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Spring 2022 Events

Posted on 2022-01-29 14:22:00 by Kyle and tagged with Announcements Updates

It’s turning out to be a busy semester! I’m teaching a couple of new-to-me classes—Music Research and Bibliography for the grad students and the Symphonic Literature for both grads and undergrads. These are paired with my normal Music Entrepreneurship, the bassoon part of Woodwind Methods II, and a studio of 13 composers.

Let’s talk about performances. I’ve recently updated the calendar, here’s what’s in store!

February 13: Kelly Burns, Cassie Keogh, and Tyler Wottrich premiere my Letters to the Poetry Editor that came about from my work with the NDSU Press.

March 5-6: We’ll present Letters to the Poetry Editor at the College Music Society Central Conference in Omaha. I’ll also be presenting a paper on composer workflow.

The next weekend, March 11-12, I’ll be in Oklahoma for the College Music Society South Central Conference, where Tempest in a Teakettle will be performed.

March 24-26, I’ll be in St. Petersburg, Florida for the Contemporary Art Music Project’s CAMPGround22, where Tape Piece will be performed.

April 21-23, we’re hosting a new music festival at NDSU, including a couple of concerts as part of our Unity concert series, and then a student and faculty (that’s me!) composers’ recital on the 23rd.

May 1, the NDSU Faculty Woodwind Quintet will play Course of Empire as part of the Fargo Moorhead Symphony Orchestra chamber series.

May 8, the Fargo Moorhead Area Youth Symphonies will premiere my One Sows for the Benefit of Another Age.

Oh, also at some point this semester, the New Rockford-Sheyenne High School Band will be premiering the new Steam Powered Rocket in New Rockford. I'll update the website and the blog when I get that date.

Hope to see you at one (or several!) of these!

2021 in review

Posted on 2021-12-29 09:51:00 by Kyle and tagged with Updates

Things I learned and/or did this year:

I never really understood when classmates (or students) said they were “done” with school. I get it now. Learning is fun, but I have work to do.
It’s hard to balance being a human, a student, a professor, a composer, and a programmer. I have to start curating this down.
I started and finished the Publishing certificate at NDSU. I learned a lot about literary publishing (and saw some book projects to fruition), and it was SO MUCH FUN. I did the program to learn more about music publishing because I thought some things would transfer over, and they do.
I also learned that there’s not much structured learning with music publishing—it’s very much apprenticeship and make-it-up-as-you-go. And if that’s the case, what’s stopping me from making up more stuff?
I started making up publishing stuff for my students.
Are we going to start a music publishing certificate in ND? No. Are we going to nudge composers to work with the NDSU Press to get some experience in publishing? Very yes.
I proposed and implemented a new BM Composition program (the first in the Dakotas), which was either the product of or the cause of taking a full-time position at NDSU.
Hey, conferences are a thing again! I presented a piece at the College Music Society national conference in Rochester, NY, and at the first Jacksonville Electronic Music Festival in Florida. I also did my annual appearance at the Aspen Composers Conference.
My parents decided to move to North Dakota—this one is still in progress.
I started using Johnny Decimal as an organizational system, and I think it’s working.
I paid off my student loans.
I stopped buying stuff from Amazon. This was easier than I thought it would be. I have lots to say about this later.
I moved my cloud computing to Microsoft Azure.
I got new headshots made (stay tuned!) and had my sheet music covers redesigned.
We adopted another cat, Lorraine.
I only wrote three pieces, which is embarrassing. But I like them all, so that’s good.
I took on a piece for adaptable instrumentation (flex band) and electronics, which has been a whole new experience.
We installed new livestreaming equipment at NDSU.
I learned how to use printing equipment from the 1880s.
I learned that I like to use printing equipment from the 1880s.
I found out how much money it costs to buy printing equipment from the 1880s.
I found out how much money it costs to find out you’re probably lactose intolerant. But as a bonus I found out I don’t have gluten sensitivity. Either way, I still can’t have pizza.
I learned that you can do whatever you want to do with commas, as long as you’re consistent. I also learned that I still don’t know how to properly use semicolons.
I learned that the drive from Red Lodge, MT to Aspen, CO is something like 14 hours of mostly 2-lane roads and gravel. Only like 100 miles of that are interstate.
I had two VCSU students apply and get in to grad schools in Composition.
Trying to remember everything from the year in the week after Christmas is hard, and next year I’ll be making an ongoing list.

The teacher becomes the student.

Posted on 2021-04-10 17:53:00 by Kyle and tagged with Updates

The more I've composed, and the more I've taught music, the more I realize that there's just so much interesting stuff out there to learn, a lot of which intersects with music composition. Psychology of creativity, business administration, critical theory, aesthetics, higher education administration--these are all things that sound terribly interesting.

