Da Capo Conversations 2.0 with Stephanie M. Neumann and Brennan Stokes

For Good Measure, by Ensemble for These Times (E4TT)
Episode 180: Da Capo Conversations 2.0 with Stephanie M. Neumann and Brennan Stokes

Looking for a way to listen to diverse creators and to support equity in the arts? Tune in weekly to For Good Measure!

Today we revisit Stephanie M. Neumann’s and Brennan Stoke’s perspectives on a piece of theirs that we played. If you enjoyed today’s conversation and want to know more about Stephanie M. Neumann and Brennan Stokes, check them out here and here. Parts of this episode originally premiered in March 2024, click here, and in April 2024, click here.

This podcast is made possible by grants from the California Arts Council, SF Arts Commission, Grants for the Arts, 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/18119386

Co-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, Christy Xu

Chapters

• 0:31 Today we revisit Stephanie M. Neumann's and Brennan Stokes' perspectives on a piece of theirs that we played. Here's what Stephanie M. Neumann had to say.
• 7:52 Here's what Brennan Stokes had to say.

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 Da Capo Conversations, a mini-series where we'll be giving familiar segments a topical twist. [INTRO MUSIC ENDS] Today we revisit Stephanie M. Neumann's and Brennan Stokes' perspectives on a piece of theirs that we played. Here's what Stephanie M. Neumann had to say.

Nanette McGuinness  00:41

You wrote "HydroCosmic Echoes" for E4TT, which we premiered in 2022 for "Dark Universe/Mysterious Spaces". For that piece, can you talk about the compositional process and your inspiration for the piece? Because I remember it definitely was a fixed media with ocean sounds.

Stephanie M. Neumann  01:01

Yeah. So I knew that the concert was going to be the "Dark Universe/Mysterious Spaces", and I thought, well, I really love recording the ocean, and I really love space. And what mysterious spaces, both of these are and dark, right? Really, I mean, so I thought it would be really interesting to kind of play around with the idea of sounds from both of these, but mixing them together and thinking about the similarities and differences in the exploration of space and the ocean and all of that in a piece. And so it was one of the electro acoustic pieces I worked. So I recorded ocean sounds, and then I grabbed sounds from Mars, and I used that played around with those together so they couldn't really tell which was which. So there was these electronic sounds, and there's also these really nice waves, and there's the little I dropped a hydrophone microphone. This is my first like. I wanted to get one, and I thought, this is the perfect time. And I bought a mic. I hooked it up to my Zoom H6, and I was out there on the pier in Monterey Bay recording the clicking sounds of fish. I think they were like, attacking the mic, almost. They're like, this is not food, but they it turned out being a really interesting sound that I used and worked really well with all of the other electronic sounds that were happening. 

Nanette McGuinness  02:49

Definitely did. Yeah. 

Stephanie M. Neumann  02:51

So, yeah, I did that, and then I used the frequencies that I heard from all of these recordings, and I started writing, you know, pitches for the instrumentalists and textures and all of that, and I created melodies with that, and did interplay between the recording and their acoustic sounds. And, yeah, it was fun, and it's notated, but I like to use events. So there's a, you know, event of maybe a notated section, but it's a timed score.

Nanette McGuinness  03:31

Right. 

Stephanie M. Neumann  03:31

And so then you would do these different events at certain times. Sometimes it could just be text, or sometimes it's actually the specific notes and melodies that they should be playing, or just some pitches, and they can decide how to play, when to play, maybe there's a little bit of instruction with it. So that's how, that's how that piece came to be and ended up being realized.

Nanette McGuinness  03:59

It was a wonderful piece, and I really liked that you leaned into the notion of space and ocean and deep spaces. When I came up with the title, I didn't just call it space. I specifically wanted to have spaces in there. Yeah, it's clear you like to play with sound. Is that what draws you to using fixed media in your composing, and do you see advantages and disadvantages to that?

Stephanie M. Neumann  04:30

I think that in a way, it can it's another or a few more musicians. That's how I hear it sometimes. So I made a trio sound like seven people. 

Nanette McGuinness  04:47

Right, right. 

Stephanie M. Neumann  04:48

So I think an advantage is I can kind of fill out some of the sound how I would like, because I have these recordings in addition to the players. And also I like to present it to people who haven't really played it before, sometimes just to see what happens. Sometimes people don't like it, but I feel like for the most part, people are interested.

Nanette McGuinness  05:13

They'll try it once, right? 

Stephanie M. Neumann  05:15

Yeah, but seeing how the performers react in their own way to the sound is really important to me, but that's the difficult part. Is like, I'm, I'm recording this sound from a totally different space, different area, you know, somewhere else, and I experienced it one way. And so some of that stuck with me when I was writing the piece too. I'm in that, but then I'm presenting this to the performers, and they haven't, you know, been through that same experience. They weren't there on the beach when I recorded the ocean, they weren't there like, you know, like, there's some of that where it probably like, it doesn't translate, but that's what I'm trying to do in my program notes, or also extra things, bringing performers into a space with sound that is already there, instead of things that I've recorded is also super exciting for me, and almost easier because it's there. It's the natural sound. I guess I didn't have to capture it then, so I've done a little bit with that, but it's sometimes hard when you want to play in a concert hall.

Nanette McGuinness  06:33

So it sounds like part of what you care about in your music isn't just the external experience, it's the experience from the inside.

Stephanie M. Neumann  06:44

Yeah, I think it's because of the way I really experience sound personally. And so sitting in it, in the sound for me, is meditative. Can be. And also the whole something i i say, something that I wrote about in my thesis, the whole idea of all sound is music. And I really believe that when I'm writing that I'm in that mindset of, you know, that's why I'm recording a fan, because there's so many frequencies, there's so much potential in that fan, that you're just like, Oh, it's so annoying. And yes, it can definitely be sometimes painful.

