Matthew Schreibeis

Tune in to Modern Notebook on WUSF this Sunday night at 8pm EST to hear Dieter Hennings perform my guitar work, They Say. This 3-movement work is part of my recent Albany Records portrait CD release. Thanks to host and composer Tyler Kline for featuring my work!

Thanks to the crew at Take Effect Reviews for their review of my recent Albany Records portrait CD, Sandburg Songs.

My former teacher and dissertation advisor, James Primosch, has died, age 64. Jim was an honest, warm, caring, compassionate human being, and I will miss him. I learned the music of many wonderful composers through him: Davidovsky, Perle, Martino, and others. We got along splendidly from our first meetings and shared many laughs and a lot of dark humor. (We also share a birthday.) Jim wrote some truly stunningly beautiful pieces, especially some of his songs—I hope he knew that, I told him so—and I believe that beauty will live on and Jim through it. Rest in peace, my dear friend.

I’m absolutely thrilled to announce that Sandburg Songs has been released on Albany Records. My portrait CD features the renowned soprano Tony Arnold with Zohn Collective and conductor Tim Weiss in my large-scale song cycle based on Carl Sandburg’s Chicago Poems, along with four other chamber works that span a decade of creative work. These works are scored for solo piano (Inner Truth), solo guitar (They Say), clarinet and violin duo (Noticing), and a trio for clarinet, violin, and piano (In Search of Planet X) and represent different points in my artistic output. The musicians are stellar, and it feels great to finally share this music with the broader public. I am especially grateful to the entire team at Albany Records and Oberlin Conservatory, including recording engineer Paul Eachus, and to my friend, the video artist, David Colagiovanni, whose art are found on the album cover and throughout the liner notes. The disc is available for purchase online here.

I’m very happy to hear that Eunmi Ko will be performing Inner Truth at the Swan City Piano Festival in Florida this June. Eunmi has been championing this work, which I wrote as part of a larger series of commissions honoring the centennial birth year of Isang Yun, since she first presented it a couple years back. I’m glad that in-person events are becoming possible again and will post details once I have them.

I was happy to receive a copy of the new book, Crossing Borders, Making Connections: Interdisciplinarity in Linguistics (Allison Burkette and Tamara Warhol, editors), in the mail today. This volume, published by De Gruyter, features a chapter I co-authored with Jiyoon Lee (University of Maryland, Baltimore County), titled “Comprehensive review of the effect of using music in second language learning.” Our interest in this subject goes back to a funded projected we pursued at the University of Pennsylvania in 2010, which included short melodies I composed to aid and test second language vocabulary acquisition.  I’m glad to see our work coming full circle in this new book and look forward to reading the other chapters in weeks ahead!

I’m very happy to have been awarded a General Research Fund (GRF) Grant from Hong Kong’s Research Grants Council to support research on the orchestral work of my former teacher, the late Steven Stucky.  The GRF Grant is the most significant and competitive grant for Hong Kong academics and will fund my two-year project, “Patterns of Influence: Steven Stucky as Orchestrator,” including archival work at the Library of Congress.

I first met Steve when I studied with him as an undergraduate at Eastman in 2000, and he remained a caring, generous, and inspiring presence in my life throughout his time on this earth.  I think very often about some of our discussions and wish he were still here for me to ask the many unanswerable questions for which he always seemed to have answers.  I hope my work over the next two years will play some small part in maintaining his legacy as a wonderful human being and a composer of finely-crafted, beautiful music.

My solo violin work, immaus, will be performed by violinist Sini Virtanen during the New Music Festival and Symposium at the University of South Florida in Tampa in March.  I’m especially grateful that my work will be included as part of this excellent event during these complex times for the performing arts.  I’ll be sure to post details on how to watch the performance, which will be streamed online, as soon as I have the them.

With the uncertainties of the pandemic, it’s not surprising that many performing arts groups are being forced to cancel or reschedule events. With this in mind, I’ve learned that the premiere of my work, Parallel Lives, as part of the mise-en Festival in New York, has been postponed to next season at a date to be determined. I’m looking forward to working with Moon Young Ha and his incredible crew then.

I’m so pleased to learn that my upcoming portrait CD with Albany Records has received funding from the Alice M. Ditson Fund at Columbia University.  I expect the CD to be out later this spring and am so impressed with the level of musicianship of soprano Tony Arnold and the members of Zohn Collective.  The CD will feature my large-scale Sandburg Songs, along with chamber music from the last decade.  Thanks to all the staff at Albany Records for their support of my work.

