Philadelphia Orchestra Readings – Composer Q&As
As part of a collaborative working session, six women composers – all of whom have been commissioned previously through ACO’s programs – will have their works read and recorded by The Philadelphia Orchestra in a rehearsal led by Assistant Conductor Kensho Watanabe. Composers will engage with the Orchestra’s leadership and Artistic Committee, and will receive feedback from co-facilitators, ACO Artistic Director Derek Bermel and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, and native Philadelphian Melinda Wagner.
This score-reading session will take place on Thursday, September 6, 2018 from 10:30am to 4pm at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts. The event is free and open to the public, no RSVP is necessary. Seatings will happen approximately every 30-40 minutes between pieces. View the full schedule here.
We spoke to the six participating composers – Xi Wang, Hilary Purrington, Nina C. Young, Melody Eötvös, Chen-Hui Jen, and Robin Holcomb – about their works and what they look forward to at the readings.
Composer Xi Wang
XI WANG - Above Light, a conversation with Toru Takemitsu
American Composers Orchestra: Can you tell us a little bit about the piece you are bringing to the Philadelphia Orchestra for these readings?
Xi Wang: The elegance and colorfulness of Takemitsu’s imaginary soundscapes drew my deep love and admiration. The style of my compositions is quite different from Takemitsu’s. However, I believe the beauty of music is its diversity and the coexistence of difference. I see struggles in my life, so do my music. And I love both of them!
There are two fundamental components in Above Light. The first material—a delicate melodic phrase played by piano, flute and harp, opens this piece. It reminisces and is a tribute to Takemitsu’s music. It is soon interrupted by the second material—heavy strokes from percussions and a dark, low, sustained note played by bass instruments. These two contrastive materials are juxtaposed several times, and are developed in length and density each time. Later there comes an attempt to combine all the materials vertically. The first material—a lyrical melodic contour is now played by piccolo and violins at the high register, producing a mist to shroud the rest of the orchestra. The other materials sweep in gradually, but violently conflict with the first. The orchestra reaches its saturation and is taken over by the massive sound from percussions. After reaching the forceful drum climax, the music collapses onto one long note played by violins at the extremely high register. It leads to a short recapitulation of the first material, with an aloof reminiscence of Takemitsu’s music.
ACO: Your relationship with ACO began with your Symphony No. 1 at the 2010 Underwood Readings. Can you talk about anything that you learned or gained from that experience that you used when writing this new piece, or that you plan to use during the rehearsals with the Philadelphia Orchestra?
XW: I learnt a great deal when work with ACO in 2010. For example, precise notation, effective communication with the orchestra, rehearsal technique, and fine orchestration, etc. All these have impact on my writing from then on especially on my compositions for large ensembles.
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Composer Hilary Purrington
HILARY PURRINGTON - Likely Pictures in Haphazard Sky
American Composers Orchestra: Your relationship with ACO began with your participation in the 2017 Underwood Readings with your piece Likely Pictures in Haphazard Sky, for which you won the 2017 Underwood Commission. The Philadelphia Orchestra will also be reading Likely Pictures in Haphazard Sky. Is there anything you have changed about the piece since Underwood last year? Is there anything in particular that you are planning to focus on during the Philadelphia readings?
Hilary Purrington: I changed several very minor things during and after the Underwood readings last year. Overall, I feel that Likely Pictures is in excellent shape, and I'm very excited to hear it again! When I wrote this work, I never imagined that four different orchestras would eventually read and/or perform it. Regarding the Philadelphia Orchestra readings, I look forward to meeting and forming connections with the musicians and administrators. It's nearly impossible to predict what one will learn from these kinds of experiences, but I anticipate leaving with knowledge and ideas that I'll certainly apply to future works.
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Composer Nina C. Young
NINA C. YOUNG - Excerpts from Agnosco Veteris, for orchestra
American Composers Orchestra: Can you tell us a little bit about the piece you are bringing to the Philadelphia Orchestra for these readings?
