Graduate composers explore new medium

Published: Thursday, February 29, 1996

Emotional themes to run through student's music at Schoenberg

By Rodney Tanaka

Daily Bruin Staff

Tonight's concert featuring compositions by five UCLA graduate students stems from many impulses: experimentation, exploration and panic.

"UCLA Graduate Composers Concert," in Schoenberg Hall's Popper Theater, features a number of styles and arrangements. Master's degree candidate Charles Gran says he believes listeners will be treated to a diverse mix of music with common bonds.

"Exploration is as much what this concert is about in terms of each of us individually exploring the musical environment in search of what we feel is a viable means of expressing ourselves," Gran says. "We're still composers in training, we're still experimenting with different types of media and different types of aesthetic approaches, and hopefully all of that's going to eventually coalesce in that each one of us will have a definite voice."

A solo piano gives voice to Mark Lathan's piece, for reasons both aesthetic and practical in the wake of a time-management crisis.

"This concert was coming up on me fast and I had a lot of schoolwork to do, so I thought it would be easier to have one person rehearse instead of having to get together a group," Lathan says. "I think (the piano is) a real expressive instrument, it's got a big, dynamic range."

David Long's "Sheets of Place," created as a class assignment, also benefits from the range of the piano. The composer says he wants to challenge listeners with his work.

"I see music as a means for leisure, and I think leisure means edification, opening your mind to a new way of looking at things," Long says. "(My music is) different from most things they've heard. I think that's a good thing."

Charles Gran turned the challenge inward while creating "Quartet in G," a piece for a string quartet.

"It's kind of a pop-influenced piece," Gran says. "It appealed to me in that it's been used by so many other composers and I just wanted to see what I could do with that medium."

The final two pieces utilize tape for their performances. Mary Lou Newmark's "Qual Shum Yaga Hickta Ho" uses the "electro-acoustic" technique, a combination of taped music and effects and live performance, a live percussionist in this instance. Janice Frey's "Breaking the Cycle," a work on tape, receives help from the composer's father and daughter.

"It's just a tape that's rolling and people are enjoying the sound environment that's created," Long says.

"These tapes are specifically designed for a live acoustic," Gran adds.

The music of the students will resonate clearly, and Lathan says he hopes his emotions connect with the audience as well.

"I want them to hear my music and feel something, whether it be anger or love or happiness," Lathan says. "If my wife gives birth to a happy baby I'm going to be happy about that. I want to write a happy piece and share that feeling with other people."

Lathan's piece uses a theme in variation to depict the journey of a young man leaving home. The music changes as the man experiences the spectrum of emotions that the world evokes.

"With anger I use dissonance, tones that don't sound pleasant together," Lathan says. The one that's supposed to describe beauty, it's a slow, flowing melody, something you might expect violins to play."

Lathan establishes a dialogue with the musicians performing his works as a way of communicating both sides' interpretation of the work. The two sides do not have to mirror each other.

"I want the performer to play with their feelings too, otherwise you're not going to get an inspired performance," Lathan says. "I want them to say, 'This is how I feel about this piece,' and really play it with some conviction."

The conviction that each student invests in their music can manifest itself in diverse ways at UCLA.

"UCLA is very supportive of different approaches," Long says. "They allow a lot of different styles, unlike a lot of other schools that like to pigeonhole you into composing, according to a specific aesthetic style."

Lathan chose this school because of its diversity. He composed music mainly for big bands before enrolling here.

"I wanted to broaden my palate," Lathan says. "Instead of just being able to paint in three colors I wanted to be able to paint in 50 colors."

"You're required to know an awful lot of repertoire here, and exposure to that repertoire has shown me more choices," Lathan adds. "It's continued to open my mind to a lot of different kinds of music."

CONCERT: "UCLA Graduate Composers Concert." Tonight at 8 p.m. at the Popper Theater in Schoenberg Hall. Admission is free. For more info, call (310) 825-4761.

ANDREW SCHOLER / Daily Bruin

Composer Charles Gran discusses the score with Karen Chan.

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