INTERVIEW
With Vince Peterson, Founding Artistic Director
and with Dale Trumbore, 2018-2019 Composer-in-Residence
With Vince Peterson, Founding Artistic Director
and with Dale Trumbore, 2018-2019 Composer-in-Residence
VINCE PETERSON
Founding Artistic Director Choral Chameleon |
DALE TRUMBORE
2018-2019 Composer-in-Residence Choral Chameleon |
Vince, What Can Our Audience Expect to hear from Dale this Season?
There are two works that we are commissioning from Dale this year. One is for the Ensemble and the other is for the Chorus. I'm excited so much about both of them.
The Ensemble work is going to be an a capella storytelling piece for our ‘Storytime’ program, which we're taking out on the road for the first time, which is really exciting. It's a program that we've cultivated over the years and we've breathed some new life into it. And Dale is of course at the very heart of that in what she's writing.
For the Chorus, she's writing a piece that is based on a secular text for chorus and organ. Now Dale, she is so facile and very, very fluid with her choral writing, but her instrumental writing is also very knowing and very understanding. And both Nathan Taylor (organist) and I are very excited to see what she writes for the organ in that piece. And that is a diptych, it's a set of two poems. She's chosen a couple of dynamic poets (Abigail Welhouse and Lynn Ungar) who are lesser known, and I always love that, again a demonstration of her command and her knowledge of literature, especially contemporary literature and what's out there right now, what's out there being said.
How Does Each Brief Differ for The Ensemble vs The Chorus?
The two briefs are very different from each other.
Of course for our Ensemble, Dale is writing for nine people maximum, which limits the number of divisi that can go in the piece. It also changes the way that a composer builds texture. If she wants a big, thick loud sound her approach to that in the small Ensemble will be different than it will be in the Chorus.
Also, in the Ensemble piece, because it's a storytelling, I've asked her to consider using extended techniques or employing the singer's voices or their bodies, or their work in other ways that might aid in the telling of the story. That could be anything from speaking, shouting, whispering, sprechstimme. It could be that they have to make a character voice and turn into a character and manipulate the sound. Or it could be simply the way that they're all lined up in the formation telling the story.
There's a lot of role playing elements to that and I really wanted it to feel like intimate story time where a group of story tellers are telling the story to ‘the kids’, AKA the audience, you know? Except of course many of these kids will be adult kids this time, that's the great catch.
How do you tell a story to adults like that and have a sort of either moral, ethical or compelling punchline that they walk away questioning and thinking, feeling enriched and feeling shifted in some way? It's a tall order. There's no doubt in my mind at all that she's accomplished it.
For the Chorus, one might assume that because our chorus is semi-pro, which means of course that there are avocational singers singing with professionals singers, that it might change the stakes, or it might change the level of what she writes. The level of ability required to execute it. That's just not true with our chorus. She really has just about as much free rein in writing for our Chorus as she does for the Ensemble in terms of the level of musicianship required to do the piece well.
I think the great challenge there is - how do we build a piece (for organ) that is decidedly secular in terms of text? Because it is a strong statement to be in a church and sing a concert full of secular texts with the organ. And really just sort of eradicate that stereotype that a lot of people hold: choir, church, organ means sacred music, you know? And we just want to say that it doesn't have to mean that.
But we've discovered in our back and forth that there's an unavoidable sort of ethos about that, that really you can't totally emancipate one from the other, right? And so the briefing's really been about how do we find something that compels us to think in a different way about the organ as instrument and the choir as an instrument and specifically about the organ and the choir and how they're used together? What are things that you would not hear a church choir do during Sunday service or mass, right? What are things you would not hear a synagogue choir do at shul?
And let's really explore that and curate a text that, or texts that invite that kind of posture or that kind of atmosphere. And also there's the usual considerations when you're writing for choir and organ in a large, reverberant space there's balance issues. If we're performing, which we will be in some cases, behind the audience from the loft, the composer has to take that into account in order to preserve the experience of the listeners in a certain way. We don't want them to have to work extra hard just to hear and understand what's going on, we want them to feel just as involved as if we are standing right down there in front of them.
