About the Composer

I’m thrilled to have just stumbled across this picture montage and interview excerpt of my former S.F. Conservatory composition teacher Conrad Susa discussing his beautiful orchestral work The Blue Hour. It was prepared by music journalist and long-time Conservatory faculty member Scott Foglesong for this article about a concert of music by Conrad and another beloved former teacher Elinor Armer that took place last year.

I’m particulary fond of this passage in Scott’s article:

Conrad Susa’s music is of a fashion some writers may call accessible, a reprehensible term deserving a lifetime Sour Grapes Award on behalf of twitchy academic composers everywhere. Forget the term, and forget everything some well-intentioned sap has told you about contemporary music.

One is not required to understand the music, or appreciate it. It’s perfectly OK simply to enjoy it, let it be what it is and refrain from labels, -isms, -ibles, cubbyholes and pigeonholes. Susa offers the notion of “a transfiguration of an ordinary moment. And it puts a halo around a time of day and makes it blessed, something is conferred on it, or it confers something.”

American Standard was premiered in Shrewsbury, England in 1993, but the U.S. premiere was given the following year as part of the New Music Delaware Festival at the University of Delaware.

Last week pianist Julie Nishimura, who participated in that 1994 performance, gave me the honor of including the piece in a concert celebrating her 20 years as faculty accompanist at the university.  This time she was joined by the wonderful clarinetist Marianne Gythfeldt, also of the U. Delaware music faculty.

Here’s a high-definition video of the performance.

American Standard is included on the British label Clarinet Classics’ CD Time Pieces – 60 Years of American Music for Clarinet and Piano

I’ve posted the recording of last week’s premiere of my new string quartet piece City Walks.  Please visit this page to hear excerpts or the entire piece.

The following is a program note for my new string quartet work City Walks, which receives its premiere this weekend in Berkeley, California.

I began composing City Walks at the end of 2008 after finding a few pages of music for string quartet deep in the caverns of my computer’s file system.  I had absolutely no recollection of composing this, and if it weren’t for the date stamp on the computer file, I would have no idea when it was from.  (It was 2004.)  I was also so surprised by how well written it was that I doubted at first that it was my own work!  So using this music, which ultimately became the second theme, marked “Andante Affabile” in the score, I set out to come up with a set of ideas that would contrast and complement this.

At a certain point in the composing process, it began to occur to me that, although this is a one-movement piece, it keeps moving and picking up new material as if it were in several movements, yet it still carries elements of what’s been heard earlier as it progresses.  A contemplative, almost cantorial cello solo at the beginning gives way to a lyrical, sauntering theme.  A tender little melody crosses the threshold into melodrama.  A macabre dance unfolds into a facetious extended coda.

The title “City Walks” came about because the form of the piece started to remind me of a linear walk through some city, where the environment changes as you move through various neighborhoods, yet you somehow know you’re still in the same place. The street signs are all brown, say, and there’s a lovely Craftsman typeface on all the public buildings, yet each neighborhood has its own distinct feel.