S4E02: Sexuality in Song: Composer Nathan Hall’s Choral & Vocal Works
Photo credit: Lewis Neeff
Today on In Unison we’re chatting with composer and friend Nathan Hall about his choral works, and how he weaves themes of nature, sexuality, and intimacy (among others) into his work. We’ll also share three movements of Nathan’s piece, “Go Ahead,” recently recorded by IOCSF, as well as discussing his latest premiere: “Unbound,” a kink opera.
And now a word from our hosts!
Edited by Fausto Daos
Music excerpts
“I Am In Love With The World”, by Nathan Hall, performed by New Wave Singers of Baltimore MD
“Tame Your Man,” by Nathan Hall, performed by Tenth Intervention Ensemble
“Last Rose of Summer,” by Nathan Hall, performed by Solis Singers
“Go Ahead: I. Virginia Beach (Live),” by Nathan Hall, performed by IOCSF
“Go Ahead: II. Go Ahead (Live),” by Nathan Hall, performed by IOCSF
“Go Ahead: V. Free (Live),” by Nathan Hall, performed by IOCSF
Episode references
“Tame Your Man” video excerpt
Theme Song: Mr. Puffy by Avi Bortnik, arr. by Paul Kim. Performed by Dynamic
Episode Transcript
Intro [00:00:07] Hello! And welcome to In Unison, the podcast about new choral music and the conductors, composers and choristers who create it. We are your hosts: I am Zane Fiala, Artistic Director of the International Orange Chorale of San Francisco, and I'm Giacomo DiGrigoli, a tenor in IOCSF, the Golden Gate Men's Chorus and the San Francisco Symphony Chorus. And this is in unison. (I like being in unison!)
Zane [00:00:34] Hey, everyone! Before we kick off this week's episode of In Unison, just a quick reminder to help support season four of the In Unison podcast. Your support allows us to continue creating great new content like the interviews you're hearing today, as well as the promotion of new choral music and the composers, conductors and choristers around the world who create it. Go to "in unison podcast dot com slash donate" to support your favorite choir nerds today!
Zane [00:01:01] Today on In Unison, we're chatting with composer and friend Nathan Hall about his choral works and how he weaves themes of nature, sexuality and intimacy, among others, into his work. We'll also share three movements of Nathan's piece, "Go Ahead", recently recorded by IOCSF, as well as discussing his latest premiere, "Unbound", a kink opera. Let's kick off today's episode with the titular movement of "Go Ahead", recorded live by the International Orange Chorale of San Francisco and featured on their new album, "Hope in Times of Disquiet". [00:01:37] [Music excerpt: loud declamations from the choir implore the listener to "go ahead" and be almost heedless in singing a song or gathering daffodils, even if it's raining. The daffodils, being the first blooms of spring, are a powerful symbol of rebirth and hope.]
Zane [00:03:17] All right, joining us today on In Unison is Denver-based composer Nathan Hall. Nathan's music spans a broad array of ensembles, as well as performance spaces, from traditional classical pieces for chamber ensembles to experimental electronic pieces, sound sculptures and multimedia projects. Nathan's works have been performed and exhibited in 14 countries and 12 U.S. states by a tremendously diverse number of ensembles, including IOCSF. Nathan is a former Fulbright Fellow to Iceland and a McKnight Visiting Composer. He earned his DMA from CU Boulder, his master's from Carnegie Mellon and his bachelor's from Vassar College. And he's been awarded numerous grants, including a new music USA Grant and the McKnight Visiting Composer Fellowship. His residencies include Mattress Factory, Denver Art Museum's first Creative in Residence, Acadia National Park and Boulder Public Library Maker in Residence. Nathan has taught both music composition and performance media at CU Boulder and is currently adjunct faculty in composition at the University of Denver. He is also board president of Playground Ensemble, a new music group in residence at Metro State University of Denver. Nathan, thank you so much for joining us today. We are really excited to chat with you!
Nathan [00:04:39] Thank you so much for having me.
Giacomo [00:04:41] Nathan, as a means to start, we wanted to let our audience get to know you a little bit better, as we normally do with an icebreaker. So here's a question for you: if you could live in one fictional universe, what would it be?
Nathan [00:04:56] Well, I... I really love sort of magical realism, so I would probably live in, like a Roald Dahl type universe.
Giacomo [00:05:07] Hmm...
Nathan [00:05:09] I love his, like, quixotic, kind of children's characters. I love the kind of hopefulness that his books have. Um... Yeah, something that's kind of... a little maybe unsettling, but magical and has this kind of positive spin at the end [laughs].
Giacomo [00:05:32] I love that! Like a little bit of Willy Wonka, a little bit of some of his darker, short stories, but all that tinge of hope. That's great!
Nathan [00:05:39] Yes, exactly.