These are tall orders. They're orders that really could only be given to a composer of Dale's ilk really. The interesting thing about her is she didn't flinch. She didn't flinch. I mean, she was like, "Amazing. Let's do it." And I was like, "Yes." So yeah, we're excited about it.
How did Choral Chameleon decide upon Dale Trumbore for our CIR program this year?
It's not really as much about what she can do as an artist - technically about her refinement in terms of putting ideas, musical ideas together and getting them down on the page, or about her self-discipline, about her establishing herself as a composer – it’s more about who she is as a person.
And I think that composers who work with us in this very intimate capacity, they have to have somehow managed to remain people when they come out of their studies, when they integrate themselves into the music landscape. Because it's really rough, it's really rough to do that and I am taken aback by her poise, her grace and her generosity, as well her insistence on the circumstances and the text and everything being the right thing.
And, as I've said to many people, there are skills that you can learn, but there are other skills that are just innately yours. And so it's really because of the latter set of skills, and because of who Dale is as a person - her commitment not only to music but to life - that makes her the ideal person to interact with a choir whose purpose and whose mission is really driven by the human condition.
Also, I really feel that Dale is an innate ‘knower’ about the power of words. I respect her respect for literature and its way of governing the movement of vocal music. I also am excited because she is self-declared as being focused on vocal music in her career, and I think that makes me feel a certain reverence for her, and for her posture towards this life that we have as musicians.
What does Dale have in common with our previous four CIRs?
Well, in terms of Rex (Isenberg) and Jeffrey (Parola), they're also based in LA. Of course Rex abandoned (New York) to go to LA. But Jeffrey has always been an LA boy and of course Dale went out there to study with Morten Lauridsen, although she's a New Jersey native. So just that simple geographical coast to coast thing,
Adam (Ward), of course lives in San Francisco, so this East coast/West coast dichotomy seems to be a theme that's emerging. Joe (Gregorio) is the only one who's the sort of odd duck out in terms of his geographical location.
I can't deny that being a transplant from the West coast myself maybe causes me subconsciously to recognize bits of California in these people. Maybe it makes me sentimental, I don't know.
Certainly both Dale and Jeffrey studied at University of Southern California, although with different people. Dale, as I said, studied with the inimitable Morten Lauridsen, who is obviously an icon in our world. And I've had fun talking with her about what that was like and with Jeff for that matter. He was Morten Lauridsen's graduate assistant at USC. Having come out of a composition program myself, there is a sense of the types of music, the types of composers, the types of technique, the types of tendencies that come out of the pens of composers who all came from the same department. Or even the same geographical area.
I would also say that she is a superb technician as the rest of them have been. And she's also a generous person. Generous, kind, caring person who cares very much about what we do and about power of all music to change the world.
What's unique this time around?
The first thing that comes to mind is that the landscape of Dale's music is decidedly more… rural…versus the sort of urban, angular feel of Jeff's music, of Rex's music, of Adam's music. Joe, he tends to be all over the place, which I love about him as well.
Dale is extremely well known amongst what you would call contemporary classical traditionalists. And I think the album Choral Arts Initiative put out of her work hit number six on the Billboard Traditional Classical music chart. The fact that she wants to work with us is even more humbling and gratifying to know that she believes in us as much as we believe in her, it's a really great thing.
Also (different) is that Dale and I, we have had a long conversation going on over the phone, over texting, over emails, I am definitely a follower of her Poem Piece Post emails. I think what she writes there is very compelling. She has responded to things that I've written online by sending me personal notes. You could sort of say that we've been pen pals for a long time.
Actually, until this residency we had not met in person, and so I feel like all of our relationship, and our communication, has existed within music, or within written word. Or maybe in phone or text conversations. So that puts her also in a very different position than the others and it puts me in a different position. It gives new meaning to the level of intimacy and vulnerability the two of us have expressed our willingness to engage in with each other. And I'm excited about that.
I think that my view of her work in this context, for the first time in our residency program since the beginning of Choral Chameleon, my view will be decidedly more objective. Not really an outsider's view, but really just objective as a person in a museum admiring a painting and not having a personal tie to the artists. I think that's a really good thing.
