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Interview with Valerie Liu

Q: How would you say your experiences with the natural world have inspired your compositions? In other words, does nature inspire you to write music?

A: I don’t think nature literally inspires the music of my compositions, although it has before. I have used nature as a way of ‘painting’ a picture through music. But I don’t literally write music the music because of nature. One of my pieces was about Lake Tahoe, and I was painting the scene through the music, using techniques on the violin to emulate sounds. For example replicating the rhythm of fish jumping up above of the water and back in. Towards the end of the piece, the perspective shifts to that of the observer. At this point in the piece the texture changes. For another piece, I was thinking of a bird sitting in a cage with the door unlocked but it doesn’t know it can fly away. The piece starts with 5 pitches locked in, pentatonic scale, but as the piece progresses, it slowly loses the pitch restriction. This is representative of the bird finding its’ freedom and leaving the cage. It’s not so much about theory, but rather nature is just something that is inspiring.

Q: What is your greatest accomplishment as a composer aside from the awards & accolades?

A: I once wrote three orchestra movements for a concerto. And it was a very difficult piece to write. There are so many timbre that you can mix and match with a full orchestra. Do you want the trumpets and the oboes playing together? Or maybe the cellos and the clarinets? Or maybe just the violins? I had to do a ton of research to see what was a better blend. When I was finished with the orchestra piece, I wanted it to be premiered by my school, but it got rejected from my school when I tried. And that was really heartbreaking for me, because we all love our art objectively. It’s our creation, and when someone else doesn’t like it, it can be hard to understand because you can love it so much. There was a silver lining though, because if the school had accepted my piece, I could have never got it accepted as a professional piece. Last year, six years after my school rejected it, it was picked as a professional piece, and for me that is so much more rewarding because my piece received recognition, something it would’ve never got if my school had premiered it.

Q: How do you feel that your interest in exploring different styles has impacted you as a composer?

A: I feel like it has definitely developed my musicianship. It’s allowed me to branch out and fear no limitations in the music I am creating. I think I am well-rounded as a result of trying all sorts of different styles. I like to listen to lots of different styles too. I enjoy listening to rap, rock, and other Western styles, although most are surprised when I say that because I am an Asian woman and I’m not that young. My taste is diverse, and I would say I’m pretty open-minded, which even helps me musically such as discovering new techniques. There are aspects of every style I enjoy, even if I don’t particularly enjoy listening to that style. I’ve written pieces in styles I don’t really enjoy just as a way of trying it once. It allows me to mix different styles, because I can take what I like from one style and something different I like about another style and combine the two, which can be really cool.

Q: What are some of the most valuable things you’ve learned from your mentor David Garner?

A: David Garner is a great mentor. He was the American Prize winner 3 years ago, he won the same year I was a finalist for my undergrad piece! It really just goes to show how good of a mentor he is though. The same year, not only was I one of the finalists, but one of his other students finished in second place. The best advice he ever gave me was to always stay authentic, not just in music, but in life. Be competitive, but keep your ego in check. Authenticity, and also remaining humble. Another thing he told me, more along the lines of musicality, is that simplicity and complexity don’t define you as a musician. Let the audience decide what defines you. As a composer, David would say that you have the responsibility to think about what the audience will feel when they hear your piece.

Q: You mentioned that some of your favorite compositions have come from people who have a background in guitar. What are some reasons you feel this way?

A: It’s not specifically that I like compositions from guitarists or pianists, but it just so happens that many of the compositions I enjoy the most were written by composers who have studied either the guitar or the piano. I don’t know, I guess I just feel that guitarists and pianists have better sense of harmony. You can’t really analyze chord changes as easily on other instruments like a violin or a trumpet.

Q: Your next composition you are working on could be about examining the life of a circus player. Could you speak on this a little bit?

A: Oh no, I’m not writing my next piece about a circus player. I am simply just fascinated by the life of a circus player. My last two pieces were very dark and mysterious. The piece I’m having premiered tomorrow is one where I want people in the audience to be thinking about a spy, or something mysterious. So know I want to write something funny and different, but not specifically about a circus player. I’ve been researching it, and it’s not a normal life. I want to incorporate the inspiration of the life of a circus player, but the piece will not necessarily be about a circus player. I just want to ultimately write something challenging.

