January 2020 News/Rambling: awards, rejection, and getting work out there
2019 closed with some awesome things happening. I was awarded an ACF Create commission to write a piece for Boston-based duo Box Not Found, a 2020 National Arts Club Fellowship, and was invited to perform at Re:Sound in Cleveland and one of my dream venues, La MaMa. A lot can happen in two years...in 2017 I was hesitant to call myself a composer and got rejected from every residency I applied to.
As artists, we all get rejected more often than not (I applied to ACF the year before, and I just got a rejection the day before yesterday), so it feels great to not get rejected. It’s also important to remember that these competitions do not valuate our work. I honestly see applications as cheap PR (especially compared to actual PR), a way to get work in front of as many people as possible.
Of course, all this supposed validation is followed by the immediate feeling that I’m a hack and got lucky somehow. Can’t stay in that mindset for too long though—I’ve got work to do!
Last weekend, I attended the Chamber Music America conference, a forum in which to get work in front of presenters and learn through panels and talks, as well as see showcases. CMA’s theme was “Music, Equity, and Our Future,” and it is clear that they have true conviction in this idea. Case in point: they are not afraid of tough conversations, as demonstrated in their panel “The Artist’s Perspective,” featuring Aaron Flagg, Tania León, Jerry Medina, and Tomeka Reid. I wrote more about it on an Instagram post:
And back again to the topic of getting work out there: I got to do a pitch session since someone didn’t show up, where artists practice pitching and then presenters give feedback. It was very helpful, and 2/3 presenters were friendly except for the last one, who had an all-too-familiar look on her face of being pissed at me for existing. She softened towards the end after I explained the collaborative fashion concept behind my ensemble, The Nouveau Classical Project.
I’m generally not great at pitching and I find it challenging to balance making the work and putting the work out there, or to put it crudely, selling the work. I’ve been able to get opportunities organically by talking to people in random social settings, or making in-person connections by seeing a show at a venue or meeting people at events.
Anyway! That’s been my January so far. Feel free to share any thoughts or ask questions in the comments.
Auto-bio, or how I got over my fear of composing
Watercoloring, my new hobby
During school, I was focused on building classical repertoire. I started The Nouveau Classical Project around the same time I began my master’s program with $175 and luckily, musicians who were willing to volunteer to play for free for our very first benefit. The economy was ROUGH!
NCP started off very classical it has changed with me. After finishing my master’s, I became more interested in new music. I had also wanted compose but stopped whenever I tried to start: I respected composers and their craft so much that I thought I had no right to do it. Along with that, I was worried that I would not be good or successful at it since I did not start at four, like I did with piano. So I immediately walked away from the idea.
As NCP grew, we commissioned composers and I, along with some members of my ensemble, would think of collaborative possibilities. This was the extent of my making activities. In retrospect, I wanted to be actually making things and not just assembling pieces, and that frustration would come out in weird ways.*
After primarily pursuing a career in performance and being solely a pianist for several years, I felt not just a desire, but a burning need to express and share my experiences and perspectives as a Filipinx American woman. It crossed my mind that I would have started doing this sooner if I saw more Filipinxes doing this.** Part of my motivation was just showing up, being a representative or an example for my people, but maybe that rationale was also a way to make it less personal and therefore less terrifying.*** I hit a turning point, where I decided I would make an attempt at this strong but long-feared desire to compose music.
A couple of things happened one year that pushed this decision. I was a Fellow in the Target Margin Institute for Collaborative Theater Making, which was not about theater, but about questioning one’s practice. This fellowship was a year long, and at some point during that year, two friends from high school around my age passed away. They were too young to die, and I realized that life is simply too short to not try to do something you want to do, regardless of whether or not you achieve conventional success. One other thing happened that I would rather not detail here. But just mentioning it so you know there was one other thing.
For the fellowship, I was meant to explore how to play the piano in unconventional ways, but as the fellowship went on, the TMT mentors (David Herskovits and Moe Yousuf) noticed that I often kept talking about how I wished I could compose. So they made my final investigation about finding ways to compose rather than about making a “good” composition, which further encouraged me to give myself permission to just try. Moe even said that my investigation should be trying to make a “bad” piece of music. It was hard to break out of my shell, so a lot of my practice has had to do with dismantling the perfectionist mentality.
I have always been a late bloomer so I suppose starting late makes sense. It is still often scary, and it is not easy, but I love what I do and I am grateful to be able to do it!
*This can be a whole other essay.
** Yes, there are many Asians, but we all are so different, so no, when I see another Asian I do not necessarily see someone who represents me.
***I wonder if this is part of the thought behind the zeitgiest of identity-focused art? By making it about ourselves but related to a broader identity it’s theoretically bigger than ourselves and feels altruistic? Anyway check out my piece Islander, which explores the residue colonialism has left behind and the resulting fragmentation of identity! :-D
My Worst Nightmare (Not Really)
Last night I had a stress dream about my new piece. I was workshopping with Laura and Hajnal, who are in my piece in real life. Laura is on her side, playing flute and trying things out. Then Hajnal’s husband, Dorian, comes to rehearsal too with small percussion equipment so I think, All right, guess I’m writing for that too. More people appear, because it turns out that Hajnal thought it they’d dig what we’re doing and would possibly take part.
Then I see tables set up for brunch, staff bustling around in my periphery, a dance floor, some guests cheering, some dancing. I assume Hajnal had planned this as well. It turns out to be a wedding reception. I do not see a bride and groom; it simply becomes fact. We are standing next to each other, looking at the scene, and she says something that implies she is as surprised as I am. I say, You didn’t plan this? And it turns out she did not.