Nina C. Young: I am bringing an excerpt of my orchestral piece Agnosco Veteris. This orchestra work is a partner piece to, and a reworked memory of my 2014 sinfonietta piece Vestigia Flammae. In book IV of Virgil’s Aeneid, Dido, long in grief over her late husband Sychaeus’s death, is suddenly awakened from emotional slumber by the visiting Trojan hero Aeneas. In an upheaval of emotion, she proclaims, “Agnosco veteris vestigia flammae,” or “I recognize the traces of an ancient fire”. For Dido, experiential time becomes a complex and powerful mix of emotions past and present. The quote resurfaces in Dante’s Divine Comedy. The overarching allegory of this epic poem traces themes of Dante’s spiritual quest through symbolism. Dante, guided by Virgil, achieves literary immortality through the act of storytelling that appropriates and amalgamates references to antiquity, classical literature, mythology, Christianity, and (then) contemporary Italian politics. In Purgatorio 30, Dante feels the presence of Beatrice and matches his emotional upheaval to that of Dido. Dante makes a final tribute to Virgil by stating, “conosco i segni de l’antica fiamma” – an Italian translation of the Latin “Agnosco veteris vestigia flammae.”
This passage is the poetic impetus for my two partnered pieces. While neither work is explicitly programmatic in connection with Virgil or Dante’s literary narrative, the music invites private, distinctive, and profound interpretations in each listener’s experience as she addresses the central concepts of lost memories, vestigial emotions, and melancholy for the passage of time (common themes in my music).
Dante appropriates explicit cultural references and symbols as a tool to weave the narrative of the Divine Comedy. However, when I was collecting the source material for Vestigia Flammae, I abandoned explicit quotation. Rather, I tried my hand at writing imagined faux folk, modal, and fanfare-like source-music that could be mistaken for something pre-existing. There is one direct quote, though, an exchange between the clarinets at the beginning of the excerpt which is a time-stretched version of the opening riff from Radiohead's Bloom.
While episodic in construction, Agnosco Veteris is divided into three large sections. Part 1, the “Music of Before” presents the thematic source material, or sonic memories. Part 2, the “Music of Ritual” is a static reflective checkpoint during which the listener can consider the musical recollections that came before. Part 3, the “Music of After” is characterized by energetic renewal and presents a reconfigured collage of the musical material.
ACO: Your relationship with ACO began with your piece Remnants at the 2013 Underwood Readings, and continued with your ACO/Jerome Foundation commission Out of whose womb came the ice, which was premiered in 2017 at Symphony Space. Can you talk about anything that you learned or gained from these experiences that you used when writing this new piece, or that you plan to use during the rehearsals with the Philadelphia Orchestra?
NCY: The giant orchestral machine is a beautiful, tricky beast. As a composer, it's sonic heaven to work with so many instrumental colors on the same stage, but the reality is that there is never enough rehearsal time and the nature of orchestra rehearsal and detail is very different than when working with a chamber ensemble. The only way to learn these nuances is through real-life experience: mistakes, happy accidents, and the occasional good idea! I'm really thankful to have had so much time to work with the ACO, and a few other groups - it's not easy to get music in front of an orchestra. These experiences have been extremely educational, and with each orchestral reading and performance I get to strengthen my understanding of the translation between the score and the performed sound.
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Composer Melody Eötvös
MELODY EÖTVÖS - The Saqqara Bird, for Symphony Orchestra
American Composers Orchestra: Can you tell us a little bit about the piece you are bringing to the Philadelphia Orchestra for these readings?
Melody Eötvös: This piece is called The Saqqara Bird and it was commissioned by the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra in 2016, and premiered that year in August. The work is about a small artifact discovered in Saqqara, Egypt. There is a great deal of speculation about the purpose and design of the object (see picture attached) from claims that it is merely a children’s toy, to it being the first experiments with aviation. The uncertainty behind the function of the bird immediately appealed to me as it embodies an openness of interpretation that works brilliantly with composing. In the music you can identify various motives and modal colors that clearly speak ‘Egyptian-bird-thing’.
ACO: Your relationship with ACO began with Beetles, Dragons & Dreamers at the 2014 Underwood Readings, and continued with your ACO/Toulmin commission Red Dirt | Silver Rain at Carnegie Hall in 2015. Can you talk about anything that you learned or gained from these experiences that you used when writing this new piece, or that you plan to use during the rehearsals with the Philadelphia Orchestra?
