Composer-Performer Interview Series: Caroline Shaw

This is the first in a series of short interviews with composer colleagues on balancing composing and performing. I’ve found it particularly challenging lately, with commission deadlines and also wanting to direct more focus into my solo practice, so I decided so ask for a little help from my friends!

Arts Letters & Numbers & Keyboards

I just got back from a productive and inspiring week with fellow pianists and composers, Melinda Faylor and Mary Prescott. We visited a residency upstate called Arts Letters & Numbers where we were graciously taken care of by Frida Foberg and Rikke Jørgenson. Rikke picked us up from the bus station and took us to the grocery store. In addition to Frida and Rikke, there was a lovely community of friends surrounding the residency: a ping-pong group that consistently meets once a week, and regular ALN folks Farmer Adam (moniker courtesy of mua) and John, who were great company, not to mention they generously gave us rides to the store and bus station.

Every day we hit the studio to work on a new multidisciplinary piece. Not going to say too much about that since it's very early in the process, but I will say that Mary and Melinda rock. Our work was intense, we were physically sore every day from all our moving around, and it was fun. We danced, sang rounds, played little pianos that were not of the grand variety. When we weren't working, we were either eating, practicing on the 9-foot Baldwin (however, after a couple of days I simply didn't feel like touching the piano), talking a walk, or relaxing. We all forgot to bring a nail clipper, so being the pianists we are, we were sad to leave but eager to get home to trim our nails. I'll remember to do so at our next intensive week, which I am already very much looking forward to. 

Melinda, me, and Mary at the House on the Hill

Love this vegetarian chili recipe I found on epicurious. Leftovers for days!

Inside the Mill

I wore this exact same outfit EVERY SINGLE DAY minus the additional sweatshirt around the waist

I liked working on the large surface area of the kitchen island

Can you remember who's who? The answers are above! :-P

Thumb piano; a Casio tone from the 80s we nicknamed "Gene," as in Gene Belcher; melodica; Melinda's accordion; and some cow bells that were hanging out at the mill

Ping-Pong set up

Our new buddy, Gary, who brought some delicious posole

Outside the Mill. Can you tell we really loved the Mill?

Steps from the Hill to the Mill

Mary called me "Kenny G"

Working on movement

Working on the porch because the weather was beautiful

Leaf imprint in the snow

Mary was stoked for the moss on this leaf

We're starting a Go-go's cover band called S & M's.

I wish I swung more on the swing

Working

5 seconds later

View from the house

Sculpture in the house

Heading back

Piano at the pop-up

I'm on a plane heading to Fort Lauderdale, and from there we'll go to Key West for a sorely needed getaway. It was a little painful to get up at 4:45 am this morning since we were up late packing after performing at the J. Elster pop-up in TriBeCa. Jennifer, the "J" of the gallery's namesake, overhauled the Steinway piano of her late grandfather, harpist Reinhardt Elster, the oldest retiree of the Metropolitan Opera. Trevor Gureckis and I played solo piano pieces: I played the fugue from Ravel's le Tombeau de Couperin and the cadenza from Potential Energies, composed by Trevor, and he played Philip Glass's Mad Rush as well as his own nocturne. People would get so close when we performed. Some dude was even standing in the curve of the piano looking at me. I didn't mind; I thought it was cool that the idea of physical distance between performers and audience somehow dissolved for people in this setting.

The gallery was full of Jennifer's artistic reflections on existence, which included collaborations with David Bowie and Yoko Ono, and a video called "Cemetery," which Trevor and I perform in. It was exciting to see it, since it was taped in 2014 and finally premiered last night. Other performances included Met harpist Mariko Anraku and a makeup artist/musician on singing bowls (will find his name!), and impromptu performance art by Jennifer. 

One of my favorite moments was when Julia Wilkins, who was also in "Cemetery," just started dancing with the harpist. Someone behind me said, "Is that supposed to happen?" When Jennifer got up to join her it was clear the answer was "Yes."

After experiencing this I feel more compelled to pursue all the weird, random ways I want to express myself. It's inspiring to see someone do it so beautifully and honestly.

And now...pics! 

This was so much fun to be a part of! There's a short clip of it on my Instagram (@sugarvendil) 

My friend Barbara Anastacio viewing "Cemetery"

 Mariko & Schaeffer

I'll get to the piano right after I...

1. Make tea/coffee/have another snack
I'll need the energy!

2. Cut my nails (even though they are sufficiently short)
Don't wanna be sliding around on the keys!

3. Sharpen a pencil
Yes, I still use wooden pencils.

4. Coco
My cat needs to be fed and cuddled!

5. Tweet/Instagram
I am my own publicist, so this is necessary!

6. Watch an animal video, i.e., a porcupine typing while wearing glasses
They're all over my feed! Which I guess means I'm also on social media when I should be at the piano.. See # 5.

7. Write a blog post
...

How do you like to prep-crastinate before you practice? Comments!

