Some of the class members of IMAGINATION AND EXPERTISE IN COMPOSITION course at the University of Chicago

As the newest department faculty member in composition, what path brought you here?  And why did you choose to work specifically at the University of Chicago?

For starters, I feel very lucky to be here at UC – exceptionally blessed!  It has only been a year but I think UC has the most fantastic music department – and say that having had the opportunity to teach for a decade at the fantastic Eastman School, for six years at stellar Northwestern, in addition to teaching at Tanglewood and Aspen in the summers.  In short: the opportunity to be at UC is categorically special.  I’m still pinching myself that it’s actually true! I’ve admired and known many of the music faculty for decades.  They are all famous superstars doing a hundred wonderful things – furthermore, all categorically nice, civilized, polite and elegant.

And what keeps you inspired?

There are countless things I find inspiring.  One would be music.

Period?

Period.  When I hear J.S. Bach, Byrd, Mahler, Ravel, Debussy, Ella Fitzgerald, Mingus, the Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel, iconoclastic Jazz icons, James Taylor, Frank Sinatra, Schubert, early Stravinsky, late Beethoven, late Mozart, Haydn, improvised music, Brahms, Berio, Knussen, Berg, African drumming, Indian Classical Music…. I feel instigated. Poetry is stimulating. I like to think about how nature is never the same twice — no two leaves, snowflakes, blades of grass, or stars are identical.  I try to keep my music organic and kaleidoscopic, like nature.

Is there a specific place in nature that you find particularly inspiring?  A certain place that you do to feel inspired?

Not really, I mostly work all day long.  (laughs)  I’m constantly working so just enjoy anytime outside – even for a brief walk to my car.

So, the Grand Opening of the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts is just around the corner and you have a piece being performed for the opening. Your “double helix” for two violins was originally performed at the opening of the Mansuetto Library.  I’m wondering if you could tell me a little more about that piece in particular?

MANSUETO TRIBUTE, double helix is scored for two violins and lasts about four minutes.  It’s very much like this (…makes a hand gesture that suggests an intertwining double helix).  It’s lyric and somewhat virtuosic to play – with many fleeting notes …  If you think of elaborate ornaments like (…sings an example of a brief, ornamental, coloratura-like passage.)  So, there’s a certain kind of lace-like, or Italianate, ornamental flair… For the opening ceremony of the extraordinary Mansueto Library, I was thinking of a double helix of man-and-book and book-and-man:  man writes books – the books teach the man to write the books…

I understand that a number of your students are involved in the Grand Opening? 

Basically it will be a World Premiere Showcase and entertaining discussion.

We’ve invited one of our Ph.D. students, Andrés [Carrizo], to compose a short piece for solo piano, and have hired a pianist to premiere it. The audience will be invited to write reviews– just like the critics do! I’ll read a few of the reviews and invite the composer to reply to his critics – we’ll have questions with a committee of six other Ph.D. student composers — it should be interactive and fun!

Sounds like a really great interactive workshop with both composers and audience – you can create that dialogue.

Some of the people who attend may never have heard a World Premiere.  Great! Composers live for world premieres so we can come to understand one another in certain important respects.

Interview by Julia Tobiska, Performance Program Assistant (8/29/2012)