Nanette McGuinness  07:36

Yes. 

Stephanie M. Neumann  07:36

But then when I go in and I'm like, messing around with EQ and like, which is like, you know, picking out frequencies, different pitches, and really, like, getting deep into that sound, and it becomes almost, you know, for me, it becomes something else.

Nanette McGuinness  07:52

Here's what Brennan Stokes had to say.

Nanette McGuinness  07:55

Your works to date feature vocal music, including your wonderful song cycles that you wrote for us, "The Unseen" to poetry by Sara Teasdale and "Mother Love" to poems by Rita Dove. You want to talk about those, the inspiration writing them, and they're both wonderful cycles.

Brennan Stokes  08:14

Oh, thank you, and thank you for commissioning me to to write them for for the ensemble, yeah, "Mother Love" was, was a, it was a fun insight, and kind of take on, on, kind of the the Greek story.

Nanette McGuinness  08:34

Right? 

Brennan Stokes  08:34

And finding, again, trying to just get shift into the mindset of of, you know, I think even Rita's perspective of what this mother love meant. And I was very involved in, I think in kind of the in the drama clubs of middle in college. I was heavily involved with the Dramatic Art Society. So doing one act festivals and spring productions, being in kind of the the church, Christmas holiday programs and plays and things. So I definitely enjoy a bit of a theatricality, so to speak, and more dramatic texts, I think there's, there's just a lot of humanity and a lot of depth to to be a lot of soul searching to be done, to feel like I really am getting as close as I can to understanding the text so that the music can be as honest as possible for me. 

Nanette McGuinness  09:39

Yeah.

Brennan Stokes  09:40

And so for "Mother Love", going on this quite emotional journey of kind of surprise and anger and sadness and clarity and kind of leveling out almost at the end with not still, with some tinge of, you know, but you better take care of her or else. And then with "The Unseen" that was, that was a very unexpected journey to have it turn into what is now "The Unseen", but what originally started out as a single song, "There Will Come Soft Rains", which is the sixth song of the cycle. And I remember having this book of her, of Sara Teasdale poetry, "Flame and Shadow". And the summer before I moved up to San Francisco, I'd gone through it, and I was just so enamored with this, just really stunning lyric poetry, and I had dotted and dog-eared, kind of the poems that really were speaking to me. And I remember coming across this one along with several others, and feeling kind of the power behind the words, but not but also, I think still for me, knowing I didn't quite understand or have, I think, the context or a personal experience to really internalize or understand kind of the heavier weight of these texts. And it wasn't until the pandemic that I was rereading through poetry and rereading through this volume and this poem kind of finally, a lot of these, these texts finally, I think, brought out a lot of the feelings that I personally was going through, and I'm sure many others were as well. 

Nanette McGuinness  11:42

Yeah, yeah. 

Brennan Stokes  11:43

And where this first text of "There Will Come Soft Rains" and just this kind of sense of hope amidst kind of a deathly fog, and amidst these, you know, things that are horrible will, you know, eventually pass in this idea of like nature, especially kind of resuming its, its life again. You know, sands, humans, was, was a, was a very pressing feeling in the the fall and winter of 2020, and I remember you asking if I was working on anything, and that that song was something I had started to to noodle around with. And kind of, you know, kind of wedding the compositional pen again, and, you know, turning it into the full cycle was a really wonderful process of finding texts that, again, we're dealing with sickness and feelings of isolation and anger or frustration. And it was a really, almost kind of startling realization to read these words that were penned in 1920 and sitting there in 2020 going, this is a very eerie and of course, you know, the goosebumps definitely were hitting several times. And it was just, I remember I took about two weeks to completely write out the texts several times over, because there's one set of the poems where I'm just, you know, her lyric poetry is she has a very concise but beautiful way of describing things, and her word choice is immaculate. So anytime there were colors or like, water is kind of a recurring idea. Various like, I said colors or seasons are present. And I was trying to kind of find, you know, how many of these kept recurring in the kind of the set of poems, I think one set of me writing them out, was trying to figure out, like, what is the almost, the person who was going through this, who is speaking these words, like, what are they? What is their emotional, physical journey through this, this whole process, what's their where's their psyche at? Kind of as as it shifts and changes, and what kind of as the cycle and like kind of almost starts, almost, kind of with this kind of where it ends, almost, kind of the one of the first things is the vocalist kind of has a sharp intake of a breath, almost like waking from a bad dream to to at the very end of the cycle, Having, kind of the final relaxed release of breath. Um, and there's just the kind of the beautiful transition between kind of the angst of and frustration and sadness of so much of the cycle that is eventually just released out. And there's a calm and the that kind of almost that thin line transition of life to death, and what happens after, and what I think we can hope to have happen when all is said and done for the last moment of kind of acting more as an epilog or prayer of, you know, a gift to be, to be able to come back when things are just peaceful and calm. 

Nanette McGuinness  15:20

Yeah.

Brennan Stokes  15:24

But it's definitely I love kind of digging into the the text itself. Because, you know, I think there's, there's so much to be even learned and reflected upon before I try and bring myself into the picture.

Nanette McGuinness  15:41

Indeed, both poets are really fabulous poets. I love their their texts, their writing, and you created dramatic arcs out of both cycles. The way you're describing the dramatic arc in the unseen is very accurate to how it is. It's experienced outside. So it is a wonderful piece. And you and I have talked about this, but the group is hoping to record it, not the very next one, which is already recorded and being edited, but the next recording after that. So fingers crossed that that'll come about. 

Brennan Stokes  16:16

Yeah.

Nanette McGuinness  16:16

[OUTRO MUSIC] Thank you for listening to For Good Measures' Da Capo Conversations, and a special thank you to our guests 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]