composition

(“In which a Roman quotes a Greek”)

So, after all of the drama of 2015, what’s in store this year?

The number one thing that’s now set and will help in my quest for a focused year is: a place to call home. After almost eight years in NYC (and a few months in Jersey), I’m now living in a small one bedroom in Chelsea. It’s ideal for getting around town, close to all kinds of subway stops, and walking distance from many of my usual hangs. It’s only 20 minutes to visit my sister and her family, and there are great grocery stores about a block away in every direction. Last night I was able to get to Carnegie Hall to see the Philadelphia Orchestra in about 15 minutes.

View out my window… The Metlife clock tower

This is the reason to be in NYC! Especially for someone who’s gone a lot, it’s hard to justify the rent if you’re not taking advantage of the many wonderful goings on. There are so many wonderful people doing exciting things, and this year one of my top priorities will be feeling grounded in the cultural life of this city. Reconnecting with friends I haven’t seen while on the road can be difficult, but I have renewed hope and energy now that I’m in a central location.

Everything else this year flows from that, the physical settling that I can now begin. I still travel a lot, but another goal is to develop a sense of routine. Of course, my idea of routine might be very different from someone else’s – mine revolves around performance dates, writing deadlines, and flight departures. But it’s still an important concept, especially at a time when there are many balls in the air that need to be managed with careful attention.

Some of the results I hope to achieve:

Feeling ahead of the practicing game, enough so that I can do extra projects like Everyday Bach with regularity.

Polishing my existing compositions to satisfaction.
Getting ahead with the projects I’m working on. Examples: this blog, concerts at Town Hall Seattle, other programming.
Engaging more with my communities, especially my music friends and TED friends, so that the relationships I care about most are well tended.
Finding ways to integrate the issues I’m most passionate about into what I do when appropriate. Some of this needs to happen regularly, like continuing to expand diversity in my music making, both in terms of performing partners and in the music itself. Some of it is a little trickier to pin down: how does one do anything to promote campaign finance reform? Some of it is related to relationships with organizations like Street Symphony in Los Angeles, and will happen project by project over time.
More performance opportunities.

The balance of fresh and routine is always important. Last year was fresh-heavy, but this year it’ll be fun to find ways to develop routines without closing the door to great opportunities. You never know what’s coming your way, on the street, or when you glance at your inbox, or even sometimes on stage! I welcome any tips on time management, especially from those who are juggling similarly diverse projects. By March, I hope to be far enough ahead to watch one movie without feeling guilty.

To close today’s thoughts, I want to talk about the zone. We’ve all felt it, I hope. I get the feeling a lot on stage, but it can happen other places as well. There’s a zone when exercising, there’s one for reading (easy to get into), there’s one for writing, and for cooking, etc. There are also zones that are shared, when there’s a mutual connection in chamber music, for example. Or, if you’re lucky, sex.

I’m a zone junkie, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that SOME kind of routine or trigger, whether conscious or not, is very important in getting into that creative or performative zone. We create the habits we live by – I think it was Aristotle that said “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” If you’re interested in digging into the zone, I recommend this book which I read more than a decade ago. It resonated with a lot of what I felt to be true but was unable to articulate at the time: The Inner Game of Tennis.

So, 2016’s broad goals: Openness by way of focus and maintenance.

Methods of achieving this: Routine, buffer time, and management of distractions.

We’ll get into some details of the various manifestations of these practices later. For now, I leave you with a playlist and some encouragement to stake your claim on your time, and go for whatever it is you’ve been holding back on.

The Westerlies: Wish The Children Would Come On Home (SI’s Album Review)
Third Coast Percussion: The Works For Percussion 2
Jeff Buckley: Grace

by Maggie Stapleton

Outdoor locations in Washington (and all over the Pacific Coast, for some, like Nat Evans) have proven to be inspiring recording venues for new music. Ancient Lakes and the Dan Harpole Cistern are two such locations that inspired Seattle-based Ewa Trebacz (originally from Kraków, Poland).

Second Inversion’s Album of the Week is a collection of some of Ewa’s finished products which include field recordings from these locations. What makes this album so fascinating is that while much of it was recorded and produced in Poland, there’s a very special part of Washington state incorporated into some of these pieces (things lost things invisible, Errai and ANC’L’SUNR).

Furthermore, this album is part of a special annual project from The Polish Music Information Centre and Polish Composers’ Union to preserve new works and performances by living composers. Each year they publish 10 CDs, featuring a different composer In 2013, Ewa Trebacz one of the chosen composers.

Second Inversion was thrilled to talk to Ewa and Josiah Boothby (French horn collaborator on much of this disc) about each work:

The two have a longstanding friendship, which surely made the collaboration fun, but Ewa says, “Horn is AWESOME for processing or editing. You can almost make any instrument out of the horn sound… you can process it so many ways, create so many timbres, you will never be able to tell it came from the horn.”

On the method of composition, recording, and production, Ewa told us, “our method of work is somewhat like film production. We basically travel from one place to another and then later I create some basic shape of the piece that’s kind like a labyrinth of spaces. Later, in the concert performance the electronic part is reproduced by a surround speaker system at the same time the live performers bring the element of ‘here and now.’ Josiah ends up playing with himself from the past and at the same time creating the very direct
interaction of where the performance takes place.”

The Dan Harpole Cistern at Ford Worden is a large underground space with a 45-second reverberation time. Ewa recorded several musicians in this space to be used later in live performance. What’s it like to play an instrument in the Cistern? Josiah says, “It’s other worldly down there!… so often when we’re performing this difficult music by living composers, it’s hard. As a performer for me in that piece (things lost things invisible), I got to go into a resonant space, make big noises, and I got told, you know, do something a little less this way or a little more this way.. it was a lot of fun!”

Errai was another piece with samples (Josiah on horn and Anna Niedzwiedz, voice) recorded in the Cistern. Josiah goes on to say, “in a space that’s resonant enough to still sound while I’m playing another note, all of a sudden I can play chords with myself. Anna and I were not only playing with each other, we were playing with ourselves and there were several of us, simultaneously, and this is before Ewa starts doing anything with the electronics.”

Recordings from ANC’L’SUNR came from multiple locations, including the Cistern and also another Washington location, Ancient Lakes. What’s with the title? Ewa explains, “Funny thing, everyone keeps asking me what the language is, or what it means… but really, it’s an abbreviation for places where I made recordings. So, the word itself doesn’t really mean anything, but I think it’s inspiring.” This piece was produced with ATK, a software package developed by Juan Pampin, Joshua Parmenter, and Joseph Anderson at the UW DXARTS which preserves as much spatial relation in sounds as possible.

Ewa holds Masters Degrees in Composition, Computer Science and Econometrics and a PhD from the University of Washington’s Center for Digital Arts and Experimental Media (DXARTS) , where she currently works as a Research Scientist.