Would I call Dale a friend? Of course. I would call anybody that I choose to work with in this capacity a friend. But she's really a bona fide colleague of great proportions. And so there is, there's a difference there and there will be a difference, and there has been a difference so far in the working process as we've been exchanging information with each other and briefs about the work. So I'm excited about that, I think it will help to make me a better musician and a better midwife for the work that she's bringing into the world. And we stand to learn things from each other I think that are really important things to learn at our respective places in our lives.
What Do You Hope This Year’s CIR Program will Achieve for Choral Chameleon, For Dale and for Choral Music at Large?
Well I think this is a win-win-win. Certainly I think Dale's music is both compelling and challenging and it will provide what I would call a healthy challenge for our groups. But one that is so deeply rewarded with a musical result that we can keep our eyes on, on a prize, in terms of her music.
And I think that I want us to play an instrumental role at Choral Chameleon at increasing her New York presence as a composer. She's of course known here in New York, there are people who have done her work here, it's not that we're the first to do it, but I just think that there's a certain side of her that I'm slowly getting to know and that we will get to know through this type of interaction with her and this type of interaction with her music, that will allow us to communicate, again objectively with the public in New York about the contributions that she has made and is making to the art form.
In terms of the art form itself? If Dale accomplishes these two briefs that I've given to her and Choral Chameleon pulls it off - we will have legitimately put some new and different and edgy ideas into the world about what a choral piece can be, what it's function can be. We will have really taken a long stride towards eradicating a stereotype, a big stereotype in choral music about organ and choir and sacred music. We'll all be better off for it.
Interview with Dale Trumbore, 2018-2019 Composer in Residence
Dale, Knowing that this is not your first Residency - what excites you, at this point in your career, about working with Choral Chameleon this year as our new Composer In Residence?
I'm absolutely thrilled to be Composer in Residence with Choral Chameleon. I've known about Choral Chameleon for so long. My friend Jeff Parola was the first Composer in Residence for the ensemble, so I'd heard him sing their praises for years. Vince programmed my piece I am Music back in 2014, too; Choral Chameleon was only the second group to perform it, and they gave it a gorgeous East Coast premiere.
I was born in New York City and grew up in Northern New Jersey, and until I moved away to go to college and graduate school, New York was the city I thought of as my own. So even though I live in Los Angeles now, I'm happy to be working closely with Choral Chameleon in the place where I started my journey as a composer, and where I still have lots of friends and family.
It's always an honor to be Composer in Residence for an ensemble. On one hand, it feels validating to know that this group likes your music enough to want to spend a year featuring it. It also grants you a wider timeframe in which to explore what it's like to write music with a specific group of performers in mind.
I'm entering this residency with a solid grasp of Choral Chameleon's strengths. The piece I wrote for them this fall reflects our past collaboration and builds on that. The piece I'll write in the spring, a secular work for chorus and organ, will take into account the specific people who will be bringing it to life.
As a Composer in Residence, you have more time to let your relationship with everyone in an ensemble unfold organically, and that inevitably winds its way into the music you write for them.
How will this appointment help you do things as a composer that you haven’t yet been able to do? What are you hoping to be able to test/try out, with the relative freedom Vince gives to our CIRs?
I'm excited to take advantage of Choral Chameleon's adventurousness. Choral Chameleon is willing to make bold programming choices as well as musical ones, all in the name of creating a compelling narrative.
In Footnotes to a History of Music, the first piece I've written for Choral Chameleon this year, soloists alternate speaking and singing as the chorus shifts between various wordless musical textures. The narrative isn't linear; in Kristina Marie Darling's poem, and the way I've set it, the story is presented as a series of footnotes. It's an experimental text and an experimental piece, and I don't think I would or could have written this exact piece for any other chorus.
This residency feels like a safe space for me to take bold creative risks, and as a composer, that's the mark of a dream collaboration.
What perspective do you hope to bring to students at our 2019 Summer Institute?
I've spent the last decade of my life gradually building a career as a full-time composer. There's so much I wish I'd known when I started down this career path, and I'm eager to share that knowledge with other composers.
Composers need to know how to collaborate with conductors effectively, and conductors need to know how to work with composers. I'm grateful for programs like this one that bring conductors and composers together and help de-mystify this collaborative process.
When I'm working with other composers, I offer solutions and advice for overcoming composing challenges as well as the nitty-gritty business details of making a living in this field. On a daily basis, I'm simultaneously trying to make meaningful art and to support myself with that art, and I've learned so much in the process.