I’m very pleased to be one of seven composers from around the world selected to compose a new work for New York City-based ensemble mise-en for this year’s Mise-en Festival, to take place June 23-28 in New York.  My planned work is tentatively called Parallel Lives and is inspired by my own experience traveling back-and-forth between Hong Kong and the US (and many other places!) over the last four years.  I’ve become fascinated with how much activity is taking place at once, whether in a particular building, on a single street, throughout a whole city, or between two points on opposite sides of the globe.  Darting to and fro around the world, I’ve gained a new appreciation for how time passes—sometimes quickly, other times at a laborious place—and how our perceptions shift over vast distances.  The sudden shifts of time, place, and energy fascinate me and are something I want to explore musically in my work.  I’m very much looking forward to working with the stellar musicians of ensemble mise-en and their conductor, Moon Young Ha, this summer.

Over the last two weeks, the stars have aligned, and three old friends descended upon Hong Kong to once again prove how small the music world really is.  To begin, percussionist Sean Connors of Third Coast Percussion was in town giving performances and masterclasses with his fellow quartet members as part of Toolbox Percussion’s International Creative Academy.  While I was unable to make these events, it was great to catch up with Sean and meet his colleagues.  Sean and I were both undergraduates at Eastman, and he performed a work of mine (for trombone and vibraphone!) in a very memorable concert in which the ceiling started leaking and…during an especially active passage, the vibraphone began to move!

In addition to Third Coast Percussion’s stopping by, Beare’s Premiere Music Festival, led by Artistic Director Cho-Liang Lin, brought composer Lei Liang and violinist Aaron Boyd (among many other fantastic players) to the city.  I was so pleased that Lei was able to visit HKBU and introduce his music to our students.  We met in the summer of 2018 at the Valencia International Performance Academy and Festival in Spain, where my string quartet, City Lights, we premiered by Mivos Quartet.  I have long admired his work, which spans a great emotional and coloristic palette.  Besides visiting HKBU, a new duo of his for violin and percussion received an outstanding premiere by Cho-Liang Lin and Zhe Lin.  I was quite impressed with what I would call Lei’s “narrative flexibility”—the way the music moves from one passage or idea to the next.

Violinist Aaron Boyd, Director of Chamber Music at Southern Methodist University, performed in several of the festival’s concerts, including in a unique version of the Mendelssohn Octet.  He is one of my oldest friends, although it has been years–at least 17 years, in fact!—since we last saw each other.  Aaron and I went to high school together in Pittsburgh, and it’s safe to say that he was among the older classmates (He was the class of ’96; I was ’98.) that I looked up to as a young person.  In fact, Aaron has the distinction of having performed in the first public performance of any of my works, which took place in the spring of 1995 during the annual “Composers Concert” at CAPA (the Pittsburgh High School for the Creative and Performing Arts).  Who would have thought that all these years later we’d still be making music?  And on the other side of the world?!

Hong Kong has been taking a lot of hits since summer because of the protest movement.  It was a relief to have some downtime and share wonderful music being made by old friends.  This spiritual nourishment is needed now more than ever.

I’m very happy that my percussion quartet, Kinetic Attractions, has been selected for performance by McCormick Percussion Group, Robert McCormick, director, during the International New Music Festival at the University of South Florida, in Tampa, this coming April.  This will be my third visit to USF, having most recently enjoyed the premiere of my solo guitar work, They Say, with Dieter Hennings in 2018.

Kinetic Attractions was premiered in 2014 at the Athens International Film and Video Festival at Ohio University by NOBROW.collective.  Like a number of my works, it has an extramusical inspiration, in this case the video art of Melissa Haviland and David Colagiovanni, specifically the rhythmic smashing of fine china in their work, Music for Teacups.  I’m planning to revise and edit the work before the USF performance and look forward to working with Bob and his excellent ensemble in bringing the improved version to life.

With my recent travels, I was unable to honor the great  Chou Wen-chung in a timely way following his death on October 25.  I would simply like to say that hearing him speak about his life and work when I was a graduate student was one of the more memorable and moving encounters I can recall with a composer.  His music is beautiful and captivating.  It represents the true and authentic vision of the much-overused slogan of “East meets West”: life experience fused through technique into a personal sound statement.  His is a path we all must follow in our creative work.  

