​A few weeks ago, we were fortunate to premier a new work by our friend Christian Carroll with special guest, soprano Margaret McNeal. Christian's music is influenced by a wide variety of music, and we can't imagine too many composers that could combine Sprechstimme with drumming in the style of Dave King and make it work! You can listen to our performance from his senior recital through the link above.

Can you give us a general background for your piece?

​For a long time I've been trying to figure out how to reconcile my official “pursuing Bachelor of Music in (Contemporary Classical) Composition” self with my less official “playing improvised rock, jazz, and experimental music with friends on guitar” self, and when Margaret McNeal and Slipstream separately approached me about writing pieces for them, I realized that this was the perfect chance to make this happen. I've worked with all five of the performers in various improvised music contexts over my time at school with them, and it was extremely freeing (and so much fun!) to write for my friends who happen to be extremely talented and versatile musicians, rather than hypothetical performers for each instrument.


What was your inspiration for the piece?

Like I said, working with other musicians familiar with both strictly notated and improvised music really inspired to find ways to combine these two idioms. Most of this piece works, to varying degrees, as guidelines for structured improvisation rather than telling the performers exactly when to play what notes. A lot of the individual sounds, techniques, or methods of developing material came out of knowing the musical backgrounds of the players and letting them do what they do best, like knowing that Ilan can do a killer rock squeal or that Matt likes to use small cells to build into more complex textures (but also likes punching the piano).

Coming up with the text was also an incredibly important part of the whole process and shaping the piece – on Margaret's suggestion, I went through some of her journal and poetry writings to find material which I then arranged as I saw fit. So the words are technically hers, but at the same time I'm the one who got to make the final call (and occasionally would intentionally take phrases out of context/chop off parts of words to emphasize this disconnect), and ultimately it's a little unclear how much each of us is responsible for the text, similar to the shifting power balance between my choices as composer and the performers choices as improvisers – hence the subtitle “Autonomy Study” - what sort of art results when we question the strict notions of creator and interpreter common in so much art? And then in one section Margaret is using a deck of cards to give her the phrases she can use, which then gets distributed to Slipstream, adding a non-human player to the mix, which opened up a lot of doors in my most recent works to start integrating randomly generated data from computers.

Here are some of composer and percussionist Patrick Marschke's thoughts  on "le/af", his piece for us  (we promise we didn't pay him to say so many nice things about us). The most thoughtful kind of musician, Patrick's sound draws on all sorts of both musical and non-musical influences to create works that are affecting in a deeply personal way. You will notice we broke our three question rule on this one, but you can never learn too much about a piece!

What was the inspiration for your piece?
All of the circumstances surrounding Slipstream and their commissioning process are incredibly extra-ordinary. Basically, they are a group of killer musicians that rehearse like crazy and put an insane amount of work into presenting music in thoughtful and interesting ways. Composer Jackpot = my inspiration.

How did this influence your construction of the piece?
I really like the idea writing for people rather than instruments. Each part in le/af is a product of my trying to capture a little bit of the character of each player (little did they know).

Is there anything that audience members should listen for that isn't immediately apparent on first listen?
I wanted to challenge Slipstream to try and do a lot with very little, taking quiet simplicity and making something compelling with it in a way that only musicians of their caliber can. I also thought of my piece in contrast to the Mayrose and Werfelmann pieces, which are relatively substantial and intricate. Hopefully it continues to compliment all of Slipstream’s music as they continue to commission new works.

​Bonus Qusetion #1: Since this is a revised version of the piece you gave us last year, what inspired you to add the kick drum?
The group had started adding some compelling ‘push’ in certain sections and I really liked how that brought the piece together. I felt that adding a kick would solidify this. But mostly I wanted to make it harder for Dan.

Bonus Question #2: Are there any other artists you would encourage people to check out if they enjoy your piece?
e. e. cummings

Two days until the recital--we are so excited to see you there!
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Fresh and creative as they come, Jason Koth's music creative a reflective space that leaves listener's feeling refreshed after hearing one of his work's. Incorporating both improvisation and electronics, What Peace May Be Found in Silence has given us the chance to explore music that is as much about creating a sonic world as it is about playing notes and rhythms.

What inspired your piece?

Specifically Max Erhmann's poem "Desiderata," and the writings and lyrics of singer/songwriter Jon Foreman.  Both have had a profound influence on my life, and I view the music that I create as simply an extension of my being.  Musically, I was listening to a lot of ambient and underground electronic music; notably Brian Eno, Max Richter, Jon Hopkins, and Nils Frahm, which filtered into much of the surface texture.  On a deeper level, my love of hymns and spiritual music factored into the simplicity of the piece overall.
 
How did this inspiration influence the compositional process for you?

As is true with most of my music, I do not force myself to do a specific technique or aesthetic focus with any piece that I write.  The resulting music is simply an extension of myself transferred into sound.  The Erhmann poem is huge with this in mind.  The title of the piece derives from the opening lines: "Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence."  To me, this is a summation of how I try to live life.  Every day there can be a million things against what I believe in, but staying grounded in these convictions (the silence) brings a temporary, but necessary, sense of peace.
 
Is there any aspect of the piece that you felt was specifically suited for Slipstream?

All four of the musicians in Slipstream are definitely true artists in the music that they play.  I knew that pretty much anything that I threw at them would come out sounding ten times better than I had envisioned.  I wanted to give them a certain amount of free reign (most notably the improvisation section in the middle of the piece), so in a sense they became a part of the entity that I had started.  I knew that they could play intensely technical music, but this piece more highlights the other end (and equally challenging) of that, working on the macro level.

Dominic Ellis is a prolific young composer with an already impressive a grasp on the craft of composition in the most creative of ways. His Johannes, der Junger, den Jesus Liebhatte uses the smallest of musical inputs to spin out a variety of effects in a piece that, while short, can be approached and appreciated on a number of levels.

What inspired your piece?

This piece was inspired by a research kick I had over the summer into the hypothesis that the biblical Christ was a gay man. A proponent of this idea, Christopher Monterfiore, went so far as to suggest Jesus was in a homosexual, romantic relationship with John the Evangelist, for whom the piece is named.

How did this inspiration influence the composing process for you?

The piece takes the notes from the first phrase of Contrapunctus IX from J.S. Bach’s Kunst der Fuge, elongates them, and stretches them out over the duration of the piece. Every note in the soprano saxophone is taken from this melody; the marimba, guitar and piano parts were written to provide support and harmonic context for the sax. The idea of a piece that is constantly moving, rhythmically driving and very, very quiet was inspired by the secrecy and shame surrounding the possibility of a gay Christ, and the use of a J.S. Bach fugue as melodic content is an idea that I ripped from Nina Young, who used it in her string quartet, Memento Mori. I took some delight in the fact that the evangelist and Bach were both named Johannes.

What are some things about the piece that the audience should notice that aren’t immediately salient during the performance?

Despite being very pleasant-sounding on the surface, this piece is extraordinarily difficult. I wrote it in a single day (which is very far removed from my usual composing process!) using a lot of copy and paste. Because of this, there is a lot of rhythmic hocketing and canons – each performer playing the same part, but separated by an eighth note. The piece is always just on the verge of falling apart, and the fact that Slipstream makes it sound so effortless and clean speaks well to their amazing talent and cohesion as an ensemble.