Composer Christopher Theofanidis with students at Betsy Ross Arts Magnet School in New Haven, CT

BandQuest® is a project of the American Composers Forum (ACF) that pairs up world-class composers with middle school bands. The program recently came up in conversation, and I realized what a great story it would make for our blog. So I scheduled a call with Suzanna Altman, the manager of education and community engagement at the ACF, to help me fill in the details. As you’ll see below, the timing of our conversation was very fortuitous.

Scott Yoho: What are the origins of BandQuest?

Suzanna Altman: Back in the 1990s the ACF underwent a very extensive survey of music educators. We were trying to learn what the forum, as an organization with a really great resource of national composers, could do for the field of music education.

What we discovered, through an overwhelming response, was a shortage of repertoire for middle school bands. We recognized that we could help by commissioning composers to write new music for middle school band, and we could publish the results nationally.

SY: How does the program work?

SA: BandQuest has two parts: There’s the initial commission, and the residency process. So there’s one specific school that has a very personal experience with one composer. The composer writes that school a piece that’s really for them – they get to premiere it and have a great experience with that composer.

We set up the residency; the composer visits the school several times, and then works on writing the piece for the school. We stay in contact with the composer and the school through the process of the writing. As the composer finishes, they send us files. Hopefully they are Finale files, if they’re not we convert them because we do all our editing in Finale. We can ensure that the final look is always consistent by using Finale. Then we publish the music. Hal Leonard distributes for us, so the pieces get really widely distributed not only throughout the U.S. but also around the world.

SY: How much repertoire have you created?

SA: We’re about to publish our 19th piece with the series – at first we did a few a year, now we do one each year. It’s been highly, highly successful. We’ve added a lot of new pieces to the repertoire that have a very different feel than what was available before.

Michael Colgrass wrote a piece that’s been very popular called Old Churches that calls for metal mixing bowls to be played by the percussionists to kind of sound like church bells in the distance – and there’s a little bit of graphic notation involved in that piece. He spent a lot of time with the students in the school where he did his residency to write the piece, talking to them about graphic notation, and encouraging them to write their own pieces using graphic notation.

The piece that came out last year was by an up-and-coming composer named Chris Theofanidis, who is a professor at Yale. He wrote a piece called Sweet like that for a band in New Haven. He went into the school and asked the students: “This is going to be a piece for you. What would you want?” One student asked to play drum set, other percussionists wanted to play fun percussion instruments, and of course the flutists all wanted to play piccolo (some, but not all of them get to play piccolo in the piece).

The tuba player wanted a solo because he so rarely gets to be heard, so the piece starts and ends with a low brass emphasis. It’s been a really well-received piece in part because Chris responded to what students were looking for and what they wanted.

SY: And Michael and Chris are just two members of an amazing list of participating composers.

SA: The goal was always to get the best composers we could to be a part of these. Our advisory board has a dream list of who they’d love to have participate, and it’s remarkable how many of these composers have agreed to participate and add to the education repertory, and affect the lives of children.

Okay, here’s where the story gets even better. The very day I spoke to Suzanna, she received some exciting news. She learned that this year’s BandQuest composer—who is currently working with the Scarsdale Middle School in Scarsdale, NY—had won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize in music. He is, of course, Kevin Puts!

SA: Kevin is actually the fourth BandQuest composer to win the Pulitzer Prize. It’s fun too, because he’s not done with the residency, so I just got to email the teacher to share the news!

Imagine being a band director and sending home a note that your students have been studying with a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer.

You can learn more about BandQuest at the official site. Here you can listen to all the pieces, and several include additional curriculum materials (and more are on the way). In addition, many BandQuest pieces are also available in SmartMusic, so feel free to explore them there too.

Check out the compositions and let us know what you think by clicking on “Comments” below!

Jeremy Levy and Scott Yoho at the 2012 NAMM Show

After receiving a master's degree from the University of Miami in Studio Jazz Writing in 2004, Jeremy Levy headed to Los Angeles with the goal of bringing his music to a wider audience. Since then he has worked in nearly every medium, including film, television, and video games. Recent examples of each include Tower Heist, The Event, No Ordinary Family, Battlestar Gallactica, Batman: Arkham City, Infamous 2, and God of War 3. He has also provided arranging and music preparation services on everything from The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, to American Idol.

Since 2007, Levy has co-led the Budman/Levy Orchestra alongside saxophonist Alex Budman and a host of first-call LA session musicians. On April 17, their first album, “From There to Here” is being released on Origin/OA2 records. I recently spoke to Jeremy about the CD release, his career, and his use of Finale.

SY: What brought you to LA, what were your goals?