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Friday June 7

     Today I traveled to Venice with professor, Pete and Madison. I honestly do feel a little bit of shame for leaving the main island to have dinner on Lido. Of course I was really tired last night and ended up getting some rest after dinner, but I can’t help but feel that professor is right in that we could’ve been walking around exploring mainland Venice, given that today is the last time I’ll be in Venice for the foreseeable future. All I can do now is make the most of the time I have left though, so I wanted to make sure I visited the heart of the city today while I still can. After grabbing lunch, Dan met up with us and Dan, Madison and I looked around some shops on our way to board a vaporetto from Rialto. I bought some Murano glass for my mom and aunts, and I bought some artwork from an artist on the street. After we were finished in Venice, Dan and I knocked back a couple of beers on Lido Beach and swam in the Adriatic Sea, which I think is a pretty cool thing to say, even if you can go to a beach anywhere. At night we boarded a Venetian galleon for a dinner cruise. The ride on the water was sublime, and the food tasted amazing! I just wish I could’ve tried that tiramisu at the end of the courses but I was not feeling too hot by that point. What a fun, one-of-a-kind way to conclude our time in Venice.

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Thursday June 6

     Our first stop was La Fenice, which is an opera house that Stravinsky premiered The Rake’s Progress at. There is a famous story where Stravinsky rode a gondola from his hotel suite to the canal entrance of the opera house. I learned that the opera house was burnt down two separate times, once because of arson. The fire set the opera house ablaze so perfectly and every emergency plan failed, but luckily (and also unfortunately) the fire was contained within the opera house and did not spread beyond. Sitting in the Royal Box was a treat, even if it only lasted a short while, and I’m surprised that even the most luxurious seat in the house is a better rate at La Fenice than decent seats to an overly commodified pop artist in a big sports arena. We walked to the Vivaldi instrument museum from La Fenice, which had a wide array of stringed instruments, mostly violins, cellos, and basses, but also lutes, guitars, clavichords, and various miscellaneous instruments. Our guide told us about how performers sometimes use instruments from the museum, and that there aren’t really violin makers anymore in Venice because the instruments just last a really long time. It dawned on me for the first time during this visit that violins can really last so long and still look brand new, even though it was made in the early 1900s.

     Following lunch, we visited the Basilica Frari, right after Dan and I finally found our way to the basilica. We saw Monteverdi’s crypt. Monteverdi was the father of opera, and was making music right around the time music transitioned from the Renaissance period to Baroque, so many consider him to also be a founder of Baroque music. Monteverdi was also the music director for St. Mark’s Basilica, which we visited two days ago. We also saw the tomb of Antonio Canova, supposedly the world’s master of lovers, although apparently only his heart is buried at his tomb in the basilica. We then transferred over to the Peggy Guggenheim museum. If I’m being completely honest, I never heard of Jackson Pollock before this trip to Venice, but I enjoyed seeing his painting style of improvisation in the Pollock exhibit. I also never thought I would see a Picasso painting in person in my life, so that’s something I can now say I’ve done. However, I think my favorite painting had to be Rene Magritte’s Empire of Light shown right as soon as you enter the main doors of the museum. The juxtaposition of the light sky while the ground is dimly lit spare a single lamppost providing some illumination on the sidewalk is really visually and conceptually appealing to me.

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Wednesday Jun 5

     This morning we visited the Isola de San Michele to see the graves of Igor Stravinsky and Sergei Diaghilev. Stravinsky loved the city of Venice and wished to be buried next to Diaghilev in Venice, given that Diaghilev commissioned three of Stravinsky’s ballets (The Firebird, Pertushka, and The Rite of Spring), and Stravinsky premiered three of his compositions in Venice (The Rake's Progress, Canticum Sacrum, and Threni). Stravinsky was one of the greatest and most experimental composers and artistic influencers of the 20th-century. On Diaghilev’s grave monument lie ballet shoes worn by professionals who have performed one of Diaghilev’s ballets. It was a humbling experience to just stand by both of their graves and think about how influential these figures must have been during their lives, both to Venetians and to musicians worldwide.

     Next we traveled north to the island of Burano where Sylvia gave us a tour of the small colorful island town. Every house is painted a different color, and contrary to myths and tales, you can literally wake up one morning and decide you want to paint your house a new color and do it that same day. They have a leaning bell tower that they never reconstructed, and as Sylvia says, “in Burano we don’t think it has to be perfect to be beautiful.” From Burano we traveled to the island of San Francisco, where friars live in the house of Saint Francis de Assisi, patron saint of Italy. I bought some things to take back to my aunts and grandmothers, who are all religious, and I said a prayer for people who need it while I was sitting in the chapel. While I do not consider myself religious anymore, it was interesting to offer up a prayer after not doing so for at least a couple of years.

