Da Capo Conversations with Gabriela Lena Frank and Dawn Norfleet

For Good Measure, by Ensemble for These Times (E4TT)
Episode 85: Da Capo Conversations with Gabriela Lena Frank and Dawn Norfleet

Looking for a way to listen to diverse creators and to support equity in the arts? Tune in weekly to For Good Measure!

Today we revisit Gabriela Lena Frank’s and Dawn Norfleet’s advice for young women and emerging artists. If you enjoyed today’s conversation and want to know more about Gabriela Lena Frank and Dawn Norfleet, check them out here and here. Parts of this episode originally premiered on June 21, 2021, click here, and January 17, 2022, click here.

This podcast is made possible in part by a grant from the California Arts Council and generous donors, like you. Want to support For Good Measure and E4TT? Make a tax-deductible donation or sign up for our newsletter, and subscribe to the podcast!

Intro music: “Trifolium” by Gabriela Ortiz, performed by E4TT (Ilana Blumberg, violin; Abigail Monroe, cello; Margaret Halbig, piano), as part of “Below the Surface: Music by Women Composers,” January 29, 2022
Outro music: “Lake Turkana” by Marcus Norris, performed by E4TT (Margaret Halbig, piano), as part of “Alchemy,” October 15, 2021

Transcription courtesy of Otter.ai.

Co-Producer, Host, and E4TT co-founder: Nanette McGuinness
Co-Producer and Audio Engineer: Stephanie M. Neumann
Podcast Cover Art: Brennan Stokes
With assistance from Hannah Chen, Sam Mason, Renata Volchinskaya

Transcript

Nanette McGuinness  00:00
[INTRO MUSIC] Welcome to For Good Measure, an interview series celebrating diverse composers and other creative artists sponsored by a grant from the California Arts Council. I'm Nanette McGuinness, artistic executive director of Ensemble for These Times. In this week's episode, we continue our Da Capo Conversations, a mini-series where we'll be giving familiar segments a topical twist. [INTRO MUSIC ENDS] Today we revisit Gabriela Lena Frank's and Dawn Norfleet's advice for young women and early career artists. Here's what Gabriela Lena Frank had to say:

Gabriela Lena Frank  00:41
I would like to say to anyone who is aspiring to be a composer, whether you're young or not, but maybe, perhaps this message just for those that are younger, is that 2020 is what it looks like when the world is telling you this: "It's time to change." And this is your generational prerogative is to take things that you see from the past, really look at the past, and take things that you see in absolute terms of valuable and carry those with you and then try to open the doors and get the skill set to fashion this world in your vision, fashion, the 21st century world, that it's truly 21st century, not just a continuation of the 20th century, which was in our field already out of date. And this beloved field of art has long considered itself exempt from being with the times and that's no longer tenable. So even if you don't know what that looks like, what the 21st century looks like, there are things that you can do now, in which is to meet people work with a lot of different people. Trust your instincts if something just doesn't seem right even after you've stuck with for a while and may not be for you. And trust at the music conservatory is about 10% of what you will need. And that can seem really daunting. But you may not need three degrees, you might be able to stop after undergraduate and try and intern or work. I think the music conservatory world is going to change quite a bit over the next decade, in terms of the repertoire that they were asked you to learn and the western oriented theory that they will ask you to learn may adjust and open you up to other non-western ways of thinking about music and...and if it doesn't, you will need to do this yourself and you have this marvelous internet at your disposal, we communicate and find people, but you're gonna have to be more of a detective. In some ways I envy you because this was the kind of environment that I needed when I was coming of age in the 90s. And I managed to do things within the conservatory, and I got a lot out of it, I really did. But there were a lot of things it wasn't going to do for me. I wanted to prove that I can write a string quartet better. Most people were going to Vienna and Paris and Berlin for this kind of thing, and I wanted to do volunteer work, and that was not something that was really supported. I had to do that on my own time and wanted to study Latin American knew that there were never any courses that were offered. So I found support in a women's studies department and romance language department, and/or I just made money on my own and funded my own trips. So I think some of those kinds of strategies will probably really be good for you. I would question whether you need to really go into monstrous debt in order to become a musician, and I don't think you should, I think you should spend a fraction of that amount of money take years off from school instead, use that to get great lessons with incredible teachers and try to do short term programs festivals or short term academies and meet people and grow your skill sets. This is a changing world and you're at the crossroads and sticking to old methods I think will not serve you well. So that's what I would say and would also end on a positive note, which is you are really needed. If you want to do this...I love my job. I love what I do. I think you'll love what you do. If you're smart about the steps you take knowing that you're needed.

