(what follows is an essay I wrote several years ago - part of my tenure application at the University of Michigan School of Music. I realize it is a little lengthy, but if you are interested to read it, it attempts to encapsulate my diverse motivations as a composer. It was my answer to the question: "What kind of music do you write?" - e)

RESEARCH STATEMENT (2003)

I initially became a composer because it would enable me to stand at the hub of many different modes of musical experience. Having been raised as a multi-instrumentalist and singer in a family of musicians who encouraged my ability to bring music to any situation, in any genre, on any available instrument, I was taken aback when, during my undergraduate study, a teacher once warned me of becoming “a jack-of-all-trades, and a master of none.” In response, I focused on composition. It was a specialization that would allow me to draw upon all of my musical resources, without having to sacrifice any of them.

However, I quickly learned that, although composition is a field which provides unlimited access to countless avenues of expression, this freedom has a price: a composer’s work consists of groping about in the dark depths of infinite, unanswered, perhaps unanswerable questions, to somehow bring form to a thing which never before existed. It is a frightening and precarious activity, full of pitfalls, scars, temptations and sacrifice, and often, alas, surviving this intense process is its only reward. Yet, through this humbling struggle, one discovers unexpected powers of adaptation, tolerance, and discernment, and one may even encounter new traveling companions along the way who make the long journey into night a little less lonely and frustrating. One evolves. Thankfully. But the process never gets easier.

Luckily, my hunger for fresh challenges has continued to attract people who commission me to undertake ever new and adventurous projects. These have ranged from classical orchestral and chamber works of varying complexity to purely electronic compositions, from music and sound design for theatrical/dance productions to rock songs and world music. And, whereas the stylistic diversity of my output has made it increasingly difficult to answer the old standard question, “What kind of music do you write?” it has also helped me to avoid being “pegged” in any category but my own. Moreover, my fluency in multiple genres has enabled me to communicate more effectively with students, colleagues, performers and audiences, regardless of their musical background. In terms of my contribution to music, this last point is vital, for music is essentially an art of sharing.

In terms of my role as a model composer at the University of Michigan School of Music, the ability to communicate in many musical tongues has an added significance. Our students are entering with wider interests and backgrounds than ever before, and graduating into a job market that is more diverse in terms of opportunity as well. Technical advancements and cultural cross-fertilizations are rendering the traditional methods of “Western classical training” insufficient in and of itself for the composers of today. To cope with the tumultuous (though exciting) state of flux that is the “real world,” one must learn how to anchor oneself in the constant mixtures and transformations of life, for the only enduring truth in this swirling world is that things always change. Identifying with this fact cultivates resilience, and one must have resilience, because luck – though a powerful element in the creative process – works according to its own principles.

I am not a composer to merely traverse well-worn corporate paths, composing for pre-established ensembles (with pre-established audiences), but to strengthen each person’s courage and resolve to find their own unique path towards knowing themselves, or more importantly, to allow their path to find them.

CONCERT MUSIC
My compositional career began in the realm of classical concert music. In common with most composers in this genre, I have written music of varying difficulty for orchestra and chamber ensembles, and solo works. While, over the last couple of years, I’ve focused my efforts primarily in other musical areas, I am still deeply involved with classical genres, and my efforts have received national recognition from prestigious institutions like The American Academy of Arts and Letters (The Charles Ives Fellowship “for a mid-career composer with exceptional gifts” in 2001) and the Music Teachers National Association (“Distinguished Composer of the Year” in 1998). I have received wonderful commissions from national organizations such as the American Guild of Organists (Star Rising for solo organ), wonderful performances from ensembles such as the Chicago Civic Orchestra (Symphony No. 1 – “Shards”) and the Seattle Symphony (…con Cruces de Fuego), my written music is published by Theodore Presser, Inc., and my recordings are published by Naxos Classical and Centaur Records, among others.