ME: When comparing The Saqqara Bird to my previous two works BDD and RD|SR, it’s a little difficult as they’re all very different pieces. Each had significant challenges for me: BDD was my doctoral dissertation and the longest orchestral work I had completed to date; RD|SR was more of a chamber orchestra situation and I potentially realized this too late in the composition process (and was also my first piece with that reduced, yet still quite large instrumentation); and Saqqara had no harp or piano, and only 1 percussionist so my idealistic ‘resonant’ combinations were very limited for the first time. Workshopping the first two works with the ACO though was invaluable in that it was an intense and devoted time to simply work out the music. There is no time to make revisions there, so any issues of balance needed to be addressed there and then, and the ACO was fantastic at doing this, as well as being patient and understanding of young composers. And of course my experience with these two pieces informed not only the composition process (conceptually), but also how I wrote the piece in terms of how much rehearsal time I knew I’d have, and what the audience would be like. It was the first time I let those factors creep in to my music and instead of regretting it and thinking I’d let myself be influenced by artificial, anti-artistic means, I had made a very good, mature choice to consider my audience and rehearsal time, finally. And this lead to a much larger and important commission with the TSO again in 2018. Now, using this knowledge for the ACO rehearsal coming up in Philly? I’m already armed with the edits that came up from the premiere with the TSO in 2016, so I feel very well prepared. Though, keeping an open mind and readiness for a different orchestra, as well as letting them make their own interpretation of the piece is important as well.
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Composer Chen-Hui Jen
CHEN-HUI JEN - in eternal dusk, for orchestra
American Composers Orchestra: Can you tell us a little bit about the piece you are bringing to the Philadelphia Orchestra for these readings?
Chen-Hui Jen: The work I am bringing is a recent work finished last year, called in eternal dusk. It was a granted commission and received its premiere in this past January in Indianapolis. in eternal dusk is my third orchestral work, whose original instrumentation allows a smaller string section in comparison to my other works, which require a large string section for many divisions. I am excited to hear it brought to live again with possibly different interpretation.
in eternal dusk carries a poetic idea of time, memories, and longing. I was inspired by the daily light outside my window, where faces the airport and the twilight. During the past decade I have been traveling back-and-forth across the ocean, and now even cross the continent as well. To me, the direction of twilight - the dusk, in a darker state - is where I am from and where I have been. I would say it's my musical meditation of seeking myself and my internal voices.
ACO: Your relationship with ACO began with your participation in the 2012 EarShot San Diego Symphony New Music Readings. Can you talk about anything that you learned or gained from that experience that you used when writing this new piece, or that you plan to use during the rehearsals with the Philadelphia Orchestra?
CHJ: In 2012 I participated the EarShot San Diego where another larger work of mine, yet the dew remains in pale, was read by the San Diego Symphony. We received workshops on publishable-quality notation and score preparation, feedbacks from the orchestra members and from the mentor composers. Very luckily, the ACO collaborates with the League of American Orchestras that launched a new program for women composers commissions and readings a few years ago. Four of this Philadelphia Orchestra reading recipients, including myself, are the winner of the LAO's women composers commissions. My work with Earshot brought be the opportunity to write this new work, and, thankfully, ACO is now bringing me and this new work to Philadelphia.
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Composer Robin Holcomb
ROBIN HOLCOMB - All the While, Suite for Orchestra
American Composers Orchestra: Can you tell us a little bit about the piece you are bringing to the Philadelphia Orchestra for these readings?
Robin Holcomb: All the While is a reflection on that which underscores waking life and runs, just below the surface of consciousness, all the while. It is my first composition for full orchestra, written in 2016.
ACO: Your relationship with ACO began with your participation in the 2015 Jazz Orchestra Institute Readings. Can you talk about anything that you learned or gained from that experience that you used when writing this new piece, or that you plan to use during the rehearsals with the Philadelphia Orchestra?
RH: I had been composing for big band, chamber groups and solo piano, writing songs and scoring films and dance and theatrical productions. I was improvising pianist as well and generally performed my own music. I had always wanted to write for orchestra, saw the JCOI opportunity, composed and submitted one minute of music for full orchestra and was accepted into the program. All the While was read as part of the EarShot Naples Philharmonic Jazz Composers Readings conducted by Yaniv Segal in May, 2016.
Of particular interest to me was being in a community of composers interested in bringing the spirit of improvisation to orchestral writing. How to translate writing for and improvising with individuals and personalties to writing for a large group of players. The importance of notating everything – detailed instructions about timbre, articulation and intention that in previous ensemble writing I had often communicated orally. The unintended consequences of omission! A lot about balance and creating contrast and clarity. The speed of the orchestra feels different, how to write for this. Experimenting with all of these elements was both exhilarating and excruciating. I am very grateful for the opportunity to have my work supported by the ACO.
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Philadelphia Orchestra and American Composers Orchestra's Showcase for Works by Women Composers is on Thursday, September 6, 2018 from 10:30am to 4pm at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts. The event is free and open to the public, no RSVP is necessary. Seatings will happen approximately every 30-40 minutes between pieces. View the full schedule here.
