Outside Music Inside the Golden State

Brandon died February 21, 2024, nearly 3 years after this interview. He was a composer of experimental music, and a very good friend of mine.This interview touches on topics like: attention (inside & outside of concert settings), processing trauma through music, mental illness, drug usage, the psychology of repetition, the harmonic properties of multiphonics, spectralism, whole number ratios, being in the same room (both acoustically and socially), zoom meetings, music being the artwork of present moments, and many other things.Pieces, in order heard:the awakened, lips parted, the hope, the new ships (for six bowed music stands)Repetition Study II (Music as a Means of Processing Trauma)the awakened, lips parted.... (reprise)Proportions/Frame (Brandon's final published recording)https://soundcloud.com/brandonbecker-2https://www.instagram.com/brandontravisbeckwr/https://www.facebook.com/brandon.becker.1612

Interview originally recorded March, 2021. Eleven trips to the Mayan region and an investigation of some 35 years into Precolumbian thought have indelibly marked and changed the work of this U.S.-born composer. Haladyna’s Mayan Cycle now stretches to thirty-five highly distinctive pieces, including such titles as Zaquico’xol, El Llanto de Izamal, The Maya Curse Pedro de Alvarado, Pok-ta-Pok, 2012, The Oracle of 13 Sky, Copal, and the Jaguar Poems.   Among the most novel features of the Cycle is its frequent use of Jeremy's original scales (three in total) derived from the ingenious math of the Mayan calendar.Jeremy, an accomplished keyboardist and conductor, served as director of UC Santa Barbara’s Ensemble for Contemporary Music for sixteen years (2003-2019) and created much of the Mayan Cycle during that time.  He holds prizes and academic qualifications from three countries. A laureate of the Lili Boulanger Prize and diplômé of the history-rich Schola Cantorum on Paris' Left Bank, he also holds an advanced degrees from the University of Surrey (U.K.) and the University of California. He taught undergraduate composition to scores of young composers at UCSB from 1990-2019 (29 years) after being named to its permanent faculty in March, 2000.  He is now Emeritus Faculty.  His own past teachers include William Kraft, Karl Korte, Eugene Kurtz, Jacques Charpentier, Peter Racine Fricker, John McCabe, Sebastian Forbes, and Joseph Schwantner.Pieces, in order heard:Pok-ta-PokMaya Zodiachttps://www.mayancycle.com/https://music.ucsb.edu/people/emeriti/jeremy-haladyna

Interview originally aired July 5, 2021. Joel Feigin is an internationally performed composer, whose operas, chamber, orchestra, and piano works have been widely praised for their “very strong impact, as logical in musical design as they are charged with emotion and drama.” (Opera Magazine).Feigin’s opera, Twelfth Night, based on Shakespeare’s comedy, was produced in North Carolina, Chicago, and southern California, where it was hailed as a “glittering masterpiece” by critic Dan Kepl.  Excerpts had also been featured at New York City Opera’s VOX Showcase series and Opera America’s New Works Sampler.  Mysteries of Eleusis, Feigin’s first opera, written on a Guggenheim Fellowship, was commissioned and premiered by Theatre Cornell; on the international stage it was featured at the Moscow Conservatory (Russia) and repeated at the Russian-American Operatic Festival.Instrumental commissions include a Fromm Commission for Aviv: Concerto for Piano and Chamber Orchestra, written for Yael Weiss, as well as piano commissions from Leonard Stein and Margaret Mills. Ms. Mills included two of Joel’s works on her album Meditations and Overtones (Cambria Recordings).  Feigin’s most recent CD (released on MSR Classics) presents the large-scale chamber work Lament Amid Silence, featuring violist Helen Callus.  Concerts devoted solely to Feigin’s music have been given in Russia and Armenia, and in New York at Merkin Hall and Lincoln Center’s Bruno Walter Auditorium.  Honors include a Mellon Fellowship, a Senior Fulbright Fellowship, and the Dimitri Mitropoulos Prize in Composition at the Tanglewood Music Center.Dr. Feigin studied with Nadia Boulanger at Fontainebleau and with Roger Sessions at The Juilliard School. An accomplished pianist and accompanist, Feigin studied with Rosina Lhevine, and worked at the Metropolitan Opera in New York with Nico Castel.The Joel Feigin Collection at the New York Public Library of the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center opened in 2011. A student of Zen Buddhism, Feigin is Professor Emeritus of Composition at the University of California, Santa Barbara.Pieces, in order heard:Surging Seas, for string orchestra: 1. Allegro maestoso (excerpt)Two Songs from Twelfth Night: No. 1 O Mistress Mine (Allegretto grazioso)Surging Seas, for string orchestra: 1. Allegro maestoso (full movement)http://joelfeigin.com/