Giacomo [00:05:40] That, I think probably sheds a little bit of light on quite a bit of the themes within your work as well, which for those who don't know Nathan's work, you should immediately check them out and you can check them out on our album. You can check them out online. You're on YouTube and a bunch of different places. But thematically, you use music as an artistic medium to explore a variety of fields: your science, nature, fine arts, history, sexuality. You do a lot of site-specific work which is tied to your passions for travel and cultural exchange. And other works that you've done are inspired by your sexuality and your experience as a gay man, creating special intimacy between performer, place and audience. And a lot of your works, talking about some of the themes, are around the ideas of trust and intimacy. It feels like there's a, there's a thread through a lot of your different works that is this sort of close personal trust between people and intimacy. Tell us a little bit about how you define trust and how you sort of express that musically between singers or between musicians.
Nathan [00:06:41] It's a really good question and one I've actually never been asked before. I keep bringing up the idea of trust in music. I think I'm still working toward finding the words for it by making work about it, in a way. I think there's something... there's something about being a classical, classically trained musician and making works for, you know, quote unquote, "classical musicians" that that we forget a lot about the kind of suspension of the world that we're in where we have to think very intently about, like, "what tempo are we in? Who else is performing? We're actively listening. We're making sounds ourselves. We're sort of in this communal thing together, but we're also trying to put our part in it." And I think that together that means that there has to be a lot of trust involved and something I don't think we talk a lot about in music. We trust our conductor to sort of lead us in a personal expression of a piece where we trust our duo partner to come in when they're supposed to so that we could respond musically. And there's this give and take. And once you do trust somebody or you build that trust, then the music just keeps getting better and better.
Giacomo [00:08:07] I definitely feel that when we perform as well, sort of as a choir, as your... You develop that sense of trust with the director, with other members of the group, you trust that people will come in on to, you know, at tempos and cut offs and things like that, that we will all do the thing that we said we will do because we're all doing it together and it's only as good as our ability to do it together. But I want to talk a little bit more also about the idea of intimacy, because, you know, lots of folks who come in and sing in a choir, we don't necessarily know each other or have familiarity with each other. And yet the process of creating music creates a sense of intimacy between people. What do you think it is about that environment that sort of lends itself? Or is it something about artists or. You know, I've always sort of felt that way and I wonder if you feel that way as well.
Nathan [00:08:54] I think intimacy is sort of a strange feeling because it's, it's very subjective. One person can feel really connected to an experience. You can feel like in, you know, you're in the moment, you're like living for this music right now. And then another person could just be like, "Well, I didn't really feel like I was doing my best" or like, you know, "I saw someone in the audience and they kind of freaked me out" or whatever. So it is a little subjective. But I think when things are going well for most people, there is this sense of like... It's like a relationship in a way that you spend all this time with your fellow musicians, you kind of build friendships real and professional, and then you make this work that is, is very abstract. You know, it's not just our normal communication with people, it's like making this art form and maybe not everyone's gonna understand it. But together, you're sort of in this thing together, being vulnerable.
Nathan [00:10:04] You're sometimes doing.... A lot of my works, for example, go into slightly more provocative places, pieces of my work, talk about sexuality, or they might use language that could be challenging. Or maybe they're taking place in a site that can be challenging outdoors or in a parking garage. And there's kind of this level of additional, what would you call it, like a world pressure or a challenge that's put on the musicians and together, that in a weird way, it sort of makes musicians glue together more because you're like, "All right! We're doing this. We're in it, like, we trust each other. We're this kind of unit." And I love that. I think that's when really the magic of it happens.
Giacomo [00:10:55] What do you think about sort of the question of the audience as well and breaking down that fourth wall? Because you'll very often see someone say something like "an intimate evening with so-and-so" and, you know, and then it'll be like, you know... Usually, it implies things like there are very few people or, you know, it's a small audience or things like that. And the audience is, I think, typically love that when they feel they're very connected to the composer or to the performers. Do you... do you think of intimacy differently when it's the relationship between performers and audience?
Nathan [00:11:26] I think first about the intimacy between my performers, I think. Because it's sort of like as the composer, I want to take care of them. I want to make sure that they're safe and feeling like they've... Like, they can do a good job, they can be successful, and then I kind of think about, "OK, what is the audience's experience of this and how can that be part of the complete package?" And the thing that makes me laugh is I think a lot about when people talk about an intimate evening, they almost think about audience participation in a way. And I, like, really try to draw a line between, like immersive things and participatory things, because actually audience participation freaks me out.
Giacomo [00:12:16] I agree! [laughter].
Nathan [00:12:17] Like, I do not want to be called on... Unless it's something very minimal, like clap with everyone on a beat or something. I don't really want to be called out to do something, but if I'm feeling like I've gone into this space and I know kind of what my expectations are for intimacy or what the show is gonna be about, or I'm gonna hear or see something that's challenging or I'm going to maybe even hear music I'm not used to, and that could be difficult or I don't understand the composer's viewpoint or something, I'm at least given a little bit of preparation so that I can feel like, "All right! I'm open to this idea, and I probably won't have to, like, jump up and down or be called out by anybody or I could sort of sit or stand." And I know what to expect.
Zane [00:13:12] Let's take a minute to listen to another movement of Nathan's piece, "Go Ahead", which reflects on the internal courage of intimacy. Here's movement five, "Free". [00:13:25] [Music excerpt: a choir sings and expresses a feeling of almost wonderment at what is possible by daring to be joyful, to be free and daring one's own soul.]