JL: Like all composers moving to LA, I was hoping to get into the film world. I’ve subsequently put most of my effort getting into film orchestration, because that seemed like the best fit as I’m mostly from a strict notation background. Seeing as piano is not my primary instrument, I’ve always preferred the digital pen and paper way – like Finale – over using DAW software. I’ve always written in that fashion for full orchestra or big band or large ensemble, where you’re dealing with all the minutiae, which I’ve always really enjoyed. Originally, I did more session work as a trombonist too, but I’ve had to pare that down in favor of my writing.

SY: How does it work co-leading the group? Do you each assume separate roles?

JL: Originally we were both composing, but the way it’s gone he’s done more studio and touring work, and I’ve done more composing/arranging/orchestration since then. So I’ve sort of taken over the writing side of the band.

The way it’s going to work out is the way it is on the record. As composer, I create the internal musical voice for the band, and as the artist, Alex brings it to life. Like if you look at some of those Michael Brecker records where he had Pat Metheny playing. Pat already has his own distinct musical voice (and is a huge influence on my writing), but Brecker would bring something wholly unique to his tunes. That’s what we did on this record. There are 11 tunes, 9 are originals, two are arrangements. I wrote all the music, and Alex is featured on almost everything.

SY: Let’s talk about the recording. The sound of “From There to Here” is decidedly up-to-date. What or who inspired the sound you were going for?

JL: Musically, I think of it as somewhat along the lines of Maria Schneider, that kind of contemporary jazz orchestra type of thing. I have a diverse musical background, and it all comes to play into this. I’m interested in rock and pop production, and I love all the great fusion records from the 70s and 80s. We also do an arrangement of a song from Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, to further keep things fresh. I’m definitely coming from a less pure jazz point of view than from the Blue Note era.

SY: This is a modern recording, and you went to great lengths to craft the sound.

JL: We approached this project sort of like a film session. The rhythm tracks were recorded separately from the band. Then we recorded the ensemble sections in a larger studio, and later solos, string quartet, and percussion, so the production was more like a pop or rock record. We were going for a much tighter, produced sound.

We were aiming for a modern big band sound, especially in the mixing. We hired Alex's good friend, Steve Baughman, to mix the record. He has mixed records for lots of best selling hip-hop artists, like 50 Cent and The Game. He got us sounding very modern and not entirely like a traditional big band record, which I think is a good thing.

SY: Tell me about Finale’s role in the process.

JL: Every single tune, every single note, every single part was written in Finale. This would be impossible for me to accomplish without Finale.

SY: Is your creative process to sketch on paper first?

JL: That’s kind of come and gone over the years. Now I tend to have a template open and put sketches right into Finale. I pretty much start at point A and go to the end. Sometimes I might sketch out the whole arrangement, then go back and fill in the orchestration, but most often I’ll write the whole thing, full orchestrated, from beginning to end, over two or three days or sometimes faster. I’m pretty quick. I tend to think in more full-fledged ideas.

SY: I imagine some of this is the result of the discipline you’d had to acquire through your professional work, doing weekly TV shows, and other projects with crazy deadlines.

JL: Yeah, I’m definitely pretty fast entering notes and moving music around using QuicKeys to program all my shortcuts and keystroke combinations. Tim Davies (Hollywood orchestrator/conductor), whom I've been working with for quite awhile, really helped get my chops up. I consider him a Finale guru.

SY: What are some of your favorite Finale productivity tools?

JL: I like Jari Williamson’s new Explode plug in, I’ve been using that a lot. (http://www.finaletips.nu) When doing parts I use the TG Tools Modify>Transfer—it's one that I couldn't really live without. (http://www.tgtools.de)

SY: I haven’t used Jari’s new Explode plug-in, what is it that you like about it?

JL: The biggest difference is that it automatically explodes down from the top staff of whatever is selected, instead of having to manually click a destination choice. Getting rid of that extra step really speeds things up. Jari also created a plug-in called "Rhythm Copy," which has been incredibly useful for quickly changing rhythms without changing the pitches.

SY: You were kind enough to share notation examples from two tunes ("From There to Here" score and piano part and "It's Like That" score and tenor sax 1 part). Soundcloud links to audio of each piece appears at the bottom of this post. Can you tell me a little about each peice?

JL: The title track “From There to Here” features pianist Andy Langham on melodica, while on “It’s Like That” we really dug into the pop production. I think we used 3 different types of guitars over five or six separate tracks of overdubs.

SY: Nice looking parts!

JL: I always aim for my parts be that classic LA session look, generally four bars to a line, easily laid-out page turns, so all my parts are always 5-7 pages. It’s always that compromise between page turns and legibility. I find players really respond well to nicely prepared music that is easy to read down.

SY: In addition to your personal website and the group website, you also have an online shop for your music, including your charts, at http://jlevymusic.myshopify.com/. Got any tips for others trying to sell their scores and parts?

