Outside Music Inside the Golden State

Brandon died February 21, 2024, nearly 3 years after this interview. He was a composer of experimental music, and a very good friend of mine.This interview touches on topics like: attention (inside & outside of concert settings), processing trauma through music, mental illness, drug usage, the psychology of repetition, the harmonic properties of multiphonics, spectralism, whole number ratios, being in the same room (both acoustically and socially), zoom meetings, music being the artwork of present moments, and many other things.Pieces, in order heard:the awakened, lips parted, the hope, the new ships (for six bowed music stands)Repetition Study II (Music as a Means of Processing Trauma)the awakened, lips parted.... (reprise)Proportions/Frame (Brandon's final published recording)https://soundcloud.com/brandonbecker-2https://www.instagram.com/brandontravisbeckwr/https://www.facebook.com/brandon.becker.1612

Interview originally recorded March, 2021.Eleven trips to the Mayan region and an investigation of some 35 years into Precolumbian thought have indelibly marked and changed the work of this U.S.-born composer. Haladyna's Mayan Cycle now stretches to thirty-five highly distinctive pieces, including such titles as Zaquico'xol, El Llanto de Izamal, The Maya Curse Pedro de Alvarado, Pok-ta-Pok, 2012, The Oracle of 13 Sky, Copal, and the Jaguar Poems.   Among the most novel features of the Cycle is its frequent use of Jeremy's original scales (three in total) derived from the ingenious math of the Mayan calendar.Jeremy, an accomplished keyboardist and conductor, served as director of UC Santa Barbara's Ensemble for Contemporary Music for sixteen years (2003-2019) and created much of the Mayan Cycle during that time.  He holds prizes and academic qualifications from three countries. A laureate of the Lili Boulanger Prize and diplômé of the history-rich Schola Cantorum on Paris' Left Bank, he also holds an advanced degrees from the University of Surrey (U.K.) and the University of California. He taught undergraduate composition to scores of young composers at UCSB from 1990-2019 (29 years) after being named to its permanent faculty in March, 2000.  He is now Emeritus Faculty.  His own past teachers include William Kraft, Karl Korte, Eugene Kurtz, Jacques Charpentier, Peter Racine Fricker, John McCabe, Sebastian Forbes, and Joseph Schwantner.Pieces, in order heard:Pok-ta-PokMaya Zodiachttps://www.mayancycle.com/https://music.ucsb.edu/people/emeriti/jeremy-haladyna

Interview originally aired July 5, 2021. Joel Feigin is an internationally performed composer, whose operas, chamber, orchestra, and piano works have been widely praised for their “very strong impact, as logical in musical design as they are charged with emotion and drama.” (Opera Magazine).Feigin's opera, Twelfth Night, based on Shakespeare's comedy, was produced in North Carolina, Chicago, and southern California, where it was hailed as a “glittering masterpiece” by critic Dan Kepl.  Excerpts had also been featured at New York City Opera's VOX Showcase series and Opera America's New Works Sampler.  Mysteries of Eleusis, Feigin's first opera, written on a Guggenheim Fellowship, was commissioned and premiered by Theatre Cornell; on the international stage it was featured at the Moscow Conservatory (Russia) and repeated at the Russian-American Operatic Festival.Instrumental commissions include a Fromm Commission for Aviv: Concerto for Piano and Chamber Orchestra, written for Yael Weiss, as well as piano commissions from Leonard Stein and Margaret Mills. Ms. Mills included two of Joel's works on her album Meditations and Overtones (Cambria Recordings).  Feigin's most recent CD (released on MSR Classics) presents the large-scale chamber work Lament Amid Silence, featuring violist Helen Callus.  Concerts devoted solely to Feigin's music have been given in Russia and Armenia, and in New York at Merkin Hall and Lincoln Center's Bruno Walter Auditorium.  Honors include a Mellon Fellowship, a Senior Fulbright Fellowship, and the Dimitri Mitropoulos Prize in Composition at the Tanglewood Music Center.Dr. Feigin studied with Nadia Boulanger at Fontainebleau and with Roger Sessions at The Juilliard School. An accomplished pianist and accompanist, Feigin studied with Rosina Lhevine, and worked at the Metropolitan Opera in New York with Nico Castel.The Joel Feigin Collection at the New York Public Library of the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center opened in 2011. A student of Zen Buddhism, Feigin is Professor Emeritus of Composition at the University of California, Santa Barbara.Pieces, in order heard:Surging Seas, for string orchestra: 1. Allegro maestoso (excerpt)Two Songs from Twelfth Night: No. 1 O Mistress Mine (Allegretto grazioso)Surging Seas, for string orchestra: 1. Allegro maestoso (full movement)http://joelfeigin.com/