Zane [00:15:36] You know, while we're while we're talking about intimacy, something that just struck me is, you know, when we first got on this Zoom call just a minute ago, I looked at the screen and I saw you for the first time and we had a brief conversation about the fact that, you know, three years ago we, my choir prepped and performed some of your music. And then recently I took that music and mastered it and we put it on a CD. And yet, I had never, until today, had the chance to meet you, to look you in the eyes, to hear your voice, to talk to you. And so, I'm wondering two things. One, how often do you as a composer get the opportunity to, one, meet the conductor of the choir that is going to be singing your music or the ensemble is going to be performing it? And two, how often do you get to meet the singers or the actual members of the ensemble? And therefore, how does that hinder the intimacy that you can experience with the musicians who end up bringing your music to life?
Nathan [00:16:41] Yeah, it's a really good thing to explore that. That idea of how much could even my music be like specifically tailored for a group or that we've had these conversations so that that this work is really special to an ensemble or a group. Um, I... I would say, more often than not, I get the pleasure of meeting the directors of things. I meet a few singers usually, or a few instrumentalists. Thankfully... Or I guess, by the nature of my work, so much is project specific and site specific that I end up then having sort of a mini residency with a lot of projects. So, I get to see what are... what are these people's strengths? What's the strength of the venue or the area? Like, what's important culturally in the neighborhood? Like, could all of that kind of come into play with how I interact with the group? And I want people to know me then, too, so that they feel like it's a real person who's written that music and who has feelings they want to convey and that I'm hopefully not that intimidating and approachable and even though my ideas might be kind of out there sometimes and avant garde or conceptual or, you know, seemingly out of the blue, that actually there's a lot of, like, relevance and meaning and emotional depth to it. I think, I wish more composers had that chance to meet singers and meet groups. And now I make a kind of a point to try to say, you know, "I really want to schedule a day to come in where maybe we could just have a casual lunch somewhere. Or like if anyone wants to join me for coffee, I'll be here for this hour." Or... yeah, more than just sitting in on a rehearsal where it seems like it's me versus them.
Zane [00:18:44] Hmm... Yeah, you get more of a connection if you're in a more social atmosphere.
Nathan [00:18:51] Exactly!
Zane [00:18:51] What do you think... I think... I think that, you know, us becoming so used to meeting people this way over Zoom because of the pandemic and the whole last, you know, almost two years (Jeez!), that perhaps we might be giving the opportunity to meet our composers' more frequently. In fact, the International Orange Chorale, we start rehearsals next Sunday and we program the new piece by a composer based in Southern California named Dale Trumbore. And when I got the piece from her, she said, "And by the way, let me know when you want to have me sit in on a rehearsal via Zoom, because I'd like to do that and meet your singers and tell them my thoughts."
Zane [00:19:34] And I think that... I mean, you know, in the International Orange Chorale, we're very lucky in that we often have many composers in this choir, who are actual singers in the group, who write music for us. So, we know them intimately because they're members of our ensemble. But also we do a lot of Bay Area composers' work as well, so we get to meet them. But now, with the new advent of video conferencing being so successful, I think that we're going to get the chance to do this with composers all over the world. You know? And I think that's a great opportunity.
Nathan [00:20:07] Yeah, nothing, nothing quite beats the in person hang out, you know? But I think Zoom has really opened up a lot of avenues... Specifically, for composition! Like, it's been really hard for people to take voice lessons over Zoom, but for composition and being able to like, see people's expressions, you can share music with share screen. You can, you know... There's something that is a good middle ground I found.
Zane [00:20:39] Yeah.
Giacomo [00:20:40] We may develop something entirely new called a Zoom residency. I mean, you may not even have to be physically present.
Nathan [00:20:45] Hey...
Giacomo [00:20:45] Who knows?
Nathan [00:20:46] Exactly!
Giacomo [00:20:47] Ooh, there you go. You heard it here first.
Zane [00:20:48] We're going to stamp our copyright on that. Thank you, everybody!
Giacomo [00:20:51] [laughter] I'm sure someone said it before [laughter from Zane]. Your uh... Nathan, your works also touch a lot upon sexuality, which is obviously a personal interest for me. What are some works that inspired you to explore this theme within your art?
Nathan [00:21:07] Ooh... Well, I'll start off by saying, when I first wrote my work, "Tame Your Man", which is a work for piano and bondage artist, I looked for other examples in repertoire that might give me some precedent, basically, and there's very few in the classical canon, quote unquote. So, a lot of my inspiration came from more like fine artists and performance artists. However, that being said, there are a few like classical pieces that at least gave me a sense of like, "Oh, I could do this successfully." I think about like Thomas Adès's "Powder Her Face" opera has the sort of salacious oral sex scene in it. I think some of David del Tredici's music deals with, like, fetish kink... not... It's a little less overt, but still there.
Nathan [00:22:22] But I looked a lot toward performance artists really like Ron Athey, queer performer in California, Laurie Anderson did a lot for me, just inspiring, taking up interesting space and having an identity that combined music and visuals in some way that I think is a lot about queer sexuality, you know, it's this combination of like "how do we outwardly present ourselves, how do we feel internally" as opposed to a more like cis-gendered existence, I guess, or non hetero existence? And how can that, like, manifest in music and visuals all tied together?
