The real adventure begins

It's been quite a week here! I spent all of Monday with Adam, an old friend from Eastman who's also here to study with Chaya this year. While sampling the local falafel (very tasty), walking along the Donau canal, and roaming the streets in search of cheap furniture stores, we discussed everything we could think of related to being a young composer. What have you been writing, what have you been listening to, what have you learned in the last few years, what are you hopes for the future, how do we fit into the larger world of classical music, etc. etc...Now, Adam went from Eastman straight to Harvard, and has never been a non-student; whereas I've spent the last five years out of school. He's nearly finished with his Ph. D, and is very well-connected to the world of contemporary music; I haven't begun a Masters Degree yet, and I'm not as well-connected, but I have learned a tremendous amount from being out in the world. It will be fascinating to see what it's like this year for me to jump back in to the contemporary-music scene, as a student, composer, and listener - and to see in what ways my perspectives on what we're doing, and why we're doing it, may be unique.

THOSE CRAZY AMERICANS!
Adam is living with two Austrian roommates - when I walked in his apartment and was introduced to one of them, he responded with "It's the American invasion!" They're both great guys, and very interested in helping Adam improve his German, plus in improving their own English. (At one point I said that the computer battery was dead, and he laughed about that - "In German, we say the battery is empty, and it sounds really funny to say "es ist tot." It is funny, when you think about it - if a battery can die, then by recharging it we "bring it back to life", and afterwards we should say "the battery is alive!")

I spent the following three days composing, working on a piece for Japanese koto. I got the first movement finished up (which took two weeks altogether) and a sketch for the second movement as well (which took one day). I chose descriptive Japanese titles: "Kazenihirugaeru" (fluttering in the wind) & "Kazenooto" (the voice of the wind), and the music came out sounding like a blend of Japanese and Chappellese, using some traditional elements (the choice of scale, harmony, bending strings and other koto-playing techniques), and some more idiosyncratic elements (rhythmic eccentricities, variations in texture, wild use of glissandos.) I felt that I had developed the music just about as far as I could, given the concepts I had in mind, and was both looking forward to and anxious about taking it to my first composition lesson - what would she say? How could the piece be improved? What new concepts could I start thinking about in order to become a better composer?

Friday morning I had my first lesson with Chaya Czernowin. I arrived fifteen minutes early and waited on a park bench outside. There's a line in a song by Phish - "With your past and your future precisely divided" - and I've never felt that so concretely before. My past consists of a life rich in experiences personal and musical, with steadily growing abilities and recognition as a composer and performer. And yet, I've known that something was missing. I've known that I haven't begun to realize my full potential as a composer. I need guidance in this kind of artistic development. I need to be challenged and inspired by some of the brightest musical minds of our time, if I am to really work towards the future that I dream of.

So I hope you see just how high my expectations are for these lessons. And Chaya met and exceeded them in all counts, in our first lesson alone. She scrutinized what I had written, and heard the difference between what I was trying to do and what I had accomplished. She had me talk about my intentions with this piece, and asked some extremely good (and difficult) questions. We discussed the process of writing, and different ways that ideas can be shaped and developed, and she provided me with some tremendously valuable insights, such as: trusting your intuition about what sounds right (which I do) is not the same thing as being free from inherited conventions and personal habits (which I aspire to).

I feel like I'm in exactly the right place at the right time now - I feel that dropping everything and moving to Vienna, as crazy as it is, was indeed just the right thing to do. I will work very hard this year, and hope to grow a lot artistically - and the future is bright, so bright...