by Melanie Wong
In preparation for their upcoming concert,
composer collective Circles and Lines—Angelica Negron, Eric Lemmon, Dylan
Glatthorn, Noam Faingold (via Skype), Conrad Winslow (absent)—and contemporary
chamber group Cadillac Moon Ensemble—flutist Roberta Michel, violinist Patti
Kilroy, cellist Meaghan Burke, and percussionist Sean Statser—sat down with FoM
to discuss contemporary music and their unique collaboration.
FoM: What is the
relationship between Cadillac Moon Ensemble (CME) and Circles and Lines (C&L)?
Patti: We’re all
friends. The whole collaboration is built off of this idea that we have this
longstanding relationship with Circles and Lines that is very
healthy and nice.
FoM: What were
some of the overall goals you had for this collaboration?
Eric: One
of the big things was completing the set; to put all of our voices that we have
as a composer collective together on one program with all of us writing for a
single group, I think that was the main goal of this.
Dylan: I think
it’s cool that a young contemporary composers' ensemble is collaborating with a
young contemporary music ensemble. It’s a similar drive and hunger for new
sounds.
Noam: It’s kind
of like going to 7th grade prom—the composers' collective is on one
side and the contemporary ensemble is on the other side and everyone’s like,
“Man, I really want to dance with that person, but I’m really shy.” And so,
we kind of broke that barrier and decided to go for it just to see what
would happen.
Roberta: For us, having a set, these
pieces, be a concert and putting the resources of our audience base and their
audience base together.
FoM: CME, it’s an
unusual grouping you have. What made you decide to come together?
Roberta: Well, we
started in 2007. I’m the only original member. We started as a student group at
Purchase College as a Pierrot ensemble plus percussion and then two of the players left school and we were left with
this setup. We really liked the way it sounded, so we decided to go with that.
FoM: And C&L, what exactly is the purpose of a composer collective? What unites you?
Eric: There are
different collectives that have different identities and got together for
different reasons. The most famous one is Les
Six in France and then afterwards there’s Bang on a Can…I think that those
guys kind of have an aesthetic or an underlying philosophy that unifies them.
But us, we got together at NYU. The original story of why we got together
was that I had written this giant piece and I needed to fill out a program and
I invited all these other composers onto the program. We all have really
different sounds but it works in the sense of the collectivism.
Angelica: I think
the unifying thing comes after. For example, we all write
for the same ensemble and that’s kind of the unifying thing instead of it being
the other way around with composers with a similar aesthetic writing for
different ensembles.
Noam: It’s kind
of like Captain Planet, except we don’t save anything.
[Group laughs]
FoM: CME, what
were some of the advantages you found in working directly with the composers?
Meaghan: I think
all of us sort of got into new music in some part because you actually get to work with the composers. When you’re
playing a piece by Beethoven or Brahms, you have a certain amount of control
over what comes out, but in the end you’re dealing with the whole baggage of
performance practice. In working with living composers, especially if they’re
writing the piece for your ensemble, you really have a role in that initial
creative process. Also, just knowing where the pieces are coming from—people
have musical personalities that relate to their actual personalities and when
you know them you can play their music in a way that makes sense
according to who they are as people.
Sean: To be able
to work that closely with someone…it makes you feel a lot better as a performer—not
having to be so worried; to have a direct connection to the composer and if
something doesn’t work to be able to say, “Sorry. You should change this or
it’ll sound bad.” It’s really nice because you never have to guess what people
are thinking, you can just ask them. It’s a slightly more rewarding experience
than just trying to interpret something written 300 years ago.
FoM: So,
composers: what, then, are some of the things you’ve gained from working so
closely with the performers?
Eric: If I don’t
play an instrument, I can go and consult the performer and I don’t have to be
sitting in front of the Samuel Adler textbook trying to figure it out based on
these weird conceptualizations he’s written out. I mean, they’re not weird, but
it doesn’t give you a whole picture of what’s possible and it doesn’t have a
lot of extended techniques. You can really work closely with the performer and
get exactly what you want in the best way that leaves everybody happy.
