What will American classical music sound like in 10, 15 or even 20 years? People who attend an open rehearsal of the Nashville Symphony Tuesday at the Schermerhorn will likely gain insights into the country's musical future.
Next week, the NSO is hosting its first annual Composer Lab and Workshop. Five promising young composers will spend several days in Music City, working with NSO music director Giancarlo Guerrero, principal musicians and administrative staff. The event culminates with a public performance of their work at the open rehearsal, where audience members will hear the kind of music today's young composers are writing. The workshop's fellows, meanwhile, will learn what it's like to work in the big time.
"At music schools, young composers usually just get to work with their peers, who are up-and-coming young professional musicians," says Aaron Jay Kernis, a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer who will serve as director of the new Composer Lab. "The young composers at our workshop will get to work with a world-class orchestra and internationally renowned conductor, which is a rare and invaluable experience."
Kernis knows what he's talking about. Back in 1983, the then-23-year-old Kernis participated in a reading of his piece Dream of the Morning Sky with conductor Zubin Mehta and the New York Philharmonic. At one point, Mehta stopped the orchestra to complain about what he described as "vagueness" in the score. Unintimidated, Kernis snapped back, "Just read what's there." The incident turned Kernis into something of a celebrity in classical music circles.
"Young composers need confidence," says Kernis. "The experience our fellows receive at the workshop should help build confidence."
Kernis, who is now 55 and a distinguished professor of composition at Yale University, is known for writing music that's both lyrical and exuberant. His diverse influences include everything from the music of Gustav Mahler to minimalism. A composer of his time, Kernis also found inspiration in rock, hip-hop and salsa, composing works with such titles as Superstar Etude and 100 Greatest Dance Hits.
He won his Pulitzer Prize in 1998 for his String Quartet No. 2, "Musica Instrumentalis." Around this time, Kernis became a co-founder and director of the Minnesota Orchestra Composer Institute. While in Minneapolis, Kernis struck up a friendship with a promising young associate conductor named Giancarlo Guererro. When Kernis quit his post in Minnesota in 2013 (he resigned in protest over the orchestra's acrimonious labor dispute with its musicians), he got a call to launch a similar program in Nashville.
"I met Giancarlo in Minneapolis and found him to be extraordinarily gifted and likeable," says Kernis. "I've been extremely impressed with the way he's championed contemporary American music in Nashville. So when I got a call from [NSO artistic administrator] Laurence Tucker about coming to Nashville, I was interested."
The NSO announced its workshop in the spring with a call for scores from young composers ages 18 to 33. Not surprisingly, the orchestra was inundated with applications, receiving more than 100 from across the country. A review panel whittled that number down to around 15, from which Kernis selected the top five.
"I was looking for young composers with a distinct voice," says Kernis. "But I was also looking for music that Giancarlo and his musicians would enjoy performing."
Jacob Bancks, a fellow from Minnesota, currently serves as an assistant professor at Augustana College in Rock Island, Ill. His piece, Rock Island Line, is a sonic depiction of an old bridge connecting his home in Rock Island with Davenport, Iowa. The music is both motoric, like a Rock Island train, and broadly lyrical.
Workshop fellow Michael Laurello's piece, Promises, imagines the orchestra as a "giant machine relentlessly chugging away to accomplish some sort of task." Gabriella Smith, a doctoral student at Princeton University, gave her music, Tumblebird Contrails, a Kerouac-influenced title. It imagines the ecstasy of wind in wings.
Daniel Schlosberg's piece, My reflection ran away with my eyes, is a kind of optical illusion in sound, a hall of mirrors where the composer sees his "image projected into infinity," where "he caught a glimpse of a shadow of some unimaginable horror." Workshop fellow Sonnet Swire's work, Antagonisme, seemingly found inspiration in the news headlines and is dedicated to victims of sexual misconduct, domestic violence and intimidation.
Tuesday's open rehearsal is free, but reservations are required. For tickets, visit nashvillesymphony.org/composerlab.
Email arts@nashvillescene.com
