McDonald -- I'm lovin' him
Wow...it's been awhile. All sorts of stuff have happened since I last updated. Spring break, at least two concerts, (that I can remember at the moment) and New England's continued refusal to warm up (though it's supposed to hit record highs tomorrow, just in time for Patriot's Day -- poor marathoners)...
This Friday, I woke up to a scratchy throat and mild sniffle. I was somewhat flabbergasted -- was this my first allergy of any kind in 24+ years? I had gone almost five years in North Carolina, which has enough pollen to turn black cars yellow for months at a time, without the slightest sniffle or irritation, but different regions can harbor different allergens. It was with mixed feelings, then, that I saw my symptoms progress into a full-blown cold. At least, I don't think extreme chills and wildly fluctuating appetite are typically symptoms of seasonal allergies. This is a short-term annoyance but a long-term relief, as I get a few days of sniffly ickiness in exchange for a continued allergy-free existence. But enough about my health; I know I'm going to die soon enough anyway.
You're probably wondering about my subject line. Have I decided to anthropomorphize the fast-food chain? Have I finally found true love, in the form of a Scottish...bagpiper? No, and no. I wish to express my admiration and adulation for John McDonald, the composition professor here at Tufts. He is objectively awesome. I mean, I had a really great time studying with Anthony Kelley at Duke, but that's partly because our personal and compositional temperants matched so well; John McD can work his magic with just about anyone. He doesn't try to push an agenda on his students, and he doesn't try to change them. He just finds ways to make each of his students flourish in his or her own way.
I don't recall whether I mentioned this before, but late last semester, I had my weekly lesson with John and complained of a creative dry spell. He challenged me to find something inherently unmusical -- a diagram in a book, a street sign, whatever -- and interpret it musically. A week later, I had two collections of studies, which were included in the concert I shared with John in early March. For me to complete a single piece in a week is almost unheard of, but he found a way to tap into my creativity with surprising efficiency.
Since that concert in March, I have been working on one major project: a piano sonata, for a concert on April 26th. I already had material for the first two movements from some sketches I made in the fall, and I just needed to flesh them out and find suitable material for a third movement. But the more I worked on the sonata, the more I became dissatisfied with it. I was bored with the material of the first movement, so I started weaving the first two movements together. But then I felt that the music lost its coherence; either way I seemed to be left with something unsustainable. In the week leading up to this past Thursday's lesson, I hadn't managed to write a single satisfactory note, so on Wednesday I went to John's office and crossed my name off the list of lessons for the week.
Thursday afternoon, I decided that even if I didn't have anything to show John, I should at least show up so he could kick my ass. My lesson slot would probably still be open, since nobody would have had the time to sign up since the day before, so at 2 o'clock I showed up at John's office with a penitent demeanor. I explained the impasse I had reached in my sonata, and how desperate I was for a solution -- if it was going to get played on the concert, it needed to be done no later than, say, the 23rd, so John could read through it once before performing it. His solution? "Forget the sonata." Excuse me? "Just put the sonata back on the shelf. You'll finish it later, if it's in you." But what about the concert? "Well, I would like for you to have something on the concert, though that is by no means a requirement. Something shorter. How about a lyrical piano piece, something easy enough for you to play yourself?" Which I will be pulling out of thin air? You've seen how slow I work. "Well, you responded fast enough when I gave you that challenge last semester. Here...give me your notebook." Whereupon he wrote one chord at the top of the page, two chords in the middle, and another chord near the end. "Use these," he said pointedly. I squirmed for a few seconds -- although I enjoy improvisation, composing on demand is slightly different. I resisted the urge to just start playing at the keyboard, as I tend to get way ahead of myself that way, and instead wrote down some notes to follow his initial chord, using only my intuition as a guide. By 3:00 I head three or four measures, which sounded quite good played back. John had another lesson then, so I left, had a quick lunch, and then went down to a practice room to continue working on this new piece. At 5:00, I had rehearsal for NME, and by that point I had the pipece 100% composed in my head, and 50% on paper. I spent maybe two and a half hours, and I had a 4-minute piece. I think that's a pretty impressive ratio for just about any composer. What's more, the sudden sense of relief has inspired my to write a dance to go with this song. It's been a bit harder to write -- and I've been slowed by a cold -- but I'm over halfway done with that. And, perhaps best of all, I get to play these myself, at the piano. So far at Tufts, I've performed my own works on bass trombone and flute, performed others' works on trombone and voice, and improvised on trombone, flute, and clarinet, but the last time I publicly performed on the piano was...um...senior year of HS. In Jazz 2. This'll be fun. Professor McDonald says that it's more beneficial for us students to sit and listen to our own pieces from the audience, (he should talk; he's played piano for every one of his pieces that I've heard so far, not to much 90% of all student-composed works that call for piano) but I really enjoy getting to play. So, "Song and Dance: Panic and Repose" should put a cap on what has been a productive first year at grad school. Well, compositionally productive; I never did get around to finding a job...
