So, I had my very first opportunity to be properly published. NewMusicBox asked and intended to publish a piece on the Nevada Encounters of New Music festival held in Las Vegas (NEON), and I fortuned into being the writer. Being sidetracked by fatherhood, work, and out-of-town business, I missed the deadline by a fair margin, and the piece wasn’t carried. But, since I know composers (and all artists, really), want and need to have some words written about their work, I will post here the article that would have run, had I been a bit more punctual.
Enjoy.
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Hammering the Stakes in Vegas
When thinking of Las Vegas, “New Music” (oh yes, those quotation marks and capital letters mean what you think) might rank thirty-eighth on the list of things that come to mind. Might. In fact, it would probably be much lower, and long may it have remained so were it not for the efforts of Drs. Virko Baley and Jorge Villavicencio-Grossmann. These two, composition faculty at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas have begun the unlikeliest of annual events in a town where Wayne Newton reigns supreme – a bonafide composition symposium. Nevada Encounters of New Music, affectionately – though in acronymically questionable logic – known as NEON, was held for the first time in March 2007 at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Conceived of by Baley and Grossmann, the aim of the symposium was to bring together exceptional young and emerging composers from lands far and wide in an environment where they would have the opportunity to interact with established composers of varied musical tastes and backgrounds.
The faculty in the first year was Steven Stucky, Paul Chihara, Virko Baley and Jorge Villavicencio-Grossmann. George Tsontakis was scheduled to round out the group but was unable to make it on account of bad weather. This year’s installment included Bernard Rands, Chen Yi, Dmitri Tymozcko and Bruce Broughton in addition to the event’s hosts. The cavalcade of composers has been lured, in mystique typical of Baley, by “an offer they cannot refuse. I’ve been around a bit, and I think that they trusted us to make this a good event – and we have not disappointed them so far.” Whatever this offer may be, it has garnered quite an impressive array of teachers for an upstart festival in a city whose idea of cultural refinement is typically a topful dance revue. Although Las Vegas has certainly earned this perception through its colorful history, it may be unfair to thoughtlessly brand the city as such. According to Baley, the public’s attitude toward new music in Las Vegas “is probably not that different from that in most other greater metropolitan areas.” He aptly points out that the arts in any major city derive their support not only from within the city proper, but from the surrounding area as well. In the western United States – and Las Vegas, in particular – this poses an additional challenge, because the cities are so often isolated from each other. Unless the population of a metropolitan area meets a “critical mass…around 2.5 million,” it is difficult for the arts to become self-sustaining without nearby sources of support, and Las Vegas, with roughly 1.5 million people and no real sizeable cities or towns in its sphere of influence (Salt Lake City, Phoenix, Los Angeles and San Diego each possess their own orbits and exert greater gravitational force than Las Vegas due to geographical proximity), does not meet this criterion.
Despite the fact that there are certain structural prerequisites that have not yet been established, Baley is certain that “there is an audience for the new here.” The obstacle? Reaching that audience. To do so, he contends that NEON must have the financial resources to cast a broad advertising net that will run from three to four months prior to the festival in Las Vegas, Phoenix, Flagstaff, Los Angeles and San Diego. An additional future goal will be the engagement of the tourist market, trying to draw a fraction of the dollars and consumers that flow so effortlessly through the local economy. Once the public relations budget accounts for more than a quarter of expenditures, there is no room for further complaint, and then NEON must uphold its end of the bargain, by providing superb performances of interesting and challenging new music. “Truth in advertising” is the mandate by which Baley believes the festival must be guided.
