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Courtesy of the Mizzou International Composers Festival
Zhou Long
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Photograph by Matthew Murphy
Nico Muhly
This week, two world-class composers are shepherding eight newer ones through the process of producing original works at the fifth annual Mizzou International Composers Festival. Capping off the week of intense instruction and seminars will be a performance of the eight new pieces by Alarm Will Sound, an internationally heralded 20-piece ensemble.
The University of Missouri School of Music sought applications from composers around the world, winnowing the 215 applicants down to a pool of eight, who come from as far away as Australia and as close as Columbia. Those eight resident composers have been working on new pieces for months leading up to for the festival, and this week has included rehearsal with and coaching from guest composers Zhou Long and Nico Muhly, as well as with Alarm Will Sound.
“My goal is to be as useful as I can. I think that’s kind of a fun attitude to have,” Muhly said by phone from New York. “Various things might happen.”
Muhly has composed classical orchestral works and operas as well as collaborating with Bjork, Philip Glass, Grizzly Bear and Bonnie “Prince” Billy. He said that in his training, which included getting a master’s degree in music at The Julliard School, he never encountered a program quite like the MICF.
“I’m so glad this exists,” he said. “Having your piece given a serious rehearsal is an amazing experience. You learn a lot as a composer about the process of how your music gets put together, about the difficulties in your music that you yourself may not have seen.”
While composers working today have the advantage of sophisticated computer programs to hear music as they write it, Muhly said nothing can stand in for having actual musicians play a piece.
“If human beings are going to get involved at some point, you may as well get them involved as early as you can,” he said. Muhly notes that many of the musicians in Alarm Will Sound are composers themselves, which adds to the usefulness of having them rehearse and play the pieces.
Zhou Long is the Distinguished Professor of Music at the University of Missouri-Kansas City Conservatory of Music and Dance. His beginnings as a musician in China were interrupted by years on a state-run farm during the Cultural Revolution. In 2011, he won the Pulitzer Prize for music for his opera, Madame White Snake.
“I’m very excited to work with these young composers, to give them some comments,” Zhou said by phone from New York. “I think this is very helpful for young composers. This is a very rare opportunity for young composers, working with Alarm Will Sound, an excellent contemporary ensemble.”
Zhou says he came to teaching relatively late in life, in his late 40s, after working as a composer in New York for years. The MICF, he said, is an opportunity for students as well as for him.
“I can not only teach them, but I can refresh myself. They have fresh ideas and imagination. For composers, imagination is the most important inspiration,” Zhou said.
At the penultimate concert of the festival, Alarm Will Sound will perform Muhly’s 2007 composition, “Seeing is Believing,” a piece inspired by a six-string violin. The sound of the instrument reminded Muhly of the space-age educational films from his ’80s youth, he said. The group will also perform Zhou’s 2006 piece, “Bell Drum Towers,” which is his imaginary exploration of how the towers in his home city of Beijing, silent since the end of the Qing dynasty, might sound.
Zhou and Muhly are making presentations that are free and open to the public, as are two of Alarm Will Sound’s rehearsals. Thursday evening, Alarm Will Sound plays a ticketed concert including the works from Zhou and Muhly, and Saturday will be the world premiere of the resident composers’ works.
For a complete schedule and ticketing information, visit composersfestival.missouri.edu.
