Anthony Joseph Lanman

I just published a new page on this site that concerns commissioning new music, and have done it in a frequently asked questions style.  I’d love some feedback on this page from anyone out there on the appropriateness of the questions/answers, and also any questions that you think were not asked, or answered.

There were also some things I wanted to say, but left out, as I didn’t want the page to become a lecture - lol.  This would include things like, “Would a performance and/or recording of the piece be considered a commission?”.  This is passed off today by many as a real commission, and while I think that these things should be inherent in any commission, they should not be the commission.  I could go on and on about this issue, which is why I didn’t include it in the FAQ.  Perhaps I’ll write a future blog calling for composers to stop writing music for free and talk about it more in depth.

Anyway, if you have any thoughts, suggestions, concerns, etc on the new FAQ, please leave a comment, or just email me.  Thanks!

Kevin Puts

This is the second of my new series of blogs about composers that I respect, and who’s music I think is shaping the classical music of the 21st century. I’ll be doing this by telling you about how I discovered their music, and how they personally affected me in the beginning. I’ll be introducing you to some of their work, and pointing you to where you can find more, so you can discover them for yourselves.

I first met composer Kevin Puts in 1999, when he came to teach composition at the University of Texas in Austin.  I had heard people talking about this very young guy that was coming to teach there, and hearing of his impressive accomplishments.  When he first started there, he did a seminar for the students on his music and to introduce himself.  The first piece he played for us was an orchestral work, just recently premiered, called Exalted Virelai.  The piece, based on music of the medieval French composer Guilllaume de Machaut, immediately resonated with me.  I have always loved early music, and Kevin’s masterful incorporation of it with his own accessible tonal style and colorful orchestration just blew me away.  This was the piece that convinced me it was “ok” to use music of the past as inspiration for new music, and made my own alto flute concerto, Three Lamentations on the Death of John Dowland possible.

The other thing that fascinated me about Kevin was that he was just one year older than myself.  Here I was, just a lowly undergraduate just making my first sputtering starts in the classical music world, and here was this guy - my age - who was barreling full force with already huge accomplishments, amazing music, and a burgeoning major career.  Not to mention, the guy looks like a GQ model.  I thought, this guy has to be an arrogant ass - lol.  Oh, how incredibly wrong I was.

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I just stumbled across something so amazing, so surprising - I am totally and completely blown away by this.  Essentially, this guy scoured You Tube for videos of musicians and singers playing/singing solo.  He then mixed and spliced together various videos to create a new song.  The process is amazing, and the songs themselves are so - damn - good.

This is something completely of our own time - something that is only possible right now.  I’m amazed by this - I can’t say that enough.  Here is the first video I saw - I’ll embed that in this post - after, I’ll post the link to hear all of his songs that he’s created - and they’re all great - I would highly recommend watching them all.

http://thru-you.com/#/videos/3/

Today is the 7th anniversary of my friend Mandy Morris’ death. In rememberance, I thought I would post the audio to my piece that I wrote to honor her memory, the Hommage a Mandy Morris, and also the piece by Mandy that inspired it.

After her death, Mandy’s mom, Sherry Morris-Imhoff, gave me a CD of ten pop songs that Mandy had written and recorded on her little mini-disc recorder. The sixth one was just an unfinished song that I really latched onto, and used as the base material for my piece. I never knew the title of any of her songs, because she never showed the songs to anyone while she was alive, so I just dubbed it Pop Song VI. Anyway, wherever Mandy is, she is missed.

AUDIO: MANDY MORRIS, POP SONG VI

AUDIO: ANTHONY JOSEPH LANMAN, HOMMAGE A MANDY MORRIS (KAORU YAMAMURA, PIANO)

11) DE STAAT - LOUIS ANDRIESSEN

I was first introduced to De Staat in the Spring of 2000, during my last semester at the University of Texas. My friend and fellow composer Rafael Hernandez and I would, at least once a week, listen to pieces of new music that we didn’t know, but felt like we should know. One week, Rafael chose De Staat by Dutch composer Louis (pronounced Louie) Andriessen. The only other thing of Andriessen’s I’d ever heard was a performance by Bang on a Can of his Hoketus, which I wasn’t into at all (and I’m still not). So, we sat down to listen.

I’m not sure why, but when I heard it for the first time at our little listening session, I violently rejected it. I hated it - plain and simple. I don’t know if it was just because it was something so different and so out of my experience at that time that my brain just wouldn’t take it in - lol - idk.

About a year later, during my first year at Indiana University, I was in the music library, and for some inexplicable reason, I decided to give the piece another shot. I checked out the CD and score, and sat down to listen to De Staat for the second time.

About 6 or 7 minutes in, my mouth was hanging open, and I was thinking “How could I have totally misjudged something so terribly.” It actually kind of disturbed me, and taught me a valuable lesson, which is when approaching something new, to try to drop all of your preconceived notions about what makes something “good” and try to be as open as possible. This is of course easier said than done, but I still try to live by this rule.

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6) BELA BARTOK - MUSIC FOR STRINGS, PERCUSSION AND CELESTA

After I graduated high school in 1991, I entered the University of Houston studying Communications, with a secret desire to study music. My first semester, I took one of my arts electives and signed up for a music class. It was kind of an informal music history class for non-music majors. By this time I was getting more and more interested in classical music, and I wanted to learn as much about it as I could. I was listening to the classics at home and even reading music history texts for “fun” - lol. I was also starting to teach myself how to read and write music at this time.

During the first day of class - the FIRST DAY - the professor played us the 4th movement of Bartok’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta. I never expected to hear anything like this on the first day of class. I think this was the first piece of classical music written in the 20th century that I ever heard. I was totally and completely blown away by it. It had everything I loved about music at that time - the power and intensity of the metal, the depth and complexity of prog, and so, so much more. It kind of opened my eyes to what was possible and set me on the path to becoming a composer. This was definitely a big one for me.

AUDIO: MUSIC FOR STRINGS, PERCUSSION AND CELESTA, IV.

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There’s been a “note” going around Facebook for a few months now that contains the following tag line:

“Think of 15 albums, CDs, LPs that had such a profound effect on you they changed your life. Dig into your soul. Music that brought you to life when you heard it. Literally socked you in the gut. Then when you finish, tag 15 others (or more!), including moi. Make sure you copy and paste this part so they know the drill.”

I thought instead of doing it as a Facebook note, I would do it as a more extensive blog. As with many of my other musician friends that have done this on Facebook, I feel the need to add the disclaimer that I found it near impossible to narrow the list down to a mere 15, so many fine albums have been left out, but the thing is to present 15, so I have. I have also done my best to put these in some kind of auto-biographical order.

1) VAN HALEN - 1984

Van Halen’s 1984 was absolutely the first album to make a real musical impact on me. I was 11 years old when the album was released, and I still remember seeing the record at Sears, where my father worked at the time.

Everyone was of course in love with this album at the time - it was beyond huge. For me though, I was just captivated by Eddie Van Halen’s guitar playing. I also clearly remember listening to the tape on my Walkman in my Dad’s chair at home one afternoon, and Hot for Teacher came on. I remember listening to Eddie’s opening solo, and thinking to myself, “I want to be able to play that.” It was in that moment that I decided to learn how to play the guitar.

AUDIO - HOT FOR TEACHER:

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