In the Company of New Music

If the name Composers Inc. evokes thoughts of a corporate approach to music making, think again. This may very well be the most open-minded, eclectic new-music series in town. Composers Inc. was formed in 1984 as a nonprofit advocate for living American composers. Its programming is determined by a collective of six artistic directors: Robert Greenberg, Rafael Hernandez, Frank La Rocca, Jeffrey Miller, Martin Rokeach, and Allen Shearer. All are active composers who support their habit by teaching or lecturing. Both Rokeach and La Rocca have been with the organization since its inception. Begun as a forum for performances of new works by the artistic directors and their fellow American composers, the organization was dreamed up by Mark Miller, a music student of Rokeach and La Rocca at what was then called Cal State Hayward. Rokeach explains that while Miller soon moved on to pursue his ultimate calling, a career in business, “he had the chutzpah to start a new music group, and four composer/teachers in their late 20s and early 30s followed him into it. “We never would have survived past our first season if Mark hadn’t found a way for us to sell beer and wine at rock and country and western concerts at the Rheem Theater in Moraga," Rokeach continues. "The two years we did that was loads of fun, far more fun than writing grants. I wish we could do it now, instead of writing grants.” Nevertheless, significant grants have enabled Composers Inc. to evolve into a high-profile, nationally known organization whose annual Lee Ettelson Composer’s Award competition draws 250 to 300 entries annually and is now endowed into perpetuity. Grants currently come from the Aaron Copland Fund for Music, the BMI Foundation, San Francisco Grants for the Arts, the Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation, and the Bernard Osher Foundation.

Putting Out the Welcome Mat

“All it really takes to be on our programs is to submit music to us,” explains Executive Director Miller, who joined the collective in 1999. “We are going to commission some works for our forthcoming 25th season [in the fall], because it’s a special occasion. But mostly, people either submit directly to the six artistic directors, or compete for our annual Lee Ettelson Composer’s Award. Either way, we look at the score, listen to a recording if it’s available, and decide. “I don’t think we have any agenda other than presenting music that we really love," Miller adds. "We all have strong and very individual opinions, and all of us are involved in making a final decision. Sometimes the piece that someone loves is the same piece that someone hates. It makes it interesting.” Sometimes, the organization’s eclectic programming has unforeseen consequences. Rokeach cites an example: “About 14 years ago, we programmed a wonderful, exciting piece by Berkeley composer Cindy Cox for percussion and piano. We had no idea that one little piano note, just one note, was prepared. It took so little effort — the pianist just slipped a thin dime in the string before she played. The percussion part was so busy and colorful we honestly didn't even perceive that the note was prepared. It was a big success — great piece, stellar performance, and the audience loved it. "Next piece, a very well-known composer came from the East Coast for the premiere of his violin and piano piece by the performers of his choice. It was written in a much more conservative musical style, and certainly did not employ a prepared piano. "Well, you can imagine what happened. The pianist in the previous piece completely forgot to remove the dime. The violin and piano piece was about three-quarters through when that one prepared note on the piano was finally struck. It shocked the pianist, the violinist, the audience, and the composer. And the note kept being reiterated. I thought a string had broken. What had hardly been perceptible in the preceding piece was utterly obnoxious and jarring in the second, and certainly ruined the mood. Afterward the composer was furious, and though we apologized until we were blue in the face, he didn't give us any mercy. "Though we weren't crazy about his piece (this is the chance one takes with a premiere), the artistic directors decided to do the right thing and reprogram it the following season. Before informing the composer, we called the violinist and pianist. They confessed they didn't care much for the work either, and didn't want to play it again. That was the end of that."

Eyes on the Prize

While Composers Inc. receives 20 to 25 direct submissions each year, most compositions arrive as entries into the organization’s award competition. The prestigious award was created to honor the memory of the former editor of the old San Francisco Examiner and publisher of the now-defunct Call-Bulletin, and was endowed by his wife, former chamber music advocate and Composers Inc. board member Suzanne Huston Ettelson. Lee Ettelson died in 1988, and his wife died in 2005. Two awards are given each year, for music written for one to five players, or for works using electronic media (including tape alone); the 2008 award-winners will be announced this month. The prize for each award is $1,000 plus a Composers Inc. performance. That may not seem like much, but having a new work performed by some of the Bay Area’s finest musicians in the Green Room of San Francisco's Veterans Building serves as a major highlight on many a budding composer’s resume. Of the two 2007 award-winning pieces, Michael Djupstrom's Walimai was presented last fall; Ryan Carter's Grip is slated for the organization’s forthcoming April 15 concert. Music arrives from all over the country. “Part of the fun and excitement for us is discovering composers we might not have come across otherwise,” says Miller. “A few years ago, we performed the music of Michael Unruh, a wheat farmer in Kansas who had taken up the bass clarinet. He sent in a wonderful piece for clarinet and bass clarinet. You wouldn’t find something like that through conventional means.” Part of the contest’s excitement is the blind judging by collective members — they do not know a composer’s name when they evaluate music and make decisions. Nonetheless, they have an excellent track record for picking composers who later become well-known. The list of past Lee Ettelson winners includes such outstanding, high-profile composers as Mason Bates (see last week’s SFCV feature article), Kevin Beavers, Martin Bresnick, Jennifer Higdon, Pierre Jalbert, David Lang (of Bang on a Can), Robert Maggio, and Christopher Theofanidis. If you aren’t familiar with any of these folks, check out the Telarc recordings by Atlanta Symphony Music Director Robert Spano of Higdon's and Theofanidis’ music, for starters, and prepare to be amazed.

