain Buddhist Society/Global Family for Love and Peace, that Dr. Chou has been helping, arrived at Flushing Town Hall; they are organizing an Interfaith Prayer and Cultural Performance for Love and Peace here next week. Dr. Chou spent some time speaking with them, in particularly the director, the Venerable Guang-Gou from Taiwan. They asked about my project and interest in Chinese culture and traditional music, then asked if Dr. Chou and I would perform a little for them, which we gladly did. I must admit, we performed well…the same poem (sung, with movement), again with alto flute, but with a different aesthetic this time.

After we finished, the committee was rather impressed how we combined the Chinese traditional poetry with my rather modern and experimental flute playing. They asked if I’d be interested to collaborate with them on some musical/artistic projects in the coming year, including in NYC, Chicago, and perhaps Taiwan…I of course said yes. Their mission of world peace through culture is in tandem with mine and my cultural diplomacy projects…just like improvising a musical performance, let’s see how we communicate and watch what happens next…

Until soon,

Demetrius

Hello All,

As I watch the Red Sox battle for their post-season lives, I am sending out a little preview to my upcoming weekend.

I seem to be going back to my roots on Saturday. When I was just a young’un, I was completely turned on by the Beatles Rubber Soul album. Much to my parents’ chagrin, this album was what made me really decide to become a musician. Although I’ve left rock music behind in a past life, the music still moves me on many, many levels.

So, on Saturday I will join the very well-known Beatles tribute band Mostly Moptop for a special performance celebrating the life and music of John Lennon at the Dix Hills Performing Arts Center at Five Towns College.

This concert holds special meaning for me. There were three events that defined the 1980s: John Lennon’s death, the Challenger disaster, and the tearing down of the Berlin Wall. I’m delighted that I can contribute to a concert honoring John Lennon, one of my musical heroes. And, coincidentally, Five Towns College–where I teach–is home to the John Lennon Center for Music and Technology.

**********************************************************

Many of you will remember my 2007 Balkan tour which took me to Bulgaria, Serbia, and Greece. In Bulgaria I was the guest and featured artist of the AmBul Festival of American and Bulgarian Music which takes place annual in the capitol Sofia. I was approached this year by the Festival’s artistic director Geoffrey Dean to appear in a film clip discussing American composer Steve Reich who is celebrating his 75th birthday this year and who is the focus of this year’s Festival.

So…the film clip, which was shot with the help of the Audio/Visual Dept. at Five Towns College, is of me discussing Reich, his importance as a composer, and his influence on me as a composer–I am basically ‘riffing’ in front of the camera, and having fun doing it. I also play a short selection from my favorite of his compositions, Desert Music.

The reason I chose Desert Music is that it was really the first piece I had heard by a major–and LIVING–American composer. It was my freshman year at New England Conservatory, and both the faculty and student composers were constantly discussing Desert Music; the recording (album…LP…) with Michael Tilson Thomas conducting had been recently released…the buzz was a-buzzing…I had to hear it…

…so I bought it. It spoke to me in ways that classical music hadn’t really before. It may have been the repetitive nature that evokes primal nature and jazz/rock music, but I could relate to it. It has had–and continues to have–its influence on my work.

I hope you enjoy it.

Until soon,

Demetrius

Film clip talking about Steve Reich for 2011 AmBul Festival

Hello and welcome to blog #4!

I have to begin with by saying that my work-in-progress Autumn Yearning has taken shape. As I mentioned last time, what I expected to be a short almost transcription of the traditional song 妝臺秋思 has evolved into a medium-sized chamber piece. I decided last week before I began (I always begin with form/structure, remember…if you don’t have this figured out beforehand, all you’re doing is flailing around and wasting everyone’s time…) that the piece would be in an A-B-C-A’ form.

Last week began with the creation of an introduction which lead into the first statement of the 妝臺秋思 melody. I kept this in a minor/modal (related) centric context (with well-placed chromatic pitches, of course). This transited to the B section which was more in a major/modal (related) realm. amazingly, the A section is almost entirely based on the antecedent phrase of the first statement, while the B is based on the consequent phrase. Very limited material can be developed in many, many ways.