I start to panic because I REALLY need to work. My friend Jay appears with an envelope that looks like one of the bank statements I actually receive in the mail and says he will go downstairs to the admin office to sort it out, since he needs to drop off a payment (which is in that envelope). Luckily, time moves by extremely slowly. I look at my phone and what was ten minutes normally was only three minutes. I don’t know how; I just know it was true in this dream. So I think, Okay cool, I have time.
Hajnal and I are talking (where the hell did Laura go?) and I tell her that some bratty girl we know, who does not exist in real life, I think her name was CJ, got put in her place.
Right before this dream was another dream, that there was an Urban Outfitters closeout sale at the top of a mountain. This is really random, because I have not shopped there in several years. The company was bussing people back and forth at regular intervals and CJ was a diva and asking to be picked up at a specific time. She was told no (this was apparently her being put in her place). At some point, my cousin and I are on the bus but we had not gotten off, so we were going back up the mountain.
There’s a little more, but I’ll stop there. To anyone who knows what my day was like yesterday, or knows me extremely well, this would make almost perfect sense. Psychologists theorize that dreams serve a role in memory processing, and this was absolutely a bizarre culmination of my Friday. Although it was cut short by an invasive wedding reception, I did receive one creative idea during my dream workshop.
I have felt stuck this month, but yesterday, I was able to sketch two tiny ideas. It did not make me feel like I had any more momentum, but perhaps just starting at least sparked a little bit of imagination that was able to manifest itself during sleep. Taking something from concept to creation sometimes seems nearly impossible: having to manifest all my research, personal stories, and the ways I think about life into a piece feels like trying to create a meal where nearly all of it is made from secret ingredients and no one in the world knows what they are.
I guess I should end with something cheesy like, perhaps the secret ingredients of my creativity will reveal themselves in my deepest dreams or some shit like that. I am not a writer and I need to start composing today. I just really want to make something good.
Delayed Budding
I'm sitting at the Chicago O'Hare airport trying to write this quickly before my complimentary 30 minutes of wifi run out (I think I have 20 left). If I finish quickly enough this post may even include an image!
Lately I've been working on a new multidisciplinary project where I'm writing the music, scoring movement, and examining my identity in a more intense way than I ever have. I've said it enough and I think this will be the last time I say it because I have already acknowledged it enough and it will not help: this is all a bit scary. New territory. And not while I'm fresh out of school; I'm a full-fledged adult! A youthful, fun adult, nonetheless, but a real adult that does not feel like time is on their side.
As a late bloomer (or a fashionably late flower?), I either feel like I don't give a fuck hell yeah life is too short to care I'm doing this! or a bit on edge about getting a late start and begin the what-iffing: What if I had become a generative artist at a younger age and how different (better???) would my work be? What if my brain is done shaping itself and I'm not developing anymore OMG. I think I'm inherently an optimist even though I'm also a cynic and I'm continually balancing the tension of those two things. The cynic in me says, "I'm just keeping it real," while the (somewhat bitchy?) optimist in me says, "Got it. Now shut the fuck up and let's move on."
A staring contest amongst sculptures and other random updates
Random updates.
I hope everyone enjoyed their summer! Summer is not really my jam, but I had a good one. Here's what went down:
- I visited LA, where I performed music by Trevor for piano + electronics at Clifton's, an interesting art deco cafeteria/bar/taxidermy museum/former Ray Bradbury haunt
- I got interviewed by Pregame Magazine
- Violinist Hajnal Pivnick and I got all avant-garde at the Bertoia exhibition in the Museum of Art and Design (MAD) in some costumes by my friend Atelier de Geste (pic above). Thanks to Hajnal for being down to get weird last minute! MAD invited musicians to record audio in the space but I wanted to make a video (ok, amateur film) and not just a sound recording. Now I need to sit down with iMovie and make it...
- I won my first award as an individual artist from the Puffin Foundation for a new multimedia piece that I now also need to make!
Taylor Mac's costumes for Act II of A 24-Decade History of Popular Music by Machine Dazzle
Until I have more time after the NCP Benefit to focus on making the things I need to make, I've been seeing performances every week or so to gather inspiration. Most recently I headed up to Yale to see Carrie Mae Weems' Grace Notes: Reflections for Now and last Saturday I saw the second installment of Taylor Mac's A 24-Decade History of Popular Music. Weems' shows are done, but Mac's are still going on and SO worth seeing! I'm even thinking about going to the 24-hour marathon performances. We'll see...I'll let you know if it ends up happening!
Morning Musings: My Helmut Lang Sweater
My 10-year old sweater.
I interned at the Helmut Lang press office during my final semester in college, when Helmut was still at the helm. I never got to meet him; I'd miss him each time I came in. At the time Prada was taking over the company so there were personnel changes, including shutting down the in-house PR.
As a result, my internship didn't last very long and I got this cream-colored sweater as a parting gift. I feel lucky to have this sartorial souvenir, both because I love the design and it's one of the last pieces from the Helmut Lang label when it was led by the designer himself. I remember the entire collection at the time being nautically inspired, with rope-like drawstrings and accents reminiscent of bubbles. This bulbous knit piece makes me look a little pregnant but I don't mind. Along the neckline it has buttons and button holes that can be connected in a variety of ways.
For a while I didn't know how to wear this. I think I tried to control it a little too much: I would essentially try to wear this sweater like I would a typical sweater, but that's impossible because it is odd and bulky, in the stomach area of all places. Once I realized I needed to work with its undulating, wavy form and embrace its awkwardness rather than fight it by trying to flatten the torso area, it started to make sense.
I've had this sweater for over ten years (along with my Meredith Burns sequined dress) and I like to wear it repetitively in the winter. I've sort of formed a bond with it, which may seem like a silly thing to say about a piece of clothing, but can you blame me? We have history.