Cassie's work at NDSU affords me a half-tuition waiver, so this spring I decided to become a bison. An entire degree seemed like a bit much given the rest of my workload, but some of our graduate certificate offerings seemed like a good place to start. The most logical, I reasoned, was the graduate certificate in Publishing, which is offered through the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Science working through the North Dakota State University Press. Even though NDSU's press is a literary press, the business side of things and the publishing process would be the same as it is in music publishing. After all, everything I know about publishing music is from 1) trial and error or 2) things I read on the internet.

I had to check my transcript, but even though I defended my dissertation in May of 2014, the last seated class I took was Dr. Ken Stephenson's Bartok, Prokofiev, Chicago in the summer of 2013. So, seven years after being a student, here I am again, this time with experience from the other side of the classroom.

So we're over halfway through: here's how it's going. For starters, it's the first time I've been in a class in a while where I haven't been in charge. This is great, in some ways it's like a mini-vacation in the middle of the day. Make no mistake, it's real work. But it's nice to follow instead of leading for a bit.

There's a ton of reading:

The Copyeditor's Handbook by Amy Einsohn & Marilyn Schwartz.
The Subversive Copy Editor by Carol Fisher Saller.
The Chicago Manual of Style by…the University of Chicago Press.
XXXXX (Unpublished Manuscript of 380 pages which we're editing).
XXXXX (Advance Review Copy of a book to be published in August at 210 pages which we're proofing).
30 chapbooks of poetry for an acquisitions project.

It looks like a lot, but it doesn't seem like a lot. Maybe part of it is because it's real, actual work. These are live projects. The poetry acquisitions project will result in us picking one of those books of poetry to publish. The novel will be printed with my edits. The advance review copy needs someone to proofread it. Everything we do in class matters.

My graduate project for this class involves creating an online music publishing boot camp.

This has made me think of quite a few things, to come later.

Irons in the Fire

Posted on 2020-01-29 22:44:00 by Kyle and tagged with Updates

As the semester started, I hoped that things would be calmer than the fall, and thankfully in most ways they are. In some ways, however, there's more work. Here's a list of some of the things on my radar this spring, some moving into next fall and further.

At NDSU: I'm part of the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences Course Curation Committee, which is looking at how to update/streamline some college requirements.
At NDSU: I'm continuing as a member of the NICE Faculty Fellows, which promotes and explores Entrepreneurship.
At NDSU: As part of the NICE center, I'm also helping out with the Civic Innovation Force, which will pair students with the City of Fargo to solve problems.
Through NICE I've happened to get involved with a project to promote nanotechnology by writing music about nanotechnology. It's supported by an NSF grant.
- To Do: Learn how nanotechnology works.
NASA is interested in linking to Calibrating the Moon on the Arcstone project website.
I have two recording projects in the works.
I'm negotiating a commission of a new large ensemble piece--details forthcoming.
I'm negotiating a consortium for a second piece very similar to the first one, and writing a grant.
- To Do: Learn to write a grant. Before Friday.
I had these grand plans to start work on an opera this year, and I still might.
Then there's that clarinet choir piece.
I'm giving a faculty recital in a week and a half.
The composition studio is giving a Student Composers Recital in March.
I'll likely be doing some bassooning in Wind Symphony this semester.
Two CMS regional conferences, in Tennessee and Michigan (and a third performance in Arkansas)
SEAMUS National at the University of Virginia.

Oof.

Why the Clarinet Choir piece isn't done yet.

Posted on 2020-01-27 23:45:00 by Kyle and tagged with Updates

I'm writing a piece for the NDSU Clarinet Choir, which they'll perform at ClarinetFest 2020 in Reno, Nevada. Well, I mean, I'm not actually writing it this very minute, I'm writing this blog post. But I have been writing it. Except when I haven't been. Which has been a lot.

This post isn't so much a list of excuses so much as it is an exploration into the creative procrastination that goes into writing.

I didn't want to start the piece until January--I finished the percussion quartet in mid-December, and wanted to take a break. By the time I ended up getting back to Fargo and got settled in, it was already the 10th, with classes starting the following Monday.

I had no idea what the clarinet choir piece was going to look like, so the first several days of writing were just bouncing ideas around. I ended up with this weird musical line in my head, which reminded me of some song I heard in college, and I wanted to make sure I wasn’t ripping it off. That resulted in several days of trying to remember what that song was.

It ended up being Little Talks by Of Monsters and Men. And the line stuck in my head ended up resembling this not at all. Score one for me.

Also this video is trippy.

Of Monsters And Men - Little Talks (Official Video)

So that line I heard, I still haven't worked into the piece, because every time I start thinking about where it could fit in, it merges with MacArthur Park. I had never actually listened to the lyrics of MacArthur park until I listened through trying to figure out where it fit in.