So, to sum up: for the second semester in a row, Professor McDonald has saved my ass by extracting two pieces from me in a single week. And none of it required invasive surgery. John rocks absolutely!
-TT
This Friday, I woke up to a scratchy throat and mild sniffle. I was somewhat flabbergasted -- was this my first allergy of any kind in 24+ years? I had gone almost five years in North Carolina, which has enough pollen to turn black cars yellow for months at a time, without the slightest sniffle or irritation, but different regions can harbor different allergens. It was with mixed feelings, then, that I saw my symptoms progress into a full-blown cold. At least, I don't think extreme chills and wildly fluctuating appetite are typically symptoms of seasonal allergies. This is a short-term annoyance but a long-term relief, as I get a few days of sniffly ickiness in exchange for a continued allergy-free existence. But enough about my health; I know I'm going to die soon enough anyway.
You're probably wondering about my subject line. Have I decided to anthropomorphize the fast-food chain? Have I finally found true love, in the form of a Scottish...bagpiper? No, and no. I wish to express my admiration and adulation for John McDonald, the composition professor here at Tufts. He is objectively awesome. I mean, I had a really great time studying with Anthony Kelley at Duke, but that's partly because our personal and compositional temperants matched so well; John McD can work his magic with just about anyone. He doesn't try to push an agenda on his students, and he doesn't try to change them. He just finds ways to make each of his students flourish in his or her own way.
I don't recall whether I mentioned this before, but late last semester, I had my weekly lesson with John and complained of a creative dry spell. He challenged me to find something inherently unmusical -- a diagram in a book, a street sign, whatever -- and interpret it musically. A week later, I had two collections of studies, which were included in the concert I shared with John in early March. For me to complete a single piece in a week is almost unheard of, but he found a way to tap into my creativity with surprising efficiency.
Since that concert in March, I have been working on one major project: a piano sonata, for a concert on April 26th. I already had material for the first two movements from some sketches I made in the fall, and I just needed to flesh them out and find suitable material for a third movement. But the more I worked on the sonata, the more I became dissatisfied with it. I was bored with the material of the first movement, so I started weaving the first two movements together. But then I felt that the music lost its coherence; either way I seemed to be left with something unsustainable. In the week leading up to this past Thursday's lesson, I hadn't managed to write a single satisfactory note, so on Wednesday I went to John's office and crossed my name off the list of lessons for the week.
Thursday afternoon, I decided that even if I didn't have anything to show John, I should at least show up so he could kick my ass. My lesson slot would probably still be open, since nobody would have had the time to sign up since the day before, so at 2 o'clock I showed up at John's office with a penitent demeanor. I explained the impasse I had reached in my sonata, and how desperate I was for a solution -- if it was going to get played on the concert, it needed to be done no later than, say, the 23rd, so John could read through it once before performing it. His solution? "Forget the sonata." Excuse me? "Just put the sonata back on the shelf. You'll finish it later, if it's in you." But what about the concert? "Well, I would like for you to have something on the concert, though that is by no means a requirement. Something shorter. How about a lyrical piano piece, something easy enough for you to play yourself?" Which I will be pulling out of thin air? You've seen how slow I work. "Well, you responded fast enough when I gave you that challenge last semester. Here...give me your notebook." Whereupon he wrote one chord at the top of the page, two chords in the middle, and another chord near the end. "Use these," he said pointedly. I squirmed for a few seconds -- although I enjoy improvisation, composing on demand is slightly different. I resisted the urge to just start playing at the keyboard, as I tend to get way ahead of myself that way, and instead wrote down some notes to follow his initial chord, using only my intuition as a guide. By 3:00 I head three or four measures, which sounded quite good played back. John had another lesson then, so I left, had a quick lunch, and then went down to a practice room to continue working on this new piece. At 5:00, I had rehearsal for NME, and by that point I had the pipece 100% composed in my head, and 50% on paper. I spent maybe two and a half hours, and I had a 4-minute piece. I think that's a pretty impressive ratio for just about any composer. What's more, the sudden sense of relief has inspired my to write a dance to go with this song. It's been a bit harder to write -- and I've been slowed by a cold -- but I'm over halfway done with that. And, perhaps best of all, I get to play these myself, at the piano. So far at Tufts, I've performed my own works on bass trombone and flute, performed others' works on trombone and voice, and improvised on trombone, flute, and clarinet, but the last time I publicly performed on the piano was...um...senior year of HS. In Jazz 2. This'll be fun. Professor McDonald says that it's more beneficial for us students to sit and listen to our own pieces from the audience, (he should talk; he's played piano for every one of his pieces that I've heard so far, not to much 90% of all student-composed works that call for piano) but I really enjoy getting to play. So, "Song and Dance: Panic and Repose" should put a cap on what has been a productive first year at grad school. Well, compositionally productive; I never did get around to finding a job...
So, to sum up: for the second semester in a row, Professor McDonald has saved my ass by extracting two pieces from me in a single week. And none of it required invasive surgery. John rocks absolutely!
-TT