Peruvian immigrant Anaís Azul (they/them) is a California based singer-songwriter, composer, and teaching artist. Described as “stunningly honest and vulnerable,” their artistry engages with music as a tool for community building, cross-genre collaboration, and collective healing.Azul writes music that is in conversation with looped vocal harmonies, classical melodies, and Latin American singer-songwriter traditions. Their songs are bilingual (Spanish and English) and about mental health, queerness, facing harsh realities and finding inner peace in spite of chaos.Photo by Erica Yi.Interview initially published 12/27/2020.Music featured:Mi PielHealingAnxiety (Live @ the HER house)Cello Trilogy of TimePaz (Cathartic Conundrum)Soledad (Cathartic Conundrum)https://anaisazul.com/YouTube ChannelSpotifyhttp://www.instagram.com/anaisazulhttps://twitter.com/anaisazulmusichttps://www.facebook.com/anaisazulmusic/

Moths, Clownfisher, Dylan Marx, The Sandman, Oracle of Light, Purveyor of Goods, Great Overtaker, Stopping by for Soup, Standing on the Corner with a Glass of Water, Dumping it out on the Sidewalk, missed the plants, missed the plant, went back, wrote a postcard, postmarked it, forgot to address it, sitting in a big mail room waiting to be sorted, sort of open to that Pieces Featured:Chan Hey, Salon LaThe Beating LolaEverything's a Calculated RiskFerrarelle e BorsecThen Ago( )https://dylanmarx.bandcamp.comhttps://soundcloud.com/dylan-marxhttps://twitter.com/Dylan_marxhttps://www.instagram.com/dylankurtmarx/

The Los Angeles Electroacoustic Ensemble (LAEE) was founded in 2018 by its core members Zaq Kenefick, Christina Lord, Marcus Carline, and Glen Grey. In this episode, the group discusses how they first came together, their aesthetic goals for the ensemble, their process for writing and developing new compositions, and their debut album LAEE, which released January 2021.Pieces Featured:contactastronautswe studyimprovisation for guitar, mandolin, and two laptopshttps://laee.bandcamp.com/album/laeehttps://www.instagram.com/laelectroacousticensemble/https://laelectroacousticensemble.wordpress.com/

Daniel Newman-Lessler is a composer, conductor, pianist, singer, educator, and dabbler in watercolor and pastels.  His compositions have been performed by players and ensembles across the country, and impressively he has also found repeated success as a conductor and performer.  We met at the California Institute of the Arts, where he is currently a Lilian Disney Scholar in the MFA Performer-Composer program.  In this conversation, we talk about his collaborations with other luminaries in the world of concert music such as Elizabeth A. Baker and Clara Kim, the intersections between activism, composition, and concert planning, about xenharmonicism and microtonality, Patch Adams, Black Lives Matter, and of course about several of Daniel's excellent compositions.Pieces Featured:#yaaasfilter93066Rondo for ClaraPray Not!https://www.danielnewmanlessler.com/ https://www.youtube.com/user/roninyukiko https://www.instagram.com/dnewmanlessler/https://soundcloud.com/danielnewmanlessler

Andrew Kaluzynski is a composer, improviser, and multimedia artist living in Oakland, CA. Andrew's music endeavors to explore relationships between gesture and feedback, and the effects of aleatoric input on improvisations and compositions. Andrew often employs the use of obsolete and/or idiosyncratic technology as a means of restraint, inspiration, and focus, in order to cultivate a live electronic music practice. Music Featured:The Resettlement CorpsTensed Timehttps://andrewkaluzynski.bandcamp.com/https://soundcloud.com/andrewkaluzynskihttps://auricularrecords.bandcamp.com/album/inverted-ambiencehttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEjAgUxJ0y80nYUCUctnfWw/videos