This weekend was a focus on the C section. What I wanted here was a tension-filled area of instability and stress, not unlike–if I may so bold as to say–an evocation of a storm. I try not to write literal music…I don’t really like music that describes a scene. Now, considering my somewhat Existential titles, I obviously don’t write completely objective music, but I do focus more on ‘etherials’ rather than ‘realism,’ if that makes sense. I like implication of thought and feeling. This was my intention with this section: more of an emotional storm rather than a literal one. I mean, we are speaking about yearning, a very powerful and primal feeling…one that calls into questions the nature and life-quality of one’s Existential being.

And speaking of Existential angst, I also decided this weekend to create a leadsheet for my piece The Love We Made (*there’s* a good example of one of my titles for you…). You will recall, dearest readers, that I composed this piece over the summer at ARTErra in Portugal. It’s basically a jazz ballad, falling somewhere between Weather Report and Styx. I originally conceived this for a ‘classic’ jazz quartet of tenor sax, piano, bass, and drums (and arranged it this way), but have decided that it will have other incarnations, as well. The main one will be for my concert for Serial Underground on December 4th at Cornelia Street Cafe. My thought is to play a more free version of this with Serial Underground’s host and downtown piano maven Jed Distler. I think a freer version of this, being able to play off each other out of time, may be it’s best incarnation…we will see…

I also spent some time listening to tangos. I need to decide on one (or more) to arrange and play with the wonderful Elaine Kwon for the Best Buddies Fund Raiser in Carnegie Hall. I of course gravitated towards my favorites, like Piazzolla’s Oblivion, which I usually play solo with orchestra (on soprano sax with strings). I’ve asked some friends to suggest others…there are so many wonderful, wonderful tangos to chose from…it’s going to be difficult.

The only negative this weekend was that the nasty weather made my meeting with Dr. Chou not occur. He was delayed Upstate due to rain-caused delays. We have rescheduled for next week.

Oh, and before I forget to mention it, my concert where we will premiere Autumn Yearning had been scheduled for 2PM, February 18, 2012 at Flushing Town Hall.

Until next!

Demetrius

Flushing Town Hall Workspace

Hello All,

Welcome to blog #3 on my Residency.

So, this weekend I decided to approach things from a different direction.

For the past two weeks, I have been researching ‘source material’ for Roots Music, the major work which I’m focusing on for this residency. I spent a great deal of the first two weeks listening to traditional Chinese music and instruments (and some traditional American as well, if you recall). I found a lovely traditional piece entitled 妝臺秋思, which roughly translates as ‘missing hometown in autumn’ (and there are numerous variations on this title). I spent much of the second week playing with this melody; harmonizing it in different ways, even improvising on the melodic material to see all of the possibilities. By this third week, it was time to try something.

Now…for this residency, I must present a lecture and/or concert on what I have been doing and what I have accomplished. The massive scope of Roots Music makes it logistically very difficult to present: hiring a dozen musicians from four traditions (and raising money to do so) who all are comfortable with western musical notation and organizing rehearsals seems to me a major nightmare. So…what I decided to do is to create a separate piece that I could perform at Flushing Town Hall that is greatly related to Roots Music, but is much easier to produce on a concert.

Now…in January 2012, I (on clarinet) along with pianist Jed Distler and violist Alexandra Honigsberg, will be performing Mozart’s Kegelstatt Trio for that same instrumentation at the lovely Cornelia Street Cafe (we’ll be calling ourselves ‘Wolf’s Gang’…I like it). Since my Flushing Town Hall concert will be in the late winter, I decided to write the other work for the same instrumentation; I also decided to call it Autumn Yearning since I will be basing it on the traditional melody mentioned above.