Nathan [00:23:12] Let's hear a bit of Nathan's first work dealing directly with his sexuality as a gay composer, exploring pleasure, surrender and trust through the power dynamics of the two main performers. The piece is a theatrical work composed for piano, rope bondage artist, narrator and electronics. So, definitely check out the video on our website. Here is "Tame Your Man" by Nathan Hall. [00:23:40] [Music excerpt: a man narrates over an electronic drone and atmospheric sounds, speaking of a new clarity and reality. A pianist interrupts this thought with a jaunty solo.]
Giacomo [00:28:57] One of the things we talk about a lot is how labels are sort of insufficient, right? I mean, even at the beginning of this conversation, when we talked about the idea of intimacy and trust, you'd sort of said, "Hey, you know, actually the words aren't that... I'm trying to create music and art that expresses it better." And it seems like, you know, this is another area where the expression of the full range of human sexuality would be... Is far more interesting through art than it is through labels anywhere.
Nathan [00:29:24] Yeah, I just, I just had a conversation that I tried to talk about, like, is there anything in music specifically that we could label as like, "oh, this is like a queer... music, you know?" And when you distill music down, it's sound and sound doesn't have a, like, a sexual preference basically, but at the same time it's like "how do those sounds manifest in culture? And those sounds have meaning." So, I think about like, how do the... how does the music I make, like, resonate emotionally with people and deep down we have those kind of universal feelings. But I think a lot of thoughts about sexuality boil down to feelings about trust and intimacy and things like power exchange, things like passion, longing, love and lust and feeling like an outsider or "othered", and those concepts can be turned into a kind of musical equivalents so they can be kind of abstracted further into music, and then you can use those to talk about what you want to talk about. Does that make sense? [laughs]
Giacomo [00:30:43] It does. In fact, I was just thinking that in my mind, I would sometimes describe my marriage as moving in parallel fourths, you know, and like things you don't do or, you know, breaking the rules somewhere [laughter from Zane]. You know, it's interesting... yeah, how you would express those feelings without emotions or, like the expressions of the range of human emotion through that. Yeah, it totally makes sense.
Zane [00:31:03] I want to talk about "Go Ahead", a great little five movement work with text by Alfred Starr Hamilton, who is known for creating these, you know, really spare and wry and slightly surreal poems. And you did such a great job of conveying that text into music. The pieces are short movements and they really exemplify the text, in my opinion. So anyway, let's talk a little bit more about that piece in particular, since some of it is on our album. What inspired you to select that text and then compose the pieces?
Nathan [00:31:41] Do you ever have a moment where [laughs] you think, "I'm just gonna go to a bookstore and I'm going to, like, randomly flip through things and see if something just sparks my imagination"? That happened to me with his poetry. So in Boulder, Colorado, there was a poetry-specific bookstore and coffee shop that I would love. It's since closed. And I mourn it all the time. But I said, "I'm kind of looking to find new poetry, like I love setting text to music." I'm a terrible, like lyricist of my, for myself, like my own words are just awful, but... or maybe they just need practice. But I love setting other people's words to music. It helps me step outside myself and I can hear melodies sort of spring up. So, I found this book randomly at this poetry shop and it was like, I cannot put this book down. This... These words are so unusual because they're so simple. And then I thought, "I need to... put this to music." And first I want to contact the estate of this person just to make sure that it's OK. I now think a lot about like do poets actually want their music or their words set to music. I'd like to get permission if they're still alive or recently deceased, then I got permission and then sort of flew from there.
Nathan [00:33:23] When I read Alfred Starr Hamilton's work, I can almost picture him in a tiny little desolate apartment writing these bizarre letters, and he would mail in poems to, like, poetry competitions all the time and just get like thousands of rejections. But, every once in a while, one would stick and then someone just ended up collecting all of his works. So, there's something in them that I really relate to, and I don't know if it's... I think it's mostly because the words are so simple that they just speak to you. They're not complex languages. They're not flowery. They feel like someone speaking to you. But it's someone speaking to you in a way that you've never heard before, that I would never choose to put those words in a line. I would never choose to repeat so many words over and over. But there's a certain musicality to that, that just immediately I thought, "This is sort of like an odd kind of minimalism. This is sort of a repeated chorus or... What would you call that? Like a motive that then slowly evolves over time and that I can kind of play with." So, I immediately found musical parallels to the music, to the text.
Zane [00:34:56] Yeah, the first movement, every single line of text starts with the words, "I think". In the final movement, every single line of text starts with the words "I dared". Let's listen to how the text repetition in Alfred Starr Hamilton's poetic style affected Nathan's writing. Here is the first movement of "Go Ahead", entitled "Virginia Beach". [00:35:18] [Music excerpt: a choir sings meditatively on the tug of the tides and its effect on the shoreline, which leads to a further enigmatic, meditation that these same tides can explain a little boy's hair and tears.]
Zane [00:37:03] I wonder, so was this... When you came across this book of Hamilton's poetry, was that the first time you had come across text that was kind of in this style? Or had you, had you found other poems before that that were in the similar style and have you since? Or was this kind of like a special shining star that kind of stands alone?