At the 2019 Summer Institute, I hope I'll be a resource for composers and conductors regarding artistic decisions as well as virtually anything related to effective and meaningful composer-conductor collaboration.
There are two works that we are commissioning from Dale this year. One is for the Ensemble and the other is for the Chorus. I'm excited so much about both of them.
The Ensemble work is going to be an a capella storytelling piece for our ‘Storytime’ program, which we're taking out on the road for the first time, which is really exciting. It's a program that we've cultivated over the years and we've breathed some new life into it. And Dale is of course at the very heart of that in what she's writing.
For the Chorus, she's writing a piece that is based on a secular text for chorus and organ. Now Dale, she is so facile and very, very fluid with her choral writing, but her instrumental writing is also very knowing and very understanding. And both Nathan Taylor (organist) and I are very excited to see what she writes for the organ in that piece. And that is a diptych, it's a set of two poems. She's chosen a couple of dynamic poets (Abigail Welhouse and Lynn Ungar) who are lesser known, and I always love that, again a demonstration of her command and her knowledge of literature, especially contemporary literature and what's out there right now, what's out there being said.
How Does Each Brief Differ for The Ensemble vs The Chorus?
The two briefs are very different from each other.
Of course for our Ensemble, Dale is writing for nine people maximum, which limits the number of divisi that can go in the piece. It also changes the way that a composer builds texture. If she wants a big, thick loud sound her approach to that in the small Ensemble will be different than it will be in the Chorus.
Also, in the Ensemble piece, because it's a storytelling, I've asked her to consider using extended techniques or employing the singer's voices or their bodies, or their work in other ways that might aid in the telling of the story. That could be anything from speaking, shouting, whispering, sprechstimme. It could be that they have to make a character voice and turn into a character and manipulate the sound. Or it could be simply the way that they're all lined up in the formation telling the story.
There's a lot of role playing elements to that and I really wanted it to feel like intimate story time where a group of story tellers are telling the story to ‘the kids’, AKA the audience, you know? Except of course many of these kids will be adult kids this time, that's the great catch.
How do you tell a story to adults like that and have a sort of either moral, ethical or compelling punchline that they walk away questioning and thinking, feeling enriched and feeling shifted in some way? It's a tall order. There's no doubt in my mind at all that she's accomplished it.
For the Chorus, one might assume that because our chorus is semi-pro, which means of course that there are avocational singers singing with professionals singers, that it might change the stakes, or it might change the level of what she writes. The level of ability required to execute it. That's just not true with our chorus. She really has just about as much free rein in writing for our Chorus as she does for the Ensemble in terms of the level of musicianship required to do the piece well.
I think the great challenge there is - how do we build a piece (for organ) that is decidedly secular in terms of text? Because it is a strong statement to be in a church and sing a concert full of secular texts with the organ. And really just sort of eradicate that stereotype that a lot of people hold: choir, church, organ means sacred music, you know? And we just want to say that it doesn't have to mean that.
But we've discovered in our back and forth that there's an unavoidable sort of ethos about that, that really you can't totally emancipate one from the other, right? And so the briefing's really been about how do we find something that compels us to think in a different way about the organ as instrument and the choir as an instrument and specifically about the organ and the choir and how they're used together? What are things that you would not hear a church choir do during Sunday service or mass, right? What are things you would not hear a synagogue choir do at shul?
And let's really explore that and curate a text that, or texts that invite that kind of posture or that kind of atmosphere. And also there's the usual considerations when you're writing for choir and organ in a large, reverberant space there's balance issues. If we're performing, which we will be in some cases, behind the audience from the loft, the composer has to take that into account in order to preserve the experience of the listeners in a certain way. We don't want them to have to work extra hard just to hear and understand what's going on, we want them to feel just as involved as if we are standing right down there in front of them.
These are tall orders. They're orders that really could only be given to a composer of Dale's ilk really. The interesting thing about her is she didn't flinch. She didn't flinch. I mean, she was like, "Amazing. Let's do it." And I was like, "Yes." So yeah, we're excited about it.
How did Choral Chameleon decide upon Dale Trumbore for our CIR program this year?
