Behind the Curtain with Brennan Stokes - Part 1

For Good Measure, by Ensemble for These Times (E4TT)
Episode 95: Behind the Curtain with Brennan Stokes (part 1)

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 go “Behind the Curtain” and talk to E4TT Assistant Director and For Good Measure podcast cover artist Brennan Stokes. If you enjoyed today’s conversation and want to know more about Brennan Stokes, check him out here: https://soundcloud.com/brennan-stokes.

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're joined by E4TT assistant director, co-curator, and composer [INTRO MUSIC ENDS] who designed the wonderful For Good Measure cover art, Brennan Stokes. Thanks for joining us for us, Brennan.   I'm really glad we're doing this in-house entre nous interview. You're a composer, a pianist, and a tenor. What was your path to becoming these? Did you know what you wanted to do from early on?

Brennan Stokes  00:50
Yeah, I think well, the journey to these three was definitely kind of an order of pianist, tenor, to composer. I started piano lessons when I was in kindergarten around age six, and from what I think I remember my parents telling me was that it was kind of left up to me. There was a new music teacher at the elementary school who was offering piano lessons, and they asked me if I wanted to try it out and I said, "Sure, that sounds like fun." And there was kind of, I always kind of tell people, it was almost like the piano and me kind of mutually found each other, where I would go into my lessons, and it just came very naturally to me, and I would go in week after week, and I would, you know, practice a little bit in the week, and I would go into my lessons, play the songs, move on to get new songs, and it was kind of a fun...hobby that never felt like work. There was always a bit of a natural understanding with my hands on the keys and reading the notes, and the music was always very fluid, very easy for me as a kid and throughout my musical journey with the piano. Both of my parents were in church choir, so listening to vocal music and hearing them singing growing up was always also something very second nature, and I was in school and church choirs as well. And it wasn't until undergrad where I had to declare a secondary instrument alongside piano as my primary and I figured it would be a good time to see about developing my voice. I started a couple of years of voice lessons, and it was it was fun and interesting to start to get the grasp of Italian, German, and French art song and it was fun to also begin to develop a kind of almost like a new, more official musical skill with with those two. And it wasn't until my junior year of undergrad where I had to do one year of composition classes, and for upper division music theories. And I remember going into that year thinking that, okay, I just have to get through it. I'm a pianist. First and foremost, I'm just the person who plays the notes, who, you know, I'll analyze the score, I can learn the notes, and I have my interpretation, but like, I'm not going to be the person to ever write the music. And just thinking, you know, this is not at all going to be something that I am going to be good at. I just have to kind of you know, check the box on this requirement and move on to other things. It turned out to be just this really incredible, creative puzzle to solve. And I remember our first assignment was just to write a melody. We didn't have to harmonize it and have to necessarily be good - it was just kind of getting our feet wet into just making something happen. Yeah, and then from there, then it was, okay, now take this melody you've written and if you want to write more you can but now let's work on harmonizing. And starting to kind of make sense of this melody you've written, now write a second theme. Okay, now bridge these two things together. It was this really fun process where even to this day, and I always kind of half joke that my hands know more music than I do. And especially sitting at the piano and kind of letting my hands wander across the keys and feeling things out and moving things around was fun because there is technically nothing written yet. It's all blank canvas and free forum space to make things happen. And after kind of writing this kind of short piano piece, you know, when you put a double bar at the end, it was that moment where I realized, wow, like I am kind of more or less using the same twelve notes that have been around since Bach and Beethoven, and, you know, the the canon of composers that know and love, and I'm sitting here at the time it was...would have been 2011, and I'm still finding something new to say. As small as it was, it still was this moment of, "Hey, like, there's something new in the universe that I that I was able to make!" And that's pretty cool.

Nanette McGuinness  05:42
Yeah, that's exciting. So it was love at first sight, kind of each step for each of your instruments and composing. But with composing, they kind of snuck it in on you.

Brennan Stokes  05:54
Yeah, it started as a requirement that definitely turned into more of a want and a love for the kind of chasing after new new puzzles. It's almost like being given just kind of a sheet of cardboard or kind of puzzle material, and you get to kind of cut out the shapes. But then you have to also make sure that the pieces that you cut out all somehow managed to fit together too.

Nanette McGuinness  06:19
Right. And at this point, does one of them pull at you more strongly than the rest?

Brennan Stokes  06:25
I feel like it definitely ebbs and flows between the pianist and the composer side, probably because those are what my, that's where my studying is: Bachelor's in Piano Performance and Master's in composing. So they always, the two of those are always at odds, even in my undergraduate when I started kind of doing some consistent composing. Even though I was a piano performance major, there were weeks where I would have a lot of practice in and I would be doing really well in my piano lesson that week, but then I didn't have a whole lot of music written for my composition class. And then there would be the weeks where I would be really in a zone for composing and getting a lot of that done, and then I would go to my piano lesson...and those lessons were more review than I think my teacher would have liked. So there was definitely kind of the battle between the two. But it's still fun to be able to kind of, you know, there's always a new wrap and pieces to want to even read over and browse, and then there's also the the list of pieces that I would like to compose and projects to undertake. So there's always the kind of the tug of war between those two.

