#metronyoung

Nina Young, prolific New York based sound artist and composer has written a new Bassoon Pocket Concerto for the Multiphonics Resident Artist Series concert at (Le) Poisson Rouge this Sunday! Her music has been heard around the world, through performances by the American Composers Orchestra, Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, Orkest de ereprijs, the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, the Aspen Philharmonic Orchestra, the Argento Chamber Ensemble, Either/Or, Ensemble de Musique Interactive, the JACK Quartet, mise-en, the Nouveau Classical Project, Sixtrum, Yarn/Wire, and the New Fromm Players of the Tanglewood Music Center. In addition to the 2015 Rome Prize in Musical Composition, Young has received a Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Salvatore Martirano Memorial Award, Aspen Music Festival's Jacob Druckman Prize, and honors from BMI, The International Alliance for Women in Music, and ASCAP/SEAMUS.

Young's Pocket Concerto features Brad Balliett on bassoon, backed by a very interesting instrumentation of flute, harp, piano, viola, and contrabass. The inspiration for this pocket concerto idea came from Miller Theater and their three-year pocket concerto series from 2006-2009. Balliett approached Nina and Metropolis with this “miniature" concerto idea for his Resident Artist project featuring the bassoon and everyone was into it — this 21st century idea of the concerto (typically for solo instrument and large or chamber orchestra) is both quite innovative and economical in the sense that its smaller footprint will be easier to program and arrange future performances.

Young spent her undergrad at MIT where she studied Engineering, which naturally has had a strong influence on her music. When Nina first starting composing this piece, she began by improvising with electronics and synths and then orchestrated the electronics line. According to Young, orchestration is one of the most important parts of her compositional process, and indeed there is a distinct set of wide-ranging colors between the flute, viola, bassoon, harp, and double bass. Young mentions, “Every instrument has its own natural resonant and filtering characteristics – when you begin to combine these different effects, an infinite world of sound possibilities are at your disposal – that’s where the real fun begins.” This is going to be such an exciting piece!

Could you go into more detail about how your work in electronics plays a roll in a purely acoustic work like this?

I think my working methods for writing acoustic, electronic, and mixed music are very similar. The process is always concerned with the sculpting of sound and the creation of an auditory experience that is constantly leading the listener into new sonic areas. When I am writing for purely acoustic combinations of instruments, like in this Bassoon Pocket Concerto, I try to employ methods of working that are influenced by electronic studio production techniques. I’ll often start pieces by improvising on my laptop with recordings and different synths which I’ll then process until I find that particular sonic “seed”. This will get woven with sound experiments using my voice, the piano, or violin (my instrument). Eventually I’ll start to write things down, in full score. For me, orchestration is an integral and often primary element of the compositional process. I find the art of orchestration to be akin to working in an electronic production environment in which I am always aware of balancing the horizontal frequency spectrum. Every instrument has its own natural resonant and filtering characteristics – when you begin to combine these different effects, an infinite world of sound possibilities are at your disposal – that’s where the real fun begins.

What challenges exist (or what's interesting) about writing a work that features the bassoon in a chamber setting?

The trickiest part of this piece was to make sure that the bassoon retained its concerto role as a solo instrument, despite the fact that it is essentially a piece of chamber music. With such a limited number of musicians (and as a fan of textural heterophony), I was inclined to give the other instruments soloistic parts that wove in and out of the bassoon’s lines. I constantly had to keep myself in check to never to overshadow the bassoon. My solution was to give the bassoon many flourishing lines that would begin as an integrated part of the chamber music and then blossom into a solo force.

You chose such an interesting instrumentation - solo bassoon, flute, harp, piano, viola, contrabass - what drove you to this decision?

Brad Balliett approached me with this Pocket Concerto project back in the summer of 2014. He was looking for ways to expand the concerto repertoire for the bassoon and to make the possibilities for future performances more logistically economical. I think he was intrigued by the Debussy Sonata for flute, viola, and harp (1915), and probably wanted to figure out a way to get himself involved in that sound world. I wanted to balance the instrumentation out a bit in the lower register, so I asked him if I could include his brother Doug (who plays the bass) in the project. Luckily, he agreed!

Could you talk about the extended techniques you used for bassoon and all the instruments in this pocket work?

This piece is a little more conservative in my utilization of extended techniques than some of the rest of my catalog. I am a string player, and despite having a few sessions with Brad, I still don’t feel completely at ease with the bassoon. Brad and I had a couple of sessions where he showed me different, unconventional possibilities that the instrument has to offer. However, I wrote most of the piece while traveling in Aspen and in Rome, so without Brad by my side to repeatedly ask, “Does this work? How does this sound?, etc.”, I felt the need to come up with a different solution to create a unique sound world. One of the things that Brad pointed out during our sessions is the distinct character of the instrument in different registers. He told me about several really successful pieces that involved a lot of leaps to expand the timbre. This is certainly something that I employed in the pocket concerto. I also wrote a lot of fast repeated notes and runs: these give the impression of more complex sounds emanating from the bassoon. While there are hardly any multiphonics in the piece (the exception is one in the flute), my vertical combination of the instruments and conception of harmony in the piece tries to orchestrate a type of “tutti” multiphonic, at times. The other players use extended techniques that are pretty common in my music: harmonics and glissandi to bend into a more microtonal sound world, as well as different string bow placement techniques (sul ponticello, sul tasto).

What inspired you to write this piece? What/Who inspires you to compose?

A lot of my pieces are inspired by extra-musical concepts: memories, text, scientific ideas, processes, narratives, etc. This work, however, was totally inspired by Brad. I met him in Paris in 2008 and was enamored by his musical abilities, unique speech, and his general mannerisms. Maybe he was my extra-musical concept? ☺☺▪This piece is a concerto, for Brad, so when I was writing it, I had him at the forefront of my mind the whole time. I kept creating mental images of him performing the musical lines (focusing not only the sound, but also on the visual persona he would embody when playing a concerto). While I do write projects for groups that I don’t know in a personal way, I think it’s a great deal of fun to write music for your friends, especially when they are extremely talented. You have a better awareness of who they are, what they like, and how they react – this definitely seeps into the creative process.

You have a very unique voice/style, how would you define it?

Well, that’s a tough and loaded question, one that I may prefer to leave to the listeners, critics, and musicologists! I definitely have a set of sonic and artistic guidelines that I am drawn to, but I’m also aware that these elements are constantly in flux, and I embrace that. I have a varied musical heritage that draws equally from elements of the classical canon, modernism, spectralism, American experimentalism, minimalism, rock, and electronic music. You can probably find hints of all of these in my work. At the end of the day, I am enraptured by the combination of sound, texture, and harmony as one entity. I also really focus on the art of listening – I can only hope that comes across in my music.