NCCO- Panel Discussion on Commissioning New Choral Works

NCCO More Saturday Interest Sessions

In addition to the Alice Parker-centered events Saturday there were two other events. These were choir/composer based events-- the first was on commissioning new choral music and the second was the introduction of the initial compositions of the new NCCO Choral Music Series. Both events were heavily attended and excellent.

The commissioning event was a round table discussion ably led by Alan Harler, whose Mendelssohn Club based in Philadelphia has commissioned 48 works since 1990. The panel members were composers Kirke Mechem and Libby Larsen, composer/conductor Steven Sametz, and conductors Jeffrey Douma and Nathaniel Lew.


(Alan Harler)

Much of the discussion centered on mechanics, contracts, communication between composer and conductors but also on the reason a choir should want to commission new works. A lot of stress was put on the importance of the composer being in the community the week of the performance and interacting with singers, the community, etc instead of just writing a work from a thousand miles away, mailing it in and never having any real personal interaction with the music makers. Good points often with goood humor were made. Steven Sametz was especially entertaining in his comments and Kirke Mechem was wonderful in his sharing of resources.


Here is a link to a book called Composers on Composing for Choirs (published by GIA, right down the street from me!) which you can see on Google Books (go to p. 99) and read for yourself this checklist that Mechem shared with us at NCCO ( I have not yet received written permission to post it directly).

Here are some further commissioning info sources for you if you want to explore this more:

From Meet the Composer

And Catherine Davies of ChorusAmerica has varied materials and articles she is happy to share if you write to her at Catherine@chorusameirca.org

Now some personal feelings about this- and there may be a bit of mayhem ahead- oh how I wish I could name names!

I have commissioned just a few works but have been commissioned a pretty fair amount in the last ten years. In my opinion there are some things that just have to happen in order for everyone to "be happy" as Bobby McFerrin would say--

First of all I am going to look at this from the conductor/organizational side of things, and not approach it from where you may have expected for me to start from- the composers side. I am doing this because I am very disappointed by the behavior of some composers and I think some of them need to work a lot harder to do the right thing by conductors and organizations (Lew gave an example of receiving a commissioned work two years past its due date- ugh, ugh, and shall I say it again?- ugh!). Also composers need to realize that conductors and organizations have rehearsal schedules to maintain and that also they are paying out their trust AND money to the composer- they really don't have a true guarantee of receiving a masterpiece and may even get a dud, or something that just doesn't work for their choir or the event the piece was to be for. Because most of the artistic risk is on the organizational side, composers should be far more willing to work harder to gain AND MAINTAIN trust. When I heard of the two year overdue piece that Lew referred to I was mad- it reflects badly on all composer and makes us look like narcissistic spoiled brats.

Conductors deserve to have some real input into the piece in some way- and perhaps in a lot of ways (conductors do vary a lot on how much they hope to control and how much they want to leave open). Sharing text selection decisions with the composer and/or at least approving the final choice to make sure it fits the scope of what they want is something that is very important to most all involved.

Composers ought to NEVER EVER be late with delivering a commission unless they have been run over by a Pizza Hut truck, or succumbed to dementia from being kidnapped by zombies and forced to watch Kardashian reality series shows or something along those lines.

Composers need to strive and honor difficulty parameters, range parameters, and so on that have been discussed in some sort of depth. Even though some of this is subjective, I am able to put some of this into contract language. And I'm not implying here that commissioned pieces should be easy- I am just saying they should fit what was discussed.

All composers should be willing to be open to all communication- not shut it off.

Finally, maybe even some composers who can't respect conductors/organizations should not appear on panels that discuss commissioning new music.



So... I'll keep going...a few years ago the following was my horror story. I have not told this story to any but close friends until now and have pretty much let go my anger about it- but the offending composer was in the room at this NCCO event and it was just galling me over and over to see this person present.

This was a joint commission between my group and two other groups. We chose a well-known composer (who was a friend of two of us at the time, btw) and worked out many musical parameters and timelines in phone calls.

And after all this groundwork here is what then gradually transpired:

We wrote up a contract which included language for a down payment from us once we received a signed contract. But the composer never signed the contract, even when reminded again and again.

We started asking more detailed questions about the text (which was roughly agreed upon to earlier- it was a series of texts on a theme - some texts were already chosen and some still to be discovered) to which we were told "It's none of your business"

We started asking for even simple progress reports which were ignored and then were answered with "Leave me alone, and I will only talk to you through my assistant" (oh yeah, he didn't talk to us either).

