The final Composer Spotlight for our appearance at this year's Midwest Clinic conference features MCI composer Kevin Day! Kevin's work for wind ensemble, Havana, will be performed by the Clements High School Symphonic Band as part of their concert on Friday, December 20 from 6:15pm-7:15pm in Skyline Ballroom W375AB.
In addition, an arrangement of Day's chart Windy City (arranged for big band by MCI composer Josh Trentadue) will be featured during the Jazz New Music Reading Session on Friday, December 20 from 10:30am-11:30am at Ballroom W196.

VIEW OUR COMPOSER SPOTLIGHT FOR JOSH TRENTADUE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT HIS ARRANGEMENT OF WINDY CITY

Be sure to check out this performance and the other events featuring music written by our MCI composers! In addition, you can also stop by Booth 2008 in the exhibition hall to meet 10 of our members and learn more about our initiative!

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The composer writes the following about Havana:

"Havana was a wind ensemble piece that I started working on in 2017, got about 30 measures into writing, and then put on the shelf. I couldn't think of what to do with it or come up with an idea, so I ended up just putting it aside until I could. I ended up forgetting about it and while I was searching through my music files one night in September 2018, I stumbled on this work and found inspiration to write on what I had. I wanted to tell a story with the piece and make it authentic, and so I spent a lot of time carefully writing the work. After messing with a few titles and feeling a good amount of frustration, I decided to go with Havana, despite there being a viral pop song already in existence with the same name (a song that is honestly a guilty pleasure of mine to listen to). This piece, however, has nothing to do with the Camilla Cabrello mega-hit.

Havana (For Wind Ensemble) is a 7.5-minute work that is heavily influenced by Cuban music, rhythms, and percussion. I wanted to highlight different dance genres such as the Salsa, Mambo, and Cha-Cha, while also making the piece in my own voice. I have a strong love for Latin music and so this was incredibly fun to write. I sought to paint a mental image of the city of Havana, this beautiful landscape, and the culture that it is known and beloved for. There are many "Latin-influenced" pieces for band already and so I wanted to make Havana stand out as one that is exciting and memorable. I hope that performers and audiences will tap their foot, bop their heads, and feel the music."

--program notes by the composer

Havana is published through Murphy Music Press and can be purchased here. We look forward to hearing the Clements HS Symphonic Band's performance of this work!

The next Composer Spotlight for the 2019 Midwest Clinic conference features MCI composer Chris Evan Hass! His piece Volcanic Ash (2017) will be performed by the Donald Sinta Saxophone Quartet as part of their concert, scheduled to take place on Friday, December 20 from 12-1pm at Ballroom W190. Be sure to check out this performance and the other events featuring music written by our MCI composers! In addition, you can also stop by Booth 2008 in the exhibition hall to meet 10 of our members and learn more about our initiative!

The composer writes the following about the piece (program notes taken from his website):

"Volcanic Ash is a boisterous and lively piece for saxophone quartet, fusing the harmonic language of Middle Eastern music with the form, rhythms, and overall intensity found in heavy metal. The piece features constant meter changes, low open fifth ‘power chords’, and sweeping arpeggios, but is complemented by a calm and reflective chorale.
Volcanic Ash was written for Donald Sinta Quartet’s Composition Competition in 2017, taking Dan Graser’s advice of writing a quartet that is 'harder, faster, and louder' than my first saxophone quartet, Polar Vortex, in an attempt to challenge the incredibly talented ensemble."

Volcanic Ash is published through Murphy Music Press and can be purchased here. We look forward to hearing the Donald Sinta Quartet's performance of this work!

We are excited to share with you the recordings from our collaborative concert with Front Porch! This event (titled "Six Climate Visions") featured the premieres of new music written by five of our MCI composers - Duncan Petersen-Jones, Eddie Jonathan Garcia Borbon, Isaac Mayhew, Ali Balighi, and Conner Leigh Shaw. Front Porch is, from their website, "a mixed quartet that invites audiences to engage personally with music by passionate, youthful voices, reimagining the classical concert experience with warmth and love as its foundation. Feeling equally at home with opera singers, composers, folk artists, and everyone in between, Front Porch is committed to exploring the expressive possibilities of its uncommon configuration of violin, bassoon, piano, and percussion."

