Lunar Module with Sage Shurman - Part 3

For Good Measure, by Ensemble for These Times (E4TT)
Episode 132: Lunar Module with Sage Shurman - Part 3

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/16152002

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

• 0:33 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 Is there anything we haven't talked about, or that you'd like to tell me about? What's your music making or composing, or interests, or anything!
• 3:22 Would you consider your music to be fast paced and intense in general?
• 3:54 We're going to be doing Composure, as I recall in the fall. Do you want to tell listeners about Composure? Although I have to admit, by time this airs, we will, I think it'll be slightly past that concert. I think we're gonna air these in December...
• 6:38 Tell us a little bit about the piece that we chose from the Call for Scores, "grace fall," I think is what is called?

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
Is there anything we haven't talked about, or that you'd like to tell me about? What's your music making or composing, or interests, or anything!

Sage Shurman  00:44
Anything... Um... That's a good... I also I play soccer. And I think I think like, this is gonna sound really silly, and you probably, you might not want to include this, but like, I feel like the fast paced like energy of like, that type of, like, laying vibe. I guess this kind of coincides with Spikeball too, in some way, like, influences my music and like, I don't know, just making things that are like exciting is very, um... I guess, important to me. And maybe this just because I have a short attention span and like it, but I, yeah, I love a good like, I feel like music is very, I don't know, serious, like, a lot of the time, and people are trying to make like stuff about like, this is, this is like, gonna, I don't know, it's just about like, depressing, Like, depressing topics that need to be talked about. But I don't know I like the flip side of that too, like making things inspired by kind of just fun aspects of of life.

Nanette McGuinness  01:52
Bringing joy and fun into people's homes and hearts.

Sage Shurman  01:54
Yeah. I remember once, like at the LA Phil, we had a we had an assignment, and it was like, write a piece, like, inspired by joy. And, oh my goodness. Like, it was so funny. Everyone was, like, struggling so hard. Like, people did not know what to do with themselves. And at the final concert, it's like, we had, they had this whole talk about, like, you know, pre concert performance, about, oh, these pieces are inspired by, you hear the concert, they're not happy pieces. [laughs]

Nanette McGuinness  02:16
[laughs] Oh my gosh...

Sage Shurman  02:25
Yeah, like the toil of I don't know. I think art... artists tend to make make sad or like angsty stuff. And not to say I'm not a part of that, but I do enjoy making some more light hearted stuff.

Nanette McGuinness  02:42
That's nice. There has to be room for that. You know. Maybe it's a 21st century thing that we're all angst laden and driven and we can't consider, you know, don't worry, be happy, right?

Sage Shurman  02:54
Yeah.

Nanette McGuinness  02:55
What position in soccer do you play?

Sage Shurman  02:58
I play, I play attacking midfield. But

Nanette McGuinness  03:02
Very fast paced.

Sage Shurman  03:04
Yeah. soccer days are kind of over, though, but you know, just play for fun.

Nanette McGuinness  03:09
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Would you consider your music to be fast paced and intense in general?

Sage Shurman  03:16
I would say, so. I would say, I would say, I tend to go for, if not fast tempo wise, fast, like, story line wise, of, yeah, lots of things tend to happen, maybe, like, a little bit quicker than other people might do it like, I don't know, I'm not, not a big lingerer.

Nanette McGuinness  03:40
I see. We're going to be doing Composure, as I recall in the fall. Do you want to tell listeners about Composure? Although I have to admit, by time this airs, we will, I think it'll be slightly past that concert. I think we're gonna air these in December, January, February, something like that, but still...

Sage Shurman  03:59
Really prepared and advanced.

Nanette McGuinness  04:01

You know, it's the only way to make it work. And you can, you can just thank the amazing Stephanie, my co-producer, and, yeah, she's, she is truly incredible. She's the reason this is such a fabulous initiative. But tell us about Composure, if you feel like.

Sage Shurman  04:20
Sure. Yeah, so Composure, Composure is for piano trio, and it's kind of like this, like, wild, I guess, in some like, wild series of events about, and it's kind of about, like, trying to stay calm under like pressure. And, yeah, it's got, like, it starts with this kind of, like, fast glissy stuff in the strings and the piano is kind of going crazy. And then it gets to, like a little jazzy, bluesy section. And then it's got like this, like a pretty, like melodic, possibly, like composed, tranquil section. And yeah, it's kind of about like, trying to find that tranquility. Amongst other pressures and like trying to, trying to feel, trying to feel calm. Also, I titled it Composure. I thought, I thought it was a funny little word play on composer.

Nanette McGuinness  05:12
Yes, yes.

Sage Shurman  05:15
And yeah, I think that, like, as a composer, there's a lot of stresses, of like, oh, maybe you should, like, write about this, write about this. And, like, a lot of, I guess, stress in terms of, like, figuring out what...