JL: I’m selling recordings and charts through Shopify, which is sort of an online shop template/host. You pay a monthly hosting fee, and they deal with everything else. You just enter your products, tweak their slick looking templates, and it’s all set up. I use a plug-in called Fetch for digital content like pdfs and mp3s. When someone buys a CD, I get an automated text message telling me the PayPal payment was received, along with the buyer's shipping address. Then, I just have to head over to the post office.

SY: What are your goals for the CD?

JL: In general, I’m looking to get some more national exposure for my writing, to get more commissions and arranging work. I’d like to be doing more production and arranging on rock/poprecords. My friend Chris Walden is a great example of the kind of work I would like to further pursue. I'm currently helping Chris with arrangements on a new record for Matthew Morrison of Glee fame, being produced by Phil Ramone. By the way, Chris is another fellow Finale user!

The CD release show for “From There to Here” is happening in Studio City, CA on May 1, 2012. Check out the show and share your subsequent review by clicking on “Comments” below.

Manuscript image © Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana. All rights reserved. Excerpt from the English translation and chants
of The Roman Missal © 2010, International Commission on English in the Liturgy Corporation. All rights reserved.

The Roman Missal is the book of ritual texts used for all celebrations of the Catholic Mass throughout the church year. It existed only in Latin until the Second Vatican Council of the 1960s allowed its translation into modern languages. Four decades after that historic change, the Catholic Church authorized an updated English translation which is more faithful to the original Latin. This new translation was introduced to English-speaking Catholics on November 27, 2011.

The new translation also required new musical settings, since many parts of the rite can be chanted instead of spoken. The Missal contains more than 400 such musical examples. Today we’ll meet Steve Fiskum, one of the people behind engraving all those chants in his role as senior music engraver at World Library Publications. A five-time recipient of the Music Publishers Association’s Paul Revere Award, Steve clearly had the expertise required to meet the exacting standards for this historic publication.

Scott Yoho: How did World Library Publications (WLP) come to work on this project?

Steve Fiskum: Interested publishers submitted requests to BCDW (the Bishops’ Committee on Divine Worship) for permission to publish the book. We were one of seven publishers granted permission to do so, and the only major U.S. music publishing company.

SY: I understand that ICEL (the International Commission on English in the Liturgy) provided music examples to the various publishers, and that unlike other publishers, WLP decided to re-engrave those examples.

SF: Every publisher has their own criteria, their own style. The examples provided did not meet our standards, so we chose to re-engrave them. Because we had the right expertise, engravers, and editors we were able to take this on.

SY: For those who haven’t seen the book in person, it’s beautiful—and immense. It has more than 1,400 pages. Despite the fact that the translation has been underway for quite some time, I understand you had a crazy deadline.

SF: Thank you. Yes, we didn’t receive the music files until January 2011, and frankly, the text was still being tweaked while we were in the middle of all this. It took us about a month, from January to mid-February, to determine styles, processes, and approve sample printouts. Once all decisions were made, we had three weeks to get the music engraved with little to no corrections. That’s 400 files of difficult chant music.

SY: Three weeks? How many people worked on this project?

SF: Four. It was 24/7. I put a bed in my home office, and told everyone they could contact me 24/7 for the next three weeks. It’s not unlike doing copy work, especially when working on tight recording sessions, or touring shows where copying music is usually the last thing and seems to be done under extremely tight deadlines if not less than 24 hours with an orchestra waiting for the charts. You work until you fall asleep, work until you fall asleep—you go back and forth awhile. Your sleep rhythm gets off for a while, but you get back on track. Those who know me know I like to take on difficult challenges.

SY: The size and the deadline weren’t the only challenges.

SF: One of the bigger challenges was the middle of the book, the Order of Mass. Here all the page turns were dictated to us so all of the publishers had to have the same page turns. This was done so priests could pick up any publisher’s book and not have to relearn all of the page breaks. We were allowed a bit of leeway with the music elements, especially page turns for better phrasings and such, but all text had to remain in the same place in all publishers’ books. Very difficult to re-engrave and achieve these results. We were able to do it with the help of Finale, QuicKeys, TGTools and the Patterson plug-in collection.

Another challenge was that the engraving style dictated to us that the text drives the book—even when it’s under music, because the text was to be the most important element on the page.

This means that the music spacing doesn’t determine where the text sits under the music but the text spacing determines the spacing of your notes—where your notes sit, which is different than what we would ordinarily do in any other music publication. With this project it’s interesting to see how involved in specific styles of music engraving the church decided to become. In our current time in history it is usually left up to the music publisher and their house style. This is definitely a change to be noted in music engraving history.

SY: You also chose to create new font characters?