Alex Hawthorn is an Artist, Composer, and Technologist based in Los Angeles and Brooklyn.His work interrogates notions of archive and memory, bringing together aspects of traditional composition and experimental sound design with elements of photography, videography, and other forms of digital media.  In his solo work, he combines elements of old and new technologies: traditional orchestral scoring, solo piano performance, field recordings, and various synthesis techniques, to create works that bring the listener into a place of meditation and  memory.Music featured:Rainfall IReflectionsEvening Dreams of Space Flightwww.alexhawthorn.com/

Andrew Jamieson: composer, improviser, & bandleader of the Avant-Gospel Trouble Ensemble. We talk about dialogues in music and community, race relations in American music, cultural appropriation, and musical accountability. Andrew even does a live improvisation near the end of the interview!Music Featured, in order heard:Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me ‘RoundDeep RiverDaily Improvisation No. 249

Scott Perry earned his PhD in music composition from UCSB in 2019. He holds a BA from UCSB (CCS), an MFA from California Institute of the Arts, and a MA from UC Davis. His teachers include Beverly Grigsby, Jeremy Haladyna, Kurt Rohde, Wolfgang von Schweinitz, Ulrich Krieger, Pablo Ortiz, Mika Pelo, David Rosenboom, Curtis Roads and Clarence Barlow.Pieces featured, in order heard:Continuum Music OneThree SpellsRegression, Tone Painting for OrchestraStudy in A-RhythmiconStudy in C-Utonal-RhythmiconContinuum Music Thirteen AContinuum Music Thirteen B

Jeremy Rosenstock is a composer, pianist, and installation artist in California. In this episode, originally aired 11/30/2020 on KCIA, we talk about his compositional outlook, Simone Weil, socialism, listening to sound on its own terms, a piano department, and many other things. You can also hear some selections of his great music!Pieces featured, in order heard:Renunciation of Time (unreleased)cairn eight: iice transducing, 5.13.20https://jr0se.bandcamp.com/https://issuu.com/jeremyrosenstockhttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5QIwlwQBXfJkRPLligVINw

Today's episode features Alison Niedbalski and the band she leads "qualia." Alison's music is tagged on bandcamp as: experimental, jazz, progressive death soul, torch gospel, great American songbook, and new wave old fashioned. Some of the things we talked about: covering Captain Beefheart songs, the legacy of Carla Bley & Annette Peacock, the effect of trauma on the creative process, many friends, and we preview a track for her upcoming record "Beside." Check it out!Songs Featured, in order heard:Missed Me (to be released on forthcoming album 'Beside')Zig Zag WandererDropout Boogieida lupino's last standneeds (redistributed)the way we never wereTroublewww.qualia-is-real.com/

Tim Rowe is a drummer, painter, video maker. His video series "How to Play the Drums by Tim Rowe" uses all those mediums and others to touch upon subjects from the silly to the historical to the philosophical to the purely musical. We talk about his careers as a drummer & painter, how he makes his videos, why he makes the artistic decisions he makes, his personal connection to & political views of 9/11, and also a little about the rest of his life.Videos featured, in order heard (or mentioned):Closet BonzoAlphabetClick. TrackLevon in the UnderworldSean Meehan Reads my 9th Grade Yearbook Pt 2.DielmanThe Chromesthesia of Elvin Jones.America at WarWalking Music (called 'Trees' in the interview)Lisa Mezzacappa in Real Musicians Have Day JobsTrio with Steve Adams and Myles BoisenThe Six Sacred ObjectsLevon in Limbohttps://timrowe.blog/YouTube Channel

Cheryl E. Leonard is a San Francisco-based composer, performer, field recordist, and instrument builder whose works investigate sounds, structures, and objects from the natural world. Her projects cultivate stones, wood, water, ice, sand, shells, feathers, and bones as musical instruments, and often feature one-of-a-kind sculptural instruments and field recordings from remote locales.We talk about her time at Palmer Station in Antarctica, her instruments built from natural objects, Tenaya Lake, about her compositional process, and about several specific works.Pieces featured, in order heard:Adélie Colony Young ChicksFrozen OverAblation Zone (unreleased)In The Gloaminghttp://allwaysnorth.com/https://cherylleonard.bandcamp.com/https://soundcloud.com/ieallwaysnorth'Music from the Ice' Blog