The metaphorical lights of NEON have not only attracted prestigious faculty but also a fine collection of participants both musically and geographically diverse. Participants and auditors have come from more than ten states and five countries, and it is not difficult to understand why. For the participation fee, composers receive a forty-five minute private lesson with each member of the faculty; they earn access to seminars presented by the faculty composers on their own music or a topic of personal expertise; they attend nightly concerts populated with works by the faculty, participating composers and past winners of the Max Di Julio Prize, the festival’s top honor, a commission for a work to presented at the subsequent edition, this year represented by Shadowings by Matthew Schreibeis; and they receive a high quality performance and live recording of the work chosen for inclusion in the festival. The insistence upon personal, private instruction with the faculty is one of Dr. Baley’s chief dictates for NEON. “Most conferences do only masterclass instruction, where each participating student composer gets fifteen minutes of attention from the visiting faculty. It is not a bad thing, but it does not give each student the kind of attention that one-on-one for forty-five minutes does.” It provides an insight to the genuinely pedagogical intent of the experience for the participants, and is an interesting manifestation of one devoted teacher’s viewpoint. For a man who doesn’t believe that composition – at its most fundamental level – can be taught, it is the intensity of this interaction and discussion of one’s own music with established that provides the greatest value of return. The seminars also render salient and appreciable musical discussion. To hear Chen Yi speak about her youth in the midst of the Chinese Cultural Revolution and the extraordinary lengths to which she went to gain knowledge of not only music itself, but western musical works, all the while finding the ability to laugh and to produce exquisite music cannot help but be an inspiration to those privileged enough to find themselves in the American loop. Dmitri Tymozcko presented an additional seminar on his theoretical work and Bruce Broughton presented on film music, expanding the scope of seminar topics to other areas of great interest to contemporary composers.
Beyond the instructional elements of NEON, there is a great “lever” in the form of the recording received. The performances and recordings are of professional caliber, with each concert presenting both faculty and student pieces under the eminently capable musical umbrella of the two ensembles-in-residence. NEXTET, UNLV’s new music ensemble is comprised of students, faculty, and alumni. The other ensemble is New York’s Talea Ensemble, a contemporary music ensemble under the artistic direction of percussionist Alex Lipowski and “devoted to the advocacy and performance of contemporary music that challenges and inspires performers and listeners alike.” Talea is essentially a reformation of last year’s guest ensemble-in-residence, the East Coast Composers Ensemble, with fantastic young performers bearing impressive new music credentials and hailing from throughout the Northeast Corridor. One of the truly exceptional facets of NEON is the singular commitment to and preparation of every piece or excerpt performed at the symposium. Both groups were already well prepared before the beginning of the event, and they have one or two rehearsals with the composer scheduled throughout the course of things. Of all observations made by participating composers, the one that appears to be universal is the deep satisfaction – even to the point of surprise – that each has with the performance level they received. This is no accident, of course. Baley and Grossmann wanted to bring in an ensemble that would be focused solely on the works being performed in conjunction with NEON, as students and performers of new music are so often over-extended. “[ECCE’s] participation the first year was crucial to the success of the performances. No less so [Talea’s] this year,” Baley said. Of the sixteen pieces performed, Talea Ensemble handled six of those and augmented NEXTET’s forces for three additional works. Due to the aforementioned rehearsal time, each composer is able to “work with the ensembles to insure the most accurate performance, both formally and emotionally.” The embarrassment of riches will only grow more severe next year, as the UNLV Hank Greenspun School of Journalism will be producing a video recording of the 2009 edition of NEON, which will then be made available for broadcast by TNC Recordings.
