Tina Davidson

Composer

Tina Davidson

Random Thoughts #5

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Notes from my Journal

 April 6

I am in between a state of reluctance and anticipation. I can “hear” the new work better than I can understand it, something about mountains, fires, sexuality and the dark pounding of the heart.

March 31

“What is the relationship between artists and their work?” a friend asks.

I can only speak of my landscape – to economize my life so that I am available. Not as an act of abstinence or poverty, instead, of allowing. When my life is work centered, all else falls off. I am at the essence of my life. The choice is time, energy and clarity. The rest – family, friends, fun – falls into place naturally.

Being available is an act of love I give myself, for here is where my spirit lives. As I go out in my work, it is all me, and at the same time, not me. When my work connects with others, my face becomes many faces, both anonymous and personal, both unrecognizable and identifiable.

The risk of art is to be at the edge of selfishness, which seems to be vanity, but is not. Vanity keeps me separate and elevated from others. Art grovels in the same mud, but ascends.

For today, I ask what my work needs and thereby know how to live my life. Letting the non-essentials go, I keep the treasures. The rest flows from me like fall leaves tossed on the river stream, riding the current happily away from me. The love I put into my work is the same that pours into my life, family, and community. A source that renews itself continually.

October 9

The string quaMysterium, drawing, colored pencilrtet continues to fall into shape, and the work is exciting. The previous agony was pressure during the most vulnerable stages of composing, of gathering the raw material together, finding tiny bits of flesh, atoms or protoplasm. The stuff of creation is a delicate process, full of uncertainty and patience. It is a time when I am open to outside fears and pressures.

The first section is almost completely mapped out. The rhythm tears along, bumping into sounds that are both unexpected and comfortable. I spin through reams of material, yet it is all connected somehow; tense, pressured, chased, inescapable, and swept away. I stitch together the fabric of the piece carefully, paying great attention to the transitions. The directions surprise the ear, and are, somehow, just right. The new shape of the piece pleases me, and has released the music inside. Unbelievable.

Excerpted from Let Your Heart Be Broken, Life and Music from a Classical Composer by Tina Davidson.  © Tina Davidson, 2022

Drawings by Tina Davidson:  Orb #1, charcoal and water color, Mysterium, colored pencil

Listen:

 

 

 

What is My Business?

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Katie fidgets at the piano, and looks blankly at the music. I touch her shoulder and put my pencil on the errant note. She settles down and with much stumbling and back tracking, plays the piece. We cheer together as I hand her a sheet of stickers. She pauses long, trying to decide which one pick. I know she is taking a much-needed break from focusing. Then we start up again.

Reading music or symbols, is such a difficult process – the eyes see, the mind decodes and sends a message to the fingers, the ear hears – all the tactile, auditory, sensory abilities working together – and if one those misfires, confusion is overwhelming.

Clearly, I should say something to Katie’s parents. Her child has some sort of learning difficulty. But when I ask obliquely about how she doing in school, her mother’s face freezes. I change the subject.

In truth, it is none of my business. I am not a trained professional, and do not know what is developmental, and what is more serious. Furthermore, parents have their own path and time-table of recognizing their child’s difficulty and dealing with it.

But mostly, I don’t want to forfeit the opportunity. I have a thirty-minute window each week to spend with Katie over a few years, perhaps even as long as a ten-year-span. How can I be effective with her, or any of my students?  What do they need from me?  How do I build a confidence in them as creative, problem-solving people?

Over time, I have learned to teach to the individual rather than the music. Each is like an intricate puzzle I have to solve. I am constantly finding new ways of bending my teaching to the particular child’s mind – testing and twisting my knowledge.

I separate the reading process from the playing process, giving them difficult, fun pieces to play where the note heads are converted to letters. Their note-reading books are graphically colorful, spacious books.

I point out that speed (so well rewarded in our society) is intrinsically of little value. A completed job well done, regardless of time, is a win. I catalog, articulate and trust their abilities, reminding them occasionally that we are working together on their weaker points. I encourage them to think of alternative solutions – there is rarely one approach to a problem.

Concert given by studentsMost importantly, I give them opportunities to experience and claim their own creativity. They are constantly composing music, either at home or in their lesson, notating it as they please. And several times a year, I gather them together in informal settings to perform and celebrate their efforts.

I talk less. Give them time to solve problems without jumping in with answers. Have rests.Do lots of stickers (even for my teenagers), and work on my own patience.

Patience, patience. The child will not be baked until their mid-20’s, sometimes older. I am in it for the long run. I value the children’s excitement rather than their abilities. And I put myself constantly be in a position to say yes. Yes, yes. Why not?

Listen!  Tremble for violin, cello and piano

 

 

Deep Listening

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Pauline Oliveros and James Tenney

Pauline Oliveros playing the accordianA few days up at the Charles Ives Center for the Performing Arts gives me relief. I am in residence with musician, composer, and maverick Pauline Oliveros. “Hear, remember, and imagine,” she intones. You hear a sound, remember it, and then imagine it again. She uses words to form her music, bringing the performers into the process of creation. Her work begets community.

I am struck by music’s linear process, where duration is the great ingredient. Unlike visual art, music cannot be experienced all at once. Instead, it moves though time. As we listen, we construct the whole in our mind through memory. Like a transparent ghost, music moves our hearts with its lack of tangible substance.

