S4E10: Freshly Squeezed: Lauren Bydalek
On today’s episode of In Unison, we’re continuing our mini-series of conversations with the composers whose works will be premiered on IOCSF’s Freshly Squeezed program on December 4th and 18th this year. We’re chatting with Lauren Bydalek—singer-songwriter turned choral composer, who wrote a wonderful piece called “Pieces of My Heart,” about her own experience growing up in Nebraska and the journey of meeting people on this crazy adventure of life.
And now a word from our hosts!
Edited by Fausto Daos
Music excerpts
“Brighter Day,” written and performed by Lauren Bydalek
“Forever is Composed of Nows,” by Lauren Bydalek, text by Emily Dickinson, performed by Choral Chameleon
“New Horizon,” written and performed by Lauren Bydalek
Episode references
Lauren Bydalek (website / soundcloud)
IOCSF on Facebook
IOCSF on Instagram
Theme Song: Mr. Puffy by Avi Bortnik, arr. by Paul Kim. Performed by Dynamic
Episode Transcript
Zane [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.
Giacomo [00:00:20] 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 [00:00:35] Hey, everyone! On today's episode of In Unison, we're continuing our miniseries of conversations with the composers whose works will be premiered on IOC's Freshly Squeezed program on December 4th and 18th this year. In case you missed it, we go into detail about the Freshly Squeezed program and IOCSF's return to in-person singing in episode 408. And just last week, we recounted works of three of our previously interviewed composers Mari Valverde, Jake Heggie and Dr. Zanaida Robles. That was episode 409.
Zane [00:01:08] On today's episode, we're chatting with Lauren Bydalek, the singer songwriter turned choral composer who wrote a wonderful piece called "Pieces of My Heart" about her own experience growing up in Nebraska and the journey of meeting people on this crazy adventure of life. Speaking of meeting people, we want to take a moment and say a big "thank you" to a couple of folks we've met who are helping support the creation of this podcast. We couldn't have made it this far without our generous donors. So, today we're giving a shout out to Vince Petersen, artistic director of Choral Chameleon, as well as Joel Jay Baluyot, a tenor in IOCSF and the Golden Gate Men's Chorus. Thanks so much, you guys! If you would like to help support in unison, please visit "In Unison Podcast Dot Com Slash Donate".
Zane [00:01:55] Now, before we dive into our conversation with Lauren, let's get to know her a bit through her music. Here she is wearing her singer-songwriter hat. This is "Brighter Day". [00:02:07] [Music Excerpt: a woman sings with quiet determination, accompanied with light percussion and gently swaying keyboards and guitars. She addresses the listener and admits that even though the skies have turned gray, she is determined to see the sunlight because her companion makes her feel alive and wipes the tears from her eyes.]
Zane [00:04:36] Okay! Joining us today on In Unison is Lauren Bydalek, a multifaceted musician based out of Lincoln, Nebraska. We know Lauren as a composer because IOCSF is currently preparing to perform her composition "Pieces of My Heart" in December, and we'll definitely talk in depth about that piece later. Lauren composes in a variety of musical styles, including classical, jazz, film and songwriting. Most notably, this includes "Life through Color", a singer songwriter EP which I have listened to many times, and "Postcards From the Land of the Rising Sun", an undergraduate honors thesis for chamber orchestra.
Zane [00:05:14] Recently, Lauren has been focusing primarily on choral writing, including recent commissions and performances from Choral Chameleon, The Young New Yorkers' Chorus, University of Nebraska, Lincoln and York College Choirs. Lauren received her bachelor's degree from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, graduating with honors and high distinction. And since then has studied with a friend of our pod, Vince Peterson. Currently, Lauren is attending U.N.L. Law School! Go figure... But she still finds time to compose, helped lead music at City Light Church and perform with Sing Omaha, as well as a local vocal jazz quintet. Lauren lives with her husband, Colton McCauley and their border collie, Elvis. Lauren, welcome to In Unison. Thanks for joining us.
Lauren [00:06:01] Nice to be here today. Thanks for having me!