​Check out the recordings below! This post will be updated as more of them are published.

VIDEOS:

Starting today, we will be highlighting the 2019 Midwest Clinic events featuring music written by our MCI composers! If you are attending the conference this year, be sure to check out each of these performances! In addition, you can also stop by Booth 2008 in the exhibition hall to meet 10 of our members and learn more about our initiative!

First up is a new work for concert band by MCI composer JaRod Hall. Hall's composition Lost Woods Fantasy (2019) will be performed by the Berkner High School Symphonic Band I as part of their concert, scheduled to take place on Wednesday, December 18, from 3-4pm in Skyline Ballroom W375AB.


Lost Woods Fantasy is published through FJH Music, who writes the following:

"This unique work follows a young group of friends in search of adventure in a nearby forest late at night. Once inside, the trees around them begin to stretch and seal off the entrance. Trapped inside, they must find a way out..."

-FJH Music

​We are looking forward to hearing the Berkner High School Symphonic Band's performance of Lost Woods Fantasy next week!

Our final Composer Spotlight for our upcoming collaborative concert with Front Porch features a new work by MCI composer Eddie Jonathan Garcia Borbon. The concert is TONIGHT at 8pm EST at McIntosh Theatre, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI - you can livestream this special event here: https://smtd.umich.edu/performances-events/live-stream-mcintosh/?fbclid=IwAR08hnAtD2f8jes2yj31PZLYSX_e0Bl6l74vdnVRIlSFJQyxsCFTMXLDszA

Each of the five composers who will be featured in this event were asked to create a piece of music reflecting environmental issues within their respective local areas. Borbon's piece addresses the presence of air pollution in Colombia:

Describe your inspiration for composing the piece.
The inspiration for this work was the air pollution present in Bogotá - Colombia. According to the analyzes carried out by the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development, air pollution in Colombia is one of the environmental problems of greatest concern for Colombians. This is due to the impacts it generates in both health and the environment, and it is also the third factor social cost generator after water pollution and natural disasters.

In accordance with the provisions of Title 5 of Decree 1076 of 2015 and adjusting the definition, Atmospheric Pollution is "the phenomenon of accumulation or concentration of pollutants, understood as physical phenomena or substances or elements in solid, liquid or gaseous state, causing adverse effects on the environment, renewable natural resources and human health that alone, or in combination, or as reaction products, are emitted into the air as a result of human activities, natural causes, or a combination of these."

The MinAmbiente establishes with Resolution 610 of 2010 the maximum permissible levels of the following criteria pollutants: Particulate Material (PM10 and PM2.5), sulfur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), tropospheric ozone (O3) and monoxide of carbon (CO), as well as the maximum permissible levels for six (6) unconventional pollutants with carcinogenic effects.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), Colombia is the second country in Latin America with more air pollution, with an average of 19,000 deaths annually throughout the territory. Bogotá, the capital, records a value of 15 PM2.5 of exposure (amount of tuxedo it produces). The pollution of the air that is in the environment is produced by different factors that affect the atmospheric layer, increasing the great variety of polluting sources that modify the natural layer and all the components that are in it.

What is the overall conception for the piece (for example, is it programmatic or abstract? Is there a specific formal structure, color, or musical device you employed?)
This is an abstract work which deals with the harmful effects of air pollution in Colombia.

What are some of the goals you strove to accomplish in writing the work?
I wanted to use in every instrument of this unique ensemble some of their extended techniques, and from there, explore the relationships created with these techniques in a manner that ties into the overall theme of this work.

Is there anything specific about your piece you'd like your audience to look out for?
The importance of fighting for the environment, and specifically against air pollution

The next Composer Spotlight of our upcoming collaborative concert with Front Porch features a new work by MCI composer Ali Balighi. Balighi's piece Daramad brings to life traditional Persian music, including a popular traditional song.

The composer writes the following:
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"Daramad" in Persian means the starting of music, the moment when every performer would be ready to play. This music is made by a member of a traditional group and it describes the mode of concerts in traditional styles; however, nowadays neither traditional musicians nor younger players use this form in their current repertoires.

