Author Archives: john.mcdonald@tufts.edu

Three heads, six hands

Interview by Robert Schulslaper on the release of Keypunch, keyboard music for solo and four-hands by composers John McDonald, Ryan Vigil, and David Claman

Fanfare Magazine, December 19, 2014.

Keypunch

Although John McDonald likes to describe himself as “a composer who tries to play the piano and a pianist who tries to compose,” the Fanfare reviews he’s garnered testify that he’s equally accomplished in both areas (see David DeBoor Canfield, The Violin Music Music of John McDonald, Fanfare 37:3, for starters). Furthermore, according to two of his former students, Ryan Vigil and David Claman, he’s an exceptional teacher, innovative, imaginative, and supportive.

Today, Vigil and Claman are established composers and teachers in their own right, who, along with their former mentor, have released a new CD, Keypunch, featuring their mingled talents.

Echoing the tripartite nature of their collaboration, the following interview might be read as a trio sonata of sorts, with John McDonald’s “theme and variations” followed by Vigil and Claman’s “continuo” commentary. Continue reading →

Aphorisms for Composers – September to November 2014

November 8, 2014

Good coffee is more important than a good website.

September 9, 2014

On Prolificacy (3): Write fast, pay attention.

Short List

Premiered on September 16, 2014 by Transient Canvas: Amy Advocat, bass clarinet & Matt Sharrock, marimba, at Davis Square Theater, Somerville, MA.

Video by Transient Canvas

Short List, op. 548 (2014) for bass clarinet & marimba

First Thing In The Morning
Unable To Move Much
Five-Note Echo Groups
Phrases In Their Places
Doodad Made In An Adirondack Chair
Steady As Can Be

“Inspired” by the rituals of academic search processes (the formation of “short lists”), this particular short list is a collection of six miniatures gleaned from notebook sketches and personalized for Amy and Matt. The pieces where conceived in places as different as the accupuncture table (2) and the front porch (5).

Aphorisms for Composers – January to March 2014

March 23, 2014

Do we compose so we can create a microcosm we can control?

Composing: a method of control, or a method of ‘seeing/hearing,’ ‘reflecting?’

February 25, 2014

When we try too hard to innovate, our work becomes even more conservative.

Is the best composing the least composing possible (i.e. that which is absolutely necessary)?

February 17, 2014

Tom Johnson says “I want to find the music, not to compose it.” I want to compose what I find, and find more in what I’ve composed upon further time spent with it.

Bigger is almost never better. (After Dallas Opera work)

January 27, 2014

Everything is in progress.

CD: Airy – Music for Violin and Piano

Aphorisms for Composers – August to September 2013

September 16, 2013.

I have a hunch that many of the most striking pieces we hear involved a lot of staring into space on the parts of the composers who formed them.

On Writer’s Block/Dry Spells: How about writing music about not being able to write music? Halting, hesitant, missing parts?

September 15, 2013

On Prolificacy (2): I’m still trying to get it right.

On Prolificacy (1): I’m trying to quit.

September 7, 2013

How can one sublimate control issues by writing a piece of music?

September 6, 2013

Does a piece of music by one of us need “last only long enough to admit [us] to a sympathetic haven?” [quotation from an August 26, 2013 New Yorker article about forger and art philanthropist Mark Landis; speaks to how much our desire and/or need to compose is tied up with the need for approval and inclusion]

September 5, 2013

What constitutes “new musical territory?”

August 5, 2013.

Are you wasting resources? Do you need all those notes?

I like scanning and sending hand manuscript electronically, but the scans are not always clear or bold enough to serve as performance materials for musicians. Scan, send, check in. Use snail mail too.

Spinning Melodies Like Silk

Flutist Elizabeth Erenberg and I were invited to the Massachusett’s Institute of Technology (MIT)’s Lincoln Laboratory on August 9, 2013, to present Spinning Melodies Like Silk, a short interactive program based on our part in a project involving the synthesis of bio-inspired silk fibers.

The initial work was published by collaborators Joyce Wong (Boston University, also a cellist), and Marcus Bueller (MIT), as Materials by Design: Merging Proteins and Music in Nano Today, and is available at the National Center for Biotechnology Information. A summary (with video and my scores), may be found at the MIT news site. A briefer account appears in Wired magazine.

Elizabeth also played the music, for solo flute, that can be heard in the video below (courtesy of MIT).

Aphorisms for Composers – May 2013

May 26, 2013

My favorite music-tech triumvirate: pencil, music paper, piano. Developing handwriting (manuscript) allows personal physical contact (literally drawing/shaping/directing the materials, using the piano or an instrument to try out/check the sounds as they form), attention to standards (notational conventions), and more. And working by hand requires comprehensive skills that are different from computer-interface requirements. Hand manuscript can pick up where music notation software leaves off. So I say: why not start and end there anyway?

Aphorisms for Composers – Spring 2013

One composer’s innovation is another’s old hat.

It’s not that “it” doesn’t have to do with everyone else, but “it” could have to do with you, too.

Aphorisms for Composers – Fall 2012

September 13, 2012

Be clear, and not so clever. [Aristophanes, via composer Meng Tian] Can we pursue clever clarity?

A composer cannot be confused when creating a musical state of confusion.

Restraint is a viable feeling, and a musical state that can be good (and difficult) to capture. Every piece one writes need not explore musical extremes.