Giacomo [00:06:03] Lauren, it's really nice to meet you and I have to tell you working on "Pieces of My Heart" right now, I'm already a huge fan of all of your music, and I'm really excited to get to know you better. So let's start with an icebreaker [clears throat]. Here's a pretty fun, simple one. What's something on your bucket list?
Lauren [00:06:20] So, I really like to be outside and I like to go hiking, so I'd really like to go to Iceland someday and do the whole Ring Road road trip in Iceland and see all the beautiful sites that are in tons of movies and everything and just really enjoy nature.
Giacomo [00:06:40] Ah, that's awesome. That's... What is it? It's called the Blue Lagoon. And then what's the name of the volcano with the big, long Icelandic name that is Björkian and...?
Lauren [00:06:49] I have no idea. I probably wouldn't be able to pronounce it honestly [laughter from Giacomo]. I... I don't... Anytime I see any of those like Icelandic words, I'm like, "Oh, I..." I'll look at it and recognize the word, but probably could not say it to you at all.
Giacomo [00:07:05] Well, I feel like that sounds like an incredibly inspirational trip, so I'm looking forward to a composition called "Word Salad", whatever in Icelandic [laughter from Lauren].
Zane [00:07:14] Fagradalsfjall. That's the name of the volcano. Fagradalsfjall.
Lauren [00:07:19] Oh, okay.
Giacomo [00:07:19] OK, it's a lot... Like three... How many syllables?
Zane [00:07:23] Too many!
Giacomo [00:07:23] Four syllables and 15 letters.
Zane [00:07:24] I'm not even sure if that's if I'm pronouncing that right, but there's only one vowel in that entire word, "a". The only vowel in the whole word is "a". Anyway, sorry.
Giacomo [00:07:33] Well, Lauren, as Zane mentioned, you are a woman of many talents. You're a musician, a legal scholar (you're in law school now - that's incredible!), a writer. But we know you as a composer. Maybe you can tell us a little bit about why you choose to become a composer? How did your journey lead you here?
Lauren [00:07:50] So, I think I kind of became a composer by accident, actually. I had a piano teacher who I took from in middle school and high school, and every spring she would have all of her piano students compose a piece. And so starting in seventh grade every spring for my piano lessons, I was required to compose a piece as part of my lessons, and I really just ended up enjoying it a lot. I never had intended on becoming a composer, necessarily. I just kind of ended up doing it as part of my piano lessons. And then eventually I realized, "Hey, this is kind of fun. This is kind of like putting a little musical puzzle piece together." And so, I started experimenting with some other things as well. And my orchestra teacher in high school was super supportive. And like had the high school orchestra read a small piece I wrote and was... I had some really great support in high school from my piano teacher and my orchestra teacher and even my choir teacher later on in high school that kind of encouraged me to keep doing it, which was great.
Giacomo [00:09:05] Who were some of your earliest compositional inspirations, like when you were playing piano, and in orchestra, were there pieces that you heard where you were like, "Ooh, I want to be able to do things like that!"
Lauren [00:09:15] There aren't any particular pieces or composers that I necessarily had in mind when I was composing. I kind of just enjoyed a lot of the music I was playing, so I played a lot of impressionist music later in high school that I think definitely influenced my first couple years of writing, especially in undergrad. And yeah, I think I just was really more influenced by being in a number of different types of musical groups, so instead of just playing piano or just being in orchestra, I was able... I was able to experience a lot of different musical textures, which I really appreciated.
Zane [00:09:55] What about for choral music? When did you get involved with, like singing in choirs? And then actually, what was your first choral composition?
Lauren [00:10:03] Yeah. So I actually wrote my first choral piece in high school and it was OK [laughs]. It wasn't great, but you know, first time for everything. So, gotta... Gotta learn in the process. I wrote it as a junior in high school and I tried to get, I remember, a group of friends from high school to sing in the closet at my high school to record this piece, and I remember it not going very smoothly [laughs]. But that was, yeah, that was my first time writing a choral piece. I sang in choir in high school, but I wouldn't really consider myself like a real choral music person, so to say, until later in college. I kind of just did choir as another musical outlet to do.
