Da Capo Conversations 2.0 with Sakari Dixon Vanderveer and Anthony R. Green

For Good Measure, by Ensemble for These Times (E4TT)
Episode 183: Da Capo Conversations 2.0 with Sakari Dixon Vanderveer and Anthony R. Green

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Today we revisit Sakari Dixon Vanderveer’s and Anthony R. Green’s perspectives on music they’ve written. If you enjoyed today’s conversation and want to know more about Sakari Vanderveer and Anthony R. Green, check them out here and here. Parts of this episode originally premiered in May 2021, click here, and March 2021,  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/18265918

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

• 0:29 Today we revisit Sakari Dixon Vanderveer's and Anthony R Green's perspectives on music that they have written. Here's what Sakari Dixon Vanderveer had to say.
• 3:06 Here's what Anthony R. Green 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. 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 Sakari Dixon Vanderveer's and Anthony R Green's perspectives on music that they have written. Here's what Sakari Dixon Vanderveer had to say.

Sakari Dixon Vanderveer  00:39

I wrote the piece "type" for three of my friends and colleagues from the University of Redlands, the PHAZE Ensemble. As a trio, they specialize in contemporary music and improvisation. Since I knew that they were absolutely eager to work with aleator org scores, I took the opportunity to branch out of my own comfort zone by writing a text based piece. Before then, most of my music had been in standard notation. Yet in the past several years, I have been exploring various degrees of aleatory in my writing. It has been a really intriguing challenge to consider what music elements I want to leave open ended and what elements I want to control. This pursuit has definitely strengthened my writing process, even in more traditionally notated works. As someone who spends a lot of her spare time reading, whether in books or online communication, as both a craft and an art form, is something that I think a lot about. On the one hand, there are the fundamentals such as word choice, grammar and logic, yet there are other elements, such as design, that also have a significant influence on how information is conveyed. I admit I'm one of those people who can be prone to agonizing about my font choices. When I was thinking of what to explore with the PHAZE ensemble, I knew I knew I wanted to break away from traditional notation, but I also felt that my skills as a graphic artist are fairly limited. Because of this, I decided early on that I wanted to use a text based score. I can save that challenge for another day. Since then, I have been including more aleatory in my writing, as long as it is something that the performer is comfortable with. Most recently, I was very fortunate to have the opportunity to write another improvisatory work, "Latitude" for bass trombonist Maxine Troglauer as part of the 2020 Composers Conference. We collaborated on that piece extensively. Since I learned that Maxine has a background in jazz improvisation. I took the opportunity to include plenty of improvisatory aspects. In fact, some of the trombone samples included in the fixed media are Maxine's improvisations based on sketches that I sent to her during the making of the piece. I had so much fun putting that together, and I definitely look forward to exploring more electronic and aleatoric techniques in the near future.

Nanette McGuinness  03:06

Here's what Anthony R. Green had to say.

Anthony R. Green  03:09

"On Top of a Frosted Hill" is one of the most personal pieces that I composed. I had the pleasure of living in Boulder, Colorado for almost five years of my life, and I remember the first time that I climbed the foothills up to the royal arch, which is a path that starts in Boulder. I remember coming across this feeling of grandeur and just marveling at the beautiful sights and the smells and the quality of the air and all of the wonderful things that are associated with doing this hike. And oddly enough, I didn't compose "On Top of a Frosted Hill" when I was in Colorado. I composed it when I was in the Netherlands in a summer trip, because at that time I spent summers in the Netherlands and then returned to Colorado. Now also at that time, I was in a Cello Piano Duo with my wonderful friend Mathieu D'Ordine, and we, of course, were looking for repertoire, and of course, I wanted to compose a piece for him. I've been wanting to, I had been one wanting to compose a piece for him for quite a while. So it was great to get the opportunity to do this. And I remember sitting at the piano thinking about Boulder, and then all of a sudden, this icy, slow, cold, serene music just started to come out of me, and that turned into "On Top of a Frosted Hill." In terms of a favorite instrumentation, I do have to say I am very much so a fan of the original cello, piano instrumentation. That's how the piece was conceived, and that's still where my heart lies. But I have to say for all of the people who have performed the piece, they have all done such a wonderful job with the piece and pour their hearts and souls and their top musicianship within this piece. So I'm really just happy when anybody plays it and gives it that special something from within themselves to make the piece come alive.

Nanette McGuinness  05:31

[OUTRO MUSIC] Thank you for listening to For Good Measure's 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 by grants from the California Arts Council, the San Francisco Arts Commission, Grants for the Arts, 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]