On Saturday, March 7th, members of the Twin Cities’ Zeitgeist New Music Ensemble will be performing musical compositions written by seven Carleton students. These students are members of Jeff Treviño’s Composition Studio class, an intimate music course that encourages unique and passionate musical composition with the help of in-class workshops and frequent personal instruction from the professor. In a musical event lasting from 9am to 5pm in the Concert Hall, each student will have one hour to showcase their piece, give an artistic statement about their piece, and receive feedback from a panel of jurors.
Interview with Josh Ruebeck ’17, a cellist and composer from Jeff Treviño’s Composition Studio class
What can you tell us about the Composition Studio class?
Josh: Composition is a seminar-style class that meets on the Tuesday-Thursday schedule. We spend Tuesdays discussing established works (mostly composed after 1940), and Thursdays presenting our weekly progress on our individual work, critiquing each other’s pieces and offering feedback. We also each have a 30-minute individual weekly meeting with Jeff Treviño, our professor.
How would you describe your personal composition project?
I’m writing a collection of Haiku for solo cello. “But wait,” you ask, “isn’t haiku a thing that has words, not music?” Well, you’re right! I’m sort of making it up as I go along. A haiku is more than just 5-7-5 syllables, so I’m trying to translate some of the other characteristics of haiku, like the nature reference and the “cutting word” into a musical idiom. It’s been fun trying to define and explore a completely new musical form!
What inspired or influenced your composition?
I’ve been trying to set Jack Kerouac’s “American Haiku” to music since this summer, but it hasn’t been working. After reading the prompt for our term composition, I thought I’d try setting them for spoken word accompanied by an instrument, rather than sung. One dead end led to another, and I eventually decided instead to emulate Kerouac’s transformation of Japanese haiku into an American (English) form by transforming the poem into a musical form. The first thing he ditched was the 5-7-5 syllable requirement, so I felt comfortable with a relatively free musical analogue. A couple of my favorites of his, for reference:
In my medicine cabinet
the winter fly
Has died of old age
Early morning yellow flowers
—Thinking about
The drunkards of Mexico
When and where will your piece debut? Who will play it?
My piece will be performed on Saturday, March 7th in the Concert hall at 11am, by Kirsten Whitson, a cellist from the Zeitgeist New Music Ensemble, a group based in the Twin Cities. The other six composition students will also have their pieces performed by members of Zeitgeist in an all-day event that goes from 9am to 5pm. Each of us is allotted an hour in which our performer plays the piece, we give an artistic statement, and the panel of jurors gives us feedback on our composition.
Have you encountered any challenges with your project?
Each haiku lasts somewhere between 5-10 seconds, which is a very small space for a full musical expression of an idea. Exploring this space has been the main interest of my work on this piece, as I look for sufficient variation while still keeping each haiku cohesive.
How many people were involved in this project?
This is my composition, so it’s mostly just been me with occasional feedback from Jeff, the composition professor. The students were also required to go down to the cities around midterm to meet with our performers, get feedback about the playability of our work, clarity of our notation, and other musical details. We also got feedback from the class in our Thursday sessions, though most of that time was devoted to other compositions.