SF: There are several symbols, like Vs and Rs with little lines through them, which we created as fonts using Fontlab. Then we had to send these fonts to the printer to make sure they all work the same for them that they do for us. We have to do that anyway for things like line thicknesses. We had to send the prototype fonts to the very press that the book will be printed on.

SY: You mentioned you need to do this with line thicknesses. I guess most people would assume this is a constant with modern printers.

SF: Whenever I’m working with a new printer I send out test samples for staff line thickness. They FedEx hard copies back to us and we review. All presses are different—even within the same plant. Each can output the same PDF I provide in different ways. With the new digital presses, the lines seem to be getting thinner, more precise.

I am fascinated by the huge differences subtle line thickness can cause. If the line thickness is too thick, the notes appear to go back and seem too small. Thinner lines help bring out the music. That’s part of the beauty of the art of music engraving. It’s a little geeky, but it’s something I love about all of this. And that’s what keeps me going. Finale lets me tweak anything to make it look exactly the way I need it to look.

SY: Where do you see this project in a historical context?

SF: It’s an important book. The last time this book was done was 40 years ago. This is the first time this has been done with electronic engraving using Finale and in the history of music engraving this is the first time in quite a long time that the church took a role in setting very specific music engraving criteria.

We looked at all the past Roman Missals and reviewed their styles before working on our book. Our work on this book will represent where engraving was in our lifetime (at this point in history) and I’m glad Finale was a part of that, not just on our end, but from ICEL as well. That they chose to use Finale over any other means is a great testament to what Finale is all about.

Eons from now, they’ll be able to say, here’s where Finale started with the Roman missal.

SY: Anything else you’d like to add?

SF: There’s no way we could have done this in three weeks using any other software—period!  

Scott Yoho and Patrick Russ at the 2012 NAMM Show  – Photo Credit: Mark Frisbie

At the NAMM Show back in January I had the honor of interviewing some high-profile Finale users at the MakeMusic booth. Among my guests was Patrick Russ, who has orchestrated more than 170 films, including several as principal orchestrator for Elmer Bernstein and Maurice Jarre. He’s also done many other types of projects, including re-orchestrating and reconstructing scores from sketches and recordings, as he did for the Grammy-winning “Previn Conducts Korngold.”

One of the highlights of our interview was an example Patrick provided that nicely illustrates this work as well as the job of an orchestrator in general. Below is an excerpt of a sketch in Dimitri Tiomkin’s own hand, for The High and the Mighty (for which Tiomkin won an Academy Award for original score in 1954).

Remarkably, the original film score manuscript was lost. Using the above pencil sketch and recordings, Patrick and his mentor Christopher Palmer re-orchestrated the score for a recording with the London Symphony Orchestra. Check out the first page of their completed Finale score to see how the sketch is transformed.

But no orchestrator would receive a pencil sketch from a composer today, right?

“It’s not as unusual as you might think,” according to Patrick. He indicated that this is a “real-life example of what I’m what I’m sometimes given in Hollywood. It’s a little like architecture, where the architect will draw a building, but a draftsman will make every room fit. Like the draftsman, ours is a bit of a clerical job, but it’s still very creative.”

We also discussed how Patrick came to work with some of Hollywood’s most celebrated composers. I knew from an earlier discussion that he began his long-time association with classical guitarist Christopher Parkening while a student at UC Santa Barbara, and that it was Christopher who introduced him to Elmer Bernstein.

“I started with Elmer Bernstein at a time when his son Peter was getting his own movies as a composer, and Elmer needed an orchestrator. He tried me on one cue in Ghostbusters and he liked it, and used me on most projects over the next twenty years. And through Elmer I met Maurice Jarre, who wrote the scores to Dr. Zhivago, Passage to India, and Lawrence of Arabia.

So I’ve had some really long and happy associations. At the same time, the industry changes. Back then I did everything all by myself. Now with the advent of digital editors, you find that there’s not enough time, so you split the movies with several other people. So it’s a lot more pressure. I remember on King Kong they would give us cues at midnight to be recorded at ten in the morning. The schedule is a lot tighter than it used to be.”

Scott: So different orchestrators are working on different cues simultaneously?
 
Patrick: Absolutely. In fact, it’s not unusual now to divide up big cues, especially if we’re going to be recording in just twelve hours, I’ll do the first four pages, the next guy will do the next four. It’s really time-intensive. But you’re usually with a team that thinks like you, so the listener can’t hear the difference: We slot into each other. 

Scott: That’s mind-boggling to me. Imagine writing a novel like that: you take the first chapter. And yet, thanks to the genius of the people involved, there’s some continuity there.

Patrick: I’m not sure we’re doing a good thing for our industry by succeeding in this process! We still meet the deadline no matter what they throw to us.

