Hitomi Oba - Part 7

For Good Measure, by Ensemble for These Times (E4TT)
Episode 162: Hitomi Oba - Part 7

In this week’s episode, we talk to Hitomi Oba about her experiences with the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music, from her first time as a Composer Fellow of the Bahlest Eeble Readings to her current participation in the Composing Earth program. If you enjoyed today’s conversation and want to know more about Hitomi Oba, check her out here: https://www.hitomioba.com/. This episode was originally recorded in December 2023.

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/episodes/17156402

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

Chapters

• 0:22 In this week's episode, we continue our conversation with Hitomi Oba, who we spoke to in December 2023.
• 0:30 You've been involved with GLFCAM, Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music... several times, right? You did an earlier program. You're now involved with "Composing Earth." You want to talk about that?

Transcript

Nanette McGuinness  00:00

[INTRO MUSIC BEGINS] 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 Hitomi Oba, who we spoke to in December 2023. [INTRO MUSIC ENDS] You've been involved with GLFCAM, Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music...

Hitomi Oba  00:35

Yes! 

Nanette McGuinness  00:35

...several times, right? You did an earlier program. You're now involved with "Composing Earth." You want to talk about that?

Hitomi Oba  00:42

Yeah! Oh, this is an amazing, amazing thing that Gabriela Lena Frank is doing. She's such a visionary, [chuckles] and she's so generous. So I was involved with GLFCAM, the first, very first cycle that she, when she just started the program, and we, you know, it involved her collecting me and several other composers to work with. The Third Angle String Quartet from Oregon, and Tony Arnold, the soprano. And it was so the, you know, the format was that we all got to write pieces for them. We got to have a reading, work with them for a week, you know, give each other feedback, etc, get feedback from her, and then work on them, and then, you know, work with her individually, and then have a reading. But I think the important, the big takeaway, you know, other than, you know, having the experience of having your reading and, you know, performance and getting mentorship was just like, she places a priority, and she focuses on, like, the best things about being a composer, you know, which is obviously the musical portion and the skills, you know, she emphasizes that, of course. But also, you know, we spend a lot of time talking about what it means to be a person who's a composer, you know, what does it mean to be the human? Yeah, what does it mean to be a composer, you know? And she emphasizes community, you know, not just within our community of composers, but outside, you know, like where she lives, her local community. And she personifies all these things by, like, actually taking action, and, you know, implementing a lot of different other programs that do this, and you know, having to do the creativity and imagination, and you know, diversity and like, you know, uplifting, like underrepresented voices and empowerment.

Nanette McGuinness  02:32

[laughs] Right, right.

Hitomi Oba  02:33

Empowerment, you know, so like we talked about all these things, she actually lives and does this, her work is pushing these values forward. And so I think all of us came away from the experience just feeling a lot more empowered and more excited about being, you know, a composer, and then "Composing Earth" kind of takes that to the next steps. It's all of those things you know, you know, uplifting underrepresented voices, you know diversity in personal and musical backgrounds, but also focusing on composers as cultural ambassadors or change makers, you know? 

Nanette McGuinness  03:07

Yes. 

