Lunar Module with Sage Shurman - Part 2

For Good Measure, by Ensemble for These Times (E4TT)
Episode 131: Lunar Module with Sage Shurman - 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 Lunar Module, a mini-series with the E4TT/ Luna Composition Lab Call for Scores winners and commissioned composers. Today we are joined by Sage Shurman, who we spoke to in June 2024. If you enjoyed today’s conversation and want to know more, check out her music here: sageshurman.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),  in SF, CA on January 29, 2022
Outro music: “Lake Turkana” by Marcus Norris, performed by E4TT (Margaret Halbig, piano), in SF, CA on October 15, 2021

Transcription courtesy of Otter.ai.
Buzzsprout: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1903729/episodes/16151969

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, 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 Lunar Module episode, we continue talking to E4TT Luna Composition Lab Call for Scores winner Sage Shurman, who we spoke to in June 2024.
• 0:46 Are there other aspects of music that interest you, although we've kind of talked about it some, but you know, going forward, you're still playing the piano, you're writing musicals, one of which is a rock send up. So what other aspects of music...
• 5:58 You've mentioned your Luna mentor. Do you have any other mentors or interests or influences you'd like to share with us?
• 8:44 I grew up, from first grade on, in Texas, in Houston. And I went to Cornell. And I remember their saying, and I experienced it to some extent, that kids from the south and the west and the Midwest find going to college on the East Coast can be tricky...

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 Lunar Module episode, we continue talking to E4TT Luna Composition Lab Call for Scores winner [INTRO MUSIC ENDS] Sage Shurman, who we spoke to in June 2024.

Nanette McGuinness  00:34
Are there other aspects of music that interest you, although we've kind of talked about it some, but you know, going forward, you're still playing the piano, you're writing musicals, one of which is a rock send up. So what other aspects of music interest you?

Sage Shurman  00:51
Yeah, so, like, recently, I've been interested in, I guess, a bit of, like music, tech stuff and multimedia, I guess, experiences and embodied experiences. This past winter, I did this Art Tech Residency at Harvard, and it was like, essentially, we made this dance performance space with, like, motion triggered audio. And the idea was like, breaking down whether, like, you're dancing to music or the music is going with the dance and having it be like one cohesive and like collective experience that's like being created simultaneously. And I think I'm interested in exploring stuff like that further, and like exploring feeling music with your body, and like creating it on a more personalized level for like and like any person, rather than just like a skilled like musician. And yeah, I definitely like to do more, more of those type of like art tech, multimedia projects in the future.

Nanette McGuinness  02:03
So kind of motion capture, working with...

Sage Shurman  02:05
Yeah, it's like motion capture. And, I mean, the way we designed this was, it was like the quantity of motion triggers various sounds. So it's like, if you're doing like X amount of motion, you're gonna get, like, it was like some waves. It was kind of under underwater soundscape situation, but yeah...

Nanette McGuinness  02:26
And do you think it would be different working with, say, professional dancers versus you and me, normal walking down the street person?

Sage Shurman  02:36
Yeah. So what so for this exhibit, we actually so we had a dancer that was gonna, like, come and dance with it, and we're gonna make a full video, and then she ended up, like, not being able to make it, which was kind of a bummer, so we couldn't see the comparison. But it was interesting when regular people were kind of, like, in the in the space, and like doing things to trigger them. Like, it definitely was, like, people felt a little bit stiff with it, and, like, not fully able to just, like, move around. They were, like, very making, very subtle movements, I think, psychologically, which was interesting. It was also like, in a essentially, like a box, like, like an open cage. And it was very, it was very interesting. People, either like, in the cage or out of the cage. Like, no one between.

Nanette McGuinness  03:25
[laughs]

Sage Shurman  03:27
It was like they saw that I'm like, it's not a cage like, you can, like, move through the space freely, but yeah...

Nanette McGuinness  03:33
Interesting... I see...

Sage Shurman  03:34
People just like, felt a little like trapped.

Nanette McGuinness  03:39
It was a delimitation. So you either were in and then you were like, Oh, I can't go outside. Yeah, you were outside, and you're like...