Now…going into it, I was thinking that I would just take and rescore the traditional melody for these instruments pretty much from A to Z. Perhaps add some moving contrapuntal lines, but mostly keep it unison (or heterophonic) with maybe some harmonic accompaniment…

…that didn’t happen…

Instead, I sat at the lovely Steinway baby grand in my workspace and started to play around. I started taking ideas and motives from the melody and developing them. I created a ground bass with a repetitive harmonic accompaniment and varied the melodic material over this…basically a chaconne. Staying in a more modal and pentatonic realm, I wrote over three minutes of music on Friday. I had to leave early to get to Manhattan to record for William Susman’s OCTET (which is always fun), but that was OK since I probably had drained my creative energies for the day and was more than happy to focus on someone else’s music.

Now…on the next day the music evolved towards a different direction. What began as modal/pentatonic starting moving (via transition, mind you…I’m so characteristically Neoclassical at times…Mozart would be so proud…as would Stravinsky, actually) to a tonal (real tonal: major/minor) center. This became my ‘B’ section: a different take on the melody with very different harmonic material (I’ve played with going back and forth between modality and tonality a lot, most recently in my choir piece Smile, for your Lover comes–I like it).

On Saturday, I wrote over two minutes, which puts this piece now just under six minutes. I foresee two more sections, so this work has not only taken on a life of its own, but is evolving into a large work…cool…

Let’s see where she goes.

The other event that happened at Flushing Town Hall this weekend was that I was introduced to one Dr. Hsing-Lih Chou, a local and highly respected traditional Chinese musician and educator. He is very interested in my project. We are meeting this coming weekend to discus about traditional music and local musicians with whom I can work with, as well as to talk about the possibilities of the two of us creating a project together–something for my Flushing Town Hall concert and beyond, perhaps.

Shoot for the moon, Baby. Let’s see where this takes me.

Until next time,

Demetrius

Dear All,

It is with great pleasure that I announce that I am a recipient of the ASCAPlus Award from the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP).

This award recognizes composers whose performances are primarily in venues not surveyed by ASCAP; and/or writer members whose catalogs have prestige value for which they would not otherwise be compensated.

This award is a wonderful opportunity for those of us who work in contemporary music genres that have many of our performances in alternative spaces, and countries that are not surveyed by ASCAP or may not follow international copyright law.

I am most grateful because this is the third consecutive year that I have received this honor. I wish to thank ASCAP and the Concert Division Board for recognizing my work.

And thank you all again for your continued support.

Sincerely,

Demetrius

Hi All,

Welcome to part 2 of my Residency Blog.

On the last blogs relating to my Fall 2011 Composition Residency, I had been using the term ‘source material’ rather frequently. Mainly, what I would like to do today is explain what I mean by this and also to describe what I plan to do with my source material for this project.

In the last year or so, I’ve been exploring the idea of taking pre-existing musical material and using it for a basis of composing. Now, this should not be confused with an arrangement or other such literal adaptation. The source material in some of my recent works may be recognizable within the overall texture and structure, but it’s *never* fully stated. Mainly I use fragments to evoke a very specific psycho-emotional response. If I may be as so bold to say, I’m approaching this material in a very Ivesian sort of way.

I think it may be prudent to restate here that Charles Ives is the reason that I became interested in contemporary music. My freshman year at the New England Conservatory held many unique surprises, but none like that of encountering Ives for the first time; it was his Putnam’s Camp, Redding, Connecticut from Three Place in New England. A powerful combination of the music, New England spirit and Transcendentalist bent hit me hard, real hard…I haven’t recovered, thankfully.

[Note: here is a list of the pieces that Ives quotes in this movement: The British Grenadiers; Marching Through Georgia; The Girl I Left Behind; Arkansas Traveler; Massa’s in de Cold Ground; The Battle Cry of Freedom; Yankee Doodle, Columbia, Gem of the Ocean; Hail, Columbia;Tramp, Tramp, Tramp]

Actually, in many of my younger (we’ll call it my ‘early career’) works I experimented with this idea, but had left it mostly in the last decade and a half. I’m actually not sure why the idea has begun to interest me again. Granted, I’ve had many pieces that were ‘influenced’ by other works, naturally, but not where I took recognizable material.