Giacomo [00:10:57] And Lauren, we talk with a lot... We talk with a lot of composers about, umm, their process also of choosing text. So, like if you're going to sit down and you're going to compose something - unless it's just like Sigur Ros in Icelandic or something where the the text may be, you know, creative or unintelligible for most of us - selecting texts and setting texts is really a big part of your work. You have a piece called "Forever is Composed of Nows", which I adore... Just listened to that, and I thought it was lovely, and it's a text by Emily Dickinson... an Emily Dickinson poem. How did you settle on choosing that text? What was it that drew you to that and thought, "OK, I want to set this"?
Lauren [00:11:38] Yeah, so I actually composed this piece at Choral Chameleon's Summer Institute a few years back. And so something I do with text a lot is when I have some free time, I'll just sit down and I'll just read through a lot of different public domain poetry, and I try and just keep a little bit of a, a bank of poems that I think are kind of interesting, but I may want to set in the future at some point. And so, getting to Choral Chameleon, the Institute, I wanted to try and actually compose the piece, all when I got to New York for it. Some people come with their pieces already partially composed or whatever, and some people come and try and compose the whole thing while they're there. And so I wanted to try and compose it while I was there and I was looking through my bank of text, and that's one that for some reason just kind of stood out to me a little bit out of the other ones that I had chosen. And I thought that there was something deep and kind of meaningful to it and something a little bit different. And I think to some extent, it was my first time in New York, too - a little Midwestern girl out in the big city for the first time. And so I think I was feeling a little bit of that New York creative energy. And I don't know if I would have necessarily chosen that text, maybe had I been here composing at the time, but sometimes just being in a different place will maybe encourage me to try something a little bit different than I would normally be comfortable with.
Zane [00:13:15] So, when you write a piece of music, so you choose, so you chose the text, you had this text in your idea, in your bank, as you say, of ideas to of text to set. Then, do you look at the text and immediately see melodic motifs that are attached to parts of the text? Or do you see it more of like as an overall journey that the text is just going to take you on? Can you tell us a little bit more about like kind of how does it start to emerge? How does the music start to come out?
Lauren [00:13:46] Yeah. So normally I feel like my process is there's generally at least one line of a particular poem or text that kind of pulls me in. And so, I think the one for that piece was "forever is composed of now". And I don't know how it happens, but sometimes you just have a melodic idea when you read that particular bit of text. And I had that original melodic line that I thought of for "forever is composed of nows", and I kind of just built from there. And it kind of becomes a centerpiece, I guess, of a melodic idea for the, for the piece overall.
Zane [00:14:28] Does the text of that piece have any specific meaning to you overall, the text of Emily Dickinson's poem?
Lauren [00:14:35] Yeah, so I did a little bit of research into the poem and it was really talking about... What she was really intending to convey is that every moment of your life is composed of just small seconds happening right now, this very second. And that's what forever is composed of. That's... It's composed of all these special little moments, and they pass by so quickly and they happen differently for everyone. And I was just really fascinated by that idea of time being something that is constantly happening and constant small moments of your life that are different for everyone, but sometimes all happen together, too, and that these small little moments really differentiate life for us.
Zane [00:15:25] Hmm. Kind of a reminder to live in the present...
Lauren [00:15:28] Mmhmm.
Zane [00:15:28] ...And live in the moment. Let's go ahead and listen to that piece now. Here is "Forever Is Composed of Nows", written by Lauren Bydalek and performed by Choral Chameleon at their Summer Composer Institute. [00:15:42] [Music Excerpt: several singers intone the word "forever" until the sound becomes very dense, the tenors enter with a fragment of a melody that also gets layered by other singers.]
Zane [00:21:12] Do you have any advice you might give to aspiring composers of any age?
Lauren [00:21:18] Yeah, don't worry so much about what other people are thinking about your music.
Zane [00:21:23] Amen!