Also the lyrics are trippy.

Richard Harris MacArthur Park

Part of this time has been spent looking for other clarinet choir pieces.

…

Crickets.

There's a lot of transcriptions, but not a lot of pieces originally for clarinet choir. So inspiration is scarce. The NDSU Clarinet Choir will be playing Schickele's Monochrome III and Curtis's Klezmer Triptych, so I know what else is on the program.

And I almost know how this piece is going to go too.

First Faculty Recital

Posted on 2020-01-20 21:45:00 by Kyle and tagged with Updates

After two and a half years, I'm finally giving my first faculty recital at NDSU, featuring all music written in North Dakota.

The planned program is:

The Notes Between The Notes - My song cycle featuring poems by Jamie Parsley. Michelle Gelinske (who premiered the cycle nearly a year ago) wasn't able to perform in February, so Dr. Kelly Burns, our new voice faculty member, will be performing the cycle with Dr. Amy Mercer.

Next up is the world premiere of Tape Piece, a tape piece featuring...tape sounds.

We'll round out the evening with the world premiere of Calibrating the Moon, commissioned and premiered by Connor Challey, and featuring Dr. Tyler Wottrich on piano.

The recital poster also features North Dakota:

I hope to see you at Beckwith Recital Hall at NDSU, on February 10 at 7:30 PM!

Three New Pieces

Posted on 2020-01-03 23:53:00 by Kyle and tagged with Updates

Over the past month or so, three new pieces have shown up on the website. Together, they represent 40 minutes of new music.

So working backwards, Calibrating the Moon is a tuba sonata written for Connor Challey. No media or score (partially because it's a commission, and partially because issuu has decided to start charging for embedded documents), but there's a program note. This work will be premiered nearly next month at NDSU.

Also receiving its premiere next month is Tape Piece, which is a tape piece (like stereo fixed media) about and using tape (like scotch and duct). Unlike Calibrating the Moon it does have media. It'll also receive its premiere next month, but given that it's tape, you can hear it in all its glory right now if you'd like.

Finally comes Four Views of the Butterfly Effect, which is a commission from the MinusOne Quartet, and which was a pain to write. I'll dive into an explanation of it a little later. No program note, score, OR media at the moment, because all I have are mock-ups.

Summer Travel, Creativity, and my Facebook News Feed

Posted on 2019-10-05 00:06:00 by Kyle and tagged with Updates

I realized in February or March of this year that I hadn't been to any conferences during the 18-19 academic year. This bugged me. It's hard to maintain a dialogue with other composers when you're sitting in your office all the time. Of course, the Spring semester was filled with creating a composition lecture series for a class, so at least I wasn't just watching Netflix.

I ramped up some submissions this summer, and I went to NYCEMF/ICMC in June, VU3 in Park City, UT in July, and the Aspen Composers Conference in August.

Considering Park City and Aspen were paper/presentation submissions, I spent most of June preparing for the July paper (Cloud Music: Audience Participation and Cloud Computing in Electroacoustic Music) and most of July preparing for the August paper (Inspiration/Perspiration: Creating a map of the music composition creative process). It was nice doing some word-thinking instead of note-thinking, but now I need to write something like 20 minutes of percussion quartet music by the end of the year. But that's a different conversation.

NYCEMF/ICMC was a blast, as always. I spent a bunch of time with Josh and Ioannis, and worked several concerts as technical staff. OU had a good showing this year, I think five of us had works through the conference. We spent more time in Greenwich Village this year (the conference moved from the lower east side to NYU), so I got my bakery fix at Mille-Feuille and spent way too little time at Strand Bookstore (I bought a volume of Ginsberg poetry).

I spent part of July in the mountains of Utah. The VU 3 Symposium for experimental, electronic, and improvised music was hosted in Park City, and it was an incredible experience I might write more about later. It was chock full of weird technical stuff, presented in a non-judgmental and non-hierarchical way. Not that normal conferences are necessarily judgy, I think that's just my insecurity coming out.

Anyway, it was a validating and supportive group (reminding me a lot of the last CFAMC conference I attended), and nearly immediately after I returned home, I dove into revising a paper on creativity that I presented the next month at the Aspen Composers' Conference (which was well-received). Because of all that, this summer was a season of creativity, spending a bunch of time around creative people, thinking about the creative process, how we teach creativity, and so on.

And then I have airport downtime and I check Facebook. Jeez! Facebook! How little original content there is on Facebook. Aside from the Ads. Or from pages I like. So much of it is shared content. So little of it is thought-provoking.

I originally had a listing of the top thirty or so posts, categorized by original vs. shared content, if there was any commentary, things like that, but it just got to be tedious. The simple point is that there was/is a vivid discrepancy between the creativity at the conferences and the creativity (or lack thereof) in my browser.

