April 4, 2012

Jake Wallace has written the program note for my new (and soon-to-premiere) grade 3 piece, “Sheltering Sky.” I expect to have a recording of the piece by the end of the month, and I’ll release the piece in June. Jake’s note is below.

—

The wind band medium has, in the twenty-first century, a host of disparate styles that dominate its texture. At the core of its contemporary development exist a group of composers who dazzle with scintillating and frightening virtuosity. As such, at first listening one might experience John Mackey’s Sheltering Sky as a striking departure. Its serene and simple presentation is a throwback of sorts – a nostalgic portrait of time suspended.

The work itself has a folksong-like quality – intended by the composer – and through this an immediate sense of familiarity emerges. Certainly the repertoire has a long and proud tradition of weaving folk songs into its identity, from the days of Holst and Vaughan Williams to modern treatments by such figures as Donald Grantham and Frank Ticheli. Whereas these composers incorporated extant melodies into their works, however, Mackey takes a play from Percy Grainger. Grainger’s Colonial Song seemingly sets a beautiful folksong melody in an enchanting way (so enchanting, in fact, that he reworked the tune into two other pieces: Australian Up-Country Tune and The Gum-Suckers March). In reality, however, Grainger’s melody was entirely original – his own concoction to express how he felt about his native Australia. Likewise, although the melodies of Sheltering Sky have a recognizable quality (hints of the contours and colors of Danny Boy and Shenandoah are perceptible), the tunes themselves are original to the work, imparting a sense of hazy distance as though they were from a half-remembered dream.

The work unfolds in a sweeping arch structure, with cascading phrases that elide effortlessly. The introduction presents softly articulated harmonies stacking through a surrounding placidity. From there emerge statements of each of the two folksong-like melodies – the call as a sighing descent in solo oboe, and its answer as a hopeful rising line in trumpet. Though the composer’s trademark virtuosity is absent, his harmonic language remains. Mackey avoids traditional triadic sonorities almost exclusively, instead choosing more indistinct chords with diatonic extensions (particularly seventh and ninth chords) that facilitate the hazy sonic world that the piece inhabits. Near cadences, chromatic dissonances fill the narrow spaces in these harmonies, creating an even greater pull toward wistful nostalgia. Each new phrase begins over the resolution of the previous one, creating a sense of motion that never completely stops. The melodies themselves unfold and eventually dissipate until at last the serene introductory material returns – the opening chords finally coming to rest.

—

Thank you, Jake, for yet another great program that makes me look smarter than I am.

April 2, 2012

Are you following me on Twitter?

Please follow me.  I’m lonely over there.

April 1, 2012

Two blog posts in one day! (Did you read the other one, about my visit to Yale? You should. Click here.)

AEJ and I like to make pizza. Fellow composers David Rakowski and Beth Wiemann (bound in matrimony) also like to make pizza. Since we live near each other and are friends, we should all make pizza together! Hooray!

Step one, as it always is with pizza prep: a cocktail. I made what AEJ calls “The Koi Pond” – Grey Goose Citron, Trader Joe’s Limeade, and pickled ginger.

It’s always good form to bring a gift to somebody’s house, and since we were hosting, we received glow-in-the-dark silly putty. I’m afraid it was too light to see it glow. (Next time.) AEJ made a kitty.

AEJ and I usually just buy pre-mixed dough for the crust. D-Rak makes his dough from scratch, complete with that yeasty stuff called “yeast.” (You can view the full pizza recipe — including his sauce — on Rakowski’s blog.)

It didn’t initially look like much.

But after some rolling…

… crust!

I was excited, but Glowing Silly Putty Cat was becoming less and less impressed.

Our main contribution to the pizza was our homemade sauce. Well, mostly homemade. 1 8-oz can of organic tomato sauce, 3 Tbs. of organic tomato paste, 1 tsp. oregano, 1 Tbs. of sugar, and 2 Tbs. of fresh basil.

One ingredient we normally don’t include, but will henceforth: fresh tomato.

After pre-baking the crust, D-Rak applies extra virgin (that’s what they all say) olive oil.

The application of the green pepper.

Other toppings for this first pizza included black olive, Spanish onion, pepperoni (on some of the pizza), banana peppers, mozzarella, and cheddar cheese. The second pizza would be a little different.

Baked! (Dude.)

Pizza number two added mushrooms, marinated artichoke, and a lot more cheese (including fresh-grated parmesan). I liked this one even more. (Observe the Vegetarian Strip.)

Eating time! I’m pretty sure the picture that D-Rak is taking would soon be on Facebook. (Um, why am I the only one with a mixed drink?)

Dessert, because we didn’t plan well, was mango and strawberry mochi from Trader Joe’s. Very tasty, but messy (you end up with flour everywhere).

I thought the evening was fun and the pizza delicious. Silly Putty Cat was completely unimpressed.

On Friday, I had the opportunity to visit Yale University for a performance of my trombone concerto, “Harvest.”

I’d never been on the campus before – it’s not as if I could ever have gained admission to the school – and I was excited to visit the school that educated 5 US Presidents, 49 Nobel Laureates, Cole Porter, and AEJ’s dad.

Upon my arrival, Thomas Duffy, Yale’s Director of Bands, gave me a tour. One building we didn’t enter: the Scroll and Key tomb, home of one of Yale’s secret societies.

Little known fact: Scroll and Key membership consists entirely of cats. Siamese cats.

Spring has come to Yale!

This stunning building, designed by Gordon Bunshaft, is the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. The “windows” are translucent marble, designed to protect the books from direct sunlight.

A shot of the interior.

