RESPIRO E MOVIMENTO®

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COMPOSER

Interview: Marcus Paus, Composer

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Marcus Paus

What are the special challenges/pleasures of working with particular musicians, singers, ensembles and orchestras?

What’s great about working closely with an ensemble or a performer, is that you get to know each other, and can play to each other’s strengths. Just as individual instruments will suggest how and what to write for them, so, too, can a particular performer inform the material. Many of my works are in fact portraits of the musicians they were written for. The better you know someone, the better you can write for them.

But sometimes you get so specialized, so idiomatic, that you might end up writing a piece that can only ever really be performed by one person. I suspect that much of the music I have written for Norwegian saxophonist Rolf-Erik Nystrøm will suffer this fate.

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Interview: Mihail Doman, Composer & Pianist

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Mihail Doman

How do you work? (as a composer)

I first create the theme on the piano. For Arhythmology it was a very basic motif in Em, which you can hear all-through-out the album. And then I build the songs around the theme and around some variations. After that, I create a rough draft of the song in my music program, so I have something to prepare the strings to. Then comes the sound design part – probably the best part. I use a lot of virtual synths. I usually like to do my own sounds, so a lot of times I start with an empty sound, like just a basic Sine or Saw wave.

Next is the string orchestra. Hopefuly on the next albums I’ll be able to use a live orchestra, but for now it was Native Instruments’ Session Strings, along with a really old East West Quantum Leap Library that I had lying around, to give it a bigger size ?Programming the strings is a super tedious work, because you basically have to write every note manually for every individual voice. And afterwards you have to tweak the velocity and the sample sounds until you have something that sounds natural.

As you can see, my process involves a lot of computer work, my music being very electronic as well. Using good old pen and paper certainly has its charm, but for my music I must go to the digital realm.

What do you consider to be the most important ideas and concepts to impart to aspiring musicians?

There is no such thing as talent. There is only work, work and work.

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Interview: Mark Darvill Evans, Composer

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Mark Darvill Evans

What have been the greatest challenges/frustrations of your career so far?

It is worrying that the whole industry is going the way of modern mass-produced popular music, where experimentation and variety are being replaced with a narrowing range of expression. There is clearly room for both, but in an era of computer algorithms it makes mainstream listening very constricted.

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Interview: Andrew Constantine, Composer

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Andrew Constantine

How exactly do you communicate your ideas about a work to the orchestra?

I never enjoy hearing people talk too much about music, other than in the most general of terms. I find it a largely pointless exercise that detracts from the players’ capacity to use their own imaginations. If I can convey a telling visual image or emotional idea as succinctly as possible I think that is the way to do it. And then of course, there’s what you do with your hands. A great deal of it is intuitive but I shall be forever grateful to my teacher Ilya Musin for opening my eyes to the fundamental importance of meaningful gesture.

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Interview: Will Samson, Composer

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Will Samson

What have been the greatest challenges/frustrations of your career so far? 

The age old problem of working tremendously hard but earning a tiny amount of money as an “artist” is always a big issue. It’s absolutely no wonder to me why so many musicians suffer with severe anxiety issues because of this.

Money is persistent source of genuine worry for many musicians (including myself), but it’s always difficult to find a job in between that is flexible enough to allow space for touring or recording.

A lot of people don’t realise the huge amount of costs involved with touring, that the artists have to cover themselves. It’s not uncommon for bands to finish a tour with barely enough money left over to cover their month’s rent.

Luckily for me, I mostly play either solo or duo, so I don’t have particularly high touring costs (van hire, backline hire etc). Although, being a solo artist certainly has its downsides too. It can be a very bizarre and isolating feeling to return to an empty hotel room, having just deeply connected with a room full of 200 people shortly before. If there is a bad show or a brutal album review then it can be a heavy load to take alone.

It’s also becoming increasingly difficult to get any press for new albums. I know more and more artists who spend many months (or years) crafting an album, only for the release to totally slip under the radar. Not enough press then has a dramatic effect on agents’ abilities to book shows, which can be deeply disheartening when an artist wants to perform. I’ve certainly experienced that before.

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