Jennifer Higdon and Christopher Theofanidis

Higdon photo by Jeff Hurwitz

“As for our own music,” says Miller, “within the areas of music currently being notated and performed live, I don’t think we have a house style. A couple of collective members are mostly tonal composers, and no one is conceptual in the manner of John Cage. Nor do I believe that anyone is still writing serial music. Some of us have changed styles; some who were in the rigorous, modernist camp have moved to a more accessible idiom.” Founding member Martin Rokeach asserts that, of all Bay Area new-music groups, the Composers Inc. concert series is the widest open ideologically. “While the new music world has been factionalized for a long time,” he says, “with composers allied to certain camps, we are six composers with a very wide artistic compass. People who attend our concerts hear accessible music as well as hard-to-penetrate music. We’re sometimes criticized for programming music that is conservative, and other times for music that is extremely challenging. What matters to us is whether or not we like a piece. If we like it, we program it. That includes serial music and neoromantic music, because we all like both." Board President Jeff Dunn, a composer and new-music connoisseur who writes for SFCV, agrees. “At Composers Inc., you won’t hear one blistering, dissonant piece after another," says Dunn. "You’ll get styles in proportion to how music is written today, which includes music based on popular idioms. Since we deal almost exclusively with living composers, we try to fly them out to our concerts and have them speak about their music. The reason our concerts are enthusiastically attended — often by different people each time — is that we program music that audiences seem to like.” Dunn is equally enthusiastic about the group’s unique choice of performers. Where in most Bay Area new-music organizations the same musicians perform on each program, every Composers Inc. concert features different musicians. The collective handpicks the players from a wide pool, pairing “the right musicians with the right piece.” Many first- and associate-chair principals from San Francisco Symphony, San Francisco Opera Orchestra, and other stellar ensembles have been known to perform, including SFS Associate Concertmaster Nadya Tichman and Principal Flutist Julie McKenzie. Composers Inc. is particularly proud that it scheduled the first West Coast gig for the Alexander String Quartet, which has since relocated from New York City to the Bay Area and become a staple of the chamber music scene.

All in a Night

Composer’s Inc. Green Room concert on Feb. 12 exemplifies the collective’s approach to programming. Three of the pieces — Karim Al Zand's Pattern Preludes, Luke Dahn's Downward Course, and William Kraft's Concerto a Tre — were contest entries; Learning the Elements is by collective member Allen Shearer; and Derek Bermel's Mulatash Stomp was proactively chosen by the collective because they wanted to see it performed and thought it would work well at the end of the program. Performers include SFS Principal Percussionist Jack Van Geem and violinist Kelly Leon Pearce (in Concerto a Tre), the Bay Area’s Adorno Ensemble (in Mulatash Stomp), SFS Chorus accompanist Matthew Laurence Edwards (in Pattern Preludes and Downward Course), and Left Coast Chamber Ensemble cellist Tanya Tomkins, frequent regional opera mezzo-soprano soloist Katherine Growden, and outstanding freelance clarinetist Diane Maltester (in the premiere of Allen Shearer’s Learning the Elements). When you discover four pianists on the same program, several of them new to the series, you know that Composers Inc. is serious about its commitment to finding the most appropriate musicians for the job. The compositional styles are a potpourri. Collective member Miller compares clarinetist Bermel’s Mulatash Stomp to a folk dance. “Based on Hungarian folk music, it sounds like ethnic music from a place on another planet. It’s a short, perfect concert closer.” Composer Bermel has a slightly different take on his piece. “Having never been to a true [all-night Hungarian] Mulatas,’ he writes in the program notes, “I called my secondhand piece ‘Mulatash’ and wove a techno rhythm into the mix for some added American late-night spice.” Shearer’s Learning the Elements brings together earth, air, fire, and water through settings of poems by Archibald MacLeish, William Pitt Root, Josephine Miles, and the composer. Audiences will soon find out if it’s another example of Shearer’s characteristically elegant, concise style, which Miller characterizes as “tonal music that doesn’t sound derivative of past tonal styles.”

Miller considers Kraft a master of a communicative, distinctly modernist style. “Concerto a Tre is virtuosic, and extremely well-written for all three players,” he says. Al-Zand’s Pattern Preludes, which is sometimes informed by jazz, is quite quirky, consciously transforming the well-known styles of such composers as Bach, Debussy, and Chopin by using accessible language that is uniquely Al-Zand’s. “Dahn’s music is the hardest to describe of the bunch,” says Miller. “It’s like a moto perpetuo (perpetual motion), full of exuberance and drive.” Rokeach admits that he’s perplexed when people occasionally suggest that Composers Inc. is a self-aggrandizing organization that mainly exists to promote collective members' work. “We are not a bunch of desperate composers who use this as our only outlet,” he says, as he cites cities and countries in which many collective members’ compositions are often performed. "The only tangible thing we get back is a performance every year or two," Rokeach says. "It has been a constant struggle and hardship to keep this group going for 24 years. It takes considerable energy to continue looking for money — the directors constantly contribute a large amount of their personal income — and the amount of emotional energy we give cannot be quantified. We do it because we are advocates for performers who draw a diverse, ever-changing audience because of the stylistic variety, outstanding musicians, and quality of the music we choose. "Frank La Rocca once described Composers Inc. thusly: ‘You know how every single Beatles album is a different experience? I feel the same way about our concerts.’ ”