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MUSICULTURE
to
create music
for a fake religion,”
says
“iwanted
Missy Mazzoli,
describing a composition-inprogress.
“My neighbour here in
Brooklyn built his own house out of
bottles, glass, and concrete. A homemade
cathedral. There was something really
spontaneous, joyful, exuberant, and
obsessive about this art. That got me thinking
about what the musical equivalent would be, about
how religion still dominates a lot of music and has for
2,000 years or more. I love ecstatic religious music but felt alienated
because I wasn’t raised religious. I wanted to be a part of that in some
weird little way.” The piece will be based on Bach chorales but she’s
“transformed it into something that is weird and new.”
Mazzoli is an ‘indie classical’ composer (a term she uses). The term
has floated around for a few years; ‘crossover’ has for even longer. It
has associated artists and record labels (New Amsterdam, Cantaloupe,
Bedroom Community, even one launched by Sergei Prokofiev’s grandson
named Non Classical). Its definition and usefulness is debatable,
but the term attempts to classify an increasing number of ‘genre-confused’
artists like Mazzoli. Like her home cathedral inspired piece,
most of her music is a bride’s mix of something old, something new.
Conservatory-trained at Boston University and Yale, Mazzoli also studied
with Louis Andriessen in Amsterdam and her work has played at
Carnegie Hall. But it has at pop venues, as well. And she has a band,
Victoire—albeit one which plays from scores and features strings and
woodwinds instead of a singer.
Nico Muhly is another indie classical composer based in New York.
A Juilliard graduate with ties to Philip Glass, he’s frequently in the
spotlight, most recently for the premieres of two operas in 2011. Between
classical music commissions (among others, he has written for
Chris Lane: read a profile of the organist on page 48), he writes for
pop musicians (including Björk, Grizzly Bear, Sigur Rós’s Jónsi) and
soundtracks. Muhly, like Mazzoli, mixes classic forms with new ideas;
one of his operas, Two Boys, centres on internet chat rooms. Or take
Keep in Touch, a viola chaconne interwoven with a tape part recorded
by pop musician Antony Hegarty. Mazzoli’s Dissolve, O My Heart for
solo violin is also inspired by the chaconne, specifically Bach’s D-
minor; it opens with the same iconic triad.
These two pieces and others are receiving their Canadian premieres
at a Warhol Dervish concert, which will also see the Canadian premiere
GJ.
DIY
Muhly, Mazzoli &
u# %
of a Kronos Quartet commission
by Ottawan Richard Reed Parry,
an Arcade Fire and Bell Orchestre
member. Although not
formally trained, Parry’s instrumental
compositions have gained
ground. In fall 2011, the Kitchener
Waterloo Symphony released a disc
featuring Muhly and Parry. Mazzoli,
Muhly, and Parry—and a constellation
of fellow composers dubbed ‘indie classical’—are
all young (Mazzoli’s 31; Muhly,
30; Parry, 34), social media and pop culture
savvy, and curious about bending genres.
The problem with considering indie classical as a
musical genre is that, unlike others, its music doesn’t have
a shared sound. That’s what you get when plurality of inspiration is
the point. “It’s more of a social movement than a musical one,” Mazzoli
explains. Waters get even murkier when you consider the distinction
between pop music written by composers and instrumental music
written by pop artists. Or, composers who are in pop bands but whose
works in the two genres are not interdependent. This identification
crisis—a crisis mainly for critics rather than musicians—questions the
role of the composer above other musicians: a band’s songwriters and
performers are fused in pop but divided in classical, so as borders blur,
composers are the first to re-navigate their place. Labels such as indie
classical are created to define the shifts. But what, really, is so new
about what’s happening here that it necessitates new labels? Mixing
old and new has been seen before, as have composers who veer towards
and away from populism. Is indie classical just as oxymoronic
and vague a name for a musical genre as contemporary classical?
Crossover
Composition
by CRYSTAL CHAN
Musical Aliens
Twentieth-century instrumental music is often described as alienating.
Stravinsky sounds alien, serialism sounds even more alien, and
audiences get scared away. But musicians feel alienated, too, especially
from the academic establishment. Mazzoli argues in an NPR blog editorial
that academia is a gated community whose snubbing of pop-influenced
music dissuades, among other things, ethnic and musical
diversity. Sources of funding also hold composers at arm’s length.
There is less and less financial support from institutions to go around.
Although this all happens more slowly and more invisibly in Canada
than in New York, parallels are growing.
These two, Ouroboros-like factors—the lack of support from financial
backers and the established arts community—seem to have
sparked the movement. Musicians who are increasingly unable or un-
14
DECEMBER 2011 / JANUARY 2012