Patrick has also published several concert suites and anthologies, and he discussed Finale’s advantage in this area:

“First of all, you have almost infinite variables with Finale, which is great, because every publishing house will tweak a symphonic score in a different way, with different sized notes, and different lines per page. I first starting using Finale with orchestra with the William Walton estate and Oxford University Press, and this goes back to the 1980s, so Finale has been in use a long time in publishing houses.

Even now, when you look at Hal Leonard Corporation’s Signature Series for professional orchestras, you see that Finale is the standard. They have recently released the John Williams series with about thirty orchestral suites such as Star Wars and Schindler’s List. Those are all typeset in Finale. I’m helping with the symphonic series after that which features music by Dimitri Tiomkin and Elmer Bernstein, and again those are all done in Finale. So Finale is very much the tool of choice if you want to be involved in orchestral publishing.”

I hope you’ve enjoyed this excerpt of our NAMM interview, and I hope it conveys some of Patrick’s enthusiasm. It was great fun and I’d like to thank him for his generosity and good humor.

Please let us know what you think about our interview, Finale, or anything else on your mind by clicking on “Comment” below.

In my previous blog post I indicated that I’ll be interviewing some high-profile Finale users at the NAMM Show this week.

Today I can let you know who’s participating, and it’s a Who’s Who of busy Hollywood orchestrators:

• Thu, Jan 19: Patrick Russ
• Fri, Jan 20: Tim Davies
• Sat, Jan 21: Bruce Fowler
• Sun, Jan 22: Jeremy Levy

Note that I’ve linked to their imdb.com pages above so you can check out some of the many projects they’ve been involved with. In our interviews we’ll learn how they started in the business, what their work encompasses, how Finale fits into the picture, and more.

If you’re attending NAMM, please join us: Our interviews will begin each day at 12:10 p.m. at the MakeMusic booth, # 6112 in Hall A. If not, I hope to share the highlights right here on the Finale Blog as well as on Facebook and Twitter.

Are you attending this year's NAMM Show Jan 19-22? It’s the annual music industry trade show held in Anaheim, California. This is where music instrument and software manufacturers demonstrate their new products to the media, dealers, distributors, and the musicians of the world.

The MakeMusic booth (#6112 in Hall A) will host several in-booth presentations daily. Here’s a brief overview:

• 11:10 a.m. Depth and Breadth of Garritan Libraries with Gary Garritan and Justin Phillips
• 12:10 p.m. Meet Finale Users with Scott Yoho
• 1:10 p.m. Why Choose Finale? with Justin Phillips
• 2:10 p.m. Creating SmartMusic Accompaniments with Finale with Tom Johnson
• 3:10 p.m. Meet MusicXML Creator Michael Good with Justin Phillips
• 4:10 p.m. Top Ten Tips: Easiest and Fastest Ways to Use Finale with Tom Johnson
• 5:10 p.m. Using Garritan Libraries in Finale with Justin Phillips [Thu-Sat ONLY]

I’m still in the process of finalizing the scheduling WHO we’ll meet in my “Meet Finale Users” section, but we’ll be pretty close to Hollywood, so you can expect some of our many friends from the film community to appear.

Not attending NAMM? Of course we’ll share late-breaking news as well as highlights from the show right here on the Finale Blog as well as on facebook and twitter.

Have questions or observations? Please let me know by clicking on “Comments” below!

Robert Paterson, photographed by Daniel Dottavio

In our last post we met NYC-based composer Robert Paterson. Today we conclude our interview, see an example of his excellent Finale work, and learn more about his most recent recording, The Book of Goddesses, which earned him a Composer of the Year Award from the Classical Recording Foundation.

SY: Could you describe your music, or your musical goals?

RP: I think of my music as contemporary classical concert music, for lack of a better phrase, so I focus on writing music for people to sit in concert halls and enjoy. I would describe my music as oftentimes energetic and colorful; I focus a lot on timbre and color.

I am also obsessed with form, so I try to create pieces that feel like, as you get to the end of the piece, there is never a dull moment where you lose focus. If people say to me, “Oh, there was never a moment where I dozed off,” then I’m happy. [laughter]

SY: That seems more honest that most composers might be willing to be in an interview; most would feel compelled to claim that they’re out to change people’s lives or something grander.

RP: You know, there are some pieces you listen to where there are whole swaths where you kind of float in and out. As much as possible, I try to engage listeners’ interest for the entire duration. Obviously, as you write longer pieces, this becomes more difficult.

I also really enjoy writing pieces that performers like to play. I am not the kind of composer who thinks of performers as automatons or technicians – I like to think of them as my colleagues and that the whole creative experience is a team effort. I like to think of composing as something you do with performers and not against them, not as a solitary effort.