Giacomo [00:21:23] Amen!
Lauren [00:21:23] I think it's really, really easy to get caught up in like, "Oh, did they think this music is, you know, ‘good’ or not?" And music is so subjective that there are just going to be people who aren't as big of a fan of your music as others are. There's going to be people who really, really love your music, and there's going to be people who are just like, "Eh, it's fine!" And so as long as you like your music and you're generally following good, good rules, so to say you're not writing music, that's like impossible to play. You know, there are some... There are some objective elements to good music, I think. But don't worry so much about what other people are going to think of you all the time. That's the best advice I could give.
Giacomo [00:22:09] That's good life advice, period.
Zane [00:22:11] Yeah, that's the truth [laughter].
Giacomo [00:22:11] I think.
Lauren [00:22:14] Oh, and also nobody is worrying about certain things that you worry about as much as you are. Like, nobody's paying as much attention to you as you think they are. Like, You're paying the most attention to yourself, out of... Out of anyone else.
Giacomo [00:22:29] Are you talking about my social media feed [laughter from everyone]? What are we really talking about here? I want to talk a little bit about some of your inspirations as well, because I think you've got a broad spectrum of ideas that you play with in your pieces and on the show. We've recently been talking a lot about the line between spiritual and secular. You've written a piece called "Unto Us a Son is Given", which is a setting from British poet Alice Meynell, whose text straddles the same line between secular and spiritual themes. How does this blurring of secular and spiritual play out in your works? Is that something that you thought about when you were setting this poem?
Lauren [00:23:09] I don't know if I would necessarily think about it in those like strict of a separation between sacred and secular. I'm particularly religious myself. I'm a Christian. And so to some extent, I think that kind of informs that the sacred and the secular kind of begin to intermix because I think if you kind of follow those beliefs, they start to kind of become a part of your life and the sacred and the secular will kind of naturally mix together.
Lauren [00:23:42] Another reason why I find that text particularly compelling and certain other texts is that there's so much sacred text that has been set just so many times. And I kind of ascribe to a belief that there's not necessarily a whole lot I have to offer that text anymore. I mean, it's been done by so many composers and done really well. And I don't know that I have any new ideas to offer certain sacred texts. So I think maybe breaking out of the typical sacred, strict, you know, mass text and other texts that have been set hundreds of times and giving new life to something that's maybe not as overtly sacred, but still has some elements of that I think can be really effective.
Giacomo [00:24:32] Well, that leads us to the heart of the conversation we wanted to have today, which is to talk about your composition "Pieces of My Heart", which is just now a piece of my heart because I just think it's so beautiful. We're currently preparing it with IOCSF for its West Coast premiere. Tell us a little bit about the inspiration for that piece. You wrote the composition and the text as well, so it must be something that is quite near and dear to your heart. Tell us a little bit about what inspired it.
Lauren [00:24:58] Yeah, so I actually wrote this piece first as a song. I do some singer-songwriter work, and it kind of came to me as a song. The year after I graduated college, I lived in a smaller town in Nebraska for a while, and it was honestly kind of lonely. There's not a lot of young life in that town, and so I was kind of feeling a bit sentimental about the people that I had met in college and people I'd met while I was traveling for, like, study abroad and internships in college. And I was just feeling a bit lonely and sentimental, and I was thinking about the fact that home isn't necessarily - it can be a specific place, but home is also kind of with the people you've met during your life, and for me, home is a lot of where, where I've been with people and those connections I've made with people during my life.
Lauren [00:26:05] And so I really wanted to convey that, that feeling a little bit and also it kind of came from a place of, you know... A lot of Nebraskans like Nebraska, but want to leave Nebraska to go do something more exciting. I have a lot of appreciation for Nebraska. I like Nebraska, but it does get a little bit boring here sometimes. And there's not like a lot of really exciting scenery in Nebraska. It's pretty much just flat cornfields, and that's most of what Nebraska is. But I was also kind of inspired. Ironically, I lived in an apartment that was right next to a cornfield, and there came to be something that I actually appreciated about the Nebraska skyline. Nebraska has the best sunsets. It's not debatable. They have the best sunsets here because the sky is so big [laughter]. And so I kind of became, you know, all sentimental about missing people. But I also became more appreciative of where I'd come from and from being from Nebraska and seeing those sunsets and those wide open fields and realizing that maybe, uh, maybe I'm lonely here, but and maybe I want to go somewhere else, but there's also a lot of beauty to this place still.