My piece Daramad was composed according to an old Persian music Be Soye To. This song is a famous piece which was written by Majid Vafadar in Dashti mode. Simple structure, melody, harmony, and the profound atmosphere this song creates inspired me to write my piece in a manner different from my usual practices. I believe that form, as an important aspect of music, is truly made during the compositional process. Form is also an abstract concept that should be created from a new perspective in every contemporary piece. Moreover, the use of older and traditional materials is a good way to describe new scenes. Audiences who have some understanding of these aspects of music and composition can follow these new ideas when used in a new piece.

Composing for a new ensemble which I do not have enough experience writing for was my biggest challenge. However, Front Porch, as a professional ensemble, helped me to search for new and artistically fulfilling ways of self-expression.
All in all, for this piece will be played in the United States, I hope that Daramad will increase its audience's interest in Persian culture.

The next Composer Spotlight of our upcoming collaborative concert with Front Porch features a new work by MCI composer Isaac Mayhew. Each of the five composers who will be featured in this event were asked to create a piece of music reflecting environmental issues within their respective local areas. Mayhew's piece Elegy for Uncommon Ground addresses the presence of climate change and its impact in the state of Minnesota:

Describe your inspiration for composing the piece.
The idea for that piece is to capture the experience of living through climate change on an everyday level. I live in Minnesota, in the center of the continent, where I'm not faced with the tangible effects on a day-to-day basis in the way that people elsewhere are. This is not to say that there aren't very real consequences to be felt. However, since we are talking about such a macro-concept, it can be hard to feel on a daily level - except for on social media, where there is still a raging debate about it.

What is the overall conception for the piece (for example, is it programmatic or abstract? Is there a specific formal structure, color, or musical device you employed?)
I was reading an online article about the ways in which my home state will feel the effects of climate change over the next thirty years, when I discovered the comments section. For this piece, each movement title is a Facebook comment, and within each movement, I tried to capture the both the tone and feeling behind the comment itself as well as my own experience of reading it.

What are some of the goals you strove to accomplish in writing the work?
​I wanted to capture the frustration of having a debate over widely greed upon facts and realities. I also wanted to mock the willful ignorance of climate change deniers.

What are some of the challenges you faced in writing the work?
​As I was writing the piece I found myself incorporating a lot of seemingly unrelated musical elements, and was having a hard time making them fit together. In the end, I decided to leave the piece a little rough around the edges because I think that gives it character and also works as an analogy for the chaos of our social media feeds.

Is there anything specific about your piece you'd like your audience to look out for?
​The second movement has some interesting things to listen for. I wanted to poke fun at the sort of "Baby Boomer Nostalgia" that I see as a major impediment to taking real action on climate change. The two main themes in this movement appear in the following places:

• Beginning to Letter A (pulled from the song La Bamba by Los Lobos)
• Letter B to Letter C (no quote in particular, but it supposed to sound like the music from Grease)

Both of these strike me as really nostalgic "Baby Boomer" music. Both sections are in 7/8 so that while the melodic and harmonic material make it really tempting to just sit back in the groove, the rhythmic framework repeatedly upsets that. The two themes are also interrupted by more serious, moody material. This is meant to portray the nostalgia that I was just describing as a way of avoiding the darker truth about what is really happening to the planet. From D to the end, the idea is that the moody "in-between" material takes over and is developed to its natural conclusion.

What do you hope your audience ultimately take away the most from hearing your work?
I would hope that listeners would be able to laugh at the humor in the piece but also make connections between the piece and their own lives. Despite this being about climate change specifically happening in Minnesota, this is a greater issue happening globally.

For you, as a composer, what has been the most beneficial and rewarding part of your collaborative process with Front Porch?
Front Porch is an exciting and upcoming music ensemble and it is an honor to have the opportunity to write for them. They have a very unique instrumentation that presents many possibilities. 

---UPDATED DECEMBER 28, 2020 W/ VIDEO TRANSCRIPT---
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​We are excited to begin sharing with you the Composer Spotlights for our collaborative concert with Front Porch! This event will be taking place on December 11, 2019 in Ann Arbor, Michigan and will feature world premieres of new music written by 5 of our MCI composers.

For this concert, each of the composers were asked to create a piece of music reflecting environmental issues within their respective local areas. MCI composer Conner Leigh Shaw's piece B00m and Bust addresses the issue of fracking at the height of the oil and gas industry within his home state of Colorado.