While I have been incredibly fortunate to receive moving performances by such virtuosic musicians as organists David Higgs and Pamela Decker, pianists Lisa Moore, Vicky Ray and Gabriela Frank, clarintettist Derek Bermel, and ensembles like Quorum and Equal Temperament, in locations around the world as far as Sweden, Australia, Japan, The Philippines, Denmark, or American cultural centers like New York City, Philadelphia, Chicago, Nashville, Seattle and Los Angeles, I have also been granted the rare opportunity to test my compositional abilities in locations far off of “the beaten track.”

In 1999, I was commissioned to write a large work for the Butte Symphony and Choir of Butte, Montana. The city of Butte was the site of one of the greatest copper mining operations in history, a true rise-and-fall success story of the Western Expansion. Its remaining inhabitants have an incredible story to tell, and realizing this, conductor Matthew Savery felt it was a story that should be told through music on the occasion of their symphony’s 50th anniversary season. The concept was noble, but I was faced with a daunting task. Not only was I to supply an original text that would give voice to the intimate feelings of an entire city, but also -- this was a painfully amateur ensemble.

The resultant work, …in the Mines of Desire for choir and orchestra (1999), was/is an example of my ability to apply the highest musical and artistic standards to a major work that uses what might be perceived weaknesses of a regional ensemble as strengths, and brings tremendous technique to bear in solving the problems of performance with such a group without resorting to condescension. In some ways, it is much easier (though perhaps less spiritually fulfilling) to write an effective piece for an elite ensemble like the NY Philharmonic, simply because there are so few technical and musical constraints on the composer. I consider it one of my strengths as an artist to be able to create works that run the gamut from the most virtuosic performance situation (like my percussion pieces for the Equal Temperament percussion duo) to pieces that take into account the realities of smaller performance organizations and their audiences while staying true to the highest expressive ideals — this demands a great deal of inspiration and technique.

This performance was so stirring, and the audience’s connection to the work so total, that I was compelled to reevaluate my definition of musical success. The modernist view of composition, which too often denies the importance of engaging its audience, could no longer be mine. Music does not just exist on the page, or on the stage – the audience is just as essential to the musical experience as the performers and the composer, and from that point on, concerns for the communal experience of music became paramount in my work.

Also changed was my idea of virtuosity. It is one thing to dazzle with flashy technique and clever ideas, but quite another to be able to reveal the depths of the soul with only a few notes and/or words. Without any extra notes, a performer is completely exposed, and thus must be completely involved in listening to every minute fluctuation of the sound produced. Indeed, by creating the conditions for such intense listening to one’s own sound, one quickly and quite naturally “finds one’s voice.” Even the composer, and the audience as well.

Almost on cue, tenor Darryl Taylor provided me with my next opportunity to focus on these new compositional preoccupations: a new song cycle for tenor based on poems by Langston Hughes. As I’d be composing for solo voice rather than choir, this was a chance for me to produce an even more rarefied musical texture, with an enhanced audibility of text. The result of the commission was Dreamer: 7 Poems of Langston Hughes (2001). The overwhelming response to our premier performance at Merkin Hall in New York City was confirmation that I had created a unified musical environment that invited everyone to hear, and thus participate in, the progression of each subtle compositional detail.

GESAMTKUNSTWERK
My concern for a total sensory involvement of composer, performer and audience has manifested in my compositions for the concert hall, but they are more deeply indebted to my experience in the collaborative worlds of theater and dance, where music is but one element in the overall perceptual fabric. As a member of an audience, I have always been slightly put off by the dividing lines inherent in concert music. One sits quietly in one’s chair, watching musicians play their instruments on a stage. The musicians are intensely concentrating on a manuscript, and trying to ignore any distractions from the audience. The audience is most likely doing the same. Often the composer has supplied program notes, which make the audience try to fit their musical interpretations within a given conceptual framework. Then there is the inevitable page turns, shuffling about in between movements, and bows and clapping before and after pieces, which remind all present that the music somehow exists apart from them, and they are merely witnesses. Of course, one is able to justify all of these separations as part of the overall concert ritual. But I have always been more interested in the world of theater, where there is a great effort to conceal all the seams, which divide reality and dreams.