Giacomo [00:27:30] I love the generosity of spirit in that text, too - that idea didn't quite strike me until you started talking about it. Just the idea. I mean, you're right, home is where... Home can be a specific place, and we often say home is where the heart is. And that to me, always kind of signaled pulling in or hugging or bringing things out. But I think the way that you've extruded that sentiment as an act of giving is so beautiful that, like your heart is everywhere else and with all these other people, and it's all just expanding out into the world, I love that. I think that is so beautiful.
Giacomo [00:27:59] The piece actually also features - speaking of giving and generosity - in your composition you left space actually for a little bit of interpretation for the solo and duet lines that are weaved throughout, but you're not terribly explicit about how the voices should be divided or whether it's a treble or bass solo. I mean, maybe you had something in mind, but just didn't scribble it down, and suddenly we're taking liberties with it. So [whispers] come and see the IOCSF show this December so you can hear this piece.
Zane [00:28:24] Shameless plug!
Giacomo [00:28:24] Shameless plug [laughter from Zane]. But tell us maybe what was the intention behind that choice, specifically? Why were you sort of like, "Yeah, do whatever you know?" Or was that the intention? Did we misread that?
Lauren [00:28:35] Yeah. So I have a little bit of a different approach with writing a lot of my choral music, and that is that I have a lot of trust for choral conductors. I don't know. I'm married to a choral conductor, so maybe that informs, informs it a little bit, but I trust a lot of the choral conductors I worked with to make good choices and to make musically expressive choices. So sometimes I like to leave a little bit of space for interpretation in some of the pieces I write because I like the idea that my piece won't be exactly the same every time it's performed. I kind of like the idea that a group can make it unique to their specific group. So I wasn't super explicit with the solo and duet lines, partially because I think certain times there's just certain people in a group who can channel the idea behind a solo really well. And I don't want to limit that to necessarily a treble voice or a bass voice or a specific voice type at all. I like the idea that, you know the conductor of the group can choose the person who is best able to convey that line in that text.
Zane [00:29:55] Yeah, I think the style of the piece, too, opens up an extra door for the singers because it's not... It's not your typical buttoned up choral piece where it's, you know, the style of the solo should quote unquote fit into a certain sound, but rather it's got this... It really carries over that idea that it was originally a singer songwriter type of composition. And so I had, I auditioned... Oh my goodness, I think I must've auditioned 10 or 12 singers for the solo and duet parts.
Giacomo [00:30:29] And by the way, super pause like... Lauren, that's not a thing that people in IOCSF typically do. Like we are a bunch of people who are like, " Nah, solos... We're not that interested." But this piece...
Zane [00:30:39] Yeah, that's a great point.
Giacomo [00:30:40] ... moved everyone so much that we were all like, "This is beautiful." Yeah, even just for the fun of it, it was wonderful.
Zane [00:30:45] Yeah, yeah. And to continue what I was just saying, which is that because of the style, some of these singers that normally wouldn't audition for a solo were like, "Oh yeah, I want to get up there and belt this out." And I made sure to preface my whole audition speech with, "I want this to be, I want you to get up there, and let's just sing this song with your soul and I want you to belt it or don't belt it or whatever. But just like you got to really own this solo." And it really inspired people. And we had so many great sounding soloists that I ended up choosing five different people to spread throughout the solo and the duet parts because it just made sense. And then I feel like that kind of ties into the theme of the text as well. Like, you know, it's about the people we've met. And so it's about this inclusivity and this community and this and the group. And so instead of having just two people, it's going to be five. So, yeah, I'm excited, but I appreciate your comment about the faith in the conductor as well. In that, you know, if the music is good and everybody's coming at it from a sense of good musicality, the end result, it'll be different, but it's still going to be good. At least. I sure hope so [laughter].