     Next on our itinerary we visited the Torcello Basilica. The highlight here was easily the gold leaf mural of the day of judgment. There are so many little details in the mural, and the piece as a whole tells a story. The seven deadly sins are represented in the bottom right corner in the pits of hell, with a serpent tipping the scales and archangels leading most of the people into hell. It also tells the story of Jesus’s birth and death, with his parents watching him as he dies on the cross. I can only imagine how this impacted people’s views of the world 1000 years ago, as this mosaic surely instilled fear in many to follow the religion and fear the day of judgment. Once we were back on the island of Burano, Pete and I enjoyed a nice discussion about practice exercises. I told him I am making a practice regime for myself when I am back in the States, so he gave me some pointers to help. He gave me some scale exercises, starting in straight 8th notes, then triplets, then 16th notes, than 16th note triplets, and then gave me another scale exercise where you go up a 3rd, up a 2nd, down a 3rd, up a 2nd, and repeat. This is a good place for me to start with writing down exercises, and I made sure to give Pete my contact info in case he can offer me any more help or advice in the future.

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Tuesday June 4

     Today we visited San Marco square, and first we stopped at Caffè Florian. This café is the oldest existing café in the world, opening in 1720. However, I did some research on the café, and technically a café in France called Café Procope opened in 1686. However, since this French café closed and reopened, the claim that Florain is the oldest operating café still has some validity to it. It’s pretty amazing that the café has remained greatly unrestored since the 19th century. Next we took a tour of the Basilica de San Marco. The columns of the outside are all different and unique, because they were stolen during the 4th Crusade. It was a little interesting to be in a place of such great reverence and yet look at it as a museum or piece of history instead. They only use this basilica for the holiest of ceremonies, but it’s hard to imagine any service taking place in the basilica given the commodification and embellishment of it. The basilica floods 200 days out of every year, which is pretty alarming given it probably never flooded 100 or 200 years ago. St. Mark the Evangelist’s corpse supposedly lies in the basilica, although I’m not sure anyone has a strong sense of whether that is true or not. What is definitely true, however, is that the gold leaf art in the domes, the gold ground mosaics, and the marble statutes of the apostles that now look like they’re made of copper from years of wear and tear are all astoundingly beautiful.

      Next we visited the Doge’s Palace, which was where the leader of Venice resided. Now it is open as a museum, filled with a bunch of artwork, largely Renaissance art. The highlight of this palace for me was when we entered the Sala del Maggior Consiglio, which was an extremely large and tall room that was not held up by any pillars, because the ceiling is a huge dome which is shaped like an upside down ship. After lunch we had a tour of the bell tower that oversees San Marco square and basically all of Venice. The tower collapsed in 1902, and was rebuilt 10 years later exactly the same way it was designed the first time, only with some extra reinforcements and an elevator. The city doesn’t look very big from the top of the bell tower, but then again I don’t think the city actually is that big. Yet it’s still so easy to get lost if you make a wrong turn… Lastly, we enjoyed a gondola ride through the canals and even rode through the Grand Canal for a little bit. The oarsmen who steer the gondolas are masters of their craft. They steer the gondola with one shoe on and one shoe off. The foot with the shoe grounds the oarsman while the shoeless foot pushes off the walls of the canal. These men are able to make sharp turns with quick precision. I’m grateful to have been given this opportunity, even if gondolas were once viewed by Venetians as just another mode of transportation, because I feel it is inevitably iconic to the city of Venice.

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Monday June 3

     Today we travelled by train from Turin to Venice. I was lucky enough to leave my car keys behind in Turin! Because who needs their car keys in a foreign country anyways right? It was pretty cool seeing the snow capped Alps during the train ride. I’m excited to see what Venice has in store for us since I am certain it will be a much different experience than Alba was. I really enjoyed staying in Alba for the past two weeks. I liked being able to navigate the streets without any maps or directions besides my own sense of direction in Alba, something I know will be much more challenging in Venice. Alba almost felt a little like it was my home by the time we were ready to get on the bus and leave. The wait staff at La Duchessa never charged us extra if our meal vouchers didn’t completely cover the bill, the Hemingway’s staff knew who we were immediately every time we walked in, and I had a general sense of where all the supermarkets, restaurants/cafes, and churches were located. I know Venice will be more about trying to see a small fraction of what the city offers during our short stay, which makes me appreciate Alba even more for feeling more like home than a destination or a vacation.

So basically whenever we travel to and from our hotel, or any of the other islands of Venice, we have to take the vaporetto, which is essentially a water bus. All of the city’s transportation is substituted on the water of the canals, which can be thought of as Venice’s roads. Vaporetto translates to “steamer,” because the vaporetto originally used to run on steam when the system of transportation was first used in Venice.