It's not really as much about what she can do as an artist - technically about her refinement in terms of putting ideas, musical ideas together and getting them down on the page, or about her self-discipline, about her establishing herself as a composer – it’s more about who she is as a person.
And I think that composers who work with us in this very intimate capacity, they have to have somehow managed to remain people when they come out of their studies, when they integrate themselves into the music landscape. Because it's really rough, it's really rough to do that and I am taken aback by her poise, her grace and her generosity, as well her insistence on the circumstances and the text and everything being the right thing.
And, as I've said to many people, there are skills that you can learn, but there are other skills that are just innately yours. And so it's really because of the latter set of skills, and because of who Dale is as a person - her commitment not only to music but to life - that makes her the ideal person to interact with a choir whose purpose and whose mission is really driven by the human condition.
Also, I really feel that Dale is an innate ‘knower’ about the power of words. I respect her respect for literature and its way of governing the movement of vocal music. I also am excited because she is self-declared as being focused on vocal music in her career, and I think that makes me feel a certain reverence for her, and for her posture towards this life that we have as musicians.
What does Dale have in common with our previous four CIRs?
Well, in terms of Rex (Isenberg) and Jeffrey (Parola), they're also based in LA. Of course Rex abandoned (New York) to go to LA. But Jeffrey has always been an LA boy and of course Dale went out there to study with Morten Lauridsen, although she's a New Jersey native. So just that simple geographical coast to coast thing,
Adam (Ward), of course lives in San Francisco, so this East coast/West coast dichotomy seems to be a theme that's emerging. Joe (Gregorio) is the only one who's the sort of odd duck out in terms of his geographical location.
I can't deny that being a transplant from the West coast myself maybe causes me subconsciously to recognize bits of California in these people. Maybe it makes me sentimental, I don't know.
Certainly both Dale and Jeffrey studied at University of Southern California, although with different people. Dale, as I said, studied with the inimitable Morten Lauridsen, who is obviously an icon in our world. And I've had fun talking with her about what that was like and with Jeff for that matter. He was Morten Lauridsen's graduate assistant at USC. Having come out of a composition program myself, there is a sense of the types of music, the types of composers, the types of technique, the types of tendencies that come out of the pens of composers who all came from the same department. Or even the same geographical area.
I would also say that she is a superb technician as the rest of them have been. And she's also a generous person. Generous, kind, caring person who cares very much about what we do and about power of all music to change the world.
What's unique this time around?
The first thing that comes to mind is that the landscape of Dale's music is decidedly more… rural…versus the sort of urban, angular feel of Jeff's music, of Rex's music, of Adam's music. Joe, he tends to be all over the place, which I love about him as well.
Dale is extremely well known amongst what you would call contemporary classical traditionalists. And I think the album Choral Arts Initiative put out of her work hit number six on the Billboard Traditional Classical music chart. The fact that she wants to work with us is even more humbling and gratifying to know that she believes in us as much as we believe in her, it's a really great thing.
Also (different) is that Dale and I, we have had a long conversation going on over the phone, over texting, over emails, I am definitely a follower of her Poem Piece Post emails. I think what she writes there is very compelling. She has responded to things that I've written online by sending me personal notes. You could sort of say that we've been pen pals for a long time.
Actually, until this residency we had not met in person, and so I feel like all of our relationship, and our communication, has existed within music, or within written word. Or maybe in phone or text conversations. So that puts her also in a very different position than the others and it puts me in a different position. It gives new meaning to the level of intimacy and vulnerability the two of us have expressed our willingness to engage in with each other. And I'm excited about that.
I think that my view of her work in this context, for the first time in our residency program since the beginning of Choral Chameleon, my view will be decidedly more objective. Not really an outsider's view, but really just objective as a person in a museum admiring a painting and not having a personal tie to the artists. I think that's a really good thing.
Would I call Dale a friend? Of course. I would call anybody that I choose to work with in this capacity a friend. But she's really a bona fide colleague of great proportions. And so there is, there's a difference there and there will be a difference, and there has been a difference so far in the working process as we've been exchanging information with each other and briefs about the work. So I'm excited about that, I think it will help to make me a better musician and a better midwife for the work that she's bringing into the world. And we stand to learn things from each other I think that are really important things to learn at our respective places in our lives.