WAA Day 1: Deer in Headlights

As I had mentioned in my first post, I had some idea of what to expect after seeing how fashion trade shows worked. I was not expecting a crowd at The Nouveau Classical Project booth, since I figured most of the attendees had scheduled meetings beforehand, but I also didn't expect to hear crickets. Over at the Launchpad corner, it was just me and Isabel most of the time, our fellow Launchpadders MIA. I figured people would at least browse the booths, but there was not much of that in our empty corner. For heaven's sake, we were CHOSEN to be here! Isn't anyone interested in meeting us?! Apparently not...even after sending out dozens of e-mails mentioning that we were part of WAA's Launchpad, I only received about five responses. Launchpad did not equal street cred. I also heard that people were scheduling meetings even farther out in advance, so I'm sure that these presenters were also extremely busy and needed to prioritize. Luckily, the conference was three days long and there would be time and in-person opportunities to make connections and schedule more meetings.

So innocent and optimistic. Me and Isabel heading down to the Opening Reception

SPEED LEADS

One of the activities I signed up for was Speed Leads. It's like speed dating, but with six presenters and one artist or manager at a table, and no one is horny and only one of us gives a shit about making a good impression. Each artist or manager gets two minutes to pitch a project to six presenters at each of the four tables without the help of any printed collateral or iPads. I came into this with confidence, as I'm a naturally social person (hell, I've even made projects happen from chance meetings at parties), and the project I was pitching was so obviously a winner: a multimedia piece with a Rome Prize-winning composer who was recently awarded a major commission for the project. Although it would have helped, I don't think practicing my pitch would have saved me, as we later learned that the project was too complex/very "New York", but I would have at least felt like I did a decent job. Anyway, the nerves immediately kicked in: I began by introducing NCP, saw the perplexed looks on everyone's faces, and then thought, shit I'm running out of time already, and so I jumped into "55-minute multimedia project with Rome Prize-winning composer Nina C. Young...<bumbling, bumbling>...integrates music, fashion worn on musicians, choreography, kinetic sound sculpture..." and as soon as the word "Anthropocene" spilled out of my mouth, I felt like everything was in slow motion and I had an out of body experience where I was like, "Nooooooooo!" Confused looks everywhere (later learned a lot of people do not know what the Rome Prize is, nor do they care), needed to explain the term "Anthropocene", then TIME! For the first two tables I basically bombed but by the third and fourth, I better understood how to pitch. While I couldn't avoid saying "Anthropocene", I figured out which order to explain the many elements of the project, and actually remembered to distribute my business cards. (By the way--props to Stephen Seifert from University of Denver for knowing what the Anthropocene is!) The reaction from the final two tables was significantly more positive than the first two. Being a former volleyball player, I know how to shake off a bad play and regrouped immediately. I started saying "concert" to provide greater clarity. In my mind, a "concert" sounds ordinary; I've noticed artists, including myself, using terms like "hybrid works" or "multidisciplinary" and at this conference, I found that these descriptors just confuse presenters. 

Granted, one usually gets more than two minutes to pitch a project, and while discussing a potential performance doesn't typically take place in this weird Shark Tank-esque setting, I still think this exercise was helpful. I'm used to having to explain projects on paper to grant makers, and as with this presenter situation, it requires immediate clarity since you often need a one-sentence description at the start. However, in this two-minute space without any visual aids, you have paint a picture immediately with words. 

YOU DO YOU...BUT A YOU THAT DOESN'T MAKE YOU SOUND TOO WEIRD

The name of the game for this first day was How to be Crystal Clear Without Scaring Away Presenters. And the way you do that is by NOT sounding too unique. Or by reframing unique to mean interesting but accessible/familiar in the context of an arts conference. After attempting to describe NCP in our usual way to booth visitors, we realized that the fashion element was something that people would get fixated on and required way more explanation than was necessary. So we decided that the best thing to say is that we're a contemporary music ensemble that incorporates visual elements. To us, that sounds like something everybody is doing, but here, it was a good thing because it's something the presenters were familiar with. This was one of the most eye-opening, and quite frankly, disconcerting things for me: the level of accessibility we had to provide with our introduction. But I get it: presenters need to fill seats and they need to feel like they're making a sound investment.

By the end of the day I felt a little discouraged and less like an artist. It's not sexy to have to think about how to downplay a major part of your identity. My team and I had created booklets with visuals, a cool vellum cover, and I felt like I had fucked up by featuring projects that I thought were compelling, but now looked too complex and not simple enough. Plus I have a project I'm working on where I'm going to explore new territory, directing a hybrid project and digging into my Filipino roots, and my head was clouded with the idea that there is clearly no space in this world for that kind of project. (I tend to have intense reactions to negative experiences, but I get over them pretty quickly). As an artist in New York, one is encouraged to take risks. In fact, it seems like risk-taking is commonplace: nudity is acceptable and there is abundance of multidisciplinary work. Not everywhere is New York, as Isabel and I learned. A lot of the feedback was that some of our projects work in New York and not everywhere else. Well, I grew up in a town called "El Sobrante" that means "the leftovers" in Spanish, and I'm pretty sure there are some people in the middle of nowhere that would love something new, and even strange, to come to their town. 

While it's important to stick to your guns, I think there's a way to finesse your way into presenters that might be initially hesitant; for example, the way we stopped emphasizing fashion in our elevator pitch. It doesn't change what we do but new contacts are less likely to shut down. And like audiences and grant makers, there's no way in hell to please everyone, and it is possible to find those who share your vision. There were way more than the 24 presenters that were in that Speed Lead session at WAA, including people who were receptive to what we do. Things looked up after Day 1.