December 28, 2017

Composing can be a refuge, and a hiding place. Yet one must be clear on what to hide from/what constitutes a musical refuge. How one emerges from the hiding place—realizing there is no actual refuge, but having manufactured a workable/working “peace”—makes the difference. The re-emergence with music written that was previously ‘unreachable’ is what listeners and performers wait for from you. Come back after hiding. Hide again, come back again.

December 20, 2017

In composing, as in political and social thinking, things we assume have changed for the better with time haven’t. Have they? The composer’s ever-renewable role is to address this stasis by moving—by tinkering tirelessly with sonic languages, by seeking new strains, by making clear first-time statements. Put this work in the service of healing the future for listeners, performers, and for all involved.

December 18, 2017

Automacy and intuition (working “by ear”), in a particular balance, promise to yield strong expression.

Contradiction/Negation 1:  Green building drive-thru.

December 17, 2017

To develop, composers would do well to understand the importance of what they don’t know.

December 11, 2017

To a group of composers:

Why are you all so selfish? Paying attention just to yourselves and your sounds like that so much of the time. Why aren’t you out buying? Conspicuously ‘saving the world?’ Why are you in a room practicing instead, trying to process what you observe by forging a new premise every time you exercise your urge to start over and write a new piece? What gives you the right to make blueprints in sound for how your life and others’ lives might revise themselves emphatically for the better? Why are you so selfish? Why do you put on the oxygen mask first? Who said that rehearsing what you and you alone hear each day is a worthy pursuit?

December 6, 2017

Keep grasping at those slivers of time to do your composing.

How important is it to identify each piece as an entity, an item to be heard, digested, admired, or remembered as a “sonic object?”

December 4, 2017

Resist thinking about the masterpiece. Free the mind to consider the tiniest, slightest musical Notions as complete, presentable thoughts while reserving the right to write large if needed. Why should one even think about making monuments? A breath, a breeze, a wave– all are taken, felt, experienced; but none stay. Same with phrases of music, visual materials, these words…

What can you make from debris?

December 1, 2017

How do sensation and listening work cooperatively to refine the making of sound in piano playing? Can one listen in the act of playing if hearing is compromised? How is accurate “aim” accomplished in various ways of playing? If one can’t hear or can’t hear well, are there compensatory ways to listen and probe music that can be profitably developed? What about “the imagined” and “the heard?” What about physical hearing? Can you hear with your hands, arms, spine? Can you feel with your ears?