Sage Shurman  03:45
You were like, "Oh, I can't go in". And I'm like, telling everybody, because I'm like there with the exhibit, with all of us. We're like, Oh, come on, come on. They're like, "can we go in?" And it's so fun.

Nanette McGuinness  03:54
Interesting experience on boundaries then, huh?

Sage Shurman  03:56
Yeah, yeah...

Nanette McGuinness  03:58
Yeah.

Sage Shurman  03:58
And I like, and just on how people interact with like art in general, and how they're like quick to feel removed from it rather than like in it.

Nanette McGuinness  04:08
That is interesting, as soon as you put the label art, it feels like something...

Sage Shurman  04:1
Right.

Nanette McGuinness  04:17
...and alien, as opposed to just part of what they do.

Sage Shurman  04:20
Right, right...

Nanette McGuinness  04:22
It's interesting. Have you listened or watched any of the music by Pamela Z?

Sage Shurman  04:28
That's, like, very familiar to me.

Nanette McGuinness  04:30
Yeah, based on what you're saying, you should check her out, because she does, she does work that I think you'll find interesting. I mean, she's great. She's both a vocalist and a composer and does really interesting work, great stuff. And I think you'd like that. We have a project coming up in just next year with a dancer, composer who also dances, but no motion capture.

Sage Shurman  04:56
What I like about the motion capture ideas, I feel like it can be broadly applied, like, I'm like, every stage should just have a motion capture.

Nanette McGuinness  05:05
I've never worked with it, but I've seen it and it looks fascinating.

Sage Shurman  05:08
Yeah, it's really cool.

Nanette McGuinness  05:10
Do you think people, over time, start to get less stiff? Did they? Did they loosen up after they got used to having it on? Or did they kind of stay marionettish?

Sage Shurman  05:20
Well, they they like loosened up when they got, like, acted like, if I'm like, in there, like moving in and out of the thing, and they're like, watching someone else, then they kind of like copy that.

Nanette McGuinness  05:31
Ah.

Sage Shurman  05:31
Yeah. They just like, needed an active, like, invitation to, like, do it or else, yeah...

Nanette McGuinness  05:37
Then they would come out of themselves and...

Sage Shurman  05:39
Yeah.

Nanette McGuinness  05:40
Be in it. That sounds good. It sounds like a fascinating project and definitely worth exploring in so many different directions. You've mentioned your Luna mentor. Do you have any other mentors or interests or influences you'd like to share with us?

Sage Shurman  05:56
I think someone that had a big influence on me both, I guess, musically, and then also as a mentor, was Andrew Norman. I've always, like, I was really liked his music before the LA Phil Composer Fellowship program, and then I was applying to that, and I was like, No way. He's, like, he runs the program. That's amazing. And one thing that, like, he told me that really stuck out to me was I was in that habit of making these like pieces that were like, consistently, like, I would say fairly good, but nothing was like, you know, nothing like, made them really special, or like, great. And he was just like, you need to write some bad music stage. Like, you need to like, you're not gonna get something like, really good until you write things that are, like, actively bad. And it's like you have this fear of, like, oh, like, it needs to hit a certain level of good for it to be able to, like, be performed and and I think, like, him telling me that, and just, like, truly accepting, like, it is okay to be out on a limb and try something totally random. And, like, in fact, like, you need to do that if you're gonna, you know, get somewhere new. Was very helpful for me. And I, like, I try to think about that. Like, if I'm, if I'm making too many consistently, like, I don't know, seven out of ten level pieces. I'm like, "Alright"... Like, we probably need a three out of ten in here, so that we could get a 10 out of 10 right. Not that these things can be grasped so like want to away, but...

Nanette McGuinness  07:28
Right. But if your stuff is consistently vanilla, let's just...

Sage Shurman  07:32
Yeah, yeah.

Nanette McGuinness  07:33
Acceptable vanilla. You haven't taken enough risks, and you've been playing it too safe, so you want to dive bomb a few times to confirm that you're taking those risks. And in taking those risks, you give yourself the opportunity to take wing.

Sage Shurman  07:51
Yeah.

Nanette McGuinness  07:52
Yeah. No, that's fabulous advice. And did that change your composing style?