Lauren [00:31:54] Okay. Well, thanks. That's exciting to hear. Yeah.
Giacomo [00:31:58] Lauren, speaking of trusting your conductors, and certainly, I think you've left the door open for it. But if you were conducting this piece and thinking about giving it to a choir, what advice would you give your singers?
Lauren [00:32:12] I would say channel the idea of wide open spaces and the idea of being, like, raw and vulnerable and... open with your heart. Which is very fluffy advice, but I...
Giacomo [00:32:31] Maybe a little scary and a little scary to do that, you know?
Lauren [00:32:34] Mmhmm.
Giacomo [00:32:34] I think it's... Being that open is sometimes a little scary for folks, but I think that it's a great thing for a choir. I mean, I think for musicians who are primed for that, I think that's a lovely piece of advice.
Zane [00:32:45] Speaking of conducting, let's talk about "All I Have", another composition of yours. You wrote this piece for a friend's graduate conducting recital. How often do you get to work directly with the conductors that are working on your pieces? And obviously you got to do that with the Conducting Institute or the Composition Institute with Choral Chameleon? But is that a frequent experience you get to have?
Lauren [00:33:11] Yeah. So I've actually been lucky enough to have the opportunity to work with a lot of different conductors who are performing my pieces or premiering my pieces. I think it's somehow helpful to have a husband who's a music educator in the area and a conductor, because that also has led me to meet a lot of other conductors. So, I think it's a really great experience to actually work with the conductor because you get to see the music from their point of view. It's really easy as a composer to get stuck in what you want the piece to be like or the lines that you think work. But conductors have a tendency to pick out the stuff that's going to be hard for the choir or stuff that you're going to need a little bit more specificity on, like, "Oh, what kind of cut off do you want there? Do you want a breath there?"
Lauren [00:34:09] It's helpful for me to realize that people are thinking about my piece in really specific and picky ways because I tend to be a very big picture person. And so I don't always think about, "Oh, are they going to want to breathe here? Are they going to do a specific consonant louder at this point?" And so it's really helpful for me to realize that, yes, these things are all very important to choral music, and I need to think about them a little bit more sometimes and just the overall harmonic and textual and overall aura of the piece.
Giacomo [00:34:47] What is an ideal relationship look like between composer and conductor for you?
Lauren [00:34:53] In my personal experience, I think the best relationship looks like me writing the piece, having the conductor look at the piece a little bit once it's towards its final stages of creation and then me giving up control completely at some point. I really... Again, as I said before, I really like to trust conductors to make good choices, and I like to give them some control over the composition at that point. And I think that's the best part about being a composer is that, you know, all of my friends in college who are pianists or violinists, they have to go do their recital and they have to play in everything, so they're in control during their whole recital. For me, it's great because I get to be in control during the whole writing process. And then once that performance comes, I'm like, "I don't have any control over it anymore [laughter]. It's not my problem. I get to just sit back and enjoy and listen." And that's one of the best parts, in my opinion, about being a composer is that you get to be finished with your work and then sit back and get a chance to enjoy it.
Zane [00:36:03] Do you ever get the opportunity to conduct your own pieces?
Lauren [00:36:06] I have not.
Zane [00:36:07] Do you want that opportunity?
Lauren [00:36:09] There's not a lot of opportunities to conduct, I feel like outside of music education in Nebraska. So, I... I would like to get better at conducting at some point in the future. But I am currently at a low level of conducting, so I generally trust those who are more experienced and have more advanced skill to do that work.
Giacomo [00:36:34] Well, it's probably one of the many additional hats you've been, you could probably try on. Another one that you are... That our folks are going to be familiar with your work is that you were also, as you mentioned, a singer songwriter and you wrote a piece that I absolutely love called "Brighter Day". And so, if "Pieces of My Heart" is a pop and folk influenced choral piece, then "Brighter Day" and in fact, a lot of the pieces on your recent releases, I think you've had a couple of eps that are just singer-songwriter pieces, which are fantastic. I would describe them as like straight up pop joy, like I put them on, listen to them a couple of days ago, and they're just, they're really fun. They're straight from the heart. They're, in my perspective of them, quite guileless and beautiful, just open hearted and lovely.