A fancy case…

… containing one of 48 surviving copies of the Gutenberg Bible, the first major book produced on a printing press in the 13th century.

Continuing the walking tour… This is where they house the visiting scholars from Dartmouth.

(I’m slowly learning the fun of disparaging “other” Ivy League institutions.  I say “other,” as if I’m a member of any.  But still, it’s fun, and I recommend it.  You could say things like Seth Myers’s recent joke from SNL about the student who falsified his transcripts to Harvard.  ”He’s been sentenced to four years at Cornell.”  You need to tell that joke in a cartoonishly haughty voice.)

The Yale Library no longer uses card catalogs, of course, but the drawers are still there – empty.

Some things that Yale-folk read. Forbes, and…

The Yale School of Music.

A poster for the concert!

The concert was in Woolsey Hall – a beautiful structure that holds a massive pipe organ.  Organ music would sound spectacular in there with the 15-second reverb and heavy low frequency response, but fast wind ensemble music? I guess we’d see!

The Yale Concert Band is not part of the (graduate) School of Music. It’s a volunteer (non-credit earning) ensemble, consisting primarily of Yale University undergrad students who major in things other than music. So basically this is a group of super-smart students who will eventually Rule the World, but they like playing in band (i.e., they’re My Favorite People™), so they do this as an extra-curricular activity. The contrabassoonist is normally a sax player. The timpanist? Also normally a sax player. So how’d the concert go?

It was great. The soloist, Yale School of Music trombone lecturer, Scott Hartman, is an awesome player. (I later learned that he was the trombone soloist in the Brass Band of Battle Creek’s performance of “Asphalt Cocktail” in 2010.) Scott is very theatrical in his performance, at times firing these blasts of power left-to-right across the audience, following with a glissando aimed straight ahead but up towards the balcony. I loved it.  The second movement was beautiful, and the last movement was light and fun.  And that first movement: badassery.

And the band? They nailed it. This was the first non-music-major ensemble I’ve heard play the piece, and I had no idea what to expect, but as I told them all after the concert, they played the sh*t out of the piece. (Sax-turned-contrabassoon-player: You should play more contra. Sax-turned-timpani player: play more percussion. Your time is better than some percussionists I’ve heard…) I really hope I get an opportunity to return sometime soon to work with Tom Duffy and his ensemble again. Next time, I hope to somehow get into the School of Music’s building, where I can contribute to the corruption of the minds of Yale’s composers-in-training.

It might sound goofy, to be able to say “I spent the day working at Yale” makes me feel proud and humbled. I’m just relieved they didn’t ask to see my SAT scores.

March 27, 2012

I got a new camera on Friday: the Canon 5D Mark 3.  I’ve only been able to play with it a tiny bit so far – not enough to justify a full blog post – so I’ll intersperse a few pictures from the camera throughout this post, which has nothing to do with cameras or photography or flowers, but everything to do with “Strange Humors” and clarinets.

Back is 2009, a clarinet grad student at Middle Tennessee State University emailed me to ask if I would considering adapting “Strange Humors” – my piece originally written for string quartet and djembe, then arranged for concert band, and then sax quartet and djembe – into yet another version, this one for clarinet quartet and djembe.  Could that work?  I wasn’t sure. My favorite version is still the original for string quartet, because nothing has that same “bite” that you can accomplish with the hard downbow of a single string instrument.  Wouldn’t clarinets end up having to soften every attack, making the piece sound… mushy?  Could clarinets get any sort of edge to their sound, and accomplish it throughout the ensemble?  (Just ask Loki, shot at ISO 8000, and with zero out-of-camera noise reduction applied.)

My response to the grad student – Jessica Harrie (currently a DMA student in the awesome clarinet studio at Michigan State): sure, if I can just transpose the sax quartet parts for you.  Jessica agreed, I made her a set of very ugly parts (that were still labeled “soprano sax,” “alto sax,” etc.), and I completely forgot about the little side project.

In January of this year – a full three years after I’d sent those parts to MTSU – I received an email from somebody with the following text:

Hello… I’m wondering where I can purchase a copy of Strange Humors for clarinet quartet… thanks.

I didn’t even remember making parts for clarinet, so I ignored the email.

Then, two minutes later, another email, from a different person:

Hello! Just heard Strange Humors by John Mackey for clarinet quartet and djembe and I’m wondering where I can purchase this! Thanks.

What the… At first, I thought somebody had arranged it without my permission (that would be: bad) and performed it somewhere, and these two people heard it and liked it (that would be: good). So I replied to one of these emails, asking where they heard it (i.e., whom did I need to sue?). Moments later, a reply with a link to the YouTube recording of the piece. I clicked, saw Jessica’s name, and the whole thing came back to me. Oh right! Nobody would be sued after all (that would be: I guess good?). But how did this sound? Hot damn. It sounded awesome. Check it out:

Damn, that’s a great ensemble! Thanks to their performance, the whole thing works so much better than I expected. Thank you to Jessica Harrie, Clay Hensley, and Cordaro Hudson on Bb soprano clarinets, and Gordon Inman on bass clarinet. Whereas the original version of the piece, with all of the string glissandi, sounded almost Arabic, the clarinets transformed that sound – pretty far culturally – to the world of klezmer.

Hearing that the piece not only works well with clarinets, but becomes a very different piece, I decided to make an official, edited version, which I am releasing today. (The printed version is in a different key than the recording above. I lowered it a full step to match the original string quartet version – and to take advantage of the low concert C of the bass clarinet, one of the coolest notes on any instrument.)  You can view the perusal score on the new page for Strange Humors: version for clarinet quartet and djembe.