Sounding out Alex Taylor
Written by Clayton Foster
In Morph's inaugural 10 Questions profile, we interview Alex Taylor, a young, talented multi-instrumentalist and composer from Devonport.
Listen to one of Alex's pieces here - "Fray", recorded by the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra in 2009:
What are the origins of your interest in music and composition?
I had a wonderful music teacher at Devonport Primary School, Chris Parkes, who encouraged me enormously as a kid, playing recorder and violin in the little school orchestra. I remember one year for the 125th jubilee of the school she had us doing a crazy collaborative composition project where we all wrote something and somehow stuck it all together – I don’t know how successful it was, but wonderful to think that Chris was getting 6 and 7year olds to write music! I guess that was my first experience of composition. But it’s probably only recently, in the university environment that I have really been turned on to classical music in a big way. I’d always loved all sorts of music, The Beatles, Thelonious Monk, Split Enz, all sorts, but my knowledge of composers was quite appalling before I got to uni. So hearing music by people like Ligeti and Messiaen and Birtwistle, really dramatic, exciting music, that’s probably what made me seriously think about composition, about creating really interesting music. Things like seeing a live performance of George Crumb’s Voice of the Whale or Steve Reich’s Piano Phase, that’s what really captured my interest in writing this kind of music.
Why did you choose this genre and this direction?
I’m not sure quite why I did a music degree, to be honest – I didn’t know what I wanted to do at high school, at one stage I wanted to be an architect, but I loved music and I loved writing so I ended up doing English and Composition. I’ve done a lot of pop and jazz stuff in the past and I still do have many different strands of music that I’m involved in but recently I’ve tended to focus more intensely on my “classical” composition. Just as an aside, I’m never sure exactly how to describe that – I don’t like the term “classical music”, well at least it is problematic – it sounds stuffy and it’s misleading because it can also mean a much more specific thing, i.e. the music of the classical period, which doesn’t necessarily have a lot to do with the stuff I write. But calling it “contemporary” or “art” music seems equally unsatisfactory. Maybe “western art music” is ok, but it sounds a bit pretentious. I like the phrase some composers use, “new music” – it’s a wide enough label to cover the enormous variety of stuff people are writing, and at the same time it’s not pop or rock or folk or whatever. And I suppose that’s what draws me to this kind of music, all the possibilities and varieties. There are lots of pop or jazz idioms, but the scope of “classical” music, particularly since 1900, is much, much wider. Also I suppose it’s a genre, if it is a genre in the typical sense, where you don’t have to filter your ideas through a preset structure or idiom; you can express yourself more directly.
What projects are you working on now?
I’ve just finished a work for a bassoonist friend, Ben Hoadley, who teaches at the University. It’s called Eight Pieces for Wind Quartet (that is flute, clarinet, oboe and bassoon). That piece is being premiered in a concert at the uni Music Theatre on April 7th alongside a number of other pieces by NZ composers for woodwind instruments. Leonie Holmes, John Elmsly, Eve de Castro-Robinson, John Rimmer, Ben Hoadley. So that should be a really exciting concert, quite a diverse programme. Right at the moment I’m working on a few different compositional projects – a solo piano work, an orchestral piece, and making a start on a vocal setting of Wallace Stevens’ poem Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird. I’m also preparing a string quartet concert for the Depot in May, which features several New Zealand works alongside Shostakovich and John Cage.
In terms of accomplishments, which do you consider to be most significant?
I was really excited last year about having my piece Fray recorded by the NZSO at the Todd Young Composer readings; it’s always an accomplishment to have a piece performed successfully, and I think I get more of a buzz out of hearing my own music being performed live than almost anything else. It’s an amazing feeling. I think it’s hard for me to answer what my most significant achievements are… I don’t really have any perspective on that yet… but I’m most proud of pieces that engage the audience, get some kind of response. Not necessarily having everyone like it, but it has to push something, provoke, excite, mesmerise, whatever, a piece has to do something or I think it’s pretty useless as art.
How would you describe your practice? Is it a profession, a passion, a calling?
It’s not something I’m ever going to get rich doing. Mostly I write because I’m compelled to write or because I feel I have something worthwhile to say in my music. Composition isn’t something that comes naturally I don’t think – I’m no Mozart; I can’t hear a symphony in my head. But I’m certainly passionate about composing… maybe even a little bit obsessive.
What are the resources, and who is it that keeps you supported?
