Part 2
How do you make use of technology? In terms of the feedback mechanism between technology and creativity, what do humans excel at, what do machines excel at?
I use technology mostly to capture and remember the details that I may forget from day to day, week to week, and even year to year. Sometimes I’ll make a piece and not have time to re-learn in it for many months or even a year. Right now, I have over 18 pieces on my computer that I demo’d on my iPhone and I’m working on relearning them for my second album that I hope to record in the next couple years.
Programs like Garageband and Sibelius allow me to have playback for ideas, but also make sheet music to share with collaborators and fans who want to play the music as well. I also use technology to have recording of my poems read and then I will play music to them in shows. Humans excel at creativity and making imperfect decisions which give art life. Technology allows for technique to be overcome, memory to be endless, and variety to be expansive.
Collaborations can take on many forms. What role do they play in your approach and what are your preferred ways of engaging with other creatives, including the artists performing your work?
I love collaborating. The first performance of much of the music from Wallflower included improvising contemporary dances interpreting my pieces for vibraphone. I love working with non-musician artists because they hear, feel, and interpret the music from feeling and not theoretical analysis and the vocabulary used is much more universal and freeing. When I do work with musicians I try to keep it about feeling, color, energy, and pace.
How is writing the music and having it performed live connected? What do you achieve and draw from each experience personally? How do you see the relationship between improvisation and composition in this regard?
Performing the music live is a part of the compositional process for me; a way to edit my compositions as well as discover new ideas. Sometimes in performance I can be self-conscious and safe and other times I can feel completely free and create completely new sections and deepen my understanding of my own music. It depends on the piece, but for the music from Wallflower, the pieces are highly improvised depending on the room, situation, audience, and instrument I’m playing.
Time is a variable only seldom discussed within the context of contemporary composition. Can you tell me a bit about your perspective on time in relation to a composition and what role it plays in your work?
I tend to side with Einstein on the subject of time, it’s relative. I love creating work that has a relative beginning and end. I love creating cells and melodies that reflect Calder’s mobiles where every way you look at the mobile is the front. Many people, including highly-trained percussionists, miss-interpret where the downbeats are in my pieces and I make them that way. I keep the subdivision flowing, but love to change where one feels the downbeat and how. I love making strictly fluid rhythmic pieces.
How do you see the relationship between the 'sound' aspects of music and the 'composition' aspects? How do you work with sound and timbre to meet certain production ideas and in which way can certain sounds already take on compositional qualities?
After writing out my pieces, I realized how little information written music gives us. Written music is truly dormant until played, it takes humans to make the magic of music real. As much as some friends love collecting scores, it doesn’t matter until it’s performed and the sounds are made and the feeling transmitted. As for sound and timbre - those are two of my favorite qualities of music. I love making the vibraphone sound like a mbira or synthesizer, like hard metal or soft gongs. There is so much to be explored with the vibraphone and all instruments.
Our sense of hearing shares intriguing connections to other senses. From your experience, what are some of the most inspiring overlaps between different senses - and what do they tell us about the way our senses work? What happens to sound at its outermost borders?
For me, music is visual and the more I cook, the more music becomes taste. It also goes the other way, if not more, in which color and the visual world is music and food is music. The visual world not only inspires me, but is crucial to my creative process, without it, I can’t make the music I see in my mind. They are directly related. I think if you’re open to it, all the senses can work together and ignite the others. I experience sound at its outermost borders like the bending of light, a slight fading and dipping of sound.
Art can be a purpose in its own right, but it can also directly feed back into everyday life, take on a social and political role and lead to more engagement. Can you describe your approach to art and being an artist?
I’ve gone through different phases with this. Before Donald Trump was elected, people weren’t paying attention to the massive social-issues facing our world, they just thought it would work out. Once Donald Trump was elected, people quickly realized they needed to make the changes to the world that he wasn’t going to. Before Trump, I was doing highly political work with a multimedia show that worked to build empathy. I wanted to use the medium of performance for a time for us all to reflect on the trauma others have faced through history. Once Trump was elected, people became obsessed with the news and were traumatised by it all. I felt a need to combat this by creating the calming and stress-reducing music that is Wallflower. Everyone is so consumed with politics; I have shifted my show to be a moment of oasis and restoration for the audience. I felt to have a show involving my older political work, though still completely relevant, was hitting people over the head and less of a unique experience, though I do think about bringing it back soon. So, whether I try or not, I’m always effected by the world around me and I try to bring my best self and work to it.
It is remarkable, in a way, that we have arrived in the 21st century with the basic concept of music still intact. Do you have a vision of music, an idea of what music could be beyond its current form?
No. Food is still food. Meat is cooked and eaten just like it was when our ancestors discovered fire and cooking. The tools to cook have changed, but we still need food to survive. Our tools have changed to make and consume music, but we still need it to feed our spirit and soul.
