On Walls (2018)

“On Walls” is a set of four movements, each inspired by a different piece of street art.

A few years ago, I started exploring the work of street painters across the globe. What began as a fascination with artists like Seth GlobePainter and Banksy quickly widened in scope to include the boundless history of street art, including not just publicly-sanctioned muralists but graffiti, guerrilla art and vandalism.

I was never interested in being a street artist of any kind — I’m a terrible visual artist and an even worse rule-breaker. Rather, my fascination was guided by how the form’s features contrast with that of my own discipline. In many ways, street art and graffiti are the diametric opposites of classical music: anyone with a spray can and a bit of a bold streak can be a graffiti artist, and the product is instantly visible by everyone within eyeshot. Graffiti lacks the barriers to entry and participation that I find so frustrating about classical music. And yet, before just a few years ago, it was taboo as an art form — even now, in a post-Banksy world, the word “graffiti” usually conjures up images of gang markings and other criminal and antisocial acts, not a serious artistic pursuit of communication or self-expression. 

But learning the history of art on walls taught me that even in its darkest corners, the medium is every bit as powerful as any other, more “respectable” mode of expression — just as able to express the profound and deep-set, and just as wide-reaching an impact and audience. The stories contained in these four inscriptions are brutal, vulnerable, and emotionally raw. And because their creators are anonymous, the stories they tell could (quite literally) be told by anyone. I find that endlessly inspiring: an art form with such memetic, infectious power — to educate, communicate, even kill — that can only be made by an artist with no face, or one with many faces. 

With “On Walls”, I wanted to engage with four different corners of this artform using my own artistic language. The four movements tackle their namesakes emotionally and musically, showing their inspiration in their structure, narrative, and the musical landscapes in which they live.

“On Walls” was written for my great friend (and one of my favorite sax players) Eddie Goodman. 

I. Kilroy Was Here

Kilroy — a bald, cartoonish character peering over a wall — appeared among American GI’s during World War II, usually accompanied by the caption ‘Kilroy Was Here’. Soldiers in Europe and Africa, mingling with other Allied troops, would scrawl Kilroy and his caption on city walls, inside bunkers and encampments, even on their own tanks. His exact origins are uncertain, but by the end of the war Kilroy was present in every theatre of the conflict and back in the United States. Kilroy’s memetic rise continued well into the 1950s.

II. quisquis amat

One of the earliest known graffiti is a Roman inscription on the House of the Silver Wedding in what was Pompeii. Like almost all ancient Roman graffiti, the author is unknown. The text is a bitter love poem, with violent imagery against the Venus, the Roman goddess of love — “if she can break my heart, why can’t I smash her head?” The first line of the short, heartbroken poem is “quisquis amat veniat,” which translates to, “anyone who loves, go to hell.”

III. 187

Street gangs around the world infamously use graffiti to communicate and to send crime-related messages in plain sight. In the United States, gangs will use ‘187’, juxtaposed with the name of an enemy, to direct members to kill that enemy on sight. ‘187’ is the California police code for homicide. 

IV. Did You Think It Was Over?

Street art gained legitmacy in London during the 1980s and 1990s with the work of, among others, Banksy and King Robbo. In the mid-2000s, Banksy painted a piece over the site of one of Robbo’s most iconic works, starting a bitter feud between the two artists. Before long, fans of Robbo’s work — the loosely-collected “Team Robbo” — began defacing Banksy works all over London. King Robbo sustained a head injury in 2011, which would lead to his death in 2014. After Robbo’s injury, Banksy tried making peace by restoring a tribute version of the Robbo work which started the feud. That didn’t stop Team Robbo — they continued to deface Banksy’s work all over London. The vandalism of “Fishing Boy” in Camden included a message: “Banksy // Did you think it was over? // Team Robbo”

Atacamenos (2017)

In the northern end of Chile, about 800 miles from Santiago, sits the Atacama Desert. This desert — the driest on the planet — isn’t well-known outside South America, and most who recognize its name might conjure a mental image of desolation, a lifeless expanse supporting little in the way of life. They wouldn’t be wrong: the Atacama is inhabited by very few animals, even fewer humans. For a few decades in the 20th century, the desert saw a boom of nitrate mining towns, but as technology moved past the need for nitrate those have largely been abandoned. The Atacama is a tapestry of ghost towns, dead zones, and the occasional lone creature seeking survival.

In my creative work, I often dance around the concept of loneliness. I remain ever fascinated by the natural and historic offerings of Chile, where my mother was born. The Atacama is a touchstone for both — treasured by Chileans even in its bleakness, and the setting for a thousand meditations on loneliness through landform, creature, and the desert itself. For some of the Atacama’s few denizens, loneliness is a curse: it means a work of art without a viewer, a ghost town without a guardian from vandals, a lone man without a community. But many others experience not a curse but a blessing: not loneliness, but solitude. Intrinsic in the solitary nature of desert life is freedom, independence, and uniqueness. Only in the Atacama can you find a phenomenon like the desierto florido, or a creature like the culpeo. It is this solitude that shapes the paradoxical life of the desert, at once lonely and free, desolate and colorful.