With careful attention paid to lights, and music, and sound effects, and scenery, and costume changes, and choreography, and characters, one is made a willing and full participant in their own unlimited powers of imagination. One goes to the theater to suspend disbelief. The challenge of the theatrical producer then, is to enliven and sustain the conditions for this to happen, for the collective power of the audience’s imagination is a vast resource, much larger than anyone or anything on the stage. It was a resource I wished to draw upon.

In 1998, I initiated a collaboration with University of Michigan Dance Faculty Sandra Torijano DeYoung, Vincent Mountain and Rob Murphy of the Theater Department and New York costume designer John Schak in an effort to pursue my interest in this realm. I called it Cruces de Fuego (“Crosses of Fire”), as I felt that the explosive effect produced by putting several match heads into the flame of one lighted match was a compelling metaphor for the type of interdisciplinary collaboration I wanted to establish. The image also corresponded with my hopes of igniting the collective creativity of our mixed assortment of student performers, and most especially that of our audience.

This three-day performance in the University of Michigan Media Union Video Studio in 1999 was my first foray into the area of gesamtkunstwerk, and also my first experience as an executive producer for a work of this scale. It was taxing, but based upon the astonished response of our capacity audiences, I knew that my goals had been achieved: all sensory input had blended into one unified experience, and the barriers between the audience, the performers, and the muse had been permeated, if not burned down. This fully integrated feeling was what I then brought to my subsequent concert music works, …in the Mines of Desire and Dreamer: 7 Poems of Langston Hughes, and Star Rising for solo organ. But I was not to return to the world of theatrical production for another three years…

JAPAN
Earlier, I said “one must learn how to anchor oneself in the constant mixtures and transformations of life, for the only enduring truth … is that things always change.” I would not have said this without having undergone a number of giant experiences to convince me of its factual nature. In the winter of 2001, I saw a production of the Japanese butoh (avant-garde dance theater) company Dairakudakan at Power Center for the Arts, Ann Arbor. It was as if I was seeing a mirror of my own soul. This was a level of interdisciplinarity I had never previously known, although the irresistible (and at times, shocking) quality of their production was exactly what I had been seeking to achieve in Cruces de Fuego. One difference, of course, was that Dairakudakan’s transcendent style of expression, butoh, had originated some forty years earlier. I walked out of Power Center, speechless, with one incessantly repeating thought: “This is what I should be doing – I must change my life.”

I was astonished that people from the other side of the planet were devoted to the practice of an art form that I had only previously dreamed about. However, this astonishment could not equal the bewilderment I felt when, through a few amazing coincidences, I found myself invited to live and work among them in Tokyo for six months in 2002 as their resident composer! Not only was this event significant on a highly personal level, but it is worthwhile to note that I am the first American composer to collaborate with this group in the 30 years of its existence (Dairakudakan is the largest, and oldest-surviving butoh troupe in existence, and the first to bring this internationally-recognized art form to Western audiences with their performance at the American Dance Festival in 1982.)

In their company, my artistic outlook underwent radical changes. To begin with, I had never before lived in another country, and without any Japanese-speaking ability, communication was a constant struggle. Surrounded by strange sounds, customs, and writing I could not understand, I had to give up communicating with words (relying instead on body language, tone of voice, etc. – in other words, basic musical instincts). Unable to ask for directions, I was constantly getting lost in the big city of Tokyo. Though I was treated very kindly by Dairakudakan’s members, I felt completely isolated, and, having to endure countless moments of wondering what would happen next, my thoughts oscillated between extreme anxiety and unrelenting boredom. This, I’m sure, was not remedied by the stress of the intense jetlag, which took months to overcome. Very soon, all this loneliness and culture shock accumulated into an artistic crisis of the highest order. I lost the sense of who I was, for the identity I had firmly established in America, had very little, or no relevance in this new context. At 34 years of age, I was as helpless as a baby. However, as Dairakudakan’s founder Akaji Maro explained to me, such deep crises are the wellspring of creative growth. As stressful as the experience was for me, it eventually brought about new psychological/artistic concerns that have spawned surprising new musical and life directions. (This experience has been chronicled in music on my forthcoming 2004 CD release, KUU: Journey to the Jar, Centaur Records.)