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Sunday June 2

Today we travelled to Busca after the afternoon concert. The ride up from Alba to Busca was nice and scenic, as we could see the Swiss Alps off on the northern horizon. The final concert of the festival program was played in a small theater, which was cool, although I thought the final concert should have been played in Alba, maybe at the Ferrero Foundation or another venue. The program was really confusing, which actually made it hard to understand which piece and composer we were listening to during each performance. We got to hear Dream Angel again, even though it was disguised on the program as Nobody Cares About the Viola... One of the sections in the beginning was in 3/4, but the count was a little odd; I think there may have been some one bar time signature changes. During the third movement, each of the three performers play a certain section where they are all counting in a different time. It’s calculated for a certain number of measures until the three are all back on the upbeat together. After the concert concluded, we travelled to a farm-to-table restaurant for a 5 course meal. Honestly though, I’m glad I ate before the concert because these portions were very gourmet. The food was pretty good, especially the prawn. I could’ve eaten a plate full! When dinner was finished we wondered outside and stumbled upon a horse stable. Originally I was keeping my distance because Dan told me horses can sense fear. However, once I saw other people petting the horses, I was able to let my guard down and I even pet one of the horses. This basically concluded our time in Alba. I really like this place.

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Saturday June 1

     Today was our SHOW! I didn’t perform nearly as well as I would’ve liked to, yet I regret nothing about taking on the challenge to formulate an 8 song set list in less than a full week. I learned so much through working with Jeffrey Chappell every day this week, and so at the very bare minimum I have gained a great deal of knowledge receiving direct help on a daily basis. This is definitely a learning experience for me to take back to the States, considering I want to organize a practice regime for my guitar playing on a daily basis. Besides, how many people will ever get to say they’ve played a street side performance at an Italian café?

Let me tell you about the Orange Soda Incident. It all starts with some innocent Grappa shots from a bottle Logan and Dan bought at the supermarket. Orange soda perfectly compliments the taste of Grappa, so of course they had to buy a large liter bottle of orange soda as well. Sounds good so far, except that Logan recently bought a very large and long roll of bubble wrap so he can wrap his guitar and it won’t be damaged during travels. But Logan hasn’t wrapped anything yet, which means there’s an untouched roll of bubble wrap sitting in the room. Three slightly intoxicated friends, having a good time following their performance earlier today, start swinging around said bubble wrap roll. But someone left the orange soda uncovered… and at some point the orange soda may have tipped over into Dan’s luggage of clean clothes (of course not the dirty pile, that would be too convenient). What ensued next was nothing short of chaotic emergency and disorderly laundry. Dan hurriedly washed shirts and trousers in the bidet while Logan rinsed in the sink and Jonathan ran the wet clothes up to the clothesline, all at nearly 1 in the morning. Logan sat on the veranda the next morning watching Dan put out more clothes to dry in the hot Alba sun, its rays quickly absorbing the water from his once orange stained clothes. Dan walked down the stairs, completing his walk of shame.

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Thursday May 30

     I’ve learned so much invaluable information having Jeffrey basically give me two hours of free instruction everyday. I know my soloing isn’t going to improve overnight, but I feel confident obtaining all this information that if I keep it in mind whenever I’m practicing my soloing that I will undeniably be a better soloist when I look back on this Italy trip in 6 months or a year.

     Honestly, I can say for the first time during this festival that I just did not enjoy most of this concert (FlutesUSA). Not that it was all bad, since it was very exciting that Sydney got her first piece premiered!! However, I felt kind of like I was at a high school flute recital instead of an Alba Music Festival concert. It was pretty cool that the first piece was played with each performer arranged in different parts of the church, which created a full environment of sounds in all different directions. I enjoyed Sydney’s piece Scrapbook, especially the melody tradeoffs from one flute to the next. I can’t believed they played the piece Flutes and Vegetables, and I wonder if the composer was quite literally studying an eggplant as inspiration for this piece. The Duke Ellington tune was a nice addition to the concert, and a necessary one to liven up the spirit of the concert. This was one of the few tunes that I felt actually allowed the performers to showcase their musicianship. In the defense of the performers, I felt as though the atmosphere prevented them from playing to their best ability. I mean they quite literally had to wait to start a piece because some indecent person didn’t silence his phone and the personal assistant on the phone was speaking out loud. The ending piece Eternal Winds was the standout of this concert, which sounded more experimental and interesting than the rest of the entire concert. There was a cool sequential section where 4 flutes would each play a percussive, staccato phrase one by one. The use of “non-musical” pitches/noises contributed to the experimentation of this piece.

