F ROM THE P AGE
TO THE S TAGE
Lisa Moore
Bach festival Composers Symposium takes a turn
BY BRETT CAMPBELL
H
ere sits the composer, scrawl-
ing (or, these days, typing)
notes in her study/office and
hoping that someday, someone will play
what she writes. And over there is the
performer, who seldom writes music and
spends most of his time practicing to
perform works written decades or cen-
turies ago.
That’s how most classically trained
composers have worked for the last cen-
tury. But that bifurcated arrangement is
changing. “We are becoming a field of
composers who are also performers,”
says UO music professor Robert Kyr.
“We will always create music for other
performers, but we are becoming more
personally involved in the performance
medium as conductors, instrumentalists,
and vocalists. This is gradually bringing
about a major transformation.”
So Kyr is creating “a new paradigm”
for the Oregon Bach Festival’s
Composers Symposium, inviting not only
composers but also composer-performers
Martin Bresnick
and performers skilled in playing new
music. The ultimate goal: opening inno-
vative avenues for music.
Kyr’s model wouldn’t surprise pre-
20th century composers, most of whom
were also performers — often of works
they’d written themselves. Mozart, for
example, was the original soloist in many
of his piano concertos and also wielded a
mean viola in some of his string quartets.
Bach played his music in a coffeehouse
band as well as in church. But, Kyr
explains, last century’s world wars frac-
tured Europe’s musical training institu-
tions, resulting in diverging paths for
those who wrote music and those who
played it. Moreover, much of the com-
plex music written during the post-
WWII reign of serialism placed extreme
demands on even virtuoso performers,
leaving it unplayable by its creators.
With a few exceptions, composer-led
ensembles were scarce in the contempo-
rary classical world until quite recently,
when New York’s Bang on a Can All
Stars, Laurie Anderson and a few others
seized control of their own musical des-
tinies.
Now Kyr, who heads the UO compo-
sition department, wants to repair the
rupture created when composition was
sundered from performance. In 1994, he
created
the
OBF’s
Composers
Symposium to give young composers the
opportunity to work with well known
composers in residence such as Lou
Harrison, Arvo Pärt and George Crumb;
participate in workshops and exchange
ideas; and write music for expert per-
formers.
This year’s symposium is one of the
largest in the country, drawing applicants
from major universities such as Yale,
Harvard and Columbia. Among the 60
participants, Kyr has selected some top
notch composer-performers — saxo-
phonists, percussionists, vocal improvis-
ers, even an accordionist and a specialist
in a Chinese string instrument. At Beall
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Hall on July 7, they’ll play new and ear-
lier works created by themselves and
their colleagues, and some will also com-
pose and play new pieces for the UO’s
Pacific Rim gamelan instruments at a
July 9 Beall concert. Many will join a
new composers improvising orchestra
that will perform at three Wild Night
improv cafes at 10:30 pm July 6-8. It’s
Kyr’s way of moving new music beyond
the concert hall; listeners and musicians
will be able to roam the UO’s Collier
House and outdoor deck.
“I think audiences are thrilled when
composers are performing their own
music because they are at a live event
where a creator is sharing his or her own
music with each listener. It makes it more
personal,” Kyr says.
He’s also invited acclaimed Can-
Banger pianist Lisa Moore to perform
new works written by the symposium
participants and give master classes that
will improve their ability to play and
write for piano. On July 7, she’ll play
and narrate a piece by celebrated con-
temporary composer Frederic Rzewski
and perform a multimedia work with
video based on the drawings of William
Blake composed for her by one of the
most celebrated composer/teachers in
contemporary music, Yale prof Martin
Bresnick, who has influenced some of
today’s hottest young composers.
The symposium will continue its
daily seminars, workshops, master class-
es and presentations, with Bresnick also
talking about his music and that of one
of the 20th century’s greatest com-
posers, Gyorgi Ligeti, who died this
year. After this year’s piano-centric
focus, future symposia might concen-
trate on percussion, wind ensembles or
string quartets.
Kyr hopes the composer-performers
will maintain the connections forged here
so they can give concerts of each other’s
works in their home regions. “I’m hoping
that this will create the first truly diverse
and ongoing network of composers who
are working in both the composing and
performing media,” he says. This will
benefit audiences as well as composers,
providing national outlets — not just in
New York or L.A. — for new music.
“In the 18th and 19th centuries, com-
posers were also performers, and finally,
we are returning to that ideal,” says Kyr,
whose performances as a pianist
enhanced his own compositional devel-
opment. “I hope that the Composers
Symposium will help to bring about a
major transformation in the musical cul-
ture of composers.”
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