I think that music is a very communal experience in the best possible way. If you go to a really good performance and the performers are happy and enjoying themselves, and they’re getting into the music and nothing is holding them back (whether it’s the notation or how they feel about the music itself), it makes the audience enjoy the performance so much more. And they’ll want to experience it again. My goal in life is to make people fall in love with that experience.

SY: Let’s talk about the music on your new CD, The Book of Goddesses.

RP: I am really proud of this album. It was three years in the making, so it was definitely a labor of love. It contains three chamber pieces. The first, The Book of Goddesses, is in nine-movements and was written for MAYA, an amazing trio based in New York City. It is scored for flute, harp, and percussion, and the percussion part is primarily hand drums. Writing for hand drums was a little out of the ordinary for me, as I usually write for classical percussion instruments, but it was a lot of fun. The whole work is meant to be choreographed. Each movement highlights a different goddess from a different region of the world, and the music reflects this. [View an excerpt.]

The second piece, Freya’s Tears, was written for Clockwise, a violin and harp duo in New York and is related to The Book of Goddesses. It’s like a sister piece, for violin and harp.

The third piece, Embracing the Wind, is scored for flute, viola and harp. This piece has been played quite a bit, as I wrote it quite a while ago. On this recording it’s performed by the American Modern Ensemble [of which Robert is the founder and Artistic Director].

SY: You mentioned the communal experience, of the composer and the performers, in the creation of music. One performer on the CD links all three ensembles heard on the disc.

RP:  The line that runs through all three is harpist Jacqueline Kerrod, who is in the American Modern Ensemble, Clockwise, and is a former member of MAYA.

SY: Any last thoughts?

RP: Perhaps an unsolicited plug. I feel strongly that Finale is the best software program out there for making your music look as beautiful as you want it to look.

I’d like to congratulate Robert for winning the Composer of the Year Award from the Classical Recording Foundation and for sharing his thoughts with us.

What are you creating in Finale? Let us know by clicking on “Comments” below.

Robert Paterson, photographed by Daniel Dottavio

This week we meet composer Robert Paterson. Based in New York City, Robert is currently the Music Alive composer-in-residence with the Vermont Youth Orchestra Association. His latest release, The Book of Goddesses, garnered him a Composer of the Year Award from the Classical Recording Foundation. Learn more about his many awards, commissions, and performances at robpaterson.com (and note that he’s not the Finale plug-in creator and composer Robert G. Patterson).

Scott Yoho: What was your introduction to composition?

Robert Paterson: When I was a kid, my parents used to take me to new music and other classical concerts. My dad was a sculptor and taught at the State University of New York at Buffalo. So I grew up seeing people like John Cage, Morton Feldman, Lejaren Hiller and all kinds of other musicians all the time. I was used to that, and thought this was normal, and that all kids did this.

In my early teens I began studying composition with Puerto Rican composer William Ortiz, and he was influential, but my high school teachers were also really supportive of my composing habit. I definitely have a lot of gratitude for them now as a professional composer, and I think about my background quite a bit as resident composer with the Vermont Youth Orchestra. I’ve visited many schools and I always talk to teachers about how important it is to support students who want to compose, even if it seems a little out there for them.

SY: What was your introduction to music notation software?

RP: I am one of those people who have been using Finale from the very beginning, from version 1.0: I transitioned over from something called Professional Composer…

SY: I used Composer too – you could have any beam angle you’d like, as long as it was perfectly horizontal! [Laughter followed by tales of horrible ink jet printers and tearing of tractor-feed paper…]

RP:  Once Finale came around you could tell it was going to be a different ball game, and I’ve been using it ever since. While at Sarah Lawrence College I taught a course in notation with Finale and Sibelius side by side. We would often do experiments with the students; creating a page in Sibelius, and then trying to do the same thing in Finale, and comparing the results.

This emphasized even more for me how much I really enjoyed working with Finale and didn’t really enjoy Sibelius. I always felt like Sibelius threw up a lot of roadblocks: Almost like somebody was slapping your wrists when you tried to do something out of the ordinary. Whereas in Finale, if you come up with a crazy idea or something that’s a little out of the ordinary that’s just not common, it’s easy to do.

I think that Finale is a much more open-ended program that allows composers to be more creative.

SY: Can you describe your work process?

RP: I began writing music before there was notation software. All along my process has been to sketch by hand with pencil and paper, then move to the computer to notate. A lot of composers nowadays don’t do that at all. While I want to transition over someday [to composing directly on the computer], I am waiting for a large-format touch screen that’s easy to use with a MIDI keyboard, because I don’t want to have a computer keyboard in front of me.  I’d rather use a stylus or my fingers. I don’t want to have too many interfaces between me and the music, but that’s just the way I think about it and everybody’s different.

