NEW RECORDING: A Sunward Tilt, for reed quintet
Music is born of co-creation and collaboration. Even when one person writes a piece of music and passes it off to performers without the two interacting with one another, there still must be co-creation to bring the music to life—performers interpreting a composer’s intentions and finding their own resonance within those perceived intentions. This can produce results that surprise (pleasantly!) the composer.
This is precisely what happened with my new reed quintet A Sunward Tilt, premiered by Fivemind Reeds in Los Angeles in late May.
Halfway through May, I took a couple weeks off work, packed the car and made my meandering way from Portland, OR down to Los Angeles—to see family, to see the premiere, to see the sights. With a platform bed in the back of the car, all-wheel drive, and the help of a well-traveled friend, my girlfriend and I set out guided by a couple pieces of paper and a few pins on the GPS, prepared to fill in the blanks en-route as we made our 2,800-mile way there and back.
A map of our travels, illuminated by my copilot!
The sunrise over the Alvord Desert on the second morning was worth the entire two-week trip alone:
Some wrong notes were played, to be sure.
Dusty, bemused, embattled, unshowered, awestruck we made our way south—eastern Oregon, western Nevada, eastern California—caught finally by the net of friends and family in the LA area, late on the eve of the premiere.
The day of the premiere, I was anxious—not my normal state and not one I manage well.
A couple days before, I’d heard a rehearsal run-through of the piece recorded in a boxy room that left me a little lukewarm, worried that I’d written a bit of lemon. I’d dashed off some (hopefully) helpful comments where I could find service on the drive to Death Valley, but had checked my expectations for how much of my piece Fivemind could address amidst a program of six other challenging works.
How would the piece come off? What would my family think? What would the audience think? What would the musicians think? What would I say about the music? Would there be ice cream afterwards?
The first half of the concert featured music written for Fivemind Reeds and the concert was something of a culmination of their partnership with living composers. Things were sounding good. Really good. This made me more excited and more nervous all at once, comparing the version of my piece in my head to what I was hearing.
Following intermission and a breathless rendition of Roger Zare’s Asphyxiation, it was time for me to introduce A Sunward Tilt:
And with the scene set, it was in Fivemind’s hands.
When the final fifth between bassoon and bass clarinet evaporated, you could fully appreciate how far the music had traveled. Fivemind had played it to the hilt, lively and robust where it needed to be, becoming warmer, gentler, and more wise as it went. The boxy sounds I’d heard blasted out of my gutless car speakers on the way to Death Valley were nowhere in sight; they’d navigated my nervousness and gone somewhere far far beyond.
The performance venue (a church) had a long reverb (1-2 second) allowing Fivemind to stretch the slower sections out longer with the benefit of letting the audience really bask in the beautiful decay of sonorities and harmonies. It was actually in this stretching that Fivemind found something in the music I really like which I hadn't heard when I wrote it; especially in the way they drew out the final minute (following the last climax) lent the music a beautiful, sad, and elegiac quality—beyond nostalgia or the simple goodbye to summer I thought I was writing and closer to a valedictory for life. Upon listening and re-listening (to the recording), I find myself moved in a way I hadn’t expected to be.
This reminder that I can make 100% of something, it can go out into the world, and then become something I didn’t anticipate but that I still find lovely encourages me to let others into my creative process more often; I hope it does the same for you.
Let go of thinking you know exactly how something is meant to be and trust the wisdom, soul, and playfulness of the others around you.
Increasingly I welcome the kind of exploration, discovery, and staking out of a clear musical perspective that signals full buy-in and ownership of a piece on the part of musicians, even if the final product doesn’t sound like I initially thought it would. In my first conception, A Sunward Tilt was quick and lively music with a couple slow contemplative interludes. Fivemind's spacious interpretation (specifically the way they draw out the slower sections) mounts a successful case that A Sunward Tilt is music with the soul of an adagio.
It was a special joy to share my music live with some of my folks. And there was indeed a frozen dairy treat (gelato!) down the street post-concert.
Getting to meet each member of Fivemind was a true pleasure. To a person, they are kind, authentic, approachable individuals (we talked about reeds, the interpersonal dynamics that keep a group together, the pain in the butt it can be to reserve a venue, etc.), and not afraid to share their humor and personality on and off stage, showing off both the musical and interpersonal chemistry that has kept them together for five years despite living in different parts of the country.
Before long, it was time to head back home. The way north was more lush and a little less austere: a few more showers, soft beds, a more relaxed pace. The afterglow of the premiere and time with family followed me all the way back home, through the plains, around the redwoods, and by the coast.
What remains is growing trust in myself—that I might have something worth sharing with others, and that that potential is magnified when I trust others will bring their gifts to the table and share likewise.