Peruvian immigrant Anaís Azul (they/them) is a California based singer-songwriter, composer, and teaching artist. Described as “stunningly honest and vulnerable,” their artistry engages with music as a tool for community building, cross-genre collaboration, and collective healing.Azul writes music that is in conversation with looped vocal harmonies, classical melodies, and Latin American singer-songwriter traditions. Their songs are bilingual (Spanish and English) and about mental health, queerness, facing harsh realities and finding inner peace in spite of chaos.Photo by Erica Yi.Interview initially published 12/27/2020.Music featured:Mi PielHealingAnxiety (Live @ the HER house)Cello Trilogy of TimePaz (Cathartic Conundrum)Soledad (Cathartic Conundrum)https://anaisazul.com/YouTube ChannelSpotifyhttp://www.instagram.com/anaisazulhttps://twitter.com/anaisazulmusichttps://www.facebook.com/anaisazulmusic/

Moths, Clownfisher, Dylan Marx, The Sandman, Oracle of Light, Purveyor of Goods, Great Overtaker, Stopping by for Soup, Standing on the Corner with a Glass of Water, Dumping it out on the Sidewalk, missed the plants, missed the plant, went back, wrote a postcard, postmarked it, forgot to address it, sitting in a big mail room waiting to be sorted, sort of open to that Pieces Featured:Chan Hey, Salon LaThe Beating LolaEverything's a Calculated RiskFerrarelle e BorsecThen Ago( )https://dylanmarx.bandcamp.comhttps://soundcloud.com/dylan-marxhttps://twitter.com/Dylan_marxhttps://www.instagram.com/dylankurtmarx/

The Los Angeles Electroacoustic Ensemble (LAEE) was founded in 2018 by its core members Zaq Kenefick, Christina Lord, Marcus Carline, and Glen Grey. In this episode, the group discusses how they first came together, their aesthetic goals for the ensemble, their process for writing and developing new compositions, and their debut album LAEE, which released January 2021.Pieces Featured:contactastronautswe studyimprovisation for guitar, mandolin, and two laptopshttps://laee.bandcamp.com/album/laeehttps://www.instagram.com/laelectroacousticensemble/https://laelectroacousticensemble.wordpress.com/

Daniel Newman-Lessler is a composer, conductor, pianist, singer, educator, and dabbler in watercolor and pastels.  His compositions have been performed by players and ensembles across the country, and impressively he has also found repeated success as a conductor and performer.  We met at the California Institute of the Arts, where he is currently a Lilian Disney Scholar in the MFA Performer-Composer program.  In this conversation, we talk about his collaborations with other luminaries in the world of concert music such as Elizabeth A. Baker and Clara Kim, the intersections between activism, composition, and concert planning, about xenharmonicism and microtonality, Patch Adams, Black Lives Matter, and of course about several of Daniel's excellent compositions.Pieces Featured:#yaaasfilter93066Rondo for ClaraPray Not!https://www.danielnewmanlessler.com/ https://www.youtube.com/user/roninyukiko https://www.instagram.com/dnewmanlessler/https://soundcloud.com/danielnewmanlessler

Andrew Kaluzynski is a composer, improviser, and multimedia artist living in Oakland, CA. Andrew's music endeavors to explore relationships between gesture and feedback, and the effects of aleatoric input on improvisations and compositions. Andrew often employs the use of obsolete and/or idiosyncratic technology as a means of restraint, inspiration, and focus, in order to cultivate a live electronic music practice. Music Featured:The Resettlement CorpsTensed Timehttps://andrewkaluzynski.bandcamp.com/https://soundcloud.com/andrewkaluzynskihttps://auricularrecords.bandcamp.com/album/inverted-ambiencehttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEjAgUxJ0y80nYUCUctnfWw/videos

Alex Hawthorn is an Artist, Composer, and Technologist based in Los Angeles and Brooklyn.His work interrogates notions of archive and memory, bringing together aspects of traditional composition and experimental sound design with elements of photography, videography, and other forms of digital media.  In his solo work, he combines elements of old and new technologies: traditional orchestral scoring, solo piano performance, field recordings, and various synthesis techniques, to create works that bring the listener into a place of meditation and  memory.Music featured:Rainfall IReflectionsEvening Dreams of Space Flightwww.alexhawthorn.com/

Andrew Jamieson: composer, improviser, & bandleader of the Avant-Gospel Trouble Ensemble. We talk about dialogues in music and community, race relations in American music, cultural appropriation, and musical accountability. Andrew even does a live improvisation near the end of the interview!Music Featured, in order heard:Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me ‘RoundDeep RiverDaily Improvisation No. 249