Angelica: As
Meaghan was saying before, I think ensembles have their own musical personality.
So in that way, instead of writing for violin, you’re writing for Patti, or
instead of just writing for any combination of instruments you’re writing for
this ensemble where you know the players and you know what they sound good
doing and what brings the best sound out of them. It’s nice to write for
something that specific.
FoM: CME, what
are some of the technical challenges you face with such diverse instrumentation?
Patti: I feel
like I have to play differently to play with flute. It’s not as easy! And then
when [Roberta] plays different flutes, like alto flute, sometimes I’m just
like, “Where do I put my pitches?” In general, I feel like it is a real challenge. People like to
write violin and flute unisons and I’m just like, “ugh…” [Laughs]
Meaghan: Very
often the cello and percussion will be kind of the rhythm section. So like, I’m
playing a bass line and Sean is playing something that resembles a drum set
thing, but on like 18,000 instruments that are much harder to play together
than a drum set. So finding that kind of tightness and then also shifting
between being a melodic figure and then a rhythmic thing with the percussion
can be challenging.
Roberta: Also, every
piece is different instrumentation because Sean plays every instrument under
the sun and I play piccolo through bass flute depending on what composers ask
for. So for each piece, finding the balance and imagining what it will sound
like in a dressing room rather than an actual concert hall is challenging…but
fun!
FoM: And composers,
what were some of the challenges you faced in writing for CME?
Dylan: It’s just
completely not a traditional ensemble. You don’t spend years in undergrad
writing for flute, violin, cello, and percussion ensembles. It presents new
challenges which most of the time are really fun—like balance and voicing and colors.
Eric: I feel like
the opportunity for color in this ensemble is really, really huge. Whenever you
have percussion, opportunity for color is really massive. I think one of the
things I struggled with when writing for them was how to create a sustained,
voluminous sound—something big that sticks around and is not an
attack that decays immediately.
Dylan: I think
that every challenge that the ensemble creates is a big opportunity
since really there’s every section of an orchestra except for brass, so the
colors are really vibrant for a quartet.
Angelica: For me, balance—not only in the sense of volume and density, but also in the
sense of all the color possibilities. It’s kind of like a compromise with
yourself, trying to balance it out and find what the piece really needs instead
of just all the things you can do.
FoM: Contemporary
music can sometimes be difficult for audiences. Is there anything you do to help
unfamiliar audiences understand your music better? And what do you hope to pass
on to your audiences?
Roberta: A lot of
our composers are from New York, so we invite them to the concerts to connect
as people and talk about their pieces. And sometimes, when we’re playing concerts
for an audience who isn’t familiar with contemporary music, we’ll show some of
the techniques first and talk about them before we play the piece. I think that
helps quite a bit. And we tend to put a lot of diverse pieces on a program so
there’s usually at least one or a few pieces that different audience members
really like—or really hate—but, get attached to in one way or another.
Dylan: I think
that new music is a really broad idea now. It’s not the ‘70s; we’re not all
writing twelve-tone things that the general public can’t understand. It goes
back to the diversity of our group—we’re all writing different things and I
think there’s something that at least one of us is writing that audience
members are going to be able to connect to.
Eric: You want
people to become engaged and for people to want to reflect and have depth. We
are not writing popular music or anything—I mean, people gain stuff from pop
music, so that’s kind of a bad way to say it—but we just want people to engage
like they’re eating meat and potatoes rather than eating candy.
Meaghan: I think even with really challenging stuff, if you find a way to frame it that’s human and personal, people are able to find a way in. One of the nice things with CME is that our programs have recently been based around a certain theme. The program we just did was called Dark Circus and we had a couple of really challenging pieces on there. But it was in this frame and I had the sense that people were more easily able to get into the really weird stuff, even more than the lighter, more ostensibly circus-y stuff, because it was in this frame of, “Ok, this is a crazy circus,” and new music is kind of a crazy circus.
CME and C&L’s
collaborative concert will take place on May 17 at 5PM at Tenri Cultural
Institute. Tickets for the event must be purchased at the door.