        Today was the second wave of the Wet Ink concert, which featured compositions from the other fellows that weren’t played yesterday. During Bryan’s piece, Erik and Jacob both used stopwatches during the performance. I’m not sure why the piece was timed exactly, but I suspect it may have related to associating time markings with playing certain sections. I really enjoyed the piano techniques utilized in Badie’s piece collective identity. At one point Clare was repeatedly pressing a key while plucking the string of that key in various different locations up and down the string, producing different harmonics. About half way through, Clare started plucking the strings playing arpeggios while the viola and violin traded lines. A little bit later she placed some metal tool on the strings of a section of the keyboard, which made those keys sound more percussive like a clavichord. Next, Valerie’s piece was played. During our interview, Valerie told me she wants the audience to be thinking about something mysterious during her piece. I did feel a sort of sense of sneakiness, given the piano creating an uneasy environment like the theme song of a spy movie. I felt as though the piece didn’t climax or have much a contour, given that the music kind of stayed at the same volume and dynamic throughout its duration. Perhaps this was intended as an allusion to the mysteriousness of the piece, but I was expecting the music to grow in some way (maybe it did grow in an unobvious way and I missed it). The last piece performed during this concert was Edna’s Inspiración Huasteca. My favorite part of this piece was that there was a well-defined pulse because the string players were stomping their feet on the floor during the music. I could hear the syncopated rhythms in the melody particularly well as a result, and it was easy to keep up with the music since you could go back to that pulse if you lost track. The melody of this piece was much more repetitive than any of the other fellow’s pieces (not that this is a bad thing but rather simply an observation). This is probably why I had that melody stuck in my head after leaving the church when the concert ended!

     Dinner with Rick was great tonight. It’s not every day that I’m actually going to be in the presence of a YouTuber with an actual significant following, which some people in our group have completely taken for granted. This man has thrived as an effective user of social media, and yet about three or four people could not even think of a question to ask Rick simply because their egos got in the way of them being able to enjoy his time at dinner. We had a guitar nerd session for a little while during dinner, but I was actually very shocked at how much Rick enjoys discussing pop music as opposed to other music, given his deep background in many different styles (I’m not adverse to it, just surprised if I’m being honest). It doesn’t shock me to hear Rick talk about how using the word ‘jazz’ in the title of a video can instantly limit the maximum number of clicks that video will receive. It’s wild to me that Rick Beato can get a guy like Gary Burton to come do an interview with him, only to have 39,000 views after two weeks of the video being out. Meanwhile, his most watched video is about Apple! Not even music… A couple days ago Jonathan and I were talking about how most people just don’t appreciate thoughtfully listening to music anymore, which is probably a large cause of this failure for YouTube guitarists/musicians to appreciate jazz. And ironically most guitarists on YouTube are metal heads! I bet they don’t realize metal and jazz are more similar than they probably think…

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Wednesday May 29

     WE HAVE A SHOW! While I’m scared shitless, I’m even more excited that I have the opportunity to increase my experiential knowledge. At Jeffrey’s jazz improv class, Jeffrey talked about the two types of knowledge you can have when you are learning something: experiential and understanding. I am very unbalanced as a musician in terms of my knowledge bases of understanding and experience, as I have a decently solid foundation of music theory and only very limited experience performing in front of an audience (even though I have played a lot of music with friends without an audience). I need to take this chance to experience some more of the music world through performance because my development as a musician is highly dependent on taking full advantage of these opportunities.

     My mind has been running pretty wild since I woke up this morning, as I went straight from our practice session to conduct my two interviews with Valerie and Emily before attending three concerts in the evening. Both of my interviews were extremely insightful though, and I’m very glad I was paired with these two composers to interview. Valerie is very verse in musical styles, and I was glad to hear that she likes rock, metal, and rap just as much as she enjoys different styles of classical music. She’s very open-minded and has explored many different styles while creating her own works, and she seems liked a very humbled individual (which she says is advice she took from one of her closest mentors). Our interview ended up lasting over 40 minutes, and after conversing with the coffee shop owner for another half an hour over a latte and a sandwich, I met Emily at 100 Vini for the second interview of the day. I was already excited to interview Emily after hearing her speak at the masterclass, but I really got way more out of the interview than just completing an academic assignment. She gave me some great life advice. One of the main takeaways from my chat with her is that it’s just really important to not give a fuck and just live your life on your own terms and not according to anyone else. At the end of the interview, I felt compelled to write down a thought I had on the cover of my notebook: “Human experience is the only truth you need.” I have had more meaningful human interactions in one week of this trip than I experience back in the States, which is something I’ll always take with me when I’m remembering my time in Alba.

      The Wet Ink concert was undeniably one of the most unique concerts of the entire festival. In the opening piece Heavens, Awaken by Derek Cooper, the music was characterized by moments of easy slow motion, which were interrupted by utter chaos. Clare was slapping the piano, which sounded like thunder strikes, and she was stretching some sort of plastic tape inside of the piano. After the concert, I talked to Valerie about this piece and she said she had wished they could’ve used nylon instead of plastic tape. Without knowing what the nylon would’ve sounded like, I feel inclined to agree with Valerie because I thought the plastic tape sounded a little too much like a fly buzzing around (maybe that was what they wanted though). Francisco’s piece Per Se was a minimalist piece that sounded very eerie with whistling pitches coming from the strings. Some of the stringed pitches sounded almost like an alarm or siren, and the interaction between the viola and violin was masterful. I could tell these two musicians have been playing alongside each other for some time based on their synergy. During Bernard’s Tafuta Upendo, Jacob was tapping his bow on the music stand while he was turning the pages. This group was so creative with getting the most out of their instruments, including percussive techniques such as this one. I was able to tell when this piece was reaching its conclusion because the viola was approaching its highest register, while the violin was using its lowest register. Neither Simer’s nor Francesca’s pieces really spoke to me much or made me really feel anything. I liked Sydney’s piece Citrine because the pulse was easy to follow given that Jacob and Erik both wore shakers on their feet. There was a certain sweetness to the tune, and the pitches sounded on the violin and viola cut through the air lightly even though a buzzing sound was produced, like a deflating balloon.