Nathan [00:37:24] For me, it really was like a lightning bolt that struck me that I just never seen or read anything like it before. I guess the closest thing I could compare it to would be... I've seen some, like stream of consciousness works, more like prose, some spoken word, artists often use repetition like this, but... I rarely see it distilled into what seems like a song. You know, usually when I see kind of stream of consciousness, it's pages and pages, and that would be really difficult for me to set unless it was like this durational epic work. So this had a kind of conciseness about it, too, that felt beautifully edited, that even though there's a lot of repetition, they all exist for a reason and they're all carefully placed based on like syllables and the arc of how this poet wanted your brain to think about things, it kind of takes you on a little journey.
Zane [00:38:33] So, this is a... that's a great segue [laughter from Giacomo] for us to do something that we've never done before on the podcast. But we talked about it with Nathan before we started recording just to make sure he was up for it. And I think it's going to be really fun. So, I was doing some research on Hamilton and his poetry, and I came across an article that was discussing how the brevity of his poems and they cited the fact that he even has one poem. Actually, there's one in "Go Ahead" called "For a Firefly", which the line is, "if ever an evening star". And that's the entire poem, which I just love.
Zane [00:39:09] But this one is in the same vein. It's a single line of text and it's titled "A Carrot". And so we thought it would be really fun for our listeners if you as a composer would take this line of text and make up a melody on the spot for this one line. And so I'll read the line of poetry for the audience so they can hear it without music. And then if you're up for it, that would be really, really fun to have you just give us a melody that is spawned from, or sparked by this line of text. So the line of the poem, like I said, it's titled "A Carrot" and the text is beautiful. It is: "I wanted to find a little yellow candlelight in the garden."
Nathan [00:39:54] [sings a crooning melody] "I wanted to find a little yellow candlelight in the garden, in the garden, in the garden."
Zane [00:40:11] I love it.
Giacomo [00:40:13] Print! I love it! Fantastic! [laughs]
Zane [00:40:15] I know, yeah, it's great! It'd be interesting to know how many of our audience members and if you'd like to at this moment, go ahead and pause the podcast and do it yourself again. The line is "I wanted to find a little yellow candle light in the garden" and see how many people were inspired by your melody. It was lovely. And now whenever you're ready to send over the full score, just let me know...
Giacomo [00:40:35] Yes, please! [laughter].
Nathan [00:40:36] ... and I'll take a look. [laughter]
Nathan [00:40:38] It's a new monodrama... [sighs]
Zane [00:40:41] [laughs] I love it!
Nathan [00:40:43] Still at voice work...
Zane [00:40:44] Beautiful! Shall we pivot and talk about "Unbound"?
Giacomo [00:40:48] Yes! Congratulations, by the way! For those who don't know, this past weekend was the premiere of a new opera called "Unbound". And I'm going to read a slight... I'm going to read the short description of it.
Zane [00:41:02] And just so our audience knows, this past weekend is referring to Labor Day weekend 2021. Just so you know...
Giacomo [00:41:09] Yes! "'Unbound' is a new kink opera about searching for a sexual fantasy - the one you think you want and the one that may change you. Set in a darkened gay fetish club, our main character meets men along the way who offer him scenarios of desire, but no emotional connection. Then, a stranger offers something new and different - a bondage experience. Over the evening, they build a relationship that builds to a sensual climax. The opera ultimately is about loving oneself and trusting someone else, exploring feelings that are all too often relegated to the shadows. 'Unbound' is a full length chamber opera in one act with no live instruments besides voices and electronic sounds.".
Giacomo [00:41:47] I am... It sounds so incredibly exciting. For those who are listening, go order the video copy because there will be a virtual version of it available, which is very exciting. Nathan, maybe the first question is what prompted you to explore this? We know that intimacy and sexuality are themes that you typically explore, but why this piece and why set where it is?
Nathan [00:42:09] Yeah, well, I wondered the same thing. I've wondered when I, when I ended up writing an hour long opera about queer bondage if anyone would come to it. That, thankfully, has not been the case to worry about. It went very well. But I... it was almost as if this was the third work in a trilogy of sorts, like an unofficial trilogy where... I first wrote my piece, "Tame Your Man" in 2012... (that's almost 10 years ago now. Ugh!) and that is for piano and bondage artist, and that really, like, catapulted my ideas of thinking about how I could incorporate my classical training with my sexuality and my interest in, like, fetish, bondage, kink, like kind of... non-normative practices into a real art form where it was both musically very solid, but also theatrically beautiful. So it wasn't just, say like, a music work that just happens to have some, like, whips and chains in it as a novelty, but then it also wasn't like a fetish piece that just happened to have a soundtrack that was cool. So it really was like a 50/50, Venn diagram of overlap between the two. At least, that was my goal.
Nathan [00:43:42] Then, the second piece was an installation in Pittsburgh called "You're Not the Boss of Me" [laughs], where I tied up a harpsichord and suspended it in bondage from the ceiling of a gallery in a museum in Pittsburgh, and then wrote a soundtrack about kind of a relationship between a performer and a harpsichord as if it were like a consensual kink relationship about trust and dominance and power, and my feelings about being a classically trained, but also wanting to do these kind of avant garde things that are outside of the normal Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, dead white guy type music.