This has caused me to look closer at the creative research I'm doing, and how I can better focus on 1) presenting it to a wider audience, and 2) integrating more of it in my own work.

And that's the plan for this fall.

Spring 2019 Recap

Posted on 2019-07-01 16:20:00 by Kyle and tagged with Updates

It's already July!? It's already halfway through the summer semester!

The spring semester has been my busiest semester as a professor. Let's recap:

At NDSU:

I had a studio of 6 composers, 4 undergrads and 2 grads.
I mentored the Freshman Theory II Composition Projects.
I oversaw the Sophomore Theory IV Composition Projects.
I taught the bassoon part of Woodwind Methods II.
I taught Music Entrepreneurship (and wrote a course pack)
I oversaw Grad Theory Pedagogy Practicum.
We took the wind symphony to Budapest, Bratislava, and Prague.
And I was asked to join the NDSU Innovation, Creativity, and Entrepreneurship (NICE) Faculty Fellowship.

At VCSU:

I had a studio of 3 students in Comp II and 2 students in Comp III.
I had one capstone advisee.
I taught Advanced Scoring and Arranging.
I turned Comp I into a lecture-based class, with 15 students.
I organized the 18th annual VCSU Composers Concert.

At NoteForge/As a Composer

I recorded and produced an album.
I wrote one and a half pieces.
I did some massive upgrades to Liszt.
I solved a lot of issues with NDSU's livestreaming.

Some of these things were successful due to my hard work. Some of these things were successful due to my dumb luck. Some of these things could be greatly improved.

Turning Comp I at VCSU into a lecture class was a ton of work. It was fun, and I learned a great deal about video editing, but it took up way more time than I was expecting. Luckily, with those videos in "maintenance mode" now, I'll have some tweaks but most of it can stand.

I built that class around my ideas about the creative process, which I'm beginning to codify into something tangible. I'm presenting a poster about the process at this year's ATMI conference.

I didn't do a bunch of conferences/festivals this year, mostly due to a focus on teaching since VCSU was a new thing. I'm ramping up those things this summer, with a piece at NYCEMF/ICMC last week and a presentation at the VU 3 Symposium in Park City, UT next week.

I wrote a piece for bass clarinet duet + piano, and I started on a tuba sonata that I'm really enjoying, though it's taking a while trying to find time to write. Which reminds me--This semester I started booking dedicated creative time, so that I'm in the studio working on composition-related things every morning until 10. This worked…most of the time.

I picked up a faculty fellowship in Entrepreneurship, and as a part of that I've spent a bunch of time thinking about how to update NDSU's Music Entrepreneurship class. That'll be it's own separate post I'm sure.

Opportunities for Personal Growth

Posted on 2018-09-19 08:25:00 by Kyle and tagged with Updates

My parents and I watch a lot of procedural crime dramas. Law and Orders of all varieties, NCIS, CSI, The Closer, and recently CK and I discovered Crossing Lines on Netflix. But my parents are obsessed with Criminal Minds. It's basically all they watch. They're either watching Criminal Minds or going to Menards.

In episode 8 of season 3, shortly after Gideon is replaced by Rossi, Morgan and Rossi are having a conversation in which both of them, at some point, utter the phrase "I was giving you an opportunity for personal growth". This has become part of the Vanderburg lexicon, usually said in some sort of sarcastic way. Or, whenever dealing with things is hard.

I'm writing this percussion and saxophone piece. As it turns out, writing for multi-percussion is really hard, in really stupid ways. Despite having a basic background in percussion (go PBHS Drumline!), picking instruments was impossible. Where do I start? In an instrument group that includes basically anything I can imagine (and some things I can't), how do I narrow down the number of instruments to something that is both engaging and logistical?

A second issue deals with the difficulty of the music. If I usually write rhythmic music, and percussionists are all about rhythm, then I need to up my rhythm game and write something nigh-impossible, right? Right?

The piece started out as a groove piece--like so much of my recent pieces (see also: Earmarks, Austerity, Joyride…). How do I keep from making this whole piece a groove piece? Or should it be?

Also, relying on computer playback for things like "swirled superball mallet" isn't really a thing.

Most of these problems are mental--It's seemed like I've been trying to drink from a firehose. Some of the problems have gone away by introducing boundaries. It's like Stravinsky said, "The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one's self. And the arbitrariness of the constraint serves only to obtain precision of execution." This was often expressed in my graduate lessons as "Give me limitations and I'll give you the world".

Some of these problems are solved by research--Steven Schick's lecture "On the Bridge" helped tremendously, as did just listening to percussion things on YouTube.

Some of these problems are being solved by technology. Recording samples that I want to use, then dropping them into Pro Tools instead of using Sibelius, and then notating them later.

Overall, it's a fun project--and an opportunity for personal growth.

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