Nanette McGuinness  07:40
It continues to this day. Yeah. You know, I've known a number of pianists who became composers, and even just pianists who aren't composers, a lot of them describe what you're saying that the hands know the music - that there's a direct circuit from hands to brain. It's very interesting. Where did you go to school, Brennan?

Brennan Stokes  07:58
I did my undergraduate studies at Pacific Union College, and I did my Master's at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.

Nanette McGuinness  08:06
So your dad is a painter, and he ran a school and you did our fabulous designs for a number of years including the gorgeous graphic for this podcast. Did you have trouble choosing between art and music when you were growing up? Or was it pretty straightforward?

Brennan Stokes  08:24
Oh, the music siren was definitely in the ear. My dad was an art major in college, much to his parents chagrin, and art has always kind of been in the house. My mom does kind of recreational painting as a hobby so there's always been the various kind of an appreciation for art and in the process of making things. It was fun having my dad be the kind of...the more talented and aware artist to help me with creating really creative science projects and school project displays and presentations, including at one point making kind of a giant, half grasshopper out of paper mache for...I think it was biology class. That was a lot of fun to have a very artistic parent be able to help me kind of even generate creative ideas and help execute those. And yet, this podcast artwork was really fun designing and wanting to you know, definitely did some homework kind of looking at other podcast artwork and wanting to kind of synthesize what we were hoping to do with this, kind of almost like parchment paper. Color backround, you know, where we love our living composers who are writing, you know, fresh music. Sort of these, we, you know, are very happy to celebrate a very diverse range of artists and composers. So this kind of fun, colorful, kind of wet splatter across the, the staff as a, you know, I think a fun tribute to, to the work that's being done and the new music that's out there. And hopefully everyone else out there is enjoying it too.

Nanette McGuinness  10:33
I think so. It's a great design and a true metaphor for fresh ink. As far as that goes, when you've done our other season designs, have you done research? Or do those just come to you?

Brennan Stokes  10:47
Sometimes there's a little research and you know, I'm, I am a little privy to what the season holds in store. So sometimes it's fun to take all things into consideration. And I do try and be as intentional as possible with designs and composing.

Nanette McGuinness  11:05
Yeah, well, you've done a great job. Thank you. Let's look now at your compositional process. Although I have a hunch, I know what you're going to say based on your earlier answer. How does being a pianist influence or affect your composing any thoughts about composing at the piano or not?

Brennan Stokes  11:24
Yeah, it's definitely an interesting topic about especially the composing at the piano or not. I think again, being one who was kind of a pianist first, it's almost instinctual for me to want to sit at the piano and want to let my...almost, you know, I have to let my brain and my hands have a conversation at the keys. Because I can have an idea buzzing around of maybe a melody or some rhythm or harmony, but then sometimes the hands will surprise me and do some fun things. And I remember, especially at the Conservatory, wanting to take some hours on my phone kind of turn on an audio recording while I was just even doodling around, because there's always that moment where you start to kind of you fall into some really cool rabbit hole of musical mumblings. And then when it's over, you go, oh, shoot, what did I just do. And then you know, it's lost to the ether and it's buzzing around in the brain somewhere and it will hopefully, you know, come back out and resurface. But I am definitely a fan of composing at the piano. I think there's really I think more of my kind of, like I kind of said earlier I think with any research that I do in terms or like text processing for some of my vocal works, I definitely do that away from the piano, a bit having had a little bit of training as a vocalist I think definitely helps with understanding you know how the some of the mechanics of breathing and register changes how vocalists have to, unfortunately, breathe.

Nanette McGuinness  13:14
[laughs] Yeah, we do.

Brennan Stokes  13:16
In singing things as long a lovely melody as you would like to have them singing or you know how much support is needed if they're going into various registers, so, it's definitely been a real blessing for me to have an experience as a pianist and singer for my vocal cords particularly, but even some of my solo piano by handful of solo piano works I've always really enjoyed trying to even make melodies that relate to the the title of the piece and most of my piano music has, I think, fairly cinematic titles and helps me to even kind of focus in on what the purpose of either that movement or that piece is supposed to be about. And not letting the canvas get too wide. And to allow me to kind of rain in my imagination into a specific direction for those pieces, especially those with text, I definitely do a lot of digging and kind of hand writing out the texts, the poem, whatever it is to make sure that I really just kind of ingraining these words the I do a lot of especially if there's multiple texts being used, I like to see if there are any through lines or related words or motives that the the poet or the author is using to also kind of start to get those thoughts mare like marinate for what that means musically and how I can relate maybe some of these...common or similar words, phrases, ideas. Just kind of add to that kind of musical unity.

Nanette McGuinness  15:08
[OUTRO MUSIC] Thank you for listening to For Good Measure, and a special thank you to our guest, Brennan Stokes, 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 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]