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Tuesday May 28

     Today was another great masterclass, as we saw Rick Beato speak to us in perhaps the most unorthodox composition masterclass of the entire program. Rick spoke to us about his YouTube channel and social media presence, discussing how to use social media as a tool to promote yourself as a composer/musician/other. I was fortunate enough to ask a question to Rick Beato, and I learned a little bit about acoustics and sound engineering. It was so fascinating that Rick said just walking into that room that when he looked to all the corners where the ceiling meets a wall, he could tell which one would reverberate the sound of his clap (flutter echoes), and simultaneously explain why the other three corners would not produce the same effect. Following his portion of the masterclass, I got a second chance to listen to professor’s piece A Letter to Say I Love You and Goodbye. I closed my eyes from the moment the piece began, in an effort to just truly engage myself in the music and nothing else. I basically forgot I was even in a room full of people until the round of applause brought me back to the physical room.

     I wasn’t a huge fan of today’s afternoon concert, mostly because I think the delivery of the performance was not executed very well. We heard some great piano playing of 16 waltzes by Brahms, but the two pianists were playing on the same piano and I could not see either one of them during the whole performance based on the seating in the venue. It was extremely difficult to understand how the musicians expected us to interpret the performance, because I was just hearing things happening on the piano and not even knowing which musicians were playing what. They were very expressive performers, incorporating a lot of abrupt tempo changes and constantly playing ritardando and accelerando. In Waltz n. 14, I thought it sounded similar to a Mozart melody, and when I researched Brahms a little bit, I found that some of his concertos and orchestra pieces were inspired by Mozart. It would not surprise me if as a result Mozart’s inspiration also seeped into some of Brahms’s waltz movements as well.

     I think that while I am learning a lot about jazz improvisation and just playing jazz in general, the evolution does not just happen overnight. Still, I want to sound good whenever we may perform, and so today I decided to skip out on dinner so I could practice my guitar between the afternoon and evening concerts. While I do not think I will be personally responsible for playing the Strousberg/St. Denis head, I made myself play it exactly correct 100 times in order to learn the song. Any takes that were less than perfect were not counted as successful attempts, so I’m guessing I made another 50 attempts in addition to the 100 successful ones. As a result of not eating dinner, I ate at Hemingway’s at midnight and enjoyed some midnight pasta. It was pretty cool to see such a large majority of the entire comp program hanging out at Hemingway’s, which has just been another reminder to me that composers are just people too, even if my exposure to them prior to this program has been limited to only seeing them on stage or in a classroom.

     We saw Sonic Apricity perform their first concert of the festival tonight. They started with Elliott McKinley’s new piece Dream Angel. The piano harmonics really resonated wholly in the space of the San Domenico church. I have listened to some of Elliott’s compositions, and I could hear common threads between his pieces and this one. We also got to see Pete Farmer’s composition, and I never even knew he was a composer until today! Emily Koh told us about her piece aphonia in class and we got to hear it played tonight. The piece was very raw and didn’t have a defined rhythm pattern. The air was very tense, making people feel uncomfortable. It was written for vocalizing violin and viola, which proved to be an interesting combination of instruments.

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Monday May 27

     While this rain is not what I anticipated for this trip, I’m still trying to make the most out of it, so this morning I ran off by myself to VinCafe to read my book and enjoy a cappuccino and a pastry. It was nice to spend some time alone without any distractions since it seems this trip has already been filled with so many distractions that have been weighing on my mind.

     I really enjoyed today’s masterclass. I am interviewing Emily Koh as part of our assignment, so it was nice to get a good glimpse into her life both as a composer and otherwise. I am really excited to ask her questions because she seems like she really lives a fulfilling and meaningful life. It’s interesting that she is likes puzzles and is a problem solver, which is something I plan on discussing with her since that is a similarity we share. I commend her ability to think so far outside of the box as a composer, and all of the pieces she shared today seemed to sound very different from 90% of compositions I have heard before. I thought it was pretty interesting that she is able to trace elements from her 2010 piece trans-[migra].nation to every other piece she has made since. Another thing Emily touched upon is that a composer is never just a composer. Whether you are a composer, performer, musician, sound engineer, etc., you need to do something else besides that one thing. Even the most virtuosic musicians or composers have other accolades to their names, and it’s arguable that part of their virtuosity comes from being a more developed/rounded individual within the large picture of music as an art.