As the date the score was due had almost arrived we were becoming so worried it was ridiculous. And then the deadline for the piece to be delivered passed and we were left waiting and with no response to our inquiries. We wondered-- would we ever receive it, how would we handle the fact that we had already printed up professionally printed promotional items heralding performances of this commission, how would one of our parties handle the fact that they were expecting to tour this piece?

The piece became even more and more overdue. I contacted the composers high profile publisher (thankfully the person answering the phone was someone I knew personally and who chose to speak freely to me) and here is what I was told: "Oh, I bet X hasn't even started this piece- X is behind on all X's commission commitments". My stunned response was- "You can't be right- and I can't fathom where we are if you ARE right"!

At this point we were all aghast. We pushed and pushed for communication (after all, by now all three groups should already be starting to rehearse this piece) and finally what happened was this- we received a shoddily, seemingly quickly written piece that did not fit any of the parameters discussed, and which included some text passages that would be obviously offensive to the world view of one of the commissioning parties institution, was far short of the duration time agreed upon, was a cappella instead of with piano as had been agreed upon and many more transgressions. The composer then demanded ALL the fee be paid immediately. In fact, payment of this fee became the only thing that X wanted to discuss. Wow- all we could do was shake our collective heads!

We consulted a couple attorneys (working pro bono, thankfully) and their advice was to refuse the piece as it 1) was so late as to be impossible for at least one of our choirs to prepare in time 2) didn't honor any of the verbally agreed upon parameters 3) the composer had refused to communicate, and 4) the composer had refused to sign a contract. This was met with a threat to sue us- but we stood firm- we knew we were in the right.

Was I comfortable and happy with our stance? Being a composer myself, in a sense I never was- but it was the logical one considering how illogical and unfair all the composer's many actions or shall I say inactions were. The composer finally backed off and saved face I guess in their mind by hawking this piece to their publisher-- needless to say friendships ended and tough lessons were learned by some of us. But today I know WE did no wrong- or perhaps the only thing we did do wrong was trust this "friend" way too much and not find a way to force the composer to sign a contract and talk to us. I have wondered now and then if the composer in question learned anything from what happened- I would hope so, but I really have no way of knowing.

So here is what I learned as a commissioned composer from this- I have vowed to never ever be late with a piece, I listen really hard to what people want from me, I stay in touch and so on. And I think this has really paid off well- I believe that everyone who has commissioned me over the years has been really happy with how I deal with them regarding contracts, text selection, communication-- and I also try to make each special in some musical or textual way- not just delivering one size fits all pieces. So...I write this not to scare people away from commissioning- but to help them get it right. And it does go right, I would bet, about 90% or more of the time!


REMEMBER: WRITE (and get it signed) A CONTRACT-- even with "friends".

KEEP THE COMMUNICATION GOING, and hey, have some fun along the way too- we're creating new art and new artistic experiences together! Commissioning is almost always a great experience for everyone.

Further Day One experiences: ACDA National Conference

(Geoffrey Boers)





Here is what I did the rest of day one of the conference. This will be a bit of a mish-mosh entry but I think it can be fun to just follow someones day and it saves me from not having to slavishly post only concert reviews.

The early afternoon offered some great interest sessions and it was hard to make a choice- there were three that caught my eye. I finally settled on Weston Noble's and Geoffrey Boers' session on "Transforming Conducting". Boers did the heavy lifting with Weston providing some of the original ideas and inspiration. The final gist of things was that mirror neuron research tells us that conducting, whether examined on a macro or micro level, is not just a leadership role but also a facilitory role which must be collaborative and invitational.


In addition, I think the greatest benefit for me and many others was Boers' discussion of the sideways gesture, or looping gestures- he really didn't get fancy and call it anything more formal. The idea is simply that outward expanding motions, especially quite often displayed as graceful angles out from the body (in other words, not just an outward mirror motion perpendicular to the middle of the body) are very natural, highly efficient, and create some wonderful gestures/pictures for the choir to sing from. I have actually been doing this lately but not really analyzing it. I find it is very freeing and I also don't conduct everything the same way every time, especially in rehearsal. This might seem inconsistent for a choir to look at, but actually I think it keeps them engaged and fresh. After the session, I was able to have a short chat with James Jordan about this and he was in total agreement with Boers' ideas. In fact James said that much of his own new book talks about this. So for me this was a great session to attend.

