On June 29, the quartet is taking over one of our favorite haunts in the city for a Sampler Pack program in The Hideout. This is a venerable venue, a Chicago classic. We’ll be presenting three world premieres on the concert, one which had its genesis at our season closing party last year at High Concept Labs. At that time, HCL was hosting Stephen Gorbos for a residency to begin his work on a new string quartet for us. A year later, we premiere the work across the street from their artist workspace! I sent Steve a few questions about his raucous new piece in anticipation of the premiere.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
JAW: Your piece stems from a week you spent in Chicago last summer. In fact, I didn’t even fully realize how apropos the timing of this premiere is one year later: we’ll be playing your piece just across the street from where you were working at High Concept Labs. Tell us a little bit about the neighborhood there and how that effected your mindset and perception of Chicago that week.
SG: Even right around HCL, the variety of sounds one can encounter is quite striking: on the one hand, with the array of warehouses, that neighborhood can feel kind of abandoned at certain times of day. One night, while walking back from the lake, I saw a coyote following the train tracks that run along the river. However, right next door to HCL is a truck depot for the city public works; a working steel mill is just a few blocks north; Wicker Park, Bucktown, and Lincoln Park are more peopled neighborhoods just a short walk away. In an effort to branch out and cover more ground in the city, on one of the days I was in town a friend and I took a north to south drive with a set of rules: every 8 minutes, we’d stop and walk around with the field recorder, checking out the neighborhood we happened to land in and talking to people. This took us from Ukrainian Village down through to Bridgeport, finishing off at the abandoned buildings in the Bubbly Creek area: the sounds of factories, fruit markets, playgrounds, record stores, tattoo parlors, bars, Mexican norteño bands, and Greek donut shops were some of what was encountered along the way. All told, I left town fascinated by the incredible array of sonic environments in such close proximity to each other. Certainly not unique, but still quite interesting, are the layers of appropriation: what was once a warehouse or factory is now an arts space; an older ethnic enclave gives way to a new group of immigrants from a different part of the world. This of course brings us to the visual experience of being in Chicago, with all of its varied architecture, which I also think plays a certain role in inspiring some of the music.
JAW: We met with you last June and got to know each other a bit, and workshopped the piece while we were in Vermont this past December. It’s often tough to get to know a collaborator from another city until the week of the show when rehearsals are in full swing. How did our process for this piece effect your work at the composition desk? How does it change your mindset leading into a week of rehearsals later this month?
SG: Given that we really didn’t know each other before my coming out to Chicago a year ago, I was pleasantly surprised at how well the quartet’s process gelled with my own compositional process. One of my favorite aspects of writing for smaller ensembles is the opportunity to make it a more personal collaboration between composer and performer: while I’m always imagining the group that’s going to perform the piece as I write, writing for orchestral sections of violins, violas, and cellos is by its very nature less tailored towards the individual than writing for Austin, Aurelien, Doyle, and Russ. To truly make a piece for those four individuals, I need to spend time with those people, which I consider part of the compositional process. Part of that time is social, getting to know them as people, and part of that time is musical, hearing them play, and in some cases, rehearse, all of which the Spektral Quartet was open to. Even though I wasn’t necessarily writing notes and gestures, that first week I spent hearing them work on Ravel, Beethoven, and (Chicago’s own) Marcos Balter last June was quite important; so was trying out some of my own ideas in Vermont last December, which I think of as an initial fitting of a tailor-made suit. This particular collaboration also presented an entirely new angle to my own creative process: when I first met the Spektral Quartet, along with their sound, energy, and camaraderie as a group, one of the things that was immediately striking was their connection and commitment to the city of Chicago. I thought it would be a fun challenge to build into my compositional process a reflection on the aural spectrum of their city. Along with sitting in on several Spektral Quartet rehearsals and sharing some meals with them, I spent large parts of that week walking around town with a portable recorder.
JAW: Your piece packs a rhythmic punch, and the whole thing bubbles with energy! This makes it a lot of fun to play, and it’s interesting to me the way you built in varying feels without losing the drive to the music. The opening of the piece is full of shifting rhythms, but the quartet plays in rhythmic unison. The next section makes a quick shift to lines in very close imitation, with the commentary in other voices more independent. This alternation marks one of the major features of the piece for me, and marks very clear characters for each section of the work. What inspired this approach to writing for the quartet?
SG: Great observation! The structural approach you’re describing is a direct response to traveling around the city and encountering all of those disparate block-to-block sound environments and building styles right on top of each other. Rather than treat the quartet as four different individuals, or four different environments interacting with each other (as Elliott Carter might do), I thought of the quartet as a single actor in that action, reflecting each of those different environments. In that sense, the piece could be interpreted as one particular individual’s subjective passage through the city, rather than something omniscient or an attempt at an objective presentation. I like the word passage in the title because it can stand for a path navigated, the act of going from one place to another, or even the right to come, go, or pass through some particular place.
Lately, as I get to know what I’m going to do in a piece, I try to frame any conceptual aspects of the piece for listeners to have as
broad an experience with them as possible. When Passage through the city started to take on its definite shape, I was less concerned about specific locations, or telling a linear story, than with presenting a picture of a 21st century urban experience. While I do think Chicagoans still have a privileged ownership over this music, and certainly a chance of recognizing specific things in the piece, I think a listener in any city might be able to relate to the action of the piece from the perspective I describe above.
JAW: Are there any composers whose works for string quartet you found a source of inspiration in writing this piece? Any whose works you felt you needed to put out of your mind to write something new?
SG: When starting a collaboration with a group, I try to get a sense of what music the group I’m writing for is spending time with: I’ll usually listen to any recordings from them I can get my hands on. At this point, chances are they’ve heard some of my music, so on some projects we might even talk about a new piece in terms of other work of mine that they know. Alongside listening to the specific musicians play, I also try to immerse myself in as much music for the ensemble I’m writing for as possible. This is mostly from a technical perspective, in terms of exploring what the instruments can do and what other composers have cooked up for them, but I also think those scores and recordings become surrogates for the group I’m writing for: ie, I don’t have a string quartet hanging out in my studio while I’m writing, so if something occurs to me that I’m not sure of technically, in addition to talking it over with the group, I try to find it in other composers’ works. Over time, as I gain a deeper understanding of my own ideas and intentions, I’m seeking out less and writing more; after my piece takes on a more definite shape, I’m just working on my piece with the occasional reference to a score or composer.
For a specific composer, Ravel’s fingerprints are all over this score. That’s been one of my favorite quartets for years, and I thought it was a sign of a good collaboration to come that you guys were working on it when we first met. Nothing that I’m aware of in Passage is modeled directly on Ravel, but some of Ravel’s textures and voicings are definitely in the DNA of my piece: I think this comes out of hearing you guys put his quartet together. Studying scores is one thing, but there is no better way to get to know a piece than to be a fly on the wall when it is being rehearsed by good musicians. Other quartets I spent a lot of time with at the early stages of this project include those by Sofia Gubaidulina and Julia Wolfe.