Lunar Module with Madeline Clara Cheng - Part 4

For Good Measure, by Ensemble for These Times (E4TT)
Episode 136: Lunar Module with Madeline Clara Cheng - Part 4

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 Madeline Clara Cheng, who we spoke to in May 2024. If you enjoyed today’s conversation and want to know more, check out her music here: https://madelineclaracheng.wixsite.com/music.

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/16322754

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

• 0:47 Any mentors, interests, or influences you'd like to share with us?
• 4:24 Who was your mentor for the Luna Composition Lab?
• 7:43 Is there anything else you'd like to tell us or that we didn't talk about and that you wish we might have?

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 and commissioned composer [INTO MUSIC ENDS] Madeline Clara Cheng, whom we spoke to in May 2024.

Nanette McGuinness  00:35
Any mentors, interests, or influences you'd like to share with us?

Madeline Clara Cheng  00:40
Oh, there's been so many people that have been very instrumental, no pun intended, to my journey. I think if I, if I listed everyone, we'd be here for another few hours. Off the top of my head, though, I think, well, most recently would be a lot of my professors, a lot of my peers at at USC. I would say, like my first composition professor here was Veronika Krausas, who was also very involved in Luna Lab. And I also had Brian Head, who I'm going to be studying with next semester, who, like, kind of really nurtured my compositional voice and made me sort of like realize that, like, what my artistic voice is, and that anything I write will inherently be a part of of my voice and my story, which was really meaningful to hear. I also worked a lot with Camae Ayewa, who her stage name is Moor Mother, which more people might know her more by that. But she really got me a little bit more into the electronic space and more into this, like, experimental phase, which was really exciting, and I'm really excited to see who else I get to learn from more at USC. A lot of my peers have been major inspirations to me as well, both performers and composers with their, you know, inherent, you know, creative aspirations and how they're just not afraid to go for what they want. It feels, I love being at USC Thornton School of Music specifically, because it doesn't feel ever like we're competing against each other, even when we're applying for the exact same things, because everyone is on their own creative journey, and we just get to support each other in what we want to do. But I I'd be remiss to not mention the reason why I get to be here in the first place, which is the Luna Composition Lab. I think I never would have even considered going into the music industry otherwise, I have no idea what I would have, like at this point, I have no idea what I would have done if not for music. But when I was, at the time when I was in Luna Lab, I was in the 2019 to 2020 term, which was unfortunately the online term, but I still learned so much from that. We even had just this one workshop where there was a bunch of like arts administrators, people who work behind the scenes, music publishers too, people who you know aren't the like forefront artists that always get the most attention. But I, for some reason, I had never even considered that like that, that there were that many possible avenues that you could be in the music industry. And I suppose, like that's that's so amazing. And then seeing all these incredible working composers, seeing Missy Mazzoli and Ellen Reid do their thing was so inspiring to me, because I it just never really like, I'd never really seen it in front of me that you could be a like, you could be a working composer, that you could thrive in this industry. Because I always, you know, especially where I grew up, it was always like, oh, like, you're going to be like a starving artist. You're going to you can't, you can't live that way, um, like, music is just like a hobby you put on your application for college admissions or but it's not, it's not something you you seriously...

Nanette McGuinness  03:54
Real.

Madeline Clara Cheng  03:55
Pursuing. Yes, and I'm sure of like, many of my, um, many of my relatives are secretly thinking that as well. But you know, I'm, I'm doing my own thing, and I will, I will figure it out, and I'm already really happy with where I am and where I'm going.

Nanette McGuinness  04:10
No, that's really great. Who was your mentor for the Luna Composition Lab?

Madeline Clara Cheng  04:16
It was Tamar Muskal, absolutely lovely, absolutely lovely person. She also was very instrumental in shaping my, my sort of musical journey. That was one of, like, the first, like formal trainings I had as a composer. Before was a lot of you know, figuring things out based off of what I already knew about performing music. But she was, she was so important to my musical development. She called, we actually like called recently, and because she's New York based, I'm hoping to to meet up with her in person for the first time. So it's she's she's so wonderful, and she taught me so many things about about both, both how you know how to write music, but also like how I write music, there's so many things that like, I did, and I didn't realize that she noticed all these, all these patterns, or so many things that I didn't realize I was, quote unquote, good at that that she was like, oh, but like, the way that you, you shape this, you have a really good ear for this. I was like, oh, okay, maybe I should, maybe I should lean into this more, maybe I should embrace it.

Nanette McGuinness  04:20
Yeah.

Madeline Clara Cheng  04:34
I owe so much to her, and I'm so excited to see her, but I was, I had no idea how formative Luna Lab would be in my compositional journey. It is, without a doubt, the most important thing that has happened to me in my musical career. It I like to say that it's the gift that keeps on giving. I mean, I said I was a 2019, 2020 fellow. And look at this, some incredible way that I've gotten to connect with Ensemble for These Times. I never would have gotten that without, without Luna Lab, you know, having this, having this Call for Scores with you. So I I'm super grateful for them, just just every year, I think, like they've got to be done with me at this point, and then something new happens. I was able, I was so grateful to I got to go to Amsterdam because Ellen Reid had a Concertgebouw residency, and she had one of my pieces programmed there. And I thought that was a scam email when I first received it, so.. but then I realized that was too specific to be a scam email. I looked it up, it was all it was all legit, I just couldn't believe it. But it really is the gift that keeps on giving. And they just, they just, it seems like they just cannot stop providing incredible opportunities for not only their current fellows, but also so many alumni that have been with them for years and years.

