AOP Spotlight
Alvin Singleton
from NewMusicBox.org's interview
Alvin Singleton: Intuitions and Reminders
Separating and Categorizing is Problematic
Published: March 1, 2008
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Frank J. Oteri: You grew up in Brooklyn, but you spent many, many years outside of this country. Then you moved to Atlanta when they asked you to be composer-in-residence with the Atlanta Symphony. That was 20 years ago, but you've lived there since then. How significant is where you are to what you're writing?
Alvin Singleton: Well, you have your favorite work place, which is basically the place you've become accustomed to writing in. Growing up in Brooklyn, I had a little corner with an upright piano, and my mother and my sister would always complain about my playing the same thing over and over and over. I couldn't tell them that's what composers do because I wasn't sure then. But then later I became sure that that's what they do. Over and over and over. You know, it's like the next-door neighbor saying, "Why can't he get it right the first time?"
I think as you move, when you're serious about your work, you can pretty much work anywhere. I think one of the best things I've ever done was to travel and to live other places. It enriches your life. This is where art comes from. You learn another language, you live another culture, and it reinforces your own. I learned more about what it is to be an American living abroad than I did in America. You can't learn what it is to be an American in America because everybody's American. The habits are the same. The language is the same. The idioms are the same. You might think, well, it's different in the Midwest. Yeah, sure, but there's something about us that's culturally the same. And abroad, you stick out in a crowd.
FJO: So what made you stay in Atlanta after the residency?
AS: Oh, I met my wife, and that did it.
FJO: Is Atlanta an exciting place for a composer?
AS: When a place is home you can't say. It's like when you live in New York and someone says, "Do you like New York?" You say yes, but then it begs the question. Where else have you lived? Atlanta is a good place to live. I don't know whether it's exciting for composers, but I get work done. And I come here a lot.
FJO: There's been a constant tirade of commentary that many of us have grown weary of claiming classical music is dying. Or classical music has limited appeal for people, or that it's culturally specific and is not something that relates to a wide range of listeners. In a program note you wrote for one of your pieces, you claimed that you have tried to create work that speaks equally to the humanity of all of its listeners, which is a sentiment I found very inspiring. But it made me want to talk with you about the idiom you've chosen to work in as a composer, which for lack of a better term most people would call contemporary classical music.
AS: Well, I don't really refer to it in that way. I always try to avoid the use of the word classical because it means different things to different people. People who are not associated with the music or the term are totally confused. So I often say extended forms, or things that are written down that other people have to read.
FJO: So what would you say to someone you might meet, say, on an airplane flying back to Atlanta who asks what you do?
AS: I say I write music. Of course, invariably people will use terms: "Do you write pop or jazz?" And I will give the instrumentation. I'll say I do chamber music, or I do orchestra music. I try to avoid the use of the term classical because that means so little in our time, especially in this country and, more specifically, in New York City, because everyone is doing everything and much of it is very good.
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The Carnegie Hall premiere of Alvin Singleton's "Brooklyn Bones: Requiem for the Revolutionary War Prison Ship Martyrs" will be presented on April 26, 2010 at The Music of Georgia Shreve and Alvin Singleton. Visit the AOP EVENTS PAGE for full details.
To hear an excerpt from Brooklyn Bones, click HERE.