The formula crafted here is working, and though the festival is new, its roots extend nearly forty years into the past. At a time long before Las Vegas’s current boom and fledgling near-legitimacy, Dr. Baley began an Annual Contemporary Music Festival. From 1971 through the mid-1980’s, the festival was held every year, earning in 1975 the first National Endowment for the Arts grant ever awarded in the state of Nevada to establish the Las Vegas Chamber Players in residence at UNLV. Upon being hired in 2004, Dr. Jorge Grossmann began floating the idea that would eventually become NEON, with the duo first considering some sort of collaboration with other existing organizations that have established annual conferences. Baley says, “We quickly shelved that idea and decided that we wanted to create something particularly our own, with our own profile and own raison d’être.” Both years have been made possible through the generous underwriting of Dean Jeffrey P. Koepp of the UNLV College of Fine Arts. That faith has been rewarded by positive word-of-mouth growth. By Baley’s count, there were 22 applicants to the first festival, and the 56 this year more than doubled that number. Cautious predictions suggest a total nearer 100 for next year, at which point the selection process “will start to become very difficult.” There is a commitment to limiting the number of participating students and auditing students to ensure the quality of all elements remains very high. The potential to win the festival’s competition for the Max Di Julio Composition Prize is another hook with which to catch the interest of potential applicants. The prize is a $1,000 commission awarded by the faculty to one of the participating composers to create a new work for NEXTET at the following NEON. This year, another prize was given for the composition of a work that uses the trumpet as a solo instrument. This was secured by one of UNLV’s senior faculty, Dr. Kenneth Hanlon. Wah-hei Ng and Eun Young Kim were the winners of the former, and latter, respectively, and the premieres of their commissioned works will be part of NEON 2009.
And what significance NEON 2009? “The third year is crucial,” Baley declares. “If the first year goes well, most think that it was luck. The second tends to either confirm that luck – if such a thing exists – was responsible, or it was not. The third year establishes a kind of legitimacy that is very important: we become eligible to start applying for grants. Grants bring an imprimatur that legitimizes the event and makes it an accepted part of the national scene.” He doesn’t foresee any dramatic changes to the format that has worked well so far, but he hopes to snare some additional visibility by incorporating the world premiere of a work by one of the distinguished guest faculty composers. Slyly, he adds: “2009 is also the season that will acknowledge my seventieth year of existence. I may pull rank and have a special event to celebrate that before I dissolve into the mist.”
It is at this point that I am afraid I must make a minor confession. I was a participant in the first edition of NEON. The experience that I had gave me an interesting and unique perspective on this year’s festival, with which I engaged as an observer. The performances and lessons were of unmatched value, and that appears to have maintained into this year, as well. The opening night concert began with the raucous Fire by Stephen Bachicha, one of two UNLV students chosen as festival participants. Shadowings, commissioned from Matthew Schreibeis with the 2007 Max Di Julio Prize was next on the program, and the piece was deserving of its inscription. A delicate and artful realization of “a collection of Japanese ghost stories by Lafcadio Hearn, one of the first Americans to document Japanese culture at the turn of the last century.” Schreibeis exploits the timbral characteristics of his chosen quartet to create an ethereal and haunting sound world that captures the essence of pre-special effects terror without merely mimicking the accepted vernacular of horror music. The evening was completed by Chen Yi’s Qi, another cross-cultural exploration of a specific idea, and Dmitri Tymozcko’s Beat Therapy, a jazz and funk influenced piece fun for jazz(-ish) ensemble and computer.
The second evening’s concert was colored by four pieces, dramatically different from each other. Burlesca, by Dante De Silva, was an entertaining and amusing trio that seems to capture an imagined ballroom somewhere in a world where the dancers aren’t strictly governed by the presence of an ever-present metronomic marking. The clarinet and violin cooperate on lines that at times seem to be drawn directly from Piazzola, while the piano glibly pounds on minor seconds in the high register, creating a delightful stylistic counterpoint that suits the post ex facto title. The second piece on the Friday concert was Jason Slaughter’s, The Ayatollah’s Sermon, for piano solo. Slaughter was the second participant from UNLV, and his work, which he states “is not politically motivated”, but rather an indictment of those who would misuse and abuse the power of religious office, is a fiendish piece that opens with a somewhat reserved call to prayer, as it were, and quickly veers into a fiery realm of pianistic virtuosity and venom. Forceful and energetic, the work makes liberal use of the entire range of the piano, drawing an immense sonic weight from the instrument. Bruno Siberchicot’s Changing Lights was a palate cleansing exploration of the different sonorities afforded by the oboe, somewhat reminiscent of a Berio Sequenza. Professor Stephen Caplan captured the subtlety of the work while embracing some of the more savage aspects with due grit and weight. A Primer for Malachi, composed by Bruce Broughton, closed the second evening with a roaming and substantial musical sojourn, performed admirably by members of the Talea Ensemble. The technical demands made of the performers are notable, and the tremendous unity attained by the group is a testament to their musicianship and the adequate rehearsal time allotted for the composer and performers to refine the interpretation of the piece.