I have wanted to write about the Atacama for years, but never found the right project — until my dear friend Sophia Han asked me for a violin solo. A soloist is lonely, yet strong and intimate in her solitude. The violin demands an unparalleled focus and vulnerability from its performer, as if the two are in private dialogue with one another. Any violin solo is a study in loneliness — what a fitting medium to give voice to figures of an arid desert, themselves lessons in isolation.

Atacameños is a quartet of portraits from the Atacama desert. The work is dedicated to Sophia Han.

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Dead Cowboys

Every once in a while, I compose music for electronics which uses as its source American field recordings. These can include folk songs, narratives, or “found” sounds from somewhere in American life. I use these sources as beginning points, entering into a free dialogue with them and the stories they tell about what it means — and has meant — to be an American and to be an American artist. These pieces are loosely organized into an ongoing project which I call Dead Cowboys.

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Step Inside (2016)

Step Inside is a fantasia on the work of French street artist Julien Malland, a.k.a. “Seth GlobePainter.” In his work, Malland (or “Seth”) creates images of young people gazing, stepping, or diving into surreal fields of color and imaginary (sometimes horrifying) creatures. The sprawling murals can take up a city block or the face of a building. Seth’s work combines childlike innocence and playfulness with a surrealist sensibility inherited from the likes of Dali and Braque; however, the viewer encounters it not in a manicured art gallery, but on the streets of their city. The harmony he achieves with these elements is like no other artistic work I’ve ever seen.

I hesitate to say that Step Inside is a narration of the experience of Seth’s viewers, or his characters, or even the artist himself. The piece was inspired by imagining the experience of one of Seth’s subjects “stepping inside” his colorful otherworlds; but as I composed, visualizing their emotions of excitement and curiosity (and maybe a bit of fear), they began to feel universally resonant. In a way, we “step inside” a similarly alien realm whenever we listen to a new piece, read a new book, visit a new place. We unlock new worlds by revealing our true selves to friends or strangers; we perceive the chimerical nature of the unknown in experiencing anything for the first time. In my own life, every morning’s act of sitting down at the writing desk is a leap into new worlds which may inspire, intimidate, bore, or even destroy. The very act of composing is an act of stepping inside.

So, Step Inside might be an attempt to capture all of these elements and the cartoonish, fantastical quality that defines Seth’s work. The music could be said to reflect the realm of the imagination, so beautifully represented in these paintings. It could also be said to portray the realm of reality: perhaps a pair of street musicians, playing rhythmic and improvisatory music on a corner near a GlobePainter mural. Or it could just be a musical journey through the real and imagined experience of the new: the moments of uncertainty and temptation, the sense of danger, and the tense breath before finally summoning courage and taking the first step.

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Two Orchids (2015)

In my creative work, I continually return to the concept of “place”: the intangible sense of belonging we feel in a city, a home, a room. Certainly this fascination is born, in part, from my own sensitivity to place and its effect on my emotions and art; but I also find myself drawn to the concept’s universal nature. Regardless of our differences, we all connect emotionally and truly with locations in our lives, with seemingly arbitrary points on a map which provide the setting for moments and feelings we treasure and crave, even (or especially) when we are in far distant places ourselves. Whether we share them with others or with no one, we all have spots where we feel most centered… where we feel most in place.

In 2013, my wife and stepson left our former home of Denver, Colorado to join me on a new adventure in Ann Arbor, and we began the slow process of finding ourselves and our lives anew. One of the first additions to make our new surroundings more colorful was a small orchid. Orchids are my wife’s favorite flower, and she had decorated her Denver apartment with one just like the one we found in Ann Arbor. That single, delicate flower became an anchor: a connection to the beloved place we had left behind. Seeing the orchid reminded me of our place in Denver — not just the beauty of the landscape and the city, but the friends and memories we’d left behind, and the journeys we’d taken in that place. These memories helped our new surroundings to feel more like home, helped to rekindle our sense of belonging where we were. The orchid was a souvenir. It was a story. It was a connection to our place.

Two Orchids is a free exploration of the emotional journey of changing place. Throughout, the core material is refracted and misty, seeking an orientation and direction which changes with each new gesture. Small sonic memories drift in and out of the texture, and flashes of my own musical memories (Bill Evans and Aaron Copland, among others) take over the music and guide the emotional journey. The work is structured around two dramatic, quintuplet-driven sections: the “orchids”. The two sections are similar, melodically and harmonically; the second clearly recalls the first, and although the journey through memories and instabilities has left it changed, the two orchids connect what has passed to what is present, each lending the other more meaning than they could have alone. It is in this connection that the work ultimately finds its own sense of place.