The university is a great framework for composers, especially with all the performers potentially at your disposal. The composition lecturers, John and Eve and Leonie, are professional composers, so I get a lot of support and feedback from them as teachers. The weekly composition workshops are also a good arena to test out a new piece and discuss compositional issues. Beyond the university, there’s CANZ, the composer’s association, which runs the annual Nelson Composer’s Workshop for young composers from around the country. That’s a really fantastic event – one can get stuck into the issues of what it means to be a composer, hear what everyone’s up to and all the professional composers are there too, Ross Harris, Jenny McLeod, Jack Body etc., so it’s quite an inspiring place to be. Chris Watson made a great little doco about it a couple of years ago, which is up on the CANZ website, www.canz.net.nz. Aside from that though I think building relationships with performers is incredibly important for composers – they are our link to the audience. So I would say networking, both with other composers and with performers, is a really crucial support mechanism. Last year I was lucky enough to be composer-in-residence with the Auckland Youth Orchestra, which was a great opportunity in terms of getting my work exposed to a wider audience – we did concerts in New Plymouth, Whanganui, Waikanae and Wellington, and the audiences were really quite receptive to our music.
In composing, what is the process of transforming ideas and concepts into music?
Every time I write a piece that process is different. You have to constantly re-examine how you are approaching the material and how it develops or else you can fall back on cliché, or worse, write the same piece twice. I think you need some kind of concept as a starting point, whether it’s a musical concept, for example a motif, or some kind of musical process like phasing or serialism, or an extra-musical concept, like an emotion or an argument. Either way you have to have a strong idea, and then you have to work out how best to translate that idea into interesting music. There are always so many questions to think about… how do I create this sound? What comes next? Where am I taking the listener? Literally there are hundreds of questions. Personally I let my intuition guide what I do mostly, once I’ve got the basic material. I struggle with big schematic formal plans and that sort of thing. I tend to go moment to moment.
How do you find the Arts scene in New Zealand? What are its strengths and weaknesses?
I think the arts community itself is very strong indeed – there are many many musicians, painters, poets etc. producing diverse, quality, thought-provoking stuff. But I think the support for the less commercial forms, like poetry or classical music, is quite poor. We don’t have the depth of tradition that most other countries have, so we don’t tend to value our arts as much, and from some quarters there seems to be a suspicion, even open denigration, of art (or any kind of discourse – journalism, for example) that seems intellectual. Even some generally liberal, open-minded people – for example the “Save Radio New Zealand” facebook page is full of comments about RNZ Concert and classical music somehow being elitist. That’s crazy talk – it’s just as ridiculous as saying rap is elitist or English literature is elitist. We don’t recognise our artists until they are 70 and then we give them a Queen’s Birthday honour and people say “who is that?” because the mainstream commercial media has nothing to say about these people. Television in particular I think is missing out on a great opportunity – where are the broadcasts of live concerts, the serious interviews, in fact any kind of Arts programming? Television is the perfect medium for live music of all kinds, and yet the networks assume what people want is formulaic, banal reality shows or puerile comedies. Radio NZ Concert does a pretty good job of including contemporary content, especially Sound Lounge on Tuesday nights, but there’s really not much else unless you’re actively going to concerts and seeking out the music. In that sense there’s a really strong, regular concert-going audience in central Auckland, but the venues seem to be limited to the Town Hall and the School of Music, and occasionally more experimental niches in The Wine Cellar or The Basement.
What do you see for the future of contemporary classical music?
I don’t know to be honest, obviously I’d like to see it grow and gain a wider audience, have more coverage and discussion in the media etc; music is becoming more available now and youtube and last.fm etc mean anyone can potentially access the music, so I think the audience will change. But one of the special things about this music, in general, is that it’s not commercial or packaged or particularly easy to consumer; you really have to listen, so I don’t think it will ever become “mainstream” … it tends not to fit the advertising formats. But having said that, every composer is doing his or her own thing; there’s no pressure to follow trends as there is if you’re writing R&B or pop tunes.
Will you continue in New Zealand or travel?
I’d like to study overseas at some point, possibly next year, but I think I will come back to New Zealand. I’m not sure really, it depends on what possibilities arise in the next year or so. I’m going to a big contemporary music festival in Sydney in May, and hopefully that will give me an idea of what sort of stuff is happening around the place, where I might like to go and study.
What is your vision for your career?
I really enjoy the university environment, so possibly an academic career in music, alongside composition. It’s very difficult to survive on composing alone unless you’re doing more commercial work, film music or jingles etc… I’d love to teach at a university, do research, that sort of thing. But also I want to get my works performed overseas, work with amazing musicians, I mean imagine having a piece performed by the New York Phil, or the London Sinfonietta! It’s the sort of thing where you don’t know what opportunities could come up. But mostly I just want to write and perform, make exciting music, be creative, be inspired.
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