Norwell High School Music Department

In this hiatus from the website over the last few days, I’ve been keeping very busy on the music front. As most of you know, I was asked by a couple of friends of mine to write processional music for their wedding–to be performed by a hodgepodge of musicians and non-musicians as the wedding party danced down the aisle.  Obviously, this was the first time such a request was made of me.  I was intrigued but also a bit nervous, since it can be a bit of a crapshoot writing music when you have no clear idea of what sorts of players you’re writing for; actually, a lot of the artistic decisions I made in writing it were bound by that simple concern.

I ended up writing a simple piece for hand drums, shaker, soprano and alto recorder. My first thought was that most anyone can make sound come out of a drum, even if the tone isn’t fantastic, and my second thought was that there are few melodic instruments on which, if one is almost completely inept at playing them, one can still sound adorable, and chief among those is the recorder, that mainstay of early-childhood music education. I also liked the pairing of the two for the sense of childlike wonderment and energy they can so easily convey.  I then went to task on the structure of the piece, deciding that something simple and clean would help the musicians learn it quicker–a simple ABA form with embellishments fit that bill nicely, as did the idea of a drum ostinato with options for improvisation, so the less-experienced players could simply fit into a groove and the more advanced players could open up and stretch their chops a bit. For a splash of color, I wrote the groove in 7/4, since the groom’s favorite number was 7. I wrote a simple, heavily pentatonic melody to mimic the musics of many of the cultures in which music is a much more participatory activity than ours.  I sent the parts to the players several weeks in advance but was still a little on edge about whether or not it would all come together properly.

The wedding is this evening, and I’m pleased to say that after roughly an hour’s worth of rehearsal time yesterday, we are a fully-functioning recorder-drum-shaker-and-ukulele band. It’s been a ton of fun working with friends both old and new to put it together and I’m really pleased to be able to make a musical offering as a wedding gift to two friends whom I’ve known for more than half my life. If you ever have the chance to do this sort of thing, I recommend it without hesitation!

Cheers,

John O’Briant

One thing with which all symphonic ensembles occasionally struggle is communication between conductor and ensemble. In our case, I don’t think it’s so much that there is a lack of communication but rather that sometimes I think I’m conveying some sort of meaning in a gesture and that the musicians aren’t picking up on it simply because they’ve not been trained to look for nuance in gesture. It’s very important, therefore, that we get out of the habit of thinking that the conductor is simply there to get everyone from Point A to Point B. While that role is certainly important, there is so much more that a conductor does–offer reassurance, nudge and tug players towards a fuller realization of their emotional commitment to a particular note or phrase, and indicate a whole range of musical ideas on the fly, from note lengths to intensities to subtle tempo shifts and a thousand other things.

For that reason, and because sometimes it does you a world of good to hear about these sorts of things from someone other than me, I managed to track down a video of my first conducting teacher working with a conducting Master Class in 2005. His name is Michael Adelson, and in addition to a number of other conducting and composing ventures, he is currently a cover conductor with the New York Philharmonic. We worked together during my most formative years, at Connecticut College when I was between the ages of 16 and 20, and more than just about anyone else he helped shape the way in which I interact with music.  Probably the most useful video for you to watch is the Q&A sessions, but you can view the entirety of the class at ArtistshouseMusic.  I hope you enjoy it!

Bonus Blogroll Entry!

I had planned to only list seven new sites on the blogroll, but I came across one this morning that I had to put up if for no other reason than its sheer utility.  aworks, simply put, is a news compilation site specializing in stories about and reviews of new music.  Other sites may go into depth about a given topic and allow the blogger to editorialize, but they are often only updated every two to three days and cover a very small slice  of the world of new music.  A site like aworks, on the other hand, is useful because even though author Robert Gable does write some of his own material, he also collects a wide range of news stories from the music world and updates just about every weekday.

If you’re interested in staying up to date, I highly recommend it!

-John O’Briant

For the more visually-inclined among us, I offer Feast of Music.  It’s a guided tour through the most current in New York City’s musical events, usually accompanied by a ton of photographic evidence.  They manage to hit everything from outdoor classical concerts by the New York Phil to accordion music, indie rock, rockabilly and any number of other things.  Fun things.

Also, I’d like to mention that we just the other day hit our 100th post–it’s a start!–and have gotten over 3,600 unique site visits.  I say that’s not a bad start at all for a website with an intentionally small audience.  Here’s to the next hundred posts and many thousands more visits!

One of the lesser-written-about aspects of the music world is management.  Drew McManus, a professional consultant for running orchestras and other non-profits, tackles the subject in his column Adaptistration, by diving headlong into issues facing the orchestral world that few people are willing to lay hands on.