Two Orchids was commissioned by Kellan Toohey.

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The Way Through the Woods (2013)

The Way Through the Woods, commissioned by Alex Carter, began as a simple acoustic piece for narrator and trumpet. Specifically, it was a piece to feature my wife, Jodi — a poet and a gifted orator. The solo trumpet is a classic American sound, and early drafts of the piece drew heavily on the great American works for trumpet: Kennan, Stevens, Copland. Inspired by the woods behind my Ann Arbor apartment, which are brimming with life in the fall, I began sketching a nostalgic tune which paints Rudyard Kipling’s woods as lively and reclaimed by nature.

Everything changed in the winter.

A string of personal struggles coincided with one of Michigan’s coldest winters on record. The forest behind my house took on an alien energy: not the dormant freeze which usually accompanies winter, but something more permanent. It was as if the forest were dead, and would never be living again. I felt the cold of that winter inside and out, and in reading and rereading Kipling’s poem discovered a new perspective. I began instead drawing plans for a piece whose forest is eerily, heartbreakingly vacant, save for the memories of those — human and animal — who may have once inhabited it. Soon the piece became one for trumpet and electronics, which place the narrator in the space more readily than an acoustic stage performance ever could.

Jodi provided the electronics part’s narration and singing drones. Other sounds were collected live or from open sources. The trumpet part was written when I finally decided to discard my Americana sketches and simply record myself improvising with the electronics. The Way Through the Woods was premiered by Alex Carter in May 2014.

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All Roads Lead Two Ways (2012)

Life could be, and often is, likened to a road. The human experience is one of walking at a fixed, invariable pace, down an unmapped highway whose twists and turns we don’t know and can’t foresee. The sights we see, the other travelers we may encounter: all are unpredictable, and are perhaps the greatest joy of walking the road. This metaphor is virtually omnipresent in our lives, from philosophers and poetry to car commercials: life is a road, a highway, a trail. But seldom mentioned in these commercial metaphors is the downside to our forward motion: ephemerality. There is only one route on the road: forward, towards the new and the unknown. The terrain behind us, no matter how precious, is a forgotten relic, necessarily discarded so that we may see the road ahead.

But all roads, by their very nature, lead two ways. A traveler on a physical road changes its direction simply by turning around and walking the other way. Maybe, by doing so, he gains a new perspective on, or admiration of the scenery he had left behind. In life, perhaps the other way down the road is memory; our ability to recall and relive may grant us the ability to turn around and glimpse our past. It can bring back past joys, resurrect lost friends, and revive forgotten love; but only for a second, for time and distance blur the terrain into nothingness, and we move ever forward.

All Roads Lead Two Ways is about memory; but it is not about memory as we are forced to experience it. In this piece, I envision a kinder version of memory: a version with no decay and no loss, where time cannot strip away memories which we hold dear. I envision a world where revisiting one’s past – reliving a precious moment, even one separated from us by years – is simply a matter of turning and walking back down the road.

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27 (2012)

Brian Jones, guitarist and songwriter, born 1942, died 1969 by drowning in his swimming pool.

Jimi Hendrix, guitarist and composer, born 1942, died 1970, of causes related to an overdose of sleeping pills.

Janis Joplin, singer and songwriter, born 1943, died 1970 of a heroin overdose, possibly also under the influence of alcohol.

Jim Morrison, singer and songwriter, born 1943, died 1971. Cause unknown, but a suspected drug overdose.

Kurt Cobain, singer, guitarist and songwriter, born 1967, died 1994, presumably of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Jeremy Michael Ward, guitarist and sound artist, born 1976, died 2003 of a heroin overdose.

Amy Winehouse, singer and songwriter, born 1983, died 2011 of alcohol related causes.

At the time of their deaths, all were 27.

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Blood on the Curb (2011)

I have long had a fascination with our mass media and the ways in which it a!ects our society. In particular, I’m intrigued by the perverse relationship America and its denizens have with violence and carnage. We deplore it, we denounce it – yet in our media and in our culture we celebrate it with a zealous, almost pornographic fervor. I challenged myself to write a piece for soloist that pays a sort of ironic tribute to our violence fetish. The result was Blood on the Curb, a work that is aggressive and primal almost to the threshold of artlessness. As inspiration for the title, I chose the angriest, most violent image I could conjure: a “curb stomp,” the infamous, oft-fictionalized act of making an unconscious victim “bite” a street curb and stomping on their head. I imagine the act of a curb stomp, the vicious, brutal dance beforehand, and an aftermath where the reaction is not one of horror, but a manic, possessed glee.