A few decades ago the composer Morton Feldman made the provocative statement that “Process is the Zeitgeist of the centuryâ€. That was the 20th century of course, and now it’s the 21st, but I personally think that Feldman, always ahead of his time, was right on the mark. Everywhere we see a fascination with “processâ€. Even the phenomena of ‘reality television’ and the ubiquitous behind-the-scenes bonus features on DVDs are two mundane examples of how this obsession with process has permeated the popular culture. As for myself, it was the musical movement known as Minimalism where I most strongly connected to this spirit. Those 1960’s early minimalist works by Reich, Riley, Young, and Glass, where the process and the piece were one and the same, left an indelible mark on my thinking. So compositionally speaking, that’s my biggest influence, and all of the ideas surrounding the subject continue to be a fertile field of exploration for me. I’d be classified as a “Post-Minimalist†by most critics, and that’s fine by me, as it only shows where I’m coming FROM, and leaves my destination wide open.
But it isn’t only on a compositional level that I’ve become obsessed with process. I founded the Common Sense Composers’ Collective in 1994 specifically to explore the ways and processes in which new pieces were conceived, composed, and presented. This group of eight composers – John Halle, Ed Harsh, Melissa Hui, Marc Mellits, Belinda Reynolds, Randall Woolf, Carolyn Yarnell, and myself – has gone on to create over 60 new works (and counting) through several workshop-intensive collaborations, along with three compact discs, (one of which went on to win a 2003 Chamber Music America/WQXR record award). We also presented five OPUS415 New Music Marathons here in San Francisco from 1995 thru 2000. The interest in process also informs my activist desires to roll up my sleeves and be a good “citizen†within the New Music community, something that currently manifests itself in my work as Vice Chair on the Board of Directors of the American Music Center. Here I get a birds eye view of the whole American compositional landscape, and I find it endlessly fascinating. It also naturally inspires a love of teaching, where I’ve found that there’s a surprising --(at least to me)-- tendency to under-emphasize “process†compared to the much more emphasized and valued “productâ€. I get to happily rant about these issues in my position as a member of the Composition faculty at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.
I suppose in a bio like this it’s good to briefly mention that I’ve received many of the usual degrees, grants and awards from organizations such as Yale University, Meet the Composer and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. This should give me some credibility for those who value these kind of establishment tidbits of recognition. But in the end it’s the juggling act of balancing process and product, teaching and doing, composing and serving the field of composition, that best describes my personal journey in this crazy world of New Music.