SY: When we spoke before, you said that because Finale can, for example, let you make feathered beams look exactly the way you’d like them to, you might be tempted to do that as you compose, whereas if you simply sketch it, you just capture the idea and move on.

RP: For me, what is most important is that the ideas flow as I invent them without having to worry about how I am going to notate them. Knowing that Finale will be able to notate anything I write means I never worry about whether it is possible. I like to focus on the composition first, then concentrate on the notation later.

SY: What are your goals when notating music?

RP: I don’t want the performers to think about how the music is notated. In fact, the less they think about that, the more I feel like I’ve done my job. I want the notation to be so clear that there is nothing about it that distracts them from making music. I think a lot about how to make everything look clean and precise and as conventional as possible.

On the issue of transparency, I think of film composers. The great ones write music that is so integral to what’s on the screen that you forget the music’s even there. The music reinforces your emotional response rather than interrupts it.

SY: I think we have a theme here. Your preference for Finale, your pencil-first workflow, and your notation approach are all driven by your desire to not place any barriers between people and music.

RP: Exactly. My philosophy is to remove any unnecessary obstacles.

In our next post we’ll conclude our interview with Robert, see an example of his excellent Finale work, and learn more about his music and his award-winning CD, The Book of Goddesses.

It sounds like a joke: “The good news is you get to lead a 115-piece group. The bad news is they’re all trombones.”

Actually, that’s good news, too. Last week Trombone Christmas performed its second annual show in Anaheim, California, playing seasonal tunes with an all-volunteer group of 115 slide trombonists. While this is shy of the world record of 289 trombonists at a single concert, it’s a great showing for the group’s second performance.

Organizer Douglas Grieve was kind enough to share some of the details with me.

Scott Yoho: Where did the idea for Trombone Christmas originate?

Douglas Grieve:  About four years ago the word went out that they wanted to set a world record at Disneyland for tubas. So I borrowed a baritone from a friend, and when I got there I realized that about a third of the performers were trombone players who were just there to play some Christmas music and have a good time. So that’s how the whole idea started.

SY: Who creates your arrangements?

DG: It’s a community effort. We started with the premise that we wanted to standardize, so we use four tenors and two bass trombones (see full details here). I’ve created some of the arrangements, Mark Divers did some, and then Jim (James) Christensen, who was the music director at Disneyland for 35 years, has also contributed some arrangements.

Plus we have composition contests every year, which generates new music. This year the contest was to create a closer for our show, last year we had a fanfare contest.

SY: Have some performers traveled great distances to perform with the group?

DG: The winner of last year’s fanfare contest, Travis Maslen, flew down from Sacramento join us, and did again this year. The winner of this year’s closer contest, Larry Mills-Gahl, flew in from Columbus, Ohio.

SY: Tell me he’s a trombone player.

SG: He’s a bass trombone player.

SY: Even better!  Are your arrangements done in Finale?

DG: I use Finale, I know Mark Divers uses Finale, and Jim would, but he’s never used a computer in his life. [Laughter] Jim has been hand-writing his arrangements – he’s a big Hal Leonard arranger among other things – but he does everything by hand. What usually happens is he’ll give a score to me and I’ll enter it into Finale.

SY: Do you have plans to make your arrangements available to others?

DG: We want to publish the book. We’ve had several enquiries from people interested in creating their own Trombone Christmas, but we need to publish the book before we make our arrangements available to others.

SY: I’d like to accompany this post with one of the YouTube videos from your 2010 performance. Do you have a favorite?

DG: My personal favorites are the Fanfare and the piece that follows: Angels We Have Heard on High. When you put something like this together for the first time, which is what these clips are from, you don’t what’s going to happen on the downbeat. When that hit and we heard how in-tune it was and how well it sounded, we were all having a great time.

I’d like to thank Doug for his time and would like to end with two items from The Trombone Christmas FAQ page:

Q: Can I bring my valve trombone?
A: Sure, but you must leave it in the car, Trombone Christmas is for slide trombones.
Q: Is this kinda like Tuba Christmas?
A: No, we have trombones.

Let us know if you have any questions OR answers by clicking on “Comments” below.

Last February, MakeMusic, the American Composer’s Forum, and the Grammy-winning ensemble eighth blackbird announced three finalists in the Finale National Composition Contest. All three were asked to submit final scores by October 1, 2011, and will workshop their pieces with eighth blackbird in Chicago on December 7 and 8. After a concert of all three works on December 8, the judges will select the recipient of the final prize, who will receive an additional cash award and a future public performance by eighth blackbird.

Having earlier met Eric Lindsay and Kurt Rohde, this week we’ll feature finalist Andy Akiho. Andy is an award-winning composer whose interests run from steel pan to traditional classical music.

