Take for example extreme metal and popular country music. The metal fans seek potent rhythms, tasteful use of articulations, and virtuosic instrumental work. The harsh vocals are used in a percussive sense, which to the metal fan only adds to the power of the music. Many a country music fan will dismiss metal for its lack of vocal melody, its harshness, or its ear-punishing sound world. These country fans value sing-able vocal melodies, stable/simple rhythms, and a real life story that they can identify with. These two groups are many times at odds not over the quality of music written, but over the use of their favorite musical characteristics. All of the musical features mentioned above have equal musical value depending on their contexts. The major difference is not what is being listened to, but who is doing the listening.

The classically trained musician has equally as many perceptive roadblocks to avoid. Many musical institutions turn students’ focus to a handful of important things: the value of “serious” western art music, the importance of form, of counterpoint, of doing what is traditionally “correct”, or of strict avoidance of that same “correctness”. Many a time as a music student have I found myself professing to like a piece of contemporary music because the concept behind it is interesting, or because I find the compositional skills by the composer amazing. That’s not to say that this music isn’t good (I think it’s awesome). It’s just that accepting non-musical elements as justification for music’s worth is leading you away from the value of the music itself. This is a battle I’m constantly fighting as a listener; the attempt to listen to music for itself and not for outside circumstances, to let my ears do more work and my brain do less.

I am in no way saying that every person should attempt to like and treat all music equally, because no one can connect on a personal level to that many types of music. Liking one kind of music and disliking others is a fundamental part of being a human. However, if you and I open our minds as well as our ears when we listen to music, we may discover that there is far more music out there that speaks to us than any of us could imagine.

Matt Pollock is a composer and multi-instrumentalist living in Bellingham, WA.  Matt is active in Bellingham based bands Queen Anne’s Revenge and E-Clec-Ti-Ci-Ty

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Introducing composer Kei Hong Wong:

My name is Kei Hong Wong and I also go by Addison.  I came from Macau, China.  I first found interest in music when I came to the State 8 years ago.  The place I went was called Hoopeston, a tiny town with 2000 population located South of Illinois.  I was 16 years old at that time and all I wanted to do was to try out everything in school.  So I joined the choir, show choir, musical and band.  They all had one thing in common.  They are very old-school style because almost all of their repertoire came from the jazzy show tunes from the 40s.  A lot of old folks loved it when we performed them including my host father, Steve, who played exceptionally well accordion since the age of 6.  That was probably my first cultural shock since I came from an Asian country where my high school, as well as many others, focuses extensively on Math, Chinese, English and Science.  The culture was pretty much business driven and music was looked at as an entertainment.  However, it is a whole different life in Hoopeston, a tiny town but extremely musical.  I was rehearsing day and night running from big sacred choral pieces to Frank Sinatra little tunes; and after I came home everyday, I would sat down to enjoy Steve’s playing accordion before dinner.  I told myself one day when I am 60, I want to be like Steve, playing music all day and have fun.

The old Jazz tunes I sung in high school really came back to me when my keyboard skill teacher in my first year of college introduced a major 7^th chord to me.  I ran home and tried that chord out for hours and I knew I heard them a lot in the past, especially in those Jazz tunes.  I have always interested in harmony, harmony that tells a beautiful story.  That matches my optimistic personality.  One could hear the clean and vivid quality harmony dominant my music.

My passion is to write music that encourages people and brings people to joyfulness.  In order to achieve this ideal, in my Chamber Music for Seven Performers, I used solely notes that comes from the Lydian mode, the brightest mode of all, for every vertical moment in the first section.  Equally important, the melodic writing gives emphasis on consonant intervals. (According to my taste, they are Perfect 5^th , Perfect 4^th  and Major 2^nd).  Finally, maybe is the most important of all, rhythm is the key to bring out happiness.  Without a rhythm that truly reflects joy, all of the above would not bring us to that stage.  In terms of rhythm, Herbie Hancock is my model.  His Jazz Fusion, Cantelope Island, has appeared to be very joyful to me, at least in terms of rhythm.  It makes you want to move with its 16^th note off-beat accent.  One could see all kinds of different approaches I took to write gestures with four 16^th notes with the last one accented.  They could go in ascending or descending direction and in fact, the subject in my Fugue in the middle of the piece ends with a descending four 16^th notes figure.

