Behind the Curtain with Stephanie M. Neumann - Part 2

For Good Measure, by Ensemble for These Times (E4TT)
Episode 91: Behind the Curtain with Stephanie M. Neumann (part 2)

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

In this week’s episode, we continue our conversation with E4TT Audio Visual Project Specialist and For Good Measure’s co-producer and audio engineer extraordinaire Stephanie M. Neumann, in our “Behind the Curtain” mini-series. If you enjoyed today’s conversation and want to know more about Stephanie M. Neumann, check her out here: www.stephaniemneumann.com.

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. Today, we continue our interview with E4TT Audio Visual Project Specialist, and For Good Measure co-producer and audio engineer extraordinaire, Stephanie M. Neumann [INTRO MUSIC ENDS]. I hadn't realized that you were a conductor as well as a composer and a performer. So tell us about your conducting.

Stephanie M. Neumann  00:40
Yeah, conducting. I started back when I was in high school. And marching band was a huge thing in our school. And I graduated with 800 people, I think. And so we had a really big marching band too. And I did that, because that's what you did as a, as a music person going to school, everyone would do the marching band, too. You know.

Nanette McGuinness  01:09
On a wind instrument for sure.

Stephanie M. Neumann  01:10
Yeah, and I started on saxophone, you know, but after two years, and I saw… actually, my, bringing back my neighbor, she played saxophone first. But she was also drum major of the marching band. And so I knew somebody who knew how to conduct, and it was a competitive band, so I would say the conducting style was a little bit more grounded in what you would see a conductor look like in wind ensemble or something, it was closer to that then I've seen other people do. So I took lessons from her because I was like, Okay, I want to try out and see this. And so when I was a junior in high school, I made the drum major position. And I mean, standing in front of so many kids, you know, blasting, you know, and we had a really good band. So it's just like, I loved that feeling and, and I just like the physicalness of conducting, it's almost like dancing, you're in the beat. So it just felt good to do that and to be a part of something like that, and be a leader, a leader making this music. After I did that I started actually teaching conducting to others who wanted to be a drum major. And after me, conducting, and some of them were making Drum Major and...

Nanette McGuinness  02:39
Passing the baton on.

Stephanie M. Neumann  02:40
Yeah, and then I decided to do it in college and made the field commander and was that for three years, from my junior to my fifth year of undergrad. And meanwhile, I was also, you know, doing more score study, just as somebody who was a composer and musician, and I loved marking up my scores, and then I ended up conducting for things in grad school for different people, different pieces. And I did some of that when I was in the contemporary performance ensemble, under Steed Cowart yeah. He let me you know, do a little bit of that. So that was great, I got more experience and something about also teaching it. When you teach something, you learn so much more about it. I really like teaching and conducting one on one and with a small group, but directing the band… And that's also another reason why I switched from music ed, when I thought that was all I could do, be a band director with music education. Little did I know, no, there's so much more I could have done, but anyways, yeah.

Nanette McGuinness  04:08
Yeah, but you do still teach privately now, right?

Stephanie M. Neumann  04:10
Yes. Yeah, I've taught many different instruments because I picked them up too. I've taught lessons for 15 years. I started when I was a senior in high school, and I kept going, I taught little kids and then I just kept teaching. Something about teaching people music is very exciting for me, I love seeing their eyes spark up when they realize something. It's super rewarding. So I think I'll be teaching for a while.

Nanette McGuinness  04:52
You went to Mills College as a graduate student in composition. What was the attraction and what was it like there?

Stephanie M. Neumann  04:59
So I had never heard of Mills College actually, I was in such a traditional mindset like, this is what music is, marching band, wind ensemble, orchestra, choirs, things I was a part of. And I was diving a little bit into atonal music. And something sparked in me, this is exciting, this is different. Also a lot of saxophone repertoire is, you know, with such a new instrument compared to everything else, you're not going find us in any of the classic orchestral pieces, right? So a lot of it was newer, newer music. So I was playing things with audio, like clips of people talking or different things. I just thought it was so interesting, versus some of the traditional stuff. All of the wind ensemble rep that I was also used to I was kind of outside the box a little bit. And so he saw that, my professor when he was there, I think, and I thought about it. And I was like, Yes, I think there's something in music that I didn't get or that I, that I needed to discover or experience that, you know, because I had this weird relationship where that might have not been as fun as what I had remembered it used to be or when I just started playing an instrument. And so I just, like I said, I still didn't know much about Mills College, I just kind of went with my gut. I probably looked at it a little bit just to kind of see what maybe the campus looked like, and like what classes I would be taking. I didn't do any school visit beforehand, because it cost probably too much money for me to get out there. And yeah, I just, I went, I thought this is a new experience. I'm going go and see what happens. And traveled in a car across with all my stuff and started two days later, or a couple days later. And I still remember, my first, might have been my first class, but it was with Fred Frith. And he gave us an assignment to write a piece, but you can't, you can't put any instructions in it. No, no words, no text, and I don't think he you could actually say instructions, it was just write a piece and then we’re gonna play it. So I used pictures, and I was drawing arrows from one picture to another, and then I had this map of photos as a piece and I presented it to everyone. And it was really exciting, everyone feeling what types of sounds they wanted to make, just by looking at these pictures and creating something that they were feeling. And it ended up being something I kind of thought was gonna happen, but at the same time different. And it was really thrilling that that performance could, it could be different every time. But I could see similarities and different performances as I ended up presenting it to another class, there was a freedom, but there was still a piece that I wrote. So that was my first experience and from then on, I discovered free improvisation and I fell in love with it. Then I started playing around with music notation, because I thought, there's so many different ways that we can communicate it. So I wanted to play around with that and use different notations. And Mills gave me that space to experiment as a composer and performer, also the connections I made. Now I play in a trio with two other people who were going to Mills the same time as me, my colleagues. And so it's I still have really close friends from that experience. It's exciting to see what we're all doing and yeah, Mills gave me that space. So I really appreciate my time there and all of the professors that I had, yeah.

Nanette McGuinness  09:34
Yeah, and you liked it enough out here that you stayed here. You settled down here. Tell me about your trio.

Stephanie M. Neumann  09:43
My trio, it's called the Sleight Ensemble. Jacob Lane is the pianist and Erika Oba is the flutist. We're going have a couple of shows, actually next year, 2024. We are a composer-performer trio, so all three of us are composers and performers. And we all have different interests, but it works out really beautifully, how we come together, and... yeah.

Nanette McGuinness  10:14
It gives you a sandbox, to play with your own composition as well as a chamber group to perform with. I find all kinds of music making is rewarding, but chamber music has some very strong rewards.

Stephanie M. Neumann  10:31
Yeah. I've played in a lot of saxophone quartets, contemporary, classical saxophone quartet, and I do really love it. Quartet and trio. Yeah.

Nanette McGuinness  10:44
[OUTRO MUSIC] Thank you for listening to For Good Measure, and a special thank you to our guest, Stephanie M. Neumann, 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].