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I heard a piece by composer Jim Tenney recently at a concert. Something interests me. HisComposer James Tenney piece is a voyage of technical manipulations involving tape delay and difference tones – those haunting resonances that appear when certain pitches rub against each other.

At first I am rapt. But, I cannot hold on, my mind disengages and falls into a dark quiet. After eight to ten minutes, the piece suddenly opens up, and I catch onto the piece again. How did I get here – where have I been? As if a white shirt, shown in meticulous technical detail, suddenly blossoms with blood, both a terrifying signal of death, and an affirmation of life.

The shape of his music reminds me of my own shape. While the content of our work is different, the linear shape and flow, moving from one point to (and through) another, is similar. He uses a one-theme-one-idea approach, where the starkness and persistence engages the listener. I am episodic, darting though material with single-minded purpose. His music is a straight line, mine moves in and over. He takes a fragment and expands it. I sew my fragments together, so one becomes another becomes one. His overall shape is like the stem of a flower, long and thin with a sudden bloom at the end. My shape is conical; the whole piece expands from a beginning point and opens up to an ecstasy. His epiphany is sharply beautiful in relief to his material. Mine is joyous and circular.

Excerpted from Let Your Heart Be Broken, Life and Music from a Classical Composer  by Tina Davidson.  © Tina Davidson, 2022

Listen: Wēpan for string quartet and piano, was written at the request of the Open End Ensemble. From the old English, wēpan means to weep, bewail, mourn over, or deplore.

I have written about Pauline Oliveros (1932-2016) before and I suspect I will write about her again. She is one of the great American composers, investigating new ways to focus attention on music including her concepts of “deep listening” and “sonic awareness.”

Jim Tenney (1935-2006), a pioneer of computer music, was interested in the possibilities offered by pure tuning. I met him in the mid-1980s and was drawn to him  as a fellow graduate from  Bennington College, and to his warmth, kindness and curiosity.

 

Measurable Outcomes

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Children playing on homemade instrumentsMy three-year residency in Delaware is winding down. We sit in meetings and talk about outcomes or measurable results of my work in community settings.

Do my students get better grades? Are the women who are homeless more successful after working with me? Or, at the very least, have we created new audiences for the arts?

These are reasonable questions. If one puts in the effort and money, shouldn’t there be tangible, visible results?

I shake my head. It is really none of my business.

I teach because I believe the power of creativity is in all of us, just unrecognized. I teachteaching because I trust it will take root in some strange and unimagined way, in its own time. I teach as an act of faith; a spiritual practice. I get up every day, and do it. “Here,” I say, “this is what I have for you today.”

I find no master-strokes or large, efficient gestures. Only this one-on-one, slow work that brings others into a meaningful connection to the arts – hopefully. A commitment to work close to the ground.

Excerpted from Let Your Heart Be Broken, Life and Music from a Classical Composer  © Tina Davidson, 2022.

Listen: Paper, String, Glass & Wood excerpt, written for professional string quartet and students quartets

 

How Will I Know When to Stop?

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Timothy stands close to me. When I move, he moves. He waits for me to play his piece with him and follows me like a shadow around the room.

I help Shante with her instrument, calm Ferron down so he can concentrate, and get sidelined by Brandi and Terrell. They work on a piece for two desks and their hands. Experimenting with fingers, palms, and fists, they make sounds on the wooden tops. I step back and almost fall over Timothy; he is patient.

Jake and Michael struggle with their invented notation. Jake’s faces contorts, he cannot figure out how to write his rhythm down. We put words to the melody, and suddenly he claps it with ease.

Timothy pushes me towards the piano and I grab a drum. His piece, Thrill Ride, is carefully notated in tiny print. Only he knows what it means, but he has taught me. He begins to play, his long fingers curving around the complicated chords. A dreamy look comes over his face.

“How will I know when to stop?” I press him. He continues to play, immersed in his own sound world. (McMichael Elementary School)

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Michael’s eyes are full of tears. His small body slumps in the chair. “It’s not fair! I want to work with the cellist.” Tears splash down his face. I study him for a moment, then settle down beside him.

Michael and two other boys were out of the room recording the rap lyrics to the song the fifth grade class had written. During their absence, the rest of the class completed their graphically notated pieces about Homer’s Odyssey. Today, the Cassatt String Quartet joins my residency. Each group will collaborate with a member of the ensemble. The three boys have no composition. I stall, thinking.

“What if you write a new piece for all of the string players right now?” I suggest. Michael runs for the markers and newsprint. Working quickly, the boys write a piece they call Rough Riders from Lotus Town. They fight briefly about how to notate the motorcycle sound.

After a discussion, the Quartet plays the piece for the class. Michael leans into me, smiling. “They played my piece pretty good!” he concedes.  (Nebinger Elementary School)

Excerpted from Let Your Heart Be Broken, Life and Music from a Classical Composer  © Tina Davidson, 2022.

Listen:  Celestial Turnings, string orchestra: excerpt

 

Tina Davidson created Young Composers program to teach students to compose their own music through instrument building, graphic and invented notation. Designed to enhance self-esteem and reinforce achievement through alternative measures of expression, the course culminates with a performance of the students’ compositions.