Some players expressed to me that they enjoyed playing the piece because they had some fun lines to play.  It is not only a piece for the composer to have fun with but more importantly for others to enjoy it.  I might not be able to recall every influence I had with the show tunes that I have sung, but the spirit of a16 year-old boy excited for life in a musical town is definitely there beyond the notes on the page.

Kei Hong Wong (Addison) is an active concert composer in Los Angeles and Eugene. This summer, he will be studying at the Bowdoin International Music Festival in Maine.

"Nobody tells you how to listen to music because there is no right way and if there is no right way then, conversely, there must be no wrong way."

Music is tough because it is an art form that forces a listener to sit still, be quiet and look at people not moving around much for upwards of an hour and a half.  It is an experience that can, at times, test even the most patient and enthusiastic of us.  I am looking at you, Mahler.  But once the fat lady sings or the clarinet softly decays into its final niente, you are left with an experience that is uniquely yours.  Nobody tells you how to listen to music because there is no right way and if there is no right way then, conversely, there must be no wrong way.  Everyone hears different things when listening to the same piece of music and when they hear different things they feel different things.  Not only that, but the mood that you are in also affects the way you respond to the music being played to you.  If you are sad, then the more morose elements come to the forefront and if you are happy then finding the underlying joy of a piece is a task of pure ease.   This what makes art, and specifically music, so amazing – there are no two experiences that are identical, either between different people or within the same person.  Each experience is a snowflake shaped by a number of factors: the performance, the music being played, the shape of the room, the experience and knowledge of the listener, other listeners in the audience, the number of people on stage, etc.

Recordings are great because they brings music to people that may not be able to attend certain concerts and they broaden people’s tastes.  One can easily familiarize themselves with obscure, seldom-played composers or world renowned orchestras with the push of a button.  I am lucky because I have had the chance to travel to Germany to study music and I can say that without a shadow of a doubt that a recording does not do justice to the Berlin Philharmonic.  This, of course, is an example is the grandest sense, but it is to prove a point: GO OUT AND SEE MUSIC LIVE!  Live music is an experience unlike any other whether it comes from a small chamber group or the local symphony.  You will be moved, you will ponder life, you may even get frustrated, but you will be left with a unique and personal experience you can take and hold onto the rest of your life.

 Kyle Grimm is a composer in many different genres and is currently living in Seattle, WA.

Where does your inspiration to write a music come from?

Unlike many composers, I am unable to translate anything extra-musical into musical inspiration. All of my inspiration comes from purely musical sources. Perhaps a contrapuntal technique fascinates me and I want to incorporate it, perhaps some rhythmic idea or concept needs fleshing out with pitches and rhythms. But never has a beautiful landscape, love, or heartbreak given me any useful musical idea. The most these things can do are inspire me to sit down and put in some hard work.

How does this reflect your choice of titles?

The titles of my pieces reflect this as well; “String Quartet in Two Movements,” “Theme and Variations.” In fact, the one piece that I have written with a title even remotely suggestive of anything extra musical, “Elegy”, was originally titled “Piano Sonata: Movement 2” until it became clear that movements 1 and 3 were never going to be written.

Can you tell us a little about your piece for the May 19th concert?

The inspiration for the Theme and Variations written for ECCE is a good example of this. In the 5^th variation of his “Theme and Variations on a Theme by Haydn,” Brahms uses double-, or invertible counterpoint- a technique in which a countermelody works at two different levels against another melody. This was used in pre-baroque and baroque music, but had become uncommon by Brahms’ time. I loved how Brahms took something so old and seemingly inapplicable to modern music and managed it to incorporate it so seamlessly into his lush romantic music. I wrote a couple bars of double counterpoint with intervals that were consistent in my tonal language and from there extracted ideas that I used to create the entire piece. I am one of those composers who believe that music is incapable of expressing anything. Some may view this negatively, but to me music alone is so powerful that it has no need to express anything other than itself.