My two most recent works that utilize source material are Giuffre Sketches (2010, to be premiered in December at the Composers Collaborative, inc. Serial Underground Series at Cornelia Street Cafe) and Around Monk-night (2011, to premiered in November at the Best Buddies Benefit Concert at Carnegie Hall). Giuffre Sketches–dedicated to the memory of my former teacher Jimmy Giuffre–takes a number of Giuffre’s compositions, as well as Jimmy Van Husen’s Darn That Dream, and interweaves them within and throughout the structure, both homophonically and polyphonically (Jimmy may have gotten a kick out of fragments from his jazz compositions used as fugue statements). The tunes will be momentarily recognizable before evolving into something new. Around Monk-night is, obviously, based on Thelonius Monk’s ‘Round Midnight. The source material here becomes the basis–at times very loosely–for a ‘written improvisation’ that constantly evolves far away from the source melodically and harmonically.

Over this weekend, I started exploring what I could do with the piece 妝臺秋思 that I found last week. What I mainly explored was different possible harmonic settings, basically adding–and do forgive me for this–’Spaneasian’ harmonies. What I mean is, I can’t just state the melody, that would be not only derivative, but downright boring. I have to explore the motivic possibilities throughout the structure of the original, and then ‘set’ my source material (derived from these possibilities) to create a unique composition that sounds like, well, me.

I also must state that I am in fact really composing TWO pieces from this same source material: Roots Music, for Beijing in March 2012, and another (which I may entitle Autumn Yearning) for a much smaller ensemble for my Residency concert in (probably) February 2012 at Flushing Town Hall. The pieces, however, will be rather different from each other.

So, this weekend I explored settings. Considering the impetus behind Roots Music, what I must do is to come up with harmonic settings that fit not only the Chinese music, but also traditional Irish and American music. I ended up working out three very interesting settings on Friday, so I’m very pleased. I then chose on Saturday to explore possible ‘American’ music to pair this with. The commission from the TIMI Ensemble implied ‘jazz,’ but I am leaning more towards hymns and spirituals that I can add ‘jazzisms’ to. I spent Saturday going through Protestant hymns and Negro spirituals. I don’t want to use anything *so* popular for the fear of becoming kitsch, but it has to be instantly recognizable in the style.

This will be the challenge for the next week.

I am also still waiting to hear what the exact instrumentation of the traditional Irish musicians will be. This won’t–shouldn’t–effect things too much. But I’ll wait to explore that traditions music until I know where I’m going.

Thank you again for reading.

Until soon,

Demetrius

Hello All,

So…I’ve decided to blog about my Composition Residency this fall at Flushing Town Hall. I received a great deal of interest for blogging about my residency this summer at ARTErra in Portugal; folks seemed to like me talking about my creative process and other thoughts. This one will be a little different since I am only here at Flushing Town Hall on Fridays and Saturdays and not every day (and night!), so I’ll write one blog about it every week. Still, though, I hope many of you find my psyche if nothing else at least entertaining…

As what tends to happen with many new creative projects, there is always some ambivalence as where exactly to begin. ‘The beginning’ is not always the best place to start a composition. Sometimes, the middle or end makes more sense, especially if those areas are more clear; you can work in any direction. But even more difficult is a project where one is working in somewhat unfamiliar territory. As you know, I have worked with Benoit Granier and TIMI in the past, but that was a little different. Our first projects together featured me as soloist or ensemble member playing other composer’s music, and in our last collaboration I rewrote my composition Gymnopaedia for the ensemble–it wasn’t a brand new piece, but an adaptation for their instrumentation. Even then, I did my best to understand the traditional Chinese instruments and to write in a proper and idiomatic way for them. In Roots Music, I’ll have to dig deeper. I’ll have to undergo total immersion in the traditional Chinese musical style.

When I’ve done my other world music collaborations, it was a little different. I know Balkan music intimately, and even when I worked with the traditional musicians in Tajikistan last year, I had (have) a good working knowledge of Persian music since it has always interested me. Chinese music is further away conceptually.