What Do You Hope This Year’s CIR Program will Achieve for Choral Chameleon, For Dale and for Choral Music at Large?
Well I think this is a win-win-win. Certainly I think Dale's music is both compelling and challenging and it will provide what I would call a healthy challenge for our groups. But one that is so deeply rewarded with a musical result that we can keep our eyes on, on a prize, in terms of her music.
And I think that I want us to play an instrumental role at Choral Chameleon at increasing her New York presence as a composer. She's of course known here in New York, there are people who have done her work here, it's not that we're the first to do it, but I just think that there's a certain side of her that I'm slowly getting to know and that we will get to know through this type of interaction with her and this type of interaction with her music, that will allow us to communicate, again objectively with the public in New York about the contributions that she has made and is making to the art form.
In terms of the art form itself? If Dale accomplishes these two briefs that I've given to her and Choral Chameleon pulls it off - we will have legitimately put some new and different and edgy ideas into the world about what a choral piece can be, what it's function can be. We will have really taken a long stride towards eradicating a stereotype, a big stereotype in choral music about organ and choir and sacred music. We'll all be better off for it.
Interview with Dale Trumbore, 2018-2019 Composer in Residence
Dale, Knowing that this is not your first Residency - what excites you, at this point in your career, about working with Choral Chameleon this year as our new Composer In Residence?
I'm absolutely thrilled to be Composer in Residence with Choral Chameleon. I've known about Choral Chameleon for so long. My friend Jeff Parola was the first Composer in Residence for the ensemble, so I'd heard him sing their praises for years. Vince programmed my piece I am Music back in 2014, too; Choral Chameleon was only the second group to perform it, and they gave it a gorgeous East Coast premiere.
I was born in New York City and grew up in Northern New Jersey, and until I moved away to go to college and graduate school, New York was the city I thought of as my own. So even though I live in Los Angeles now, I'm happy to be working closely with Choral Chameleon in the place where I started my journey as a composer, and where I still have lots of friends and family.
It's always an honor to be Composer in Residence for an ensemble. On one hand, it feels validating to know that this group likes your music enough to want to spend a year featuring it. It also grants you a wider timeframe in which to explore what it's like to write music with a specific group of performers in mind.
I'm entering this residency with a solid grasp of Choral Chameleon's strengths. The piece I wrote for them this fall reflects our past collaboration and builds on that. The piece I'll write in the spring, a secular work for chorus and organ, will take into account the specific people who will be bringing it to life.
As a Composer in Residence, you have more time to let your relationship with everyone in an ensemble unfold organically, and that inevitably winds its way into the music you write for them.
How will this appointment help you do things as a composer that you haven’t yet been able to do? What are you hoping to be able to test/try out, with the relative freedom Vince gives to our CIRs?
I'm excited to take advantage of Choral Chameleon's adventurousness. Choral Chameleon is willing to make bold programming choices as well as musical ones, all in the name of creating a compelling narrative.
In Footnotes to a History of Music, the first piece I've written for Choral Chameleon this year, soloists alternate speaking and singing as the chorus shifts between various wordless musical textures. The narrative isn't linear; in Kristina Marie Darling's poem, and the way I've set it, the story is presented as a series of footnotes. It's an experimental text and an experimental piece, and I don't think I would or could have written this exact piece for any other chorus.
This residency feels like a safe space for me to take bold creative risks, and as a composer, that's the mark of a dream collaboration.
What perspective do you hope to bring to students at our 2019 Summer Institute?
I've spent the last decade of my life gradually building a career as a full-time composer. There's so much I wish I'd known when I started down this career path, and I'm eager to share that knowledge with other composers.
Composers need to know how to collaborate with conductors effectively, and conductors need to know how to work with composers. I'm grateful for programs like this one that bring conductors and composers together and help de-mystify this collaborative process.
When I'm working with other composers, I offer solutions and advice for overcoming composing challenges as well as the nitty-gritty business details of making a living in this field. On a daily basis, I'm simultaneously trying to make meaningful art and to support myself with that art, and I've learned so much in the process.
At the 2019 Summer Institute, I hope I'll be a resource for composers and conductors regarding artistic decisions as well as virtually anything related to effective and meaningful composer-conductor collaboration.