        During today’s afternoon concert, our friend Jonathan performed Perludio in do diesis minore, op. 3 n. 2 by Sergej Rachmaninov. The piece felt very grim and disparaging. I liked Jonathan’s use of the foot pedal; he chose moments where he played with the dynamics to sometimes end a chord’s sustain very abruptly and poignantly, while other times the chord sustained for a longer period of time. Upon doing some research, I found that Rachmaninov wrote this piece to be played fortissimo, or very, very loud, and also Agitato during the B section. I think at certain time Jonathan captured these dynamics correctly, but at other points they were a little lacking. After the concert Dan and I were invited to eat dinner with professor and Sonic Apricity, and I tried rabbit for the first time. We also had an amazing bottle of wine with our dinner. At the evening concert, we saw the Japanese Flute Ensemble for the second night in a row. I could see the influence of Japanese culture on these musicians compared to the other musicians we’ve seen at different concerts. For one, a lot of the music tended to involve a lot of tutti sections and not all pieces had solo sections, and Japanese culture is rooted in a much stronger sense of community and less on individuality. In certain songs no one flute was playing an individual line, but rather multiple flutes were playing the same line, such as Melodia orientale n. 4 by Čerepnin where the flutes tended to support each other by replicating sounds on different flutes. Also during this concert, Miyuki Matsuda absolutely crushed her two solo piano pieces, first turning Mozart’s Piano Sonata n. 11 into a jazzy ragtime tune with a triplet feel and syncopated rhythms, followed by the performance of Debussy’s Claire de Lune. She played the piece almost exactly as written, but did add a couple passing tones in the melody, which I think added to the performance since she didn’t stray very far from the original tune. All of the artists of the ensemble held themselves with such great composure, and have been some of the finest musicians we’ve witnessed at the festival.

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Sunday May 26

     Today we had our first morning concert in the church of San Giuseppe. This church was absolutely gorgeous, including sophisticated ceiling art and beautiful paintings and statues. I’ve been thinking a little bit about the effect that a title can have on our interpretation of a piece, and I plan on making occasional note at the upcoming concerts when I believe the title of a piece specifically hinders or helps the audience’s perception of the music. for example, I felt as though Reynaldo Hahn’s Nocturne helped me digest the piece the way he intended based on the fact that the piece was characterized by simple piano chords laid down to create a tempo of graceful slow motion. After the concert ended, we paid a Euro to walk up to the top of the bell tower and get an astounding view of the city of Alba.

      Dan and I met with Jeffrey and Jonathan again for another lesson, and it sounds like we’re starting to put something together. We started working on a couple new songs, Roy Hargrove’s Strousberg/St. Denis, and Thaddeus Monk’s Blue Monk straight out of The Real Book.

        I think Dan and I have both gained a great respect for Madison as this trip has developed. One of the most important things he said to us when he saw us dealing with great stress last night was “I can’t pretend to understand certain things that are affecting you guys, just as there are things you guys could never imagine I have been through.” And after he opened up to us at lunch today at La Duchessa, that statement couldn’t have been more on point. I think we take Madison’s goofball personality for granted, and it was awesome to see a different layer of his personality. We had a great lunch over some pizzas and a couple of beers.

        Today’s afternoon concert was relocated to Sala Beppe Fenoglio and featured some Baroque music, although it was not strictly a Baroque concert. The night opened with Sergej Prokof’ev’s pieces for piano. The movement Reminiscences felt nostalgic to me, with straight and edgy chords that made the music sound stoic. The rest of the piece continued in a morbid fashion, as the final movement Suggestion diabolique made me envision a room spinning around with flickering lights, where vision was distorted and things were crashing to the floor before abruptly ending. I’ve been trying to pick up on the slightest bits of Italian using my limited knowledge of Portuguese, and I was actually able to understand Jeff Silberschlag when he announced that it is correct that the program says that Pietro Nardini’s piece would be played with the first movement following the second movement. I wasn’t a huge fan of the way the performers were oriented on the stage because I was looking at the back of Diego while he was playing violin and I couldn’t see some of the other performers as a result. I think Kyle the cello player deserves an applause for his performance of Bach’s Suite n. 3 in do maggiore per violincello solo. Even though his execution was not perfect, he recited the entire suite without any music in front of him, and he was up there for a good 15-20 minutes by himself.