Danny Hansen was born in 1987 and currently resides in Portland, OR.

Composing is like having a song stuck in your head, except it’s music you made up.

Do you ever get songs stuck in your head?  Part of my composition process is like having a song stuck in my head, except it’s music I’ve come up with.  If I’m just starting a piece, often it will just be a short musical idea.  Just like many people do with a catchy tune they know and love (or sometimes hate), I hum my musical idea all day, feeling its pulse, and as the idea settles, I get a sense of how I want the larger piece to develop.

How do I come up with a musical idea in the first place?  Generally by improvising.  If the idea is melodic, I work best by singing.  If the idea is textural or harmonic, I like to use the piano.  I improvise, often for a long while, before I come up with something that sticks.  Sometimes ideas happen by accident.  I touch a “wrong” piano key, but that key creates a new harmony that I didn’t anticipate.  One of my previous teachers Stephen Jaffe spoke about using musical “junk;” you sift through heaps of ideas until you find something interesting, odd, beautiful, and often unexpected.  For me, a big part of composition is simply being open to unexpected ideas, and not worrying so much about what an idea “should” be.

Of course, not worrying about what music “should” be is easier said than done, because our culture values artistic “geniuses” and “innovators.”  Such pressure can easily intimidate artists of any level of experience.  I’m not saying that composers shouldn’t strive to be innovators.  Where would we be without the likes of Liszt, Schoenberg, and Cage?  Yet, Mozart, often called “the great assimilator,” was a composer who learned by emulating the styles of the famous composers of his day.  What I am saying is that there are strong pressures working against inexperienced composers.  The pressure to be innovative and the sense of simply not knowing where to start are difficult obstacles to surmount.  So improvise, experiment, and see what you can discover!

David Eisenband (b. 1987, Atlanta, GA) is a composer, performer, and music educator currently based in Eugene, OR. His music will be featured on the May 19th New Music Now concert in Portland. You can listen to some of his work at: davideisenband.bandcamp.com

The Eugene Contemporary Chamber Ensemble will be presenting a FREE preview of our newmusicnow.pdx on May 6th, 2012 at 7:30 p.m. at the Frohnmayer Music Building on the University of Oregon Campus. The project is a combined effort between ECCE and 10 young composers from the northwest United States to present a concert featuring the newest voices in local classical music. The project was financed through a Kickstarter campaign that raised over $1,000 from supporters around the world. The concert will feature a preview of six of the pieces that will be presented in Portland on May 19th.

For more info and to receive updates, please join our Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/349793551745563/

Program:

Waking Lullaby by Robert Chastain

Intermezzo by Matthew Pollock

Salva by Jacob Walls

Telegrams: When the Guns Roar, the Arts Die by Kyle Grimm

Sextet No. 1 by Diana Rosenblum

Chamber Music for Seven Performers by Kei-Hong Wong

We want YOU to join us in our effort to “bring local music home!”

We believe in the importance of presenting music written by local, northwestern composers. Many “contemporary” concerts feature music from the last century (Cage, Feldman, or Webern as examples), or composers who do not live and work in the communities where their music is played. We believe that there is a lot of exciting music being written here in the Northwest by local composers, and that audiences should have the opportunity to hear it. Our concert will feature the works of ten composers working in Portland, Seattle, Eugene, and Bellingham. We will be presenting a multimedia event that will feature live performances, interviews with the composers, and opportunities for the audience to interact with the composers and performers. The intimate setting of the Bamboo Grove Salon is an excellent location to facilitate discussion and interaction in a comfortable and inviting environment.

To make this happen, we would really appreciate your support! You can watch our project video (just two minutes!), donate if you wish (donations start at $1), and SHARE our passion with your friends and family! Thank you so much for your consideration and support!