Banffblogging: Coda

As predicted, my own blogging from Banff proved unpossible after the first day (I also now realize I failed to take any photos whatsoever), but check the Greenleaf Music blog for ongoing updates from the workshop's Supreme Allied Commander, Dave Douglas. My Week Two faculty cohorts and I -- Matana Roberts, Ben Monder, Myra Melford, Michael Bates, and Gerald Cleaver -- have all left the mountains and snow behind. (Snow! In late May! I know it's the town with the second-highest elevation in Canada, but seriously...) Replacing us on faculty for Week the Third is the Ravi Coltrane Quartet (with Luis Perdomo, Drew Gress, and E.J. Strickland),  Mary Halvorson, and composer Giorgio Magnanensi. This lineup makes me a bit jealous of the participants who are still there -- I learned a tremendous amount from Matana, Ben, Myra, Michael, and Gerald, and I kind of wish I could have extended my stay another week to soak up a bit of what Ravi & co., Mary, and Giorgio have to offer.

The Banff schedule is not for the faint-hearted or the poorly-caffeinated. For me, a big part of the appeal of the "musician lifestyle" is that you don't have to be up at 7 AM every morning. But in Banff, the Composers Workshop hits at 8 AM sharp. Participants would come in, somewhat bleary-eyed, pass out copies of their freshly-minted tunes, and perform them for an all-star panel of celebrity judges -- viz. Michael Bates and yrs truly. (Simon Cowell sends his regrets.)  Composing is such a personal thing, and tampering with someone else's tune is always a bit fraught, but I think Michael and I were able to constructively suggest some alternate possibilities and directions in the music that the composers had not previously considered.

I gave a couple more workshops for the group, one a live-action Composition Vivisection of "Zeno" (I haven't abandoned the blog-based version... it will continue soon, I promise). The other session began with an introduction to Bob Brookmeyer's infamous White Note Piece excercise. This is something Brookmeyer assigns to all of his students. The instructions are incredibly simple: write an extended (ideally 64 bars or more), coherent melody -- i.e., one with a definite beginning, middle, and end -- using only the white notes on the piano from middle C to the C the octave above. 4/4 time, medium tempo, no chords -- just a C pedal. I had a trio come up and play a few of the participant-written White Note Pieces for the group. It's always amazing to me how different each one sounds, and how revealing they are.

Of course, given Josh's previous post and recent blogosphere/Twittersphere comments about dissonance and chromaticism, the use of the White Note Piece as a learning tool suddenly feels rather controversial! That's a can of worms I'd rather not open right now, except to mention:

• The one-octave diatonic major scale contains all 13 chromatic intervals between unison and octave, and I think it's vitally important for composers to develop a deep emotional connection to all of them. The constrained possibilities of the White Note Piece is designed to assist with that.
• At the conclusion to his epic series on Lester Young from last year, Ethan Iverson talks about how Lester's diatonicism has the potential to serve as a springboard for future creative music. I feel this is especially pertinent here. If writing a satisfying White Note Piece sounds easy or banal to you, you probably haven't tried it.

After hearing the participant-written White Note Pieces, I switched gears to demonstrate a few possible transformational techniques (transposition, inversion, retrograde, pitch/rhythm rotation, displacement, augmentation/diminution, construction/deconstruction, etc etc etc.), all applied to this familiar white-note melody:

Incidentally, the composer of this line isn't who you think it is (check out from 1:13). Thanks to Dave Douglas for tipping me off. Especially in light of the recent centennial, I really need to check out the bio.

My primary responsibility at Banff, though, was leading the bigband. We had five rehearsals to prepare about 80 minutes of not-at-all easy music: "Zeno," "Obsidian Flow," "Transit" and "Drift," plus Dave's "The Presidents" (from A Single Sky), and three participant-written tunes -- including a hot-off-the presses premiere of Johannes Luebbers' "Give Me Coffee." (I believe this chart was started on Monday and completed in the wee small hours of Friday AM.) I also realized that the first-ever public performance of my own bigband music actually took place in Banff, back when I was a participant there in 1998, so it felt good to be able to provide the composers in the group an outlet for their own large-ensemble urges.

I will, however, cop to a certain amount of trepidation after the first rehearsal -- as previously mentioned, we just barely managed to struggle through two tunes -- but the group really went all-out for the rest of the week, to the point of sacrificing a big chunk of their dinner break so we could have an additional hour of rehearsal every day. I'm enormously grateful to everyone who worked so hard to make the music come together. It was also great fun to add vibraphone (Katie Rife) and voice (Jihye Kim) to my usual sound palette.

Michael Bates (who is also a former participant) and I were both amazed at the seriousness and drive of the participants this year -- everyone was working way harder than we ever did when we were there as students. The kids were powering straight on from those 8 AM Composers Workshops through the morning and afternoon workshops to the late-afternoon ensemble rehearsals to the evening club sets to Myra Melford's midnight "Cobra" sessions (as in the John Zorn game-piece, "Cobra"). Then they'd wake up bright and early the next day to do it all over again. It was impossible not to be invigorated and inspired. I hope I can carry some of that energy with me into my own daily routine going forward -- especially since I have an intimidatingly large amount of music to write over the summer. Speaking of which: before I left Banff, I did manage to get started on the Brookmeyer feature for Newport this year. I hope it captures something of the spirit of the place.

Comments

[Josh Sinton]

1.

"Of course, given Josh's previous post and recent blogosphere/Twittersphere comments about dissonance and chromaticism, the use of the White Note Piece as a learning tool suddenly feels rather controversial!"

Actually, that sounds like a really great assignment: see if you can write an atonal melody using only the white notes of the piano. Certainly would be a good workout for the ears.

btw, I think generating dissonance is a lot easier to do harmonically rather than melodically. So to a certain extent, diatonicism is besides the point.

[Michael Bates]

2.

Thanks Darcy, for the chronicling of what was an inspiring week for me to both partake in and witness. You weren't kidding about the participant work ethic this year. I also wanted to mention the quality of the music that was being put together as well. Fantastic stuff. Thanks again to everyone for a great week. I'm sure the other two weeks were just as fun...

[Johannes Luebbers]

3.

Thanks from me too Darcy, for taking the time to come up to Banff. I know that you, Michael, Dave and all the other faculty were a great inspiration to myself and the other participants!