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Saturday May 25

     Today I had a jazz lesson with Jeffrey Chappell, the same pianist who performed in yesterday’s jazz concert. His ability to apply jazz lessons to each of us individually despite the fact that we all played different instruments speaks to his musicianship. He was very supportive and understanding of our varying levels of music and jazz comprehension and accommodating to us all. I don’t have as much experience with soloing, and I’ve done even less soloing in the realm of jazz. He was able to diagnose that one of the pressing issues holding me back was my phrasing (or lack of phrasing). That is something I plan on working on with Jeffrey for the remainder of this trip and beyond.

     After a very stressful day, Dan and I had spent a great while reflecting on the events of the day. This conversation persisted for at least an hour and a half, and just when we needed something to get us past the conversation, Jonathan knocked on the door. We met him today and he’s a pretty chill dude. He showed us some of the music he produces on his laptop, and then Dan reciprocated by sharing some of his. It even helped me work up the courage to share the one project I’ve created on Logic, despite knowing their knowledge of the software is far more advanced than mine. This was followed by a fun night at Hemingway’s.

     Tonight’s concert was great, my favorite one thus far by a long shot. Seriously, the performance was so exceptional I actually stopped taking notes just because I was speechless in the moment. I recorded the whole performance on my phone, and I’ve listened back to reflect more on the music. I heard a lot of South American rhythms also combined with different jazz rhythms. The compositions seemed to move by movements, and I didn’t really hear many recurring sections after that respective section passed. The bandoneon player led the group as the main melody player, but the violin was also a melody component, and the bandoneon player was often silent during the violin melodies and vice versa. The guitar player mostly played lines using chord tones and arpeggios. The guitar tone was clean, similar to that clean Fender/jazz sound. I loved the descending guitar chord melody towards the end of Conceirto para quinteto with the bandoneon playing countermelody over it; it reminded me of a Baroque arraignment. The emotions of the performers were so incredibly raw, so much so that the pianist couldn’t help but rise and fall into his seat during the show. The performers were all very zoned in and knew what they were responsible for. Overall it was just a very cohesive performance and one the great, not just good, performances of the festival.

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Friday May 24

     Today I had a meditative experience while listening to a piece in our class session. I’ve been trying to be aware of being completely attentive while listening to a piece of music. While we were listening, I simply picked one spot to just look at and I tried my best to remained focused on that spot. After we finished listening and the piece concluded, I felt drawn to my guitar, and I felt as though I needed to make an attempt to work on a piece I’m in the very early stages of writing. I decided to do just that, but it was more of an experiment than an attempt to solidify more parts of the song.

     I had a great breakfast today with Dan, Aiden, and McKinley. Besides the food and refreshments, our topics of conversation were thought-provoking. I synthesized some of the main points in a note on my phone after our conversation:

·      Attention spans have decreased in the last couple of centuries; Industrial Revolution has been a main catalyst in this change.

·      As a result we don’t spend time worrying about important life factors, such as clean water and human waste filtration systems. We have to choose something to do with our time as a result of not having to worry about these things.

·      Yet we all pass the time with bullshit to different extents. Our phones are designed in part to prevent us from critically thinking, since Google can think for us. We commented on the probability that this is intentional in an attempt to keep the general population suppressed and controlled.

·      The Earth is not ours; we are the Earth’s. The Earth has existed for billions of years, and will exists for billions of years once we are extinct. We don’t have to save the Earth from being destroyed; we are actually trying to save the human race from destroying ourselves with an Earth that is uninhabitable to humans.

     Seeing Pete Farmer perform as a saxophone player for the first time was awesome! The concert had such great vibes and you could tell the performers were all just having so much fun and really gelled well together as a group. The nonverbal communication between the group as a whole was satisfying to witness, as it was apparent to me that they were almost always on the same page musically. The fact that Giorgio played his bass acoustic after his amp did not work is the epitome of what jazz improvisation is all about. And damn was his soloing impressive! The upper register of his bass cut through so nicely while he was soloing. I have to say I aspire to be able to be part of such a fun jazz performance and to play with the same level of expertise that those guys played with one day.

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Thursday May 23

Today we had the opening concert that kicked off the Alba Music Festival. We saw Kevin Zhu and Jeffrey Chappell perform at the Ferrero Foundation, which was the perfect venue for the opening night concert. I felt like for the first time I was able to take in the movements of each piece as a connected work instead of just a section of the song. I was thinking of the pieces, trying to methodically figure out how each movement flowed into the next and proceeded the previous one. I was amazed when I found out Kevin Zhu was even younger than myself! Upon doing some research, I found that Kevin has been playing the violin since the age of three, which must’ve explained his calm and cool composer throughout the performance. I thought the communication between Kevin and Jeffrey and was pretty impressive, given the fact that neither had performed with each other prior to tonight’s show. Jeffrey’s accompaniment seemed appropriate, as he often held back in a way that allowed Kevin to make his violin almost sing to us.