​Learn more about Conner's new piece below:

Hi! My name is Conner Leigh Shaw; I'm a composer from Greeley, Colorado, and I currently reside in Los Angeles, California. I'm here today to talk about my collaboration with the Front Porch ensemble - they are currently working on a piece I wrote entitled B00m and Bust.

B00m and Bust is inspired by a number of things that I have both perceived growing up in Colorado, and that continue to be relevant to people living in Colorado, with regard to our environment and our energy future. My inspirations for the piece first started with my memory of my high school graduation having a backdrop of an oil fracking well. Something as important in a young student's life, as a graduation had this backdrop of fracking, which unfortunately in many cases of it showing to cause health issues in communities as well as a non-sustainable resource. My other inspirations for this piece are historical, and, in my program notes, I note that the oil and gas boom in Colorado (and the economy it's generated) is nothing new. There have been many different eras of generational, or temporal, economies in Colorado, including the first non-Native American settlers who were often silver and gold miners that were headed west in the [California] Gold Rush, and then, during the 20th century, radioactive materials were sought after in Colorado (and also stored in Colorado) during the Cold War. And, there seems to be these recurring cycles of "boom-and-bust" economies - hence, the title of my piece.

​The piece, overall, is extremely programmatic. I guess the most programmatic element of this is - in the piece - I ask the ensemble, at the end, to (through their instruments and their sound); I ask them to create the sound of a low jack-pump, which is a device that extracts oil. I ask them to relay the sound of this jack-pump as if it's the last, lone jack-pump left in the state and nothing else exists there, which is essentially - definitely - a possible scenario in the future, considering the way the environment is going. This idea of environmental immediacy also had a strong connection to the concept of the piece. Throughout the piece, there is a theme that is in a bluegrass style that every time it recurs - like in a rondo; every time the theme recurs - it becomes more and more frantic, and more and more chaotic things happen, and so this idea of cycles speeding up and events speeding up and becoming more disastrous is key and essential to the piece.

​However, I sought to contrast this with the potential for us to change our environmental and energy future. Contrasted with the more frightening sections of the piece - including the end of the piece being somewhat apocalyptic - there are moments of hope that bleed through, and those moments are the potential for people in Colorado, as well as throughout the world, to revolutionize the kind of energy we are consuming, and also to ensure that what we are doing here on Earth is not "boom-and-bust" and that everything we do on Earth can be sustained.

Along those lines, I would say that, in part, some of the piece - because of its explicitly programmatic and somewhat political leanings - the piece is definitely an example fitting in with the rest of the four Front Porch collaborative concert [pieces] that they will be doing. The piece is intended, in some way, to be somewhat a piece of activism, and also to grow people's awareness.

The piece itself uses certain elements that are supposed to help the audience be a bit more aware of what's going on, so - for instance - this idea that (during my research for this piece, the idea I found that) there were over 20,000 oil wells in Colorado in 2017, just in the county I lived in alone, factored heavily in this, and so I was doing things in the piece where I was taking the number of oil wells; I was turning those into musical notes based on the [foured] system (taking notes 1-12 and assigning those chromatic pitches). I was also doing things where the words "oil" and "gas," the letters themselves, were translated into notes. So, the idea of oil and gas, and the number of wells in Colorado in the county I lived in, were both included in the piece.

This was challenging, too - to try and find something that an audience would want to be entertained by, but also have a piece of activism - and so those elements were very difficult to try to coalesce into one piece. But, the important thing is that - what I felt was most important was that - there were at least some sections of the piece that were hopeful.

For me, as a composer, I was extremely interested in this opportunity to create a piece based on environmental issues, since it weighs so heavily on me and my daily life, especially being in this generation of millenials that is extremely worried about our future. In a way, the most rewarding thing for me about composing this piece was that I was able to express some of my issues and anguish in my own community and kind of externalize them in a way that was both entertaining, but also a piece of activism that I had not necessarily done with music before. I actually continue to hope to do this kind of writing in the future that brings awareness to certain subjects in a tasteful and entertaining, but also meaningful, way. I really appreciate the opportunity from Front Porch ensemble, and I hope you all enjoy my piece B00m and Bust.

​Thank you.