Hitomi Oba  03:07

And like, yeah! And so she, it's centered on the climate crisis. So she's set it up so that we're able to educate ourselves, you know, we're being educated on and discussing and thinking about the climate crisis, kind of just like informing us, informing us, but then getting us to think about it. And it's, it's been like, "Oh my gosh." It's been just educational. It's been so illuminating. I just, I feel, you know, much more empowered coming away from it. And you know, she's able to talk about... she and a scientist named Rob Davies are kind of leading it, and they talk about the micro, they talk about the macro. You know, we talk about the larger picture of things, the complexities and the format, I think is she's done such a good job with it's like how to format a program. So it's really thoughtful. It's really, really, really conducive to what she's trying to achieve. And that, again, this comes out of all of her values that I mentioned about GLFCAM, you know, the reading portion of it, and that's that, you know, she's considerate of what would help us dive into it the best. So she's created a community, right? So we're doing this together. We have regular engagement. We have resources, not only people resources, but also informational resources. And then she has, you know, she's made it so that there's financial support to allow us to actually do this because for a lot of us, at the last meeting, we just talked, we were like, we felt like we had permission to actually, like, take on these important topics, whereas, like, before, we might not have felt like we had the permission to, because we should be prioritizing other things, right? So just saying, like, okay, yeah, here's like, you know, it's not a lot, but here's like, a little bit of financial incentive to say, like, this is part, you know, it gets away being us permission as professionals to actually engage with this, whereas maybe personally, we might have wanted to, but we might not have permitted ourselves to before. So, you know, we then we have accountability, right? Financial incentive, but also the community gives us accountability as well. And she's also worked in, like, low stakes writing, writing opportunities, you know, worked into it. So because she's saying, like, you know, as artists, it's very important that we're able to write, you know, social, social ambassadors, you know, it's very important that we're able to write as well. So she's kind of getting us to write about music and also larger kind of concepts. And so she's formatted in a really great way, really great way for communication, you know, so, and I think the Rob was kept saying, you know, like, oh, the scientific, you know, solutions, the tech solutions are all there. The climate crisis is really a cultural problem. That was the big takeaway. So they're saying, so they're like, Yeah, you guys are cultural, you know, change. You influence culture as composers and as musicians and artists. So, you know, they're saying, We want you informed, you know, with all this information and, you know, concepts. And now it's our, you know, we're tasked with kind of taking this through our voices out there. And, you know, all of this kind of both programs, you know, throughout all of this, you know, she has this emphasis on like, you can strive for excellence, like very you can achieve great things musically, you know, professionally, and reach really high level while, like, still nurturing ourselves and our values and the world. [laughs] And so I think that has been so important for us, because, again, having to do with going back to cultural conditioning, you know, like most of us have been having to kind of, like actively do away with a lot of the messaging and, you know, things we've grown up with in the musical, educational, kind of, you know, educational system, I guess, right, and professional world, to try to make this in a way where we can make good music because, not despite of, but because we are, you know, caring for other things. And so she doesn't just preach it, you know, she's set up these frameworks so that we're, you know, she's, for instance, like, the family considerations thing, right? She's like, Yeah, you know, like, several of you have kids, like very young kids, you know, let's make this in a way that makes sense for you all, you know. Like, here's some audiobooks. So if you can't read the actual book, you know, you could actually, you hear an audio, but I did that, you know, like, she's very trying to think about these ways to make it work for the whole person, you know. And so, yeah, it's just, it's trailblazing. She's just going for it. She's involving more and more people, and all of us are, you know, coming out transformed and inspired, and hopefully, you know, able to healthily go forward, you know, and influence other music worlds as well. Yeah, she's, she's incredible, and, oh my gosh, she's an incredible, like, first and foremost, she's an incredible composer, musician. [laughs] We all you know, gain so much just from, you know, from that as well.

Nanette McGuinness  08:04

Yeah, we have performed several of her pieces, maybe three or four of them over time, and she was one of our earliest interviews, maybe about the sixth.

Hitomi Oba  08:13

She was? Oh! 

Nanette McGuinness  08:13

Yeah, yeah. Way back, yeah. And she talked about some of the resources, but her interview was maybe 2021, and to see how that has been carried out and how it's been fulfilled and continuing, I think would be very interesting to people.

Hitomi Oba  08:29

Absolutely, and how it's impacting, you know, the people who come through her program, yeah.

Nanette McGuinness  08:34

Life altering, it sounds like.

Hitomi Oba  08:36

Absolutely, absolutely, extremely influential. Yeah.

Nanette McGuinness  08:40

The "Composing Earth" sounds like a really deep program.

Hitomi Oba  08:47

Absolutely, it was, it was a lot. They really had us really dive into, you know, a lot of things there. There was, yeah, it was, [chuckles] it was a lot more engaging and also demanding than I'd even expected. And I'm grateful for it, because, you know, I think all of us had been interested, but we hadn't had, you know, the space or opportunity to dive in to this degree. Yeah, it was, it was, it was absolutely transformative as well, absolutely transformative.

Nanette McGuinness  09:16

[OUTRO MUSIC BEGINS] Thank you for listening to For Good Measure, and a special thank you to our guest, Hitomi Oba, 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]