After that I dropped in on the children's choir reading session, and was pleasantly surprised to see my wacky (and unexpected bestseller) "Peace on Earth...and lots of little crickets" on the session list. The session was full of great energy- and for any of you who don't travel in the children's choir circle- you don't know what you are missing! This dedicated group of people have great energy,and are constantly exploring all the wonderful new repertoire being written today for their genre. They even had a bit of a wild and wacky party Thursday night!I also got to meet promising young composer Andrea Ramsey at the reading session, and my friend Sydney Guillaume was present as well for a reading of one of his pieces. It's great to see these young composers in the room for a session- choral composers are becoming less shy about being present at conferences!

Next up for us gold track folks was the International Choir concert. Unfortunately this was a disappointment to me, especially after having witnessed such jaw dropping presentations by international choirs at the 2007 and 2009 national conferences. I felt that the only truly strong, innovative group was the Latvian choir "Kamer". They were quite excellent but not spectacular. The evening went downhill from there-- "musica intima" claimed out loud to be "Canada's most important choir" and then proceeded to give a completely flat, uninspired concert. The sound was thin, tight, and tired, and the Auditorium Theater did not give this small group any helping hand. The repertoire was tedious and repetitive and tiny reshuffling of the singer formations between selections seemed to make no difference to the sound that we could detect in the audience-- and honestly, the hooty or wooty approach to high soprano lines was something I also, unfortunately, began noticing in other groups during the week. Can we not do the hooty wooty thing up high- we're not really trying to sound like old, tired copper kettles on the cottage fire getting the water hot for teatime, are we? The Taipei Philharmonic Chamber Choir sang next, with at tines a full and vibrant sound, but then also often sounding hoarse and tired as well. The repertoire was full of Chinese music with the usual pentatonic melodies and occasional folk yelps. Sadly, zero fresh, exciting repertoire here.

The final group was Chanticleer. Now please don't be a hater,but I am not much of a fan anymore. I used to love them years ago, but I have grown weary of the warbly high soprano male voices. I also think they are nowhere near as good as they were in the 1990's.

(Miranda says don't hate on Paul for not liking Chanticleer anymore)


I just basically feel now that I want to hear a men's choir singing in men's voices, without going into warble land. My main reason to listen to Chanticleer for the umpteenth time was to hear my friend Steven Sametz' Brock commission piece,"Three Mystical Choruses" . In all honesty I need to hear this piece a few more times to really be a good critic or judge. Everyone though it was quite beautiful, but I think we really need to hear it more to get a handle on what Steven was aiming for and how the texts work with the music. The piece is in three movements which Steven believes can stand alone and is being sold that way by EC Schirmer. Many of us felt that the third movement, titled "I am Within you", which danced way more than the first two movements, was the most appealing on first listen. I hope some quality mixed SATB groups will sing this piece, and of course it will sound very much different with female sops and altos. All in all, I was proud of Steven, and a bunch of us fellow composers (we mostly go back to being part of the Oxford Institute sessions in the early 2-thousands) were able to have a very fun conversation with him late Saturday night as the whole conference was winding down in the Hilton lobby. Bravo Steven, for an enticingly beautiful and intelligent piece.

Finally, my evening ended with a visit to my pals at the Northern Arizona University reception at Kitty O'Shea's. There I got hang out with the folks who had hosted me in groovy Flagstaff in December when they sang my NAU Holiday Dinner commission: very cool and talented people like faculty Edie Copley, Ryan Holder, and recent grads and/or current students like Erica Kragness, Elliot Liles, and the uber-energetic Erin Tucker.











me, Edie Copley, Ryan Holder, Sydney Guillaume







Coming Up; Day Two, including an amazing HS performance, and lunch with the very fun Joan Szymko

Aspiring choral composers- do NOT miss this!

I see that Steven Sametz and his school Lehigh University, in a beautiful part of Pennsylvania, have hooked up with ACDA to present a choral composers workshop this summer. Bravo to all involved and for those of you who don't know the history behind this, I will try to fill you in (though I am not privy to the details of the new developments with ACDA- perhaps someone there can fill in the recent blanks).


Steven started this great idea about 9-10 year ago-- a week long bootcamp for aspiring choral composers/arrangers to start a new piece or two from scratch, hit the ground running, write like maniacs every day AND hear their sketches sung every day by Steven's fine professional group, the Princeton Singers. This was Steven Sametz' and Lehigh's invention, and it went really well the first year, from what I heard.