As I prepare to head back to Hong Kong, I wanted to offer some overall thoughts, a review of sorts, on the premiere of Bernard Rands’ Dream with the Chicago Symphony and Music Director Riccardo Muti. This is a mature work of a composer who has nothing to “prove.” Because of this, there is a restrained quality to certain aspects of the work; nothing is overdone. The final chord, for example, a romantic swell surging to silence, occupies a register that extends only as high as the F above middle C; thus many instruments are excluded from its presentation. For another composer, this would have been a moment to offer a grand, glorious ending, but for Rands this is a time to revel in a kind of unfinished warmth. Are there more notes or chords to this melody yet to come?

The final swell which ends the piece, as well as the overall ending section—in which a lyrical melody is presented in its full form for the first and only time with a displaced chord progression in the background—recall for me the music of Sibelius, another highly “restrained” composer I adore. There is the ending swell to a C major chord and elemental melodic movement from B to C at the end of the Seventh Symphony, as well as the extended yearning string melody amid a churning brass chord progression at the end of the Fifth Symphony, among other recollections that emerge.

As I wrote in a previous post, this is a piece in which musical ideas emerge in unexpected and seemingly spontaneous ways. What is more fascinating to me, having heard the piece, is how the rate or degree of this change affects our experience of the work. It is a very subtle thing to talk about and—like so many musical phenomena—likely an impossible sensation to precisely quantify, but the kinds of changes that take place—from one bar to the next or one beat to the next—are one of the most personal and elusively poetic aspects of the piece and something I enjoyed so much.

Through the three performances I heard, I was impressed with how quickly the orchestra understood the music, not just the notes and rhythms—that is to be expected from such musicians—but the narrative of the work, the sense of storytelling—in this case often interrupted storytelling—that defines the piece, and how every nuance and type of balance contributed to it.

There was something slightly operatic about Muti’s approach, an aspect of interrupted arias and interrupted recitatives, especially in quick mood shifts that start the work, and this sense of drama made the conclusion of the piece even more satisfying. What a pleasure it has been to witness the premiere performances of this work, as well as the rehearsals that made it possible. I look forward to exploring Rands’ work in more depth, and the philosophies and technical processes behind it, in a more extensive upcoming article.

By now settled in to the Chicago chill, I’ve had a chance to speak with Bernard Rands and for both of us to hear the first rehearsal of his new work, Dream, with the Chicago Symphony and Music Director Riccardo Muti. There are many things I’ve been struck by, having now heard the work, as opposed to what I could “hear” with my inner ear, so I offer a few of my mental notes here.

The swell, which opens the work, plays a much larger role than I expected. In fact, this swell and the many directions it takes—a hairpin, a long decay, a final surge followed by silence as in the ending—may be the key element of the work, as much or more vital than the melody upon which much of the music is based. This recurring swell—multidirectional in character—relates perhaps to what Rands meant when he spoke to me of harmonies that can go in “more than one direction.” Perhaps not just harmonies, I would add, but the gestures through which those harmonies are deployed. Taking things one step further, this swell is not just a gesture but also a structural idea or concept, for the work proceeds overall through a series of build-ups and various degrees of decay. This is a kind of “three-dimensional” thinking—and listening—to which I’m very much drawn.

Another thing I’ve been struck by is how the beautiful lyric melody, which concludes the work, permeates even more aspects of the music than I envisioned from having studied the score. It is not just the wind solos presenting melodic fragments as the piece progresses, but some of the pizzicato figures and the long-resonating punctuation of tubular bells, among many other points of references. Especially after hearing the piece a few times, these iterations emerge in a quasi-déjà vu-like fashion, creating an overall—dare I say it—dreamlike atmosphere.

The role of certain orchestrations and timbres is also more pronounced than what I imagined. Those same tubular bells, besides tolling parts of the melody, play a structural role, helping us to identify the start of several sections by “resetting”, in a sense, the pulse and focusing our momentary sense of tonic.

Hearing Rands’ work for the first time reminded me once again that our ability to perceive things aurally far outpaces our ability to detect some of them on the page. As I have often put it: “The ear is faster than the brain!” I’m looking forward to accumulating some more aural data over the coming days.

This week I’m heading to Chicago to meet with composer Bernard Rands for a series of interviews and to attend rehearsals and performances of his new work, Dream, with the Chicago Symphony and Music Director Riccardo Muti.  What a privilege it has been to spend time getting to know this score in advance of our conversations and actually hearing the music.  I first met Bernard back in 2008 at the Nevada Encounters of New Music Festival at UNLV in Las Vegas and got to know him the following year during an intensive week of performances, seminars, and—if I can recall correctly…a few drinks—at June in Buffalo.  We have kept in touch since then, and I have always been moved by his music, which speaks from the heart through the clearest technical means, and by his supportive friendship.