ELECTRONIC MUSIC
In Japan, I began making music exclusively on my laptop computer utilizing a variety of audio software, as this was the only musical instrument available to me. My music consisted entirely of constructions of mixed and manipulated samples derived from sounds recorded with a minidisc player, or whatever CD’s and DVD’s I found in the library at Kochuten (“Paradise in a Jar” – Dairakudakan’s studio). In short, the seeds of my sonic vocabulary came to me by chance. I worked thus with electronic music almost exclusively for almost two years, and in that time, I produced a sizeable body of twenty-two compositions. In live performance, Dairakudakan has used several of these pieces, but it is almost always mixed together, spontaneously, with other musical genres and sound effects. Therefore it is never heard, or danced to, the same way twice. My first collaboration with the group, Universe of Darah, received its Tokyo and United States premiere in 2003.

The process of electronic composition affords the composer many wonderful possibilities. The instant playback capabilities and ease of shaping/coloring sounds through the wide variety of digital signal processing, effect plug-ins, splicing techniques, panning, etc., allows one to essentially compose a musical performance. Without having to consider the needs of intermediary performing musicians (other than the quality of the sound system used for playback), this compositional process is akin to sculpting or painting. I am able to control all musical parameters to create such musical events as deafening whispers, or muffled screams. The use of pitch-shifting can transform a plaintive shakuhachi flute into a devastating seismic rumble. Combined effects of time-stretching, tape reversal, volume curves and multiple delays can turn the voice of a female street singer in Okinawa into the sound of a voracious snapping dragons, bearing down on the listener from all directions. In one piece on KUU: Journey to the Jar, this effect is accompanied by variously manipulated samples of Nigerian drummers, Tibetan prayer horns, and the spoken text of a famous American country singer (who shall remain nameless). I am able to bring together disparate sounds from around the world, and merge them into unprecedented hybrids. I am a sonic alchemist. There is no end to the possibilities…

EVOLUTION
Although working with Dairakudakan opened my eyes to new performance situations, and although my work in the purely recorded medium gave free reign to my imagination in ways that I could never have predicted, I have yet to
find a venue to allow me to bring it all together. In the way that my passion for unifying composer, performer and audience moved from large-scale productions (…in the Mines of Desire for choir and orchestra, and Cruces de Fuego) to an even more intimate and naked setting in Dreamer: 7 Poems of Langston Hughes, I am compelled to move everything I’ve learned into a more intimate setting, where only the most essential impulses are conveyed.

I have already brought life to my creative ideas as a composer, writer, producer, collaborator, and instrumental “sideman” (acoustic and electronic). But there are still a few missing pieces in the puzzle. When I left my role as a “multi-man” as an undergraduate to become “a composer,” I was actually being groomed to be a singer (my first academic degree was in voice). I had left this role far behind, and concurrently sacrificed my love of playing rock music (as a bass player predominantly). Interestingly enough, since returning from Japan in January 2003, I began to perform with my dear friends (University of Michigan Professors Evan Chambers, Albin Zak, Travis Jackson, Dan Worley and Michael Gould), frequently, to perform as a singer, songwriter, bass player, pianist and electronic musician for their projects in the realm of popular and folk music. I have been busy performing their material for various shows and recording in their home studios.



Though I stopped performing rock and jazz when I embarked on a compositional career, I never did lose my interest in listening to these mediums. I have always enjoyed the directness of rock’s kinetic musical energy, in addition to its performance venue, which often encourages spontaneous creative invention, spurned on by the more extroverted quality of a rock music audience that is allowed to respond freely to the dynamism of a musician’s inspired performance.

Having been appointed this year to the position of Director of Electronic Music Studios at the University of Michigan, where careful study of the recorded medium often leads discussions toward the innovations developed in the popular music, film, video game, and classical music industry, I am quickly noticing that my recent experiences of performing the pop/rock/folk/funk music of my UM colleagues have nurtured a deepening awareness of the potential of this technology to enhance my own work. All of this, coupled with my renewed interest in song-writing and singing, is beginning to take shape in a new solo project that will draw upon all of the musical/dramatic resources I have acquired through thirty-five years of concrete experience, without having to sacrifice any of them. T.B.A.…