Giacomo [00:37:20] And so you write in many modalities you've written for film for singer songwriter stuff, choral works. When inspiration strikes, how do you channel that inspiration into a specific modality? Do you start with an idea and you're like, "Oh, this should be for a string orchestra or it should be for that?" Or do you sort of just let it go where it's going to go?
Lauren [00:37:38] I mean, I think the easy answer is that I just let it go or it's gonna go, right? I think I generally have when I come up with an idea, I have some idea about what the texture of that idea is going to be. It doesn't always end up staying in that particular, that particular texture, but I generally have an initial idea. So, if I'm going to write a piece for strings, then I'll, I'll kind of imagine and hear that texture ahead of time. And that doesn't always mean that that's where I'll stay. But the initial idea generally comes with some idea about what the texture of the music is going to sound like.
Giacomo [00:38:18] Lauren, looking forward, are there current projects that you're working on that you're excited about? Anything we can, we can plug coming up.
Lauren [00:38:25] Yeah. So I am not as busy composing lately as I would like to be because I'm in my last year of law school. So, I.. A lot of the projects I'm doing are just kind of personal for me right now. I am writing a choral piece or two, working on it. Hopefully a local group in Omaha is going to perform one of them. And I'm also in the early stages of... I'm actually going to do another EP. I'm hoping to... It'll be a little bit of a process when I have a lot of legal readings to do. There's only so much time in the day, but I'd like to have an EP out by the end of next spring. And I have another performance coming up in, actually, in California as well. Another group in Irvine, I think the... if you know the Choral Arts Society?
Giacomo [00:39:20] Mmhmm.
Lauren [00:39:21] Yeah, they're going to do "All I Have" in their season as well.
Zane [00:39:26] Lauren, where can folks find you online?
Lauren [00:39:29] So you can go to my website "lauren lynn music dot com" for any of the recordings of my pieces and there's links there to SoundCloud and videos on YouTube and stuff as well. Or, if you want to see pictures of me and my dog and the hikes I go on, you can follow me on Instagram @laurenbyninety95.
Giacomo [00:39:54] There's a fantastic, by the way, it's worth going to check out this fantastic photo of Lauren on a stage just rocking out with a microphone. It's so cool. I love that photo!
Zane [00:40:04] That's awesome. And we'll, of course, we'll put links to everything in our show notes as we always do, so that our listeners can find you and can commission you and can listen to your EPs and be inspired like Giacomo and I have been.
Lauren [00:40:17] Well, thank you so much for interviewing me today, and I'm really excited for your guys' performance of "Pieces of My Heart". I'm really excited to hear how the different soloists and duets will sound.
Zane [00:40:29] Yeah, we are too. This has been a great conversation.
Giacomo [00:40:32] We hope to do you proud, Lauren.
Zane [00:40:34] Yes!
Lauren [00:40:34] Thank you.
Zane [00:40:35] Of course, always. Well, thanks for joining us today, and we'll hope to talk to you again very soon.
Lauren [00:40:41] Yeah, thank you very much!
Zane [00:40:43] Let's finish off today's episode with a track off of Lauren's 2016 EP, Life through Color. This is "New Horizon". [00:40:52] [Music excerpt: a driving beat provided by synthesizers and diffused chords introduce the song before Lauren sings of a new horizon and a new dawning - leaving memories behind and making it through the night.]
Outro [00:45:10] Well, 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 [00:45:28] Vaccination cards checked before rehearsal by Chorus Dolores, who loves a good TikTok sea chanty.
Credits [00:45:40] In Unison is produced and recorded by Mission: Orange Studios. Our transcripts have been diligently edited by IOCSF 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 ww.dynamicjazz.dk