My visit is part of what I plan to be at least one article devoted to his new composition and related works for orchestra.  In this case, the related works have in common a melody that Rands composed decades ago during a flight from London to Sydney.  What interests me is the way this tune has found its way into three very different orchestral contexts in his compositions London Serenade and …body and shadow…, both from 1988, and now Dream.  Through our conversations, I hope to glean some hints of how and why this particular tune has stuck through all these years, as well as broader aspects of his compositional approach and philosophy.  From my initial study of the score, I can tell that the “dream” aspect of the work comes through in music that seems to move spontaneously from one idea or mood to the next, sometimes shadowy and mysterious, other times intense and rhythmic, but most often than not warm and with a slightly nostalgic underpinning.  I’m very much looking forward to hearing the work over the coming days and enjoying the splendid musical scene of Chicago in fall.

It has taken me a bit longer than I expected, but I am nearing the end of the editing process of my upcoming CD for Albany Records.  The recording, which took place last summer at Oberlin, is sounding great, but with Tony Arnold, the musicians of Zohn Collective, and intrepid conductor, Tim Weiss, this should come as no surprise.  It looks like the physical product will come into being this summer, so a CD release party sometime next fall must be in the works.  Details, details…

I’m very happy to learn that Eunmi Ko will be performing the work I wrote for her, Inner Truth, as part of her faculty recital at the University of South Florida.   Eunmi has recently performed the work at the San Francisco International Piano Festival, the World Piano Conference in Serbia, and the Dot the Line Festival in Seoul.  By now, I trust she has the piece firmly in her grasp.  Tampa friends, please check out this event on September 15, which also features USF faculty Francesca Arnone (flute) and Amy Collins (oboe) faculty.

I’ve received word from Tiffany Ng that she’ll be performing my carillon work, Resonant Memories, during her faculty recital as part of the 59th Annual University of Michigan Organ Conference on September 30 in Ann Arbor.  The theme of the conference is “Building Bach: His Foundations and Futures.”  My work, which Tiffany premiered in 2018, fits into this program because of the contrapuntal aspect of much of the piece.  As I wrote in a revised program note for this performance:

“One of J. S. Bach’s many musical “magic tricks”, especially in works for solo instruments, is the way he crafts a single musical line to imply two or more independent voices, or what is often called compound melody.  This sense of lines being woven together and apart, of going in and out of sync, is one of the marvelous qualities of his work.  In imagining my first composition for carillon, I found myself returning again and again to these woven melodies, as well as the ephemeral quality of the instrument’s sound.  No matter how large or powerful the initial attack–whether single note or complex chord–it instantly began to fade away.  There was an aspect of inevitable disappearance that I found intriguing and that suggested a certain musical character I wanted to explore.”

I’m so pleased Tiffany has programmed the piece again and look forward to hearing it person sometime soon.

I’ve received a link to video of pianist Eunmi Ko’s recent performance of Inner Truth at the Dot the Line Festival at Ewha Womans University in Seoul.  What a pleasure it is to remember this excellent interpretation!  I’m so pleased Eunmi will be playing the piece again next month at the San Francisco International Piano Festival.

I’ve received word from pianist Eunmi Ko that she’ll be performing my work, Inner Truth, at the World Piano Conference in Novi Sad, Serbia on June 29.  Eunmi recently presented the work in Seoul and will be performing it in August in San Francisco.  I’m very happy to hear my work will be finding its way to Serbia for the first time!

Last week’s events with the Albany Symphony and David Alan Miller, including the premiere of my work, Unite in Song, were too big to fit into just one post, so I wanted to say a bit about the distinguished American composer, David Del Tredici, who was was one of the featured composers at this year’s American Music Festival.