Nathan [00:44:26] Um... So, this opera was kind of the third in that trilogy where I thought, "I need to give voice to the things that had previously been instruments." So, the piano was sort of the voice before and then the harpsichord. And now, I thought, "I really need to have singers sing what's important to talk about." And then when I actually went to a sex club in Sweden, I had such... I'd never been to one before and I had such an odd experience there that instead of this sort of [imitating the bass beats in a club] "untss, untss, untss", like the club music that I thought I would have and this like... it's, you know, like hot and sweaty. And there's all these guys and they're just like cruising each other. It was like... dead! It was... there was no music, no soundtrack, no people there, and I basically just arrived on the wrong night. You know, I arrived on a random Monday night as a tourist or something just wanting to check it out. But then I sat down and rather than feeling depressed and sort of like, "Oh man! I'm like really lost out on the fun I could have had." I gathered my thoughts and I thought this actually is the idea for the start of an opera. That it's... It's bizarre and it's about...
Nathan [00:45:57] Not about having a hookup, per se, but about like how can you as a person feel like you are enough just by yourself and that you can, like, embrace your sexuality and your comfort about that, to put yourself in vulnerable positions wherever they might occur, and that that there's a pleasure in that. That's the long winded version of how this opera came to be. And then it evolved musically from there. [laughter]
Zane [00:46:27] How many voices were in the opera?
Nathan [00:46:29] It's four voices, four male-identified voices. But there is a sort of omniscient DJ part [laughs] ... where the DJ acts almost like a musical conductor or a music director, so they can actually stretch or compress transitions of scenes. If the performers need a little bit of time, you know, they can play with tempo, they can bring out the high levels of sounds, or they can up the bass if they want really like club beats or something, but they can kind of control that like a music director would.
Zane [00:47:03] And a follow up, did you write the DJ's parts that... all the electronic music that was being played, you wrote that as well...
Nathan [00:47:13] I did.
Zane [00:47:13] ... Or at least put it together, programmed it? I'm not sure how all that stuff works, to be honest.
Nathan [00:47:18] Yeah. I mean, it felt like composing to me. I didn't do it longhand on sheet music, but essentially, like anyone would make beats and, you know, electronic music, I made an hour of that that also had vocal lines that I did notate on top of that. So, it was very through-composed in a way, just like a singer might listen for an oboe part, they now have to listen for, like, this high "E" in a Moog synthesizer or like this more triangle wave in the mid-range that's gonna be in "A" flat. They'll listen for that as pitch cues.
Giacomo [00:47:59] So, I love hearing you sort of talk about this theme within your work, Nathan, because I think too often in the past... So, as a gay man and someone who was looking for this kind of work growing up, you didn't find it and... You did, but unfortunately, what you wound up seeing were things that didn't have an earnestness or an honesty to them. Or very often we were the punch line, right? I'm thinking of things like "The Ritz", which is also set in a New York club sex club, or, you know, "La Cage", where being gay is the punch line. You know... I mean things that you think of in that way. Did you think about that a little bit? I mean, I haven't seen "Unbound" obviously yet because it hasn't come out digitally. But like, is there a part of your work that sort of also toes the line of that in terms of thinking like, "Oh, gosh, this is, you know, maybe audiences who are uncomfortable or..." I mean, how did you play it basically?
Nathan [00:48:45] I love to subvert expectations, I will say [laughs]. I love setting up something that seems like it's going to go one way and actually transforms into something. I hate to use the word like "transcendent", but I personally want, like, a transcendent experience from listening or experiencing music. And if I get that, I'm just... I mean, my day is made. So, if I can set up a situation where people might think, "I'm going to go see this like kink opera and it's going to be kind of titillating and, you know, we're going to see a bunch of, like gay men make out like, that's cool." But then, actually what they get is something that's like very moving and real and subtle and strong and complex - that it takes you to another place and you go, "Oh, these people that I'm watching now are like real people, but they're based on real people that exist. And that means that life is more complex than I thought it would be and relationships and sexuality are more complex.".
Nathan [00:50:06] That being said, I also love a little levity as well. So, you know, the... This opera and my other works, too, they do have moments for humor and there's moments where we can kind of pick on ourselves. You know, there's a character in the opera who's a total, like leather daddy because that is like a stereotype, and that is kind of an archetype from gay culture. So, I love playing with that and then seeing where the twist might be.
Nathan [00:50:40] But I did, I did mention in another chat with people about, you know, why opera when I kind of hate opera myself [laughter from Giacomo and Zane]? Oh, like I've seen... I love contemporary operas, I should say. And I like operas in English particularly, or at least a more relatable language to my native language. But I realized, like, oh, it's actually not the genre that I hate. It's sort of like things about the genre that like there's always a woman who is in a lesser position of power or... seemingly. This is... I'm, of course, generalizing and someone always has to die at the end like a tragic hero, and there's always the sort of 20 minute, like Forbidden Love Aria and or something like that, and I'm just like, "I don't want to do that.".