When you ask people about symphony orchestras, a lot of them will tell you that style of music is dead–and in comparison to the health of orchestras in the first half of the 20th century, they might actually be on to something.  But McManus feels (as do I, as do a lot of people!) that large, full-time, professional music groups still have a lot to offer to the public.  He goes on to examine what sorts of changes these kinds of groups might make–or are currently making–to evolve and try to remain relevant.  It’s a very cool read if you like music and think you might want to stay involved in it but don’t know if you want to try to perform or teach for a living.  (If you’re that sort of person, you might also consider looking at colleges that have a music business degree in addition to a regular business program!)

DO THE MATH is the blog of the fellows from jazz-rock monsters The Bad Plus.  In addition to offering news specifically about their recordings and their touring schedule, they spend a goodly amount of time talking about current art culture, the modern jazz world and “straight-up goofs and pop culture.”  Case in point–they recently did an in-detail analysis and comparison of Tom Baker-era Doctor Who and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  They also have some really insightful posts on issues in jazz–for just one sample, see this post about a story told to Ethan Iverson (TBP’s pianist) by legendary jazz drummer Paul Motian (he of Bill Evans Trio fame) about the relationship between drummers and trumpeters.  For a pretty healthy list of some of the things they’ve covered, take a look at this list broken down by topical category.

The fourth in our week-long series of additions to the blogroll is Kyle Gann’s site, an amalgamation of writings about contemporary music, technology and the internet and politics.  Gann is a composer in his own right, and his works experiment with many of the musical elements that we often take for granted–like intonation, for instance, or rhythm.  In most (if not all!) of the music you’re probably used to listening to, the scale is divided up into 12 equal parts–half-steps, or semitones.  The distance between each of those semitones is exactly the same.  In some of Gann’s music, however, he utilizes just intonation, in which semitones are tuned by means of whole number ratios (octave=2:1, whole step=9:8, etc.), producing a music that most likely will sound out of tune to our ears but which creates a whole new, often fresh way of listening to intervals and chords.  His music also often uses multiple ostinati that are slightly out of phase with each other–imagine two recordings of the same short rhythmic pattern with one played ever so slightly faster than the other.  Believe it or not, composers have been experimenting with that since Henry Cowell and Conlon Nancarrow (two of the more famous examples) in the early- to mid-20th century.  Gann’s music also draws on jazz idiom and harmony, a practice that began close to the beginning of the 20th century but which remains strong today.

It’s clear from reading his columns that he’s both smart and passionate, and I highly recommend checking in on him periodically.  Enjoy!

In yesterday’s post, I mentioned the Analog Arts Ensemble and the Iron Composer competition they’re having.  Joe Drew, the Artistic Director of the ensemble, noticed that we’d added Sequenza 21 to our blogroll and dropped me a line to mention the Analog’s MP3 blog, which he advertises as “a steady source of new and rarely heard music.”  Thus, the most sensible next addition to our blogroll will be ANABlog.

The whole feel of ANABlog speaks very strongly to what I feel are some of the best new trends in music.  It’s striking, hip and completely unapologetic.  The front page alone mentions everything from Rondo Brothers (whose “Until We All Fall Down” is vaguely reminiscent of Beck) and Jim Croce to Harry Partch, John Cage and Luciano Berio.  Go check out some of the fantastic newer music on their blog–chances are, you won’t hear it anywhere else!

The second addition to our blogroll is a group-run website called Sequenza 21.  It specializes mostly in contemporary music, including a pretty entertaining mention recently of a music composition competition called Iron Composer Omaha, in which five Nebraskan student composers between the ages of 18 and 26 will be selected to compose a piece based on an instrumentation to be revealed at the start of the competition and which must include the use of a “secret” ingredient that the competition administrators will agree on before the start.  They only say that the secret ingredient can be “any kind of musical raw material,” which means it could be anything from a found object (a block of wood, toaster, etc.) to a chord progression or melodic fragment.  Cool stuff.

-Mr. O’Briant

Over the next few weeks you should notice the blogroll over on the right-hand side of the screen expand with the additions of some of the more popular music blogs on teh Intart00bs.  As the school year gets busier, our site’s focus turns mostly to getting out information from Mrs. Cortright and me to you, but now that things are at a rest, I’m looking forward to adding some more specifically musical content.  Check out these blogs at your leisure!

The first addition is Alex Ross’ The Rest is Noise.  Ross is the resident music critic for The New Yorker.  Lest you think that classical music (and writing about it!) is only for the grey of hair, he’s still in his thirties and has a fresh writing style that keeps his subject material from sounding stuffy.  Enjoy!