Nanette McGuinness  05:27
Choices

Sage Shurman  05:28
...you're trying to say, yeah, there's a lot of choices and like that, that's magical in some sense, like, that's what art is, like, making choices about things. But it's also nice to just have a moment of, like, maybe I should stop thinking so much and just like, just exist and just be there in the moment. So I think Composure is about trying to find those like, little those little moments.

Nanette McGuinness  05:51
Those little moments of Zen.

Sage Shurman  05:53
Yeah, moments of Zen.

Nanette McGuinness  05:55
Yeah.

Sage Shurman  05:55
I say this, and it's like, my life probably sounds so stressful, or like I'm not happy, like, I promise. Like, I promise I'm happy.

Nanette McGuinness  06:01
[laughs] Well, you're the one who can judge that. I actually, you seem very happy and just fine. The concert that we put it on, the theme is In Motion. So you could see...

Sage Shurman  06:01
Oh!

Nanette McGuinness  06:09
...why we picked it...

Sage Shurman  06:14
Yeah, that's great.

Nanette McGuinness  06:15
...to put on that, because we could, you know, I could see that interplay happening in the piece. And it seemed like a really good fit for that theme.

Sage Shurman  06:24
Yeah.

Sage Shurman  06:25
Oh, yeah. That piece is so funny because I, like, I wrote the piece, "grace fall," and then I literally, if you read the performance note. It's like the queen falls tonight. I swear to God, a week later, the Queen died. I was like, "This is crazy. No way..."

Nanette McGuinness  06:25
Yeah. Tell us a little bit about the piece that we chose from the Call for Scores, "grace fall," I think is what is called?

Sage Shurman  06:25
Oh, yeah. That piece is so funny because I, like, I wrote the piece, "grace fall," and then I literally, if you read the performance note. It's like the queen falls tonight. I swear to God, a week later, the Queen died. I was like, "This is crazy. No way..."

Nanette McGuinness  06:28
Which Queen, which Queen?

Sage Shurman  06:29
of England.

Nanette McGuinness  06:31
Oh my gosh. It was then that you wrote, okay,

Sage Shurman  06:54
It was then!

Nanette McGuinness  06:56
Right, right.

Sage Shurman  06:57
It was actually so crazy. Umm... And, yeah. But that piece, it's, it's like, I guess, all about this, like, this descending motion that kind of culminates at the end, and just like a conversation between, like, higher and lower voices and registers.

Nanette McGuinness  07:22
Mmhmm...

Sage Shurman  07:24
Yeah. There's some like, Royal sounding music. There's some like, I think I have a like, Death March sounding music, falling sounding music.

Nanette McGuinness  07:35
Wow wow...

Sage Shurman  07:36
Yeah. It was never meant to be like that serious of a piece, or, like, grace... "grace fall" was also supposed to be a play on, like graceful.

Nanette McGuinness  07:45
mmhmm, I wondered, yeah...

Sage Shurman  07:46
I really like these, like, word play things. Um... but yeah, and then the Queen died, I was like, wow, that turned out way more true than I ever that was way more serious than the piece ever was intended to be.

Nanette McGuinness  08:00
Yeah. What was the inspiration for it?

Sage Shurman  08:05
Like, to be fully honest, I really just liked playing with the

Nanette McGuinness  08:10
the register?

Sage Shurman  08:11
yeah, it started with the register things with, like harmonics. Um... And then on it just like fun string techniques, with, like the gliss glistening and tremoloing at the same time. And getting that, like, falling motion, I thought was really nice. And I kind of wanted to, like, I guess, like, figure out how to do a lot of those falling things in different ways. So like, like, there's your like, Oh, okay. Like, glissy. Glissy cascade way. There's like the runs. There's like the jumping around the harmonics. I think it's I like to do. I'm a big fan of, like, trying to say the same thing in a lot of different ways throughout a piece. And I think, like, that was something I was trying to do in this piece too.

Nanette McGuinness  08:57
Yeah. And I guess "grace fall," the play with "grace fall" makes sense if you're exploring different ways of making the registral shifts happen...

Sage Shurman  09:06
Yeah.

Nanette McGuinness  09:06
In a musical way. That's very cool. It's a nice piece, and it either is or will be available on our YouTube channel soon if people are interested...

Sage Shurman  09:15
Yeah.

Nanette McGuinness  09:15
And want to listen to it. So alright, well, that was very interesting. If there's anything else I left out now is the moment!

Sage Shurman 09:23
[laughs] I don't think so.

Nanette McGuinness  09:27
Okay, well...

Sage Shurman  09:28
Yeah...

Nanette McGuinness  09:29
Then thank you. This was fascinating, and I enjoyed it. Thank you for joining us.

Sage Shurman  09:33
Thank you.

Nanette McGuinness  09:34
[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 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]