Nathan [00:51:40] But I also love about opera, what I realized, is like the theatricality. And I love that there is this sense of intensity and drama and complexity and characters can change midway. I thought, "OK, I'm going to include the parts that I like about opera. And then because I'm the composer, I'm just not going to use the parts that I don't like. Nobody has to die. There's gay characters. Nobody has to get sort of the cliche of HIV or come down with some, you know, illness at the end and they're a tragic hero, you know, there's really just a walk off into the night and I had a great night and this was a great night. Thank you." That's, you know, without giving away the end of the opera, there's no tragic ending.
Zane [00:52:33] Well, we can't listen to Nathan's new opera just yet. So in the meantime, let's listen to a piece that explores connectedness and sexuality based on the words of Maurice Sendak from a Fresh Air interview in 2011, just before Sendak's passing. Here is Nathan's composition, "I Am In Love With the World", which deals with Sendak's feelings about his family, his life partner, and accepting his old age. [00:53:01] [Music excerpt: a piano accompanies a baritone soloist wistfully remembering his life and admitting that there are many beautiful things in this world that he will have to leave when he dies.]
Zane [00:56:16] So, recently, we messaged a lot of composers that we're connected to through our various musical organizations and asked... We asked those composers for topics of conversation that they would find interesting. And so we decided that we would perhaps pose some of those questions to you that came from that group, things that other composers were interested in. And these are just a few ideas that we had. And so, I'm just going to throw out a few different things. And then you can just kind of stream of consciousness, just talk about these things, whatever comes up in your mind as we start to talk about these different ideas. So, the first one is quality in composition. And one of the composers we talked to posed the question, "why does no one seem to talk about quality of composition and therefore, does anything really go?" What are your thoughts on that?
Nathan [00:57:13] I suppose... the first thing that comes to my mind is, like, taste is very related to quality. Like someone could find something, a really solid quality piece, that someone else just does not like. So, it seems very subjective to me. I could see... I once had a teacher tell me, like "There's no good music and bad music, there's just more effective and less effective music." And I kind of think about that when I think about composition. I think about it like, "This communicates clearly to my player of what I want to get out of it. Or this music actually communicates more clearly to an audience what they might want to feel or how the words come across." But I'm not sure if then the total package of the music has a marker of quality. I'd have to think about that.
Zane [00:58:10] Yeah. Do you think efficacy is also subjective, like how effective your compositional technique is, is dependent on who the audience is and who the performers are?
Nathan [00:58:24] Yeah, I mean, now that we think about that, it probably also then comes down to like what kind of training have you had? Like is this a culturally relevant practice? Like, are we coming from different backgrounds? What... What's important to you personally that you'd convey or that we bring to the table for this piece?
Giacomo [00:58:49] Here's another question from the array of composers, maybe one that's a little bit touchy and one that I have a personal feeling about when it comes to literature. Editing, who, what, when and how should composers and publishing houses actually edit the music they put out beyond just cleaning up the engraving much the way book publishers edit books before they hit the shelves. What's your thoughts about editing?
Nathan [00:59:14] Ooh... You know, I'm not really aware of how much a book might get edited from author hand to final, you know, purchaser's hand. But I also sort of feel like there is so little mass music notation publishing nowadays that aside from maybe choral music and band music, that maybe we should allow a lot more into our world that could exist, but because it doesn't fit in the right sort of box of like, "Well, you know, like six through eight grade junior chorus can't really understand this music, so maybe we shouldn't we need to fix it in some way.".
Nathan [01:00:04] But then there's also things where if it does fit in sort of a pathway, let's say, of concert band notation or jazz charts or things like that, I could see... I could see the publishers and, quote unquote, "higher ups" making suggestions to the composer, and I would love to see more of a dialogue happen rather than an odd power dynamic of like "this is right, this is wrong". But having a conversation that makes everyone benefit in the end from it.
Zane [01:00:41] What's your experience with publishers and publishing houses? Do you have a publisher that publishes your music or do you just do it yourself?
Nathan [01:00:50] Yeah, I self publish almost everything. I have one very small publisher, Abundant Silence, which is a great little independent project that publishes my twenty four preludes for piano. So, that as like a compendium was really nice for them to... they bound it beautifully, they can distribute it, take it to like music teacher conferences, but it has sort of an avenue for it, so it made sense that it could get published. The rest of my stuff I have to do on my own and... I am, of course, you know, not taxed to the max about it, but it would be nice if other people said, "Yeah, I'll take this graphic score. Sure, we could, like, allow some people to... More people to see it than might just come through my website." You know, more avenues is better.
Zane [01:01:44] So relating that to editing, let's say a conductor reaches out to you through your website and says, "Oh, I'd really like to purchase this piece of music." And then they get it. And then they write to you or contact you and say, "What do you think about editing this passage here? Because my chorus or my ensemble is having a hard time with this part of it." And would you be open to having that dialogue with a director, even though you've technically already, quote unquote, published the piece?