Saturday’s concert began with the first of this year’s Max Di Julio prizewinners, Wah-Hei Ng. Sleepless City is a musical representation of a night spent on Tokyo streets among people who were stranded or shuffling about en route to work or some otherwhere. The deftness and lightness in the piano writing creates the impression of electric-lit in-betweenness, and an indubitably cold musical sound. Much like the feeling one might get in the sort of scenario that inspired the piece, in which Ng and his friends missed the last train in Tokyo and spent the night awaiting the first departure of the next morning. The intricate and enticing piano writing continued with Alex Miller’s Actions and Resonances, performed with exacting control and sensitivity by Elena Miraztchiyska. The piece sounds like Keith Jarrett, only less driven by interiority and more shaped by expansive melodic lines that create a very clearly-defined architecture that one can almost see. This is, much to the chagrin of new music’s detractors, beautiful music, plain and simple. Kye Ryung Park, one of the professors responsible for the effective running of the festival, received a world premiere of her work, Erneuerung, a contemplative investigation and self-discussion of her own musical styles that translates into a cohesive blend of conflicting cultural influences, each vying for equal consideration in her writing. Another host’s composition followed. Jorge Grossman’s Three Etudes for piano, commissioned by the Nevada Music Teachers Association, was aptly constructed for the genre implied by the title. Studies of the possibilities afforded by the piano, which the composer acknowledges is an ongoing personal curiosity and investigation. Each of the three possessed a markedly different character, yet they sounded as if they belonged together, which is a tricky line to negotiate. Petroushka Dreams, by John Bilotta, was a delightful reminder of an old favorite, evoking Stravinsky’s Petroushka through direct and abstract musical evocations, imagining life after murder for the famed puppet. Dancelike and faithful to the character of the ballet, the work is an interesting example of the meta-musical world, in which we are now drawing upon the imagined characters of previous works for our own. It makes one wonder about Gaspard.
The final concert ended the festival in grand style. a quiet way, by Eun Young Lee, the other Max Di Julio Prize honoree this year, made use of the ensemble to present a Dickinson song with an appropriate degree of remove, avoiding any tendency toward sentimentality, and instead boiling the materials down to clipped, independent gestures. The treatment was very well suited to the text, and the performers did a magnificent job of capturing the underlying discourse. Movements from Virko Baley’s Dreamtime, an epic cycle for Pierrot ensemble, were next. The movements chosen illustrated an intense dynamism and a lithe gentleness of gesture and texture that successfully draw the listener into another space, where the environs are dictated not by the concert hall, but by the music coming from the stage. Utterly absorbing, in every way, with particularly remarkable playing from cellist, Christopher Gross. The festival was concluded by the other elder statesman, Bernard Rands. Fragments from his Sappho, sounded as if duly encased in gold. An inexpressible depth and lushness permeated the piece, and when the last notes were sounded, it was difficult to accept the finality of it, because it so engendered a desire for more. Impeccably orchestrated and lyrically powerful, it provided a satisfying closure to an unabashedly successful event.
Justin Capps (b. 1980)
Justin Capps is a composer living in Las Vegas, having received his M.M. in Music Composition/Theory from UNLV in December 2007. When not organizing dots on a page or actively chasing musical development with something like abandon, Justin occupies himself with other facets of music, literature, and unceasing admiration of his wife, Emma and his newborn thunder stealer, Zoë Louise Capps.