To do this, I decided to begin by reacquainting myself with my dizi flute which I bought during my trip to China in 2009. The dizi is a bamboo flute which is more similar to the pre-18th century European ‘simple’ flute than to the modern Boehm flute; this is a big difference. I spent my morning session on my first day working on basic sound production and researching both technical writings and recordings/video so that I could understand it better. The dizi player in TIMI also plays xiao, so I really explored both (but don’t own one…yet!).

I had decided that Roots Music will based on just that: roots, or traditional, music. As I was researching my dizi, I was also looking for well-known pieces that may function as ‘source material’ for the composition. In Chinese music, even though all instruments can play all music (like other traditional music), it seems that there are pieces specifically meant for the characteristics of individual instruments (like European classical). I was listening to numerous works for dizi (which had a spectrum of interest for me) when I came across a video of a xiao player performing a piece called Missing of Hometown in August. The piece was beautiful, haunting; it would fit perfectly with my concept for Roots Music and meld nicely with traditional Irish and American music that I was thinking of using for source material.

At this point, satisfied by my morning work, I decided to explore Flushing for local cuisine and neighborhood vibe. I would explore Missing of Hometown in August after lunch, which was chow fun and chicken dumplings and cost me a whopping $2.75…I LOVE Queens!

After lunch, I started to look for other recordings. I found one that was quite different and played on dizi and guzheng…I also found numerous other recordings with ‘Autumn’ in the title, including one called Longing in Autumn and another called Autumn Yearning by the Dresser. Listening to these, they sounded similar, but were different enough to make me doubt. There were exact duplicate figures followed by unrelated passages, and my limited knowledge of Chinese music did not give me enough information to know if they were variations on the same piece, same idea, or completely different but using the same basic scale and intervals. That, and the two with the same title were quite different.

I decided then to try and find a Western notation transcription. I looked in catalogs online and Chinese music stores and other collections of Chinese music transcriptions…nothing. I even tried Google image searches to see if I could find sheet music…again, nothing. Probably the only thing I could do now is to transcribe it off the recording/video, but again the problem is whether or not what I was hearing was the real tune or variation/interpretation of it.

So I decided to go back to the 2nd video. As I looked on the ‘suggestions’ list, there was a solo guzheng player but with the title in Chinese characters. I decided to listen and realized that it was a completely different piece…even *I* could tell that. Funny though, the title characters were the same as in the 2nd Missing… video. I listened to the 2nd video again and realized that they were playing TWO different pieces…AHA! I translated the characters from the guzheng piece, and came up with Plum Blossom, NOT the same piece. I then translated the characters from the 2nd video, 妝臺秋思、梅花三弄 which says “Autumn Thoughts Dressing Table, Plum Blossom”.

EUREKA!!!

So…I then realized that the characters 妝臺秋思 could be translated as all of the different results that I was getting in my video searches. In a final moment of insight, I did a image search for 妝臺秋思 and found sheet music in Western notation that seemed to be from a Chinese music ‘fake book’! Yes!

That was enough for Friday.

Saturday: I decide to take the music for 妝臺秋思 and start to learn it on both dizi and silver flute. As part of my total immersion, I plan on become quite proficient on the dizi. The biggest issue I was having with it, however, was that playing it was quite uncomfortable…it actually hurt. The stretch of the fingers of the right hand was not natural, and I couldn’t find a comfortable playing position. I spent the majority of the day working and adjusting and adjusting more. I spent a great deal of time online trying to find pictures and videos of people playing it to see their hands; the problem was that that they were either shot at a distance/wrong angle, or were beautiful models who were not really playing it…

Eventually, I found a Chinese video on basic dizi practice where I could see the hand position clearly. Amazingly, the issue is with the LEFT hand, not the right. If you hold it like an European silver flute, it doeas’t work (as I soon realized); the thumb of the left hand must go along the dizi and not face the body–this takes pressure off the right hand and allows for a more comfortable angle.

So I spent the afternoon learning music and new techniques

The first days of the residency have been wonderfully successful! Let’s see where this goes next!

Thanks again!

Demetrius

My Workspace, Flushing Town Hall