Nathan [01:02:17] True. Yeah, I'm... I'm really open, perhaps more than most people. But I also love... I love making music work for people to the best that it can work, and if it's, if it's a dialogue that's approached in sort of earnest, where we're both in this to make a great performance out of it, not just like, "I have a personal preference that this person can't sing this 'E' and it's going to be garbage like." That seems a little too selfish to me, but if it's, if it's like, "What do you think about this? Like, have you ever thought about an edit?".
Nathan [01:02:54] I don't... I've never viewed my works as like, "I've put the double bar lines down and now they are sort of stamped, signed, sealed, delivered." They're always open for interpretation, a revisiting, and I've looked at things again and they just mean new things to me. So, it's... they're like living organisms in my mind.
Zane [01:03:18] I like that. I mean, and as a conductor myself, I mean... I've never just wholly changed anything that a composer has sent me, you know, like I'm rehearsing with the group and go, "You know what? I don't think this passage works like this. Let's re-... Let's change it." Like, I really haven't done that ever, because I think that's disrespectful. But...
Giacomo [01:03:37] Well, I have... unintentionally. [laughter from Giacomo and Zane]
Zane [01:03:41] [laughter] Well, yeah. Mistakes aside...
Giacomo [01:03:42] "This is too hard!" [laughter]
Zane [01:03:42] MIstakes aside, but I think that comes into the idea of music being subjective, you know? And so, I wouldn't want to, as a conductor, I wouldn't want to be making subjective suggestions like, "Oh, this... I just think it would sound better this way." But if it comes in earnest, I think that would be a really interesting conversation to have with a composer.
Nathan [01:04:01] Yeah. And again, I feel like the word "dialogue" is important, so that it's not a one way street. It's not like, "This is wrong and you need to fix it." It's like, "Have you thought about maybe making like an anacrusis for this one vowel? Because sopranos will have to come in a little bit earlier and they'll just be more clear if this was one beat earlier.".
Nathan [01:04:27] I think that's like... It's a pearl of wisdom that a composer would appreciate in the same way that we would love to give our thoughts to. Directors and conductors to make our music more effective too.
Giacomo [01:04:42] Nathan... what's inspiring your work right now and what are some upcoming performances or live streams that we should know about?
Nathan [01:04:50] Yeah...
Giacomo [01:04:50] Whatcha workin' on?
Nathan [01:04:52] My next project that happens, actually in 10 days from now, is I head to Minnesota for three weeks. So, I do my official in person research for the McKnight Fellowship. And I am interviewing queer senior citizens and Somali immigrants who all live in this interesting building together in Minneapolis, kind of a residential housing, commune type building or assisted living, I guess. It was originally made for LGBT seniors. And then they had open spaces and fair housing allowed for other people to apply, and a lot of Somali immigrants moved in and I really want to paint a portrait of this building and its inhabitants. And then I'm going to have One Voice, LGBT choir sing the composition that comes out of it, hopefully next year and two years. But mostly I'm just really excited to hear what like queer elders and old people and, you know, some immigrants to our country have to say about life right now and what their lives have been like and try to turn that into music.
Zane [01:06:18] So can you tell our audience where they can find you online or otherwise so that we can make sure people can connect with you if they want to program your music or see performances of your compositions?
Nathan [01:06:30] Yeah, the best way to find me is my website, "nathan dash hall dot net". My whole works list, chronology and contact is there. I'm also on Instagram @thisisnathanhall and SoundCloud probably best found through my website.
Zane [01:06:49] Awesome. And of course, as we always do, we'll put all of those links in our show notes. So if our listeners want to just head over to the show notes, they can find links to connect them to you.
Nathan [01:07:00] Great!
Giacomo [01:07:01] Yeah, this has been really terrific. It's so, so wonderful to put a face to the name and to the music.
Nathan [01:07:08] Oh, thanks!
Giacomo [01:07:09] And congratulations again on "Unbound" and on all the things that are coming your way. And thank you so much for making the time to chat with us today.
Nathan [01:07:16] Well, thank you so much! I appreciate that.
Zane [01:07:19] Let's wrap up today's episode with an example of Nathan's work, spanning from the sublime avant garde to a more traditional choral sound. Here is Nathan's resetting of the traditional Irish piece, "Last Rose of Summer" arranged for five voices. [01:07:37] [Music excerpt: a mournful melody grieves for the last rose of summer and makes a connection to when friendships decay and hearts are withered, who would inhabit this "bleak world alone".]
Outro [01:10:16] Thanks for listening to this week's episode of the In Unison podcast. Be sure to check out episode extras and subscribe at inunison podcast dot com. You can follow us on all social media @inunisonpod. And leave us a review on Apple podcasts to let us know what you think!
Chorus Dolores [01:10:33] IPads and music readers recharged by Chorus Dolores, who lives for vowel unification.
Credits [01:10:43] In Unison is produced and recorded by Mission: Orange Studios. Our transcripts have been diligently edited by IOC member and friend of the pod, Fausto Daos, and our theme music is "Mr. Puffy," written by Avi Bortnick, arranged by Paul Kim and performed by the Danish vocal jazz ensemble Dynamic on their debut album, This is Dynamic. Special thanks to Paul Kim for permission. Please be sure to check them out at dynamicjazz.dk.