Composer hits musical ‘target’ with local premiere Feb. 17
By Melissa Mitchell, News Bureau Staff Writer 217-333-5491; melissa@illinois.edu
Throughout history, composers, painters, poets and other artists have gone to the well of current events and politics to draw inspiration for their art. Times of revolution and war have yielded particularly powerful works, from Beethoven’s “Fidelio” to Picasso’s “Guernica.” Current world conflicts – notably, U.S. military intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq – were on Keeril Makan’s mind last year when he was tapped to participate in a highly competitive and innovative workshop sponsored by Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute. So the UI professor – who joined the School of Music’s composition/theory faculty last fall – embraced the opportunity as a means of contributing to the ongoing cultural and political discourse about the United States’ military presence in the Middle East. The result was an intense and emotionally charged 13-minute composition for soprano, clarinet/bass clarinet, percussion, violin and cello titled “Target.” The piece received its world premiere last October at New York’s Carnegie Hall; locally, it will be performed on a program presented by the New Music Ensemble at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 17 at the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts. Makan was commissioned to create the piece as one of eight participants – four of them composers, four singers – in the John Harbison/Dawn Upshaw Workshop for Composers and Singers. Harbison, one of the nation’s best-known contemporary composers, and Upshaw – a world-class soprano – are longtime collaborators. The pair launched the experimental workshop to serve as an incubator of sorts for a select group of emerging composers and singers. In effect, they hoped to serve – by example and experience – as cheerleaders for the collaborative creative process. Harbison and Upshaw initially spent a few days listening to audition tapes of more than 250 singers and composers before whittling the list down to eight. In May, Makan and his “match,” mezzo-soprano Laurie Rubin, joined the other three pairs in New York, where they spent several days working together, observing, and soaking up tips and practical advice from the masters. The composers had been asked to bring a short draft of their proposed compositions to the first meeting. Makan, who had traded e-mail and recordings with Rubin prior to that first face-to-face meeting, brought along a complete draft of his score. Despite being somewhat over-prepared for the assignment, Makan concedes that he arrived at the workshop harboring some trepidation, mainly because “I hadn’t done voice before … I’ve been mostly an instrumental composer.” Before coming to the UI, Makan – who has a doctorate in composition from the University of California at Berkeley – lived for two years in Paris, where he studied with Philippe Leroux. Makan has received commissions from numerous ensembles, including the Kronos Quartet, Bang on a Can All-Stars, Paul Dresher Electroacoustic Band, Left Coast Chamber Ensemble and Del Sol String Quartet, and has received prizes and grants from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Fromm Foundation, Meet the Composer, ASCAP, and the Gerbode and Hewlett foundations. On his journey into terra incognita – composing for voice – and his quest for the right text for “Target,” Makan sought comfort in the familiarity of Jena Osman, a poet he had met a couple of years earlier at the Djerassi Resident Artist Program in California. “In embarking on this project, I was searching for a text that resonated with me, both through its commentary on our contemporary situation and through a creative use of everyday language,” he said. “Ideally, I was looking for a living writer whom I could work with, whose artistic goals and viewpoints would make for a promising collaboration.” Ultimately, he set Osman’s poem titled “Twister,” which the poet has described as “playing off of the exchange for possible confusion between a military formation and a Wall Street ticker-tape parade.” Sources for the composition’s other three songs are “found” poems; “every sentence comes from other sources that Osman excerpts and rearranges,” Makan explained. For instance, texts for the songs “Leaflet I” and “Leaflet II” are appropriated from language used in leaflets dropped over Afghanistan after 9/11 by the U.S. government. The text for “PsyOps: Know Your Target” is based on military psychological operations written by a former U.S. army officer. “These texts illustrate how a colonial/imperial mind frames and dehumanizes the “other,” as well as how the language strategies of military invasions are closely tied to the language of advertising,” the composer wrote in the Carnegie Hall concert’s program notes. “What these found texts reveal is that every war on some level must be a war of words.” Appropriately, the music that accompanies the text is edgy and intense, reflecting the anger, anxiety, apprehension, violence and fear associated with war. To evoke the raw emotion embedded in the music, “Target” employs what Makan called “unusual vocal techniques” such as inhaling while singing. And, he said, “some parts border on screaming.” As a result, the piece would be challenging for any singer. Its complexities presented perhaps even more obstacles for Rubin, who is blind. “Pitch she could learn by ear, but rhythmic notation is more cumbersome … that took more time because she couldn’t see the score, though in the end she did a phenomenal job,” the composer said. After the May workshop sessions, the collaborators continued to communicate with each other from a distance before reconvening for a few days in October prior to the Carnegie Hall performance. “Overall, the piece worked out much better than I would have expected,” Makan said. “I really enjoyed the experience, and probably learned the most from Dawn Upshaw from observing her vocal coaching.” He said he also was surprised by how easy it was to work with a vocal component. “If you have text,” he learned, “it helps structure the composition for you. It was a very positive experience that made real for me the expressive potential of the voice.” Both halves of the composer-singer team will be reunited on Feb. 17, when Rubin visits the UI to reprise her performance of “Target” during the Krannert Center performance. She also will be performing UI music professor Erik Lund’s piece “ … And where you are is where you are not.” Is this initial collaboration the first of many? Will Makan and Rubin follow along the same path established by mentors Harbison and Upshaw? “We’re discussing it … hopefully, we can work more collaboratively in the future,” Makan said. Meanwhile, the wheels of the UI composer’s latest collaborative project are already in motion – but in a slightly different direction. Last month, he met with choreographer Benjamin Levy to discuss plans for a dance project commissioned by San Francisco’s ODC Theater. Work on the project will continue this summer, with the premiere set for next December.
