Ursula Kwong-Brown - Part 7

For Good Measure, by Ensemble for These Times (E4TT)
Episode 128: Ursula Kwong-Brown - Part 7

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 talk to Ursula Kwong-Brown about the difference between the music scenes in LA, the Bay Area, and New York, the importance of timing in a creative career, and fighting imposter syndrome. If you enjoyed today’s conversation and want to know more about Ursula Kwong-Brown, check her out here: https://www.ursulakwongbrown.com/. This episode was originally recorded in February 2024.

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.
Buzzsprout: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1903729/15653077

Producer, Host, and E4TT co-founder: Nanette McGuinness
Co-producer and Audio Engineer: Stephanie M. Neumann
Podcast Cover Art: Brennan Stokes
Interns: Renata Volchinskaya, Sam Mason, Hannah Chen, Addy Geenen, Yoyo Hung-Yu Lin

Curious to hear music by Luna Composition Lab alums? Check out E4TT's annual concert of music by women and non-binary composers, "Midnight Serenades," on January 25.

Chapters

• 0:34 In this week's episode, we continue our conversation with Ursula Kwong-Brown, who we spoke to in February 2024.
• 0:42 You fairly recently moved to LA. What inspired the move? And how is the music scene in LA different from New York and or Berkeley?
• 4:17 It's hard to titrate coming into your own and unfolding into your own and taking risks, and then getting exposed at just the right moment where it works. It's a tricky thing developmentally.
• 5:55 What was the piece of yours that you feel like okay, now I'm ready?

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 conversation with Ursula Kwong-Brown, who we spoke to in February 2024. [INTRO MUSIC ENDS]

Nanette McGuinness  00:30
You fairly recently moved to LA. What inspired the move? And how is the music scene in LA different from New York and or Berkeley?

Ursula Kwong-Brown  00:40
So we moved during the pandemic, when midtown Manhattan was a dark place to be. Helicopters. And, you know, when, when they, when the Black Lives Matter, like protests started, and there was curfews and you know, police lining our block, we lived on 42nd and 10th. We're like this, this is it. We've had, we've had enough. I grew up in New York City, I love New York City, it will always feel kind of like home. But I was ready to, to get out to somewhere a little more peaceful. And I had already, you know, spent time in Berkeley. And my husband, Danny is from San Francisco. And writing music. There's, one of the few places you can still make money doing that is, you know, film and TV. So we thought about, you know, LA for a long time, and we came out here. And one wonderful thing about being on the West Coast is I feel like you're a little further from like the orthodoxies of like Europe. Like going to Columbia University, I'd felt like tremendous pressure to write like modern music, like in a serious sense. Like, again, French spectralism-inspired and, and like, you know, nothing too normal. Because that had been done, you know. And here on the West Coast, nobody cares. Like every, you know, there's, there's a lot, you don't feel like Europe is like looking over your shoulder in the same way.

Nanette McGuinness  02:15
Yeah, I don't think it's only in music. To be honest, there is an openness and freedom that I find out here, you know, because I went to school, not in New York City, but in New York State. And I find that out here, there is just kind of a, an openness, that's probably the best word for it.

Ursula Kwong-Brown  02:34
I felt like that at Cal, at UC Berkeley, I sometimes knew that my teachers didn't like what I wrote because maybe it was too like tame for them. But they also didn't mind. They were just like, go be you, you know, so. Yeah, I'll take it, it was, it was also good not to feel constantly like you're about to be reviewed by like The New Yorker or the New York Times, which can, can make you feel very hesitant to take risks. Like I remember I was a senior at Columbia, I put on a concert, Poisson Rouge with my friend's string quartet, or my friend, Andrew Yee, he's part of the Attacca String Quartet. And he's wonderful and, but like, you know, getting it listed in the New Yorker, like goings on about town, and you just had this, there's a whole level of anxiety that, that wasn't just like, a college senior putting on a show, it was all of a sudden, like, how will this be recorded for posterity, you know.

Nanette McGuinness  03:40
Right. It's a double edged sword that here, especially smaller groups, and everybody is struggling to get listed and reviewed. It's harder. So the visibility and publicity piece is harder. But people can also unfold at their own pace.

Ursula Kwong-Brown  03:59
Exactly. And take risks.

Nanette McGuinness  04:01
And take risks. So you know, there's good and bad to almost everything. It's hard to titrate coming into your own and unfolding into your own and taking risks, and then getting exposed at just the right moment where it works. It's a tricky thing developmentally.

Ursula Kwong-Brown  04:20
It's funny because my husband has before been like, why isn't the New York Phil already doing your work? This was like five years ago, and I looked at him and I was like, you know, I don't have a piece right now that if they call that I'd really want them to do, that I felt was like really representative of me that like, I'd be like, this is mine. Like I I don't feel ready, you know, and I just wrote my first piece like last year that I was like, okay, if they called I'd feel like okay with this one. But it's taken me a while like, you know, you, it doesn't happen overnight.

Nanette McGuinness  04:56
No, and everybody has their own version of now I'm ready or fighting imposter syndrome enough that they feel that they own a seat in the room.

Ursula Kwong-Brown  05:05
And I've seen a lot of people get their first piece at the New York Phil and never get another performance. And it's often I think, because they weren't ready, like it didn't, you know, a piece wasn't that memorable. It wasn't that amazing. I mean, it was fine, like good. It's always nice to get a huge commission, but you really want it when you feel like you're at your peak, you are ready to shine, you know?

Nanette McGuinness  05:29
Right, right, the piece is worth it. And maybe they weren't ready because they didn't have the follow through. Maybe it was an okay piece, but not memorable, as you say. But maybe other things came to their door a little bit and they weren't ready. They couldn't follow up, follow through. What was the piece of yours that you feel like okay, now I'm ready?

Ursula Kwong-Brown  05:48
It's sort of a grandiose thing to say. But it was it's called Cover the Walls and it is inspired as so much of my instrumental music is by text. And so it's inspired by poetry that was carved into the walls of the Immigration Detention Center on Angel Island in the San Francisco Bay. And the conductor who did it, he actually found, which I was so moved by, he found in the score, the quotes, like I have lingered here three days moving again and again. It's like a, it's a horn solo. And he like wrote it in. But he, he could find it basically because I quoted the poetry, when he like found all of these. And then he even had one that I hadn't put in that he scribed. And I thought that that was fascinating too, you know, that people could look at your instrumental music and write in the words of, you know, implicated melodies.

Nanette McGuinness  06:49
[OUTRO MUSIC] Thank you for listening to For Good Measure, and a special thank you to our guest, Ursula Kwong-Brown, 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 design 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]