Sage Shurman  07:56
Yeah, for it just made me branch out more and, like, try new things without, I guess, the fear of like, well, what if this doesn't work? Like that almost, the idea of like, what if this doesn't work, almost becomes more of a good thing, because then it's like, Oh, yay. That means that I'm doing something that, like, you know, at least like, I haven't done before, or not enough people on the internet have done before where I could look it up and be sure that it's going to work...

Nanette McGuinness  08:24
Right exactly! Because, you know, how can you develop your own unique compositional voice if you're just playing it safe?

Sage Shurman  08:32
Yeah, exactly.

Nanette McGuinness  08:33
Yeah. That's true. I grew up, from first grade on, in Texas, in Houston. And I went to Cornell. And I remember their saying, and I experienced it to some extent, that kids from the south and the west and the Midwest find going to college on the East Coast can be tricky to feel comfortable, that it's more of a disjunct experience. And I mean, I loved going to Cornell. It was great. I fit in it. I really did like it, but it was definitely different. And this is despite the fact that my family comes from the East Coast, and I'd spent my first six years there. So are you finding that kind of experience going to Harvard or, you know, this, is it a big culture change from Southern California?

Sage Shurman  09:26
I mean, I think, I think one thing is everyone on the East Coast just thinks I'm so chill. This person I met, and I'm like, really, like, not that I'm not chill. But I feel like everyone on the West Coast is just a certain level of laid back. And I feel like I'm like, solidly in the middle of that on the west coast. But then on the East Coast, it's become, like, somewhat of a personality trait, which is kind of interesting to me. They also think of me as, like the Spikeball girl. I don't know if you've heard of that game, but it's kind of like a mix of volleyball and, like, Yeah, but you like, played on this brown net. That's like a trampoline. You hit the ball, but...

Nanette McGuinness  10:11
You play?

Sage Shurman  10:12
It's, it's funny, because it's very popular in the west coast and somewhat popular in other places too. And I just, like, brought this is my very one. I brought that to campus. Like, of all the things I'm bringing to college, like, I need to bring this game. And I made all my, like, I made so many of my friends. I just set up my Spikeball net, I got my speaker out, blasted some good tunes, and then the friends just came to me, like, I didn't have to, like, everyone's out here, like, trying to go out and make friends. And I'm like, Oh, wait, this is awesome. So at the beginning of the year, like, that's a funny like, fun was a fun way to make friends. And then, you know, the weather, the weather gets colder, things get a little more stressful. It's not really Spikeball weather anymore.

Nanette McGuinness  10:12
Right.

Sage Shurman  10:19
And then, obviously, like that, that gets tough for people's attitudes that are, like, a little bit less chill than mine. But, you know, I think because I had a, like, I made a lot of friends at the start.

Nanette McGuinness  11:14
Right.

Sage Shurman  11:14
It was easy to, it was easier to, like, keep it going, because I didn't have to, like, make new friends, or, like, really try to, like, push for that when, like, when it was cold or when it was, you know, like, work was harder.

Nanette McGuinness  11:30
Yeah, that makes sense. That was actually an accidentally very ingenious way of finding your people like..

Sage Shurman  11:36
Yeah... Very very...

Nanette McGuinness  11:38
Instead of baking brownies and cookies, you know, you brought... you brought game.

Sage Shurman  11:43
It's funny because, like, people that don't know me that well, don't even know like, I do music as my main thing, because they're just, because they just see me playing spike ball, they're like, oh Sage yeah. Closer, not the pianist, not the doesn't do musicals, Spikeball Girl...

Nanette McGuinness  11:57
Did you expect that? Boy [laughs]

Sage Shurman  11:59
No [laughs]

Nanette McGuinness  12:01
That's pretty funny. Yeah. I mean, one of the fun things about college is you can kind of reinvent yourself in in many ways, it's a transitional break. And yeah, who knows? Right?

Sage Shurman  12:13
Yeah.

Nanette McGuinness  12:13
[OUTRO MUSIC] Thank you for listening to For Good Measure and a special thank you to our guest, Sage Shurman, 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 Measures 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]