I first came into contact with Del Tredici’s music as part of my weekly listening assignments during composition lessons with Christopher Rouse in my freshman year at Eastman.  The first work I heard, Final Alice (1976), is a huge, hour-plus piece and one of many connected with Lewis Carroll’s Alice tales.  During last week’s concerts, the Albany Symphony performed his Pop-pourri (1968), which Del Tredici describes as “a kind of Cantata of the Scared and Profane.”  I also got to hear a performance of his chamber work, Bullycide (2013).  Del Tredici’s work encompasses vast stylistic and sonic space, making use of massive orchestras, rock groups, crazed singing styles, Bach chorales, Schubertian harmonic progressions, noise, and everything in between.  After hearing his Pop-pourri, a non-composer but highly-informed musical amateur asked me: “Was that crazier than Ligiti?”  And, in fact, I believe it was!  (There is a whole issue of American composers not getting the “credit” the European “Masters” have more easily received.  Hint: Copland, Piston and other mid-century symphonists, Druckman, Rochberg, and others.  But I digress…)

Beyond the musical interest and joy in listening to his music, I must say that hearing David Del Tredici speak to us “young” composers about his life and work—his struggles, fears, triumphs, hopes—his Composer’s Ten Commandments—was the most touching aspect of my time in Troy.  Regardless of style, I have always felt the greatest honor in meeting composers “of a certain age.”  Anyone who has managed to survive the harshness of a creative life has my highest respect.  Especially when they are kind.

For the last week I’ve had the pleasure of working with musicians of the Albany Symphony and their music director, David Alan Miller, as part of the Orchestrating in the 21st Century Workshop and American Music Festival at the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC for short) in Troy, NY.  The sheer number of events has been staggering: orchestral and chamber music performances, film screenings, lectures, orchestration workshops with Chris Theofanidis, late-night jam sessions…there’s been something for everyone and then some!  

The highlight for me was the premiere of my 10-piece ensemble work, Unite in Song, on Thursday night with members of the Albany Symphony and David Alan Miller conducting.  In writing this work, I was inspired by the festival’s theme, “Sing Out, New York!”, and wanted to write a piece that honored the role music has played throughout civil rights movements.  The piece packs a lot into its length, opening with very active flourishes, moving through syncopated rhythmic passages, giving us some—hopefully catchy—dance music, and concluding with a memorable (and singable) tune.  I would emphasize the word singable, because the score calls for most of the musicians to quietly sing the tune in the final bars atop a groove in the marimba and lower strings.  

Maestro Miller is well known for his relentless championing of contemporary music, and I believe it was this background, encompassing vastly disparate styles over many years, which caused him—with the significant support of Chris Theofanidis—to suggest trying various vowels (“ah”, “oh”, “oo”) to give different effects in the sung portion.  In the end, we settled on the more mysterious “ah” vowel, and I was very pleased with the result!*  

I was truly impressed with every aspect of this week’s events: the level of musicianship and open-mindedness of the players; Chris Theofanidis’ ability to get to the crux of any orchestral problem, the supporting staff throughout the week, the venue (EMPAC is one of the finest performing arts complexes I’ve ever seen, and the Albany region is so lucky to have it.), the town of Troy with its lovely restaurants and farmers’ market.  I definitely hope to get back here one day!

(*Thinking back to some of my recent compositions, it seems that various vocalizations are becoming a recurring aspect of my work.  The large-scale song cycle I wrote for Tony Arnold, Sandburg Songs, includes spoken text and a long hummed vocalise in addition to singing.  My guitar work, They Say, requires the player to hum a tune at one point and speak text while playing at another.  To the extent that it is possible—in many cases it is not—it’s interesting to observe one’s tendencies and their origins.)  

I’ve concluded a brief but meaningful 2-day stay in Seoul.  Having come to know this place quite well over the years, I always look forward to its energy, delicious food, and warm people.  During this visit, I enjoyed a deeply felt performance of my piano work, Inner Truth, by Eunmi Ko, as part of the inaugural Dot the Line Festival at Ewha Womans University.

Although I composed the work for Eunmi as part of her Tributes to Isang Yun centennial project, for various logistical reasons, this was the first time she performed the piece.  (It was previously performed in Chicago and Hong Kong.)  I can say without reservation that it was worth the wait, for hers was a performance of total commitment and deep emotion.  I was especially struck by Eunmi’s understanding of the work’s architecture.  Her sense of tension, drama, and pacing aligned nearly perfectly with how I conceived the piece.  Throughout her performance there was never a doubt that the climax was on the way, no matter how long it was in coming.  What a pleasure it was to hear this performance, as well as the work of so many other interesting composers.  

Later this morning I will board a plane for the US as I travel to Troy, New York for a week of workshops and a premiere with members of the Albany Symphony, conductor David Alan Miller, and composer Christopher Theofanidis.  The physics behind the reality of boarding a flight at 10am, traveling fourteen hours, only to arrive at a destination on the same day—once again around 10am—elude my pitch-and-rhythm-based brain.  Nonetheless, I look forward to catching up on some movies I’ve missed…and perhaps some sleep as well!