Scott Yoho: How did you initially discover the steel pan?

Andy Akiho: I didn’t actually know what one was until I was about 18. When I was at the University of South Carolina I did everything I could do as a percussionist. I really tried to learn about everything that was available to me at the time. In addition to playing in orchestra, concert band, and percussion ensemble as a classical percussionist, I joined the local West African percussion ensembles, Brazilian drumming ensembles, and the steel bands. By the time I finished at South Carolina I felt that playing pans was what I loved to do the most, and I subsequently traveled to Trinidad several times. My first visit, I stayed for five weeks and played with a big band called the PCS Starlift Steel Orchestra, led by Ray Holman (a legend in the steel pan community). The following year, I played with another steel orchestra called Phase II, led by Len “Boogsie” Sharpe.

SY: How did you make that connection?

AA: I went to Trinidad without knowing anybody. The first day I got there I immediately began telling the locals I met that I really wanted to play. The place I was staying happened to be a block from where Ray Holman lives, and within a few hours I was knocking on his door. He led me to the Starlift Orchestra pan yard, and I got to play with the band that night. I played and performed with them for the next few weeks.

I returned to Trinidad in 2002, 2003, and in 2006, when I shipped over eighty pans up to New York and started two programs, one in the Bronx and one in Brooklyn. [Andy has served as a lead teaching artist for ArtsConnection, New York’s most comprehensive artist-in-education non-profit organization.]

SY: Was music composition part of your formal training?

AA: I didn't formally focus on composition until I was at the Manhattan School of Music's Contemporary Performance Program, when I was there for contemporary percussion. I had been in New York for years teaching and playing steel drums after completing my undergrad at the University of South Carolina.

This year I just completed my master’s degree in composition at Yale, and plan to pursue my doctorate in composition this fall at Princeton.

SY: What composers are influencing or inspiring you these days?

AA: What really got me into the whole composition thing, and gave me the confidence to go in that direction, was doing the Bang on a Can Summer Festivals in 2007 & 2008. I really learned a lot from my colleagues and composers there: David Lang, Michael Gordon, Julia Wolfe especially... And all my teachers at Yale: Martin Bresnick, Christopher Theofanidis, and Ezra Laderman have been extremely influential. I'm constantly excited. I’m at Aspen right now and am really enjoying working with Matthias Pintscher and Christopher Rouse. I’ve also been extremely influenced by the Caribbean community too, including Caribbean guitarists, like Scipio Sargeant who used to teach me in Crown Heights. The pan players in Brooklyn like Freddy Harris III, Kareem Thompson, and Eddie Quarless were a great influence as well. There’s just so much inspiration out there. I feel very fortunate for all that.

I’m really lucky that I came into this at a later stage because at this age I feel like I really know what I want and hence more able to appreciate the instruction from the best composition teachers and performers out there.

SY: Does writing for eighth blackbird’s instrumentation offer some unique challenges or opportunities?

AA: It’s crazy! A big piece that really influenced me right when I began to compose was Jacob Druckman’s “Come Round,” which I performed at the Manhattan School. When I got the score I looked for a recording of it to learn the percussion part really well, and the first one I came across was by eighth blackbird. I didn't know who they were back then, and I was just blown away.

What I like about the Pierrot ensemble instrumentation is that you have three pairs of instrumental families: piano and percussion, violin and cello, and flute and clarinet. Each pairing offers a unique range, color, and technique. The different composite timbral combinations are truly limitless! I think that’s why so many composers write for this instrumentation.
 
SY: Can you describe your musical goals?

AA: I want to write music that I feel really confident about artistically and creatively, that all kinds of people can relate to and appreciate. It would be awesome if my colleagues, professors, AND my family could enjoy a piece. I don’t want to create music that only 2% of the population can relate to – I don’t want to be completely academic about it.

I really feel that rhythm is something almost everyone can all relate to. For me it’s the most important musical parameter in terms of what I can manipulate and communicate to others. If the rhythm and rhythmic counterpoint feels right, I’m happy with it, and the music seems to make more sense.

SY: Got any Finale stories or tips?

AA: Just about every piece I’ve written I’ve put in on Finale. I really like the program because I feel like you have a lot more freedom to do funky things with notation that other programs don’t offer. It's great for clarity and innovation. I’m particularly happy with the prepared piano solo I’ve done that I don’t feel could have been done with any other program. I originally wrote it all out by hand, and was able to make the Finale version look identical to the handwritten version. See an excerpt of Andy's piano piece.

SY: Anything to add?

AA: I’m extremely excited to be a part of this project and really grateful for this opportunity, and I just want to really max it out!

I’d like to thank Andy for his time and I’m looking forward to hearing more of Andy and the other finalists in Chicago in December.