Nanette McGuinness  04:53
Here's what Dawn Norfleet had to say:

Dawn Norfleet  04:56
Emerging composers who are...let's say that, let's say they're very young, like, in their teens or 20s, I would encourage them to listen to lots of different kinds of music and play a lot of different kinds of music, or at least be open to it. Even if you don't want to play it, like if you're in college, if you have an opportunity, take a course in a style of music that's unfamiliar to you. For one thing, it expands your ear, and another, it allows you to hear how other people [of different cultures] make music for a variety of reasons, and sometimes that can lead you to be interested in the people that make that kind of music. That's what drew me to ethnomusicology, actually, that when I when I found out that something called ethnomusicology existed, I was like, "What the heck is that?" But then, you know, being around people that make music, and finding out why they make music, as well as how they make music, that just really fascinated me. And so, in this universe, now that's so...we're drawn closer together and pulled further apart by this technology, we can get into our bubbles, you know, where we communicate pretty much with people who think like us, and so we could be listening to say music and that kind of thing. Taking steps to just go beyond that. A lot of times it will be through a course that you take in college or going to a concert series or something like that. And, yeah, I'd say that, you know, music, music can be a safe way to make a first step into reaching beyond something that you're unfamiliar with. Let's see...there's other advice that I have. Yeah, don't compare yourself to other people. You don't know what their issues are, like thinking that, "Well, I'm 17 years old, and I haven't had my, you know, I haven't gotten into this thing yet that I've applied for two times, and I didn't get in and I must be horrible." Now going back to something that I said earlier, when I graduated from college, I stopped playing the flute for about two or three years. So I was pretty much self-taught until college. I took flute lessons for three years in college. And then I convinced myself that, you know, there were other people who are my age that were much better than me. And so yeah, I actually stopped playing. So when I came back to it, I realized that nobody has my own voice. So when you're 17, or 13, or 14, or 15 to 21 or whatever, there are a lot more opportunities for girls, for women, for nonbinary people, for people of color for you know, all these different groups of people, there are a lot more opportunities, and what I'm also realizing is that it could also bring potential for additional stress and pressure, you know, another competition another way for somebody to tell me I'm not good enough. What I have said was that...I mean, I was trying to think of a nice way of saying it, but you win some things and you lose some things. You win some things, you don't win some things. But when you don't win some thing, there are opportunities of reflection of the event, seeing the way the world works, you know, there, the many, just because you didn't get something doesn't mean you are terrible, it means that that particular time, you didn't get it. And there, you know, there are, there'll be other opportunities after, you know, and I'm saying opportunities a lot, because every day that you're alive, there is another chance for something to happen. And it's up to us to make things happen when they seem not to be working our way. So one thing I've learned is that nobody has my voice, nobody has my unique voice. So even though I may not I may not be strong in one area, I have strengths in all these other areas. So my mission as an artist is to be the best me that I can be. So that can mean, you know, improving my intellect, my artistry, taking lessons, performing, you know, and then getting balance, you know, something that is not in that realm of what I'm trying to achieve. And that's that's also something I've said to a, an aspiring composer. I remember talking to her and her father, like her father was was concerned about all this pressure, and, like, how do you get balance and I said, you know, "Have something that's just away from all of that." For me, when I was in grad school, that's the same time that I started my career as a jazz musician. So I was I would do, you know, I would take my classes, and then I would, you know, do my field research., and then I would also, you know, go to jam sessions, and go to jazz concerts and you know, perform. So I had a whole other life that was totally separate from my academic life, my scholarly life. And my attitude was, "Okay, well if they throw me out of school tomorrow, I'll still have..." [Nanette] You didn't have all your eggs in one basket. [Dawn] No, no and and even even when I was working on my comps, I mean, ethnomusicology, that ethnomusicology exam was was nuts. I mean, they could test you on anything. And there was the famous needle drop where they, you know, get an album, drop the needle, and you'd have to say something about the culture, which is crazy, because it could have been anything. But how I prepared for that was I would, you know, have I would schedule time for study, eating, walking, exercising, and then every Friday night, I've walked over to Blockbuster Video. Get the get two movies, watch one fall asleep and the other one, then watch the second one the next night, what you know, so I would schedule in time for exercise and time for relaxation. Because that relaxation time is resetting time. And one thing I need to go back to is going away, like I'm in an urban area. And for me, my reset was going, you know, like going up the coast, and just being away from the internet, being away from, you know, Netflix and just cell phones and stuff like that, and reset, recharge and renew.

 Nanette McGuinness  14:44
That's such wonderful advice and the whole notion of getting away or being away with your videos and going up the coast. That's great. Don't you find that the brain needs to percolate and that when you go away from something even for a short time, but also for a long time? Time that when you come back and you get the rust off, because there will be that rust that's very disheartening. Something has grown in the absence and whether it's a skill or whether it's insight. Don't you find that something's happened? Something exciting?

Dawn Norfleet  15:16
Yes. As intense as anyone can be everyone needs sleep. You know, everyone needs sleep. And so it...it also makes sense that everyone needs to take a break, you know, from whatever hustle they're involved in.

Nanette McGuinness  15:44
[OUTRO MUSIC] Thank you for listening to For Good Measure's Da Capo Conversations, and a special thank you to our guests for joining us today. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to our podcast by clicking on the subscribe button and support us by sharing it with your friends, posting about it on social media and leaving us a rating and a review. To learn more about E4TT, our concert season online and in the Bay Area, or to make a tax-deductible donation, please visit us at www.e4tt.org. This podcast is made possible in part by a grant from the California Arts Council and generous donors like you. For Good Measure is produced by Nanette McGuinness and Ensemble for These Times and designed by Brennan Stokes, with special thanks to co-producer and audio engineer Stephanie M. Neumann. Remember to keep supporting equity in the arts and tune in next week "for good measure." [OUTRO MUSIC ENDS]