Nathan Corder is an Oakland-based composer of works for electronics, objects, and arrays of people. Our chat covered topics like performer agency & control in composition, fixed media composition vs. composing for people and/or objects, and nontraditional ways of conceiving rhythm and musical time.Pieces featured, in order heard:Untitled (for string trio and electronics) AppetitePushLockstep

Christoffer Schunk is an artist based in Los Angeles. His portfolio vacillates between audio and theater, resulting in intricately staged productions, films, and sound art. His audio compositions incorporate almost everything: theatricality, humor, strange instrumentation (farts, hunting calls, dolls, to name a few), noise, and many other things. We talk a bit about content production on the internet, his switch from experimental music to TikTok videos, and of course how he writes his music.Featured tracks, in order heard:JackrabbitDeerMourning DoveDid YouFind

Pander Sera is a noise-pop artist from the LA area. Our conversation touches on topics like practical uses of magic, equipment which grants a view on infinity, gender transition, pop punk as a modern folk music, and many other interesting things.https://pandersera.bandcamp.com/https://pandersera.com/https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCd8uxKf6JYUIR5tUjKm-v_ghttps://soundcloud.com/pander-serahttps://vimeo.com/panderseraPieces & songs featured in this episode, in order:Yard WorkCon Past YoungJelly BandHana the GiantCatch Mehoneysun on bone

Memory Leaks Onto The Rug is secretive and anonymous artist who has been recording tapes onto tapes since 2014, these days out of Santa Cruz, California. In this interview, originally aired 10/5/2020, we talk about some of their recent and older music releases, how they make music, names, and about birds and plants and places.Check out their bandcamp:https://memoryleaksontotherug.bandcamp.com/Their YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbqpT7ChVWDfJabui-D98UATheir SoundCloud:https://soundcloud.com/mlotrugAnd some related projects made by the same person:https://memoryleaks.bandcamp.com/, https://laymeekroms.bandcamp.com/releasesTracks featured in this episode, in order: Spring CinquefoilSweet-pea ShrubSmilax AsparagusGreen Carpetfront noseslidelay meek srmoerror: {"code":-14,"message":"Error: Bubble Pushing

Composer/sound artist Dr. Ron K. Sedgwick received his PhD in music from the University of California, Santa Barbara. His acoustic and electro-acoustic works have received numerous awards and have been performed and broadcast throughout the world. He has studied composition with Professors Joel Feigin, Karen Tanaka, Kurt Rohde, Samuel Adler, and electronic music with Professors Curtis Roads and Clarence Barlow.Check out his bandcamp:https://abstractjak1.bandcamp.com/

Patrick Talesfore, Jr. is a drum set artist from Sunnyvale, CA. His playing has been described by master drummer Kenwood Dennard as '...cognizant, deliberate, musical...like facing a life or death moment. Passion personified.' Since 2011, Patrick has performed solo and with Cerce, Space Devil Rest in Peace, infant, Nishad George, Dylan Ewen, Sam Morrison, Piotr Lato, Matt Hull, David Lechuga-Espadas, Tom Weeks, gabby fluke-mogul, Eliot Burk, Zac Suskevich, Zach Weeks, Becca Cadalzo, Tim Altieri and even got to jam with Ernie Isley once...Patrick studied with Wally Schnalle, Jason Wall, Anthony Cirone, George Marsh, Sergio Bellotti, Henrique De Almeida, Tony “Thunders” Smith, and Kenwood Dennard. Check out his website: https://.patricktalesforejr.com/His YouTube Channels: OFFICIAL YOUTUBE DRUM COVERS https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmFfE6tbXPZWHGEATJZdfiQNot Cercehttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSKDsISVOTwPYiiIdtfB04A OFFICIAL BLINK 182 DRUM COVERS https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbrLYbl_XZqHiMA8BOoUkGQ