The next year, 2002, Steven got Oxford University Press (USA), at that point run very ably by Chris Johnson, to collaborate. Oxford (with some of the decisions being made by the UK management) decided to expand the event by adding in a "festival" adult choir to the composer element in hopes of drawing more people and more income to the event. For a few years this was the format, but the festival choir element never really took hold, as many quality amateur singers in the area (and there are a lot, this is Bethlehem Bach Choir country) already had pretty strong allegiances to singing at the Berkshire Festival off and on.

But in the meantime Steven had great guest composer mentors such as Libby Larsen, Bob Chilcott, and so on working with the aspiring composers and things really took off. Oxford was able to discover some, at that point, totally unknown composers such as yours truly (I attended 2002 and 2003 to compose, and 2004 to work on my conducting with Nicholas Cleobury), Reg Unterseher, Jon Rommereim, Ellen Voth, Valerie Crescenz, Jonathan David, and a whole bunch of other very talented folks. Oxford was able to, in short time, add about 40 quality pieces into their catalog from the composers at the event, no small accomplishment by the composers or by OUP.

However, things kind of unraveled. As I said, the festival choir element never really gelled, although people like Nick Cleobury and Tom Hall gave it their all (hey, I just rhymed) and Oxford UK seemed to grow weary of the event and/or lack of income. They finally pulled the plug on their support which to me totally sucked (yeah, I can say that, it's my blog). To me, this was OUP UK not respecting (or jealous of?) OUP USA as run by Chris Johnson-- a real shame that they decided to not respect Chris' vision for what OUP USA Music Department could achieve.

I believe Steven Sametz did the event at least once or twice since then with its original intent, as a composer/professional choir workshop for new choral compositions. I'm thrilled that Steven and Lehigh went back to their original idea and did that.

I am also thrilled to see that Steven, Lehigh and now ACDA are collaborating on this event this summer. I wish them all the success in the world and for any of you aspiring choral composers/arrangers of any age- PLEASE sign up and attend. I guarantee you that it will be worth it- the chance to work with Steven, Chen Yi, the Princeton Singers, and the collegial atmosphere you will find there will be life-changing for you.

And finally, I will never forget the amazing sessions we had with Bob Chilcott one summer- Bob's tiny handwritten immaculate notes he prepared for seminars, his supportiveness, his earnest and intense beliefs about the intent of musical composition, and for sure his ability to blow off some steam and amuse all of us with insanely funny King's Singers stories- what a blast.

So... here is the link to ACDA's page about this event. Go, sign up already!


http://acda.org/index.php?q=summer-choral-composers-forum

Part Two: ACDA Brock Commissions for 2011-13

While I was in Tucson for the recent ACDA Western division conference, Tim Sharp, ACDA executive director, happened by. Tim sat down and we got a chance to chat for a few fun minutes (and also again later in Memphis). One of our topics was how to get more young choral directors to join ACDA and to start attending conferences regularly, and I think Tim and the organization have already made some strides there.

The other topic was Joan Szymko’s very successful new piece “All Works of Love” which was the 2010 Brock Commission. I asked Tim how the commission had progressed and how Joan and he had discussed it as the process unfolded. And Tim’s wonderful comment was this- his role, as he saw it, was to invite Joan to write a beautiful new choral piece, and it “just happened to be” the Brock Commission. In other words, don’t let the “importance” of the commission weigh you down and make it difficult to simply write in your own personal, very creative voice. It appears Tim’s advice/invitation to Joan really worked.

By the way, Joan’s new piece is published by Santa Barbara Music Press, and through their new marketing/distribution relationship with Lorenz, it is available through Lorenz, catalog number SBMP 942. Here is a link to the order page:


http://lorenz.com/product.aspx?id=SBMP942


Then Tim rewarded this cub reporter with a mini-scoop.



(pictured: a more famous cub reporter)


In addition to already public knowledge of the next two commissions (Steven Sametz for 2011 and Chen Yi for 2012) Tim gave me this scoop (you are hearing it here first folks)-- the 2013 commission will be for women’s choir and orchestra. Tim likes this idea a lot, as he’s trying do things outside the box- how many pieces are there for women’s choir and orchestra? So, it will be very interesting to see who this commission goes to and how the piece turns out. I hope it will be stunning and a great addition to the repertoire!