Nanette McGuinness  06:43
We think very highly of what they're doing, it's an amazing program. And when we were thinking of who we might want to do a collaboration with for a call for scores, their name came right to mind, because there's such a synergy in the missions of their organization and ours and I think they're great, so.

Madeline Clara Cheng  07:00
Oh, it's so wonderful. And they're going to have their festival in in San Francisco too. I was so, I was so excited. I wanted to, I wanted to be a part of it and help, like volunteer and do whatever they needed, you know, move chairs or whatever, but, but, of course, I will be across the country, but supporting from afar.

Nanette McGuinness  07:18
Yeah, no, I just heard about that very recently, so I'm hopeful that we'll be able to go or, you know, see what's going on with that. Well, this is really great. You had such wonderful answers, and it's a pleasure talking to you. Is there anything else you'd like to tell us or that we didn't talk about and that you wish we might have?

Madeline Clara Cheng  07:38
I guess not anything that's super specific to me. I guess I'm just, I hear a lot of I hear a lot of different things about the music industry, you know. And I, you know, there's so much that I still have yet to learn that's like barely scratching the surface. But I hear a lot from my from some of my professors, that they're like so, you know, they've been beaten down by many, many years, so they're not super optimistic about, how, about how things are going. So there's a lot of there's a lot of things to worry about, lots of things to fix, lots of concerns to have, you know, especially with the impending rise of of AI, how is that even going to to work in the music industry?

Nanette McGuinness  08:19
Yes.

Madeline Clara Cheng  08:21
So there's just so many things that I've I think about all the time, about the, again, the intense future orientation, about what the music industry is going to look like. But there's, you know, there's a few, there's a few things that that give me hope. I'm not sure if you're, this is, this is something that's very familiar with a lot of, like, young college, college students my age. But are you familiar with with, they were formerly called College Humor, which I guess makes sense for this demographic, but they're not, they're now called Dropout TV.

Nanette McGuinness  08:53
No, tell me about it.

Madeline Clara Cheng  08:55
I would be, I would be, like, very impressed, but they're this, they're this, like independent media production company, and they they have, like, a streaming service, which, like I would I would be surprised, a lot of streaming services are not doing the best right now, even even the major ones. And it's really, really hard to, like, start your own independent one. They have this, it's basically like unscripted comedy. So they were in a very unique position where they weren't like bound by a lot of like the writers strikes, because they have so much..

Nanette McGuinness  09:27
Right, right. [laughs]

Madeline Clara Cheng  09:28
So they they actually thrived during during that time. But they have they market a lot on on social media, on like Instagram and TikTok, which is why it reaches a lot of younger audiences. But what fascinates me the most about them is the way they run their company. It's just so ethical and and in such like an astounding way. Every time I look into it, they seem to just be doing the most and really changing the game for the entertainment industry. They were they hit the news recently because they were so successful in their previous year that they were able to do profit sharing with their employees, and not just with, you know, not just with like the staff and crew behind the scenes, but like everyone, every single performer, people who auditioned for them, anyone who made a dollar, because they pay people to audition for them, anyone who made even a dollar with them, got to be part of this profit sharing, which...

Nanette McGuinness  10:22
Wonderful.

Madeline Clara Cheng  10:23
...if I'm if I'm correct, is pretty much unheard of in the entertainment industry. And I thought, like, no way with such like, with such like, you know, incredible production budgets and high value of their of their content, like, no way can they really compensate their performers that well, and then I also see them on LinkedIn and post and post like, you know, different like video editor opportunities, or people who work behind the scenes on their content. And I'm really impressed with how, with how great their compensation is, and how much they, and their benefits, how much they care about their workers. So I like places like that really give me hope for the future, because they make it actually possible that we can, we can make the entertainment and music industry, you know, a better place for for people coming into and in the future. So in in many ways, I am, I'm very hopeful.

Nanette McGuinness  11:16
That's wonderful. Yeah, the whole industry has been turned upside down by the Internet and by the whole, the model of how artists are paid has changed, and the valuation put on art has changed. It's interesting, a number of us have been talking about that on and off the last month or two. How if, you know, in the past, you would tour, you would sell your CDs, you would get fees from presenters, and now you make a recording, it goes out on streaming, right, on the platforms. Maybe it's available for download, maybe it's not, and the money that you can get from that is peanuts. So how does an artist earn a living? How do they support themselves? We're in a, I would say we're still in a time of cataclysm...

Madeline Clara Cheng  12:09
For sure.

Nanette McGuinness  12:10
...for how all this happens. And it is, as you say, it generates hope that young artists coming up like you are thinking about how we can make this a viable path for other creatives. That's really great.

Madeline Clara Cheng  12:25
For sure. I mean, again, I I don't think anyone really knows what the next, you know, decade is going to look like, but I I do know that at least, at least right now, that I want to be able to dedicate my life to to the performing arts industry and to make it a better place.

Nanette McGuinness  12:42
That's wonderful, and I think that's a wonderful way to end our interview. Thank you so much for chatting with us, this was great.

Madeline Clara Cheng  12:48
Thank you so much. It's been an honor.

Nanette McGuinness  12:51
[OUTRO MUSIC] Thank you for listening to For Good Measure and a special thank you to our guest, Madeline Clara Cheng, 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 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].