Tiny Alligator Music

I’m heading into another series of late nights with my printer. I feel as though about 45% of my career as a composer so far has been spent like this: printing scores and parts, re-printing them when I discover that I’ve done the page turns wrong, taping or hole punching, repeating the whole thing when I do my last proof-read and discover mistakes. This time I’m starting miraculously early- four days before rehearsal!- and have learned from many past papery mishaps. I’m also printing for a much smaller pile of parts for this concert- 10 musicians instead of my usual 21. But still. I know myself. I’m sure to make a mess. 

I feel quite loyal to the giant, antique printing machine that lovely Jennifer Ryan donated to the Alligator Cause awhile back. This old scanner-printer-faxer (fax! remember that?) has a very comforting purr that, as 2 am turns into 3 am, often begins to sound more and more like a decent substitute for sleep. Despite my best attempts to control the chaos, the floor of my studio inevitably ends up covered in hole-punch confetti, bits of tape, mangled parts that got caught in the feeder, and abandoned socks (the more tired I am, the less I chose to wear socks). 

I complain now. But I can see myself in thirty years, shaking my head at a bunch of glossy young musicians with sleek touch-screen e-music readers, flicking page turns effortlessly and snickering as I squint to read the score off some sort of magic holographic conducting desk. I will shake my head at them, and reminisce about the the good old honest days, when the nights were long and the printers creaked, back when we used real trees to make real music. 

I just spent the most amazing 8 weeks in a cabin in the woods at the MacDowell Artist Colony, writing an opera about terrible things. During this residency, I wrote and orchestrated the music for three of the eight scenes in my libretto, which is about the Canadian experience of the recent war in Afghanistan. The text in “When This War Ends (Or, Some Important Questions You May Have About Our Recently-Concluded Engagement in the Graveyard of Empires)” is adapted from several sources, including reporting by my brother, Globe and Mail journalist Graeme Smith, as well as the parliamentary committee testimony given by former Canadian diplomat Richard Colvin.

Why write an opera about old news?

The war in Afghanistan is an event that I did not experience. It is strange that I did not experience this event. It moved, changed or ended the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. But I am writing an opera about not experiencing a war; about how it prickled the edges of my life, but changed nothing; about how strange it is that this massive cataclysm did not affect me. This was not our grandfathers’ war.

This is an inherently selfish point of view for an opera about a war; I am taking it nonetheless in an attempt to force myself into an awareness of my own naïveté. I also wanted to notice the inadequacies of some of the sources that brought me into contact with this war, and with the shortcomings my own consumption of other sources. Official information provided to Canadians about this “mission” was completely veiled and useless (when it was not detrimental). When I did bother to read the news about this war, I would briefly wonder about it, and then become distracted before I made it to the end of an article, or before I could follow up on my own questions. In doing so, I was violating my most basic duty as a citizen in a democracy: I was not wondering; I was not trying to understand. So, by writing this opera, I begin to question.

What does it sound like?

Because I’ve had so much time at MacDowell, I have tried a lot of things in these three scenes that I otherwise would not have had the time, technique or courage to write. Some of these new (at least, new to me!) sounds will be successful; some will undoubtedly not be. I have tried to take advantage of the luxury of having four opera singers, a string quartet, a percussionist and three jazz musicians (guitar, bass, saxophone) by writing interesting melodic and harmonic material that occasionally leaves space for improvisatory exploration.

When can we hear it?

Three scenes from “When This War Ends” will be performed in concert on Thursday, May 31^st, 2012 by Spectrum Music. The concert will feature a pre-show chat, where I will interview Globe and Mail journalist Graeme Smith and former Canadian diplomat Richard Colvin. I will ask them how they feel about my turning them into an opera, and what will happen, now that this war has ended. The chat begins at 7:30 pm. This will take place at the Al Green Theatre, Bloor and Spadina, Toronto. Tickets at http://www.spectrummusic.ca/

Last week:

This week:

People like shiny things. Human beings seem to have an inherent dislike for well-worn normalcy. From a young age, we can’t wait: we can’t wait for Christmas, for the cookies to come out of the oven, for school to be over.

Most people learn, at some point, that shiny things are not necessarily real. Being a grown-up means appreciating the space between the shiny things in life, understanding the value of realness.

I am dismayed when I hear that the Ford Brothers want to turn my city into what is essentially a cruise ship filled with shopping malls. This is not a plan for a real city. This is a plan for a place where people who wish to feel rich arrive, drop some money in one single area, and never go anywhere else. This plan will not enrich our city. It will enrich a few developers, and a few American companies like “Bloomingdales and Macy’s.”

Building a good city, a real city, is like building a career. It takes time. You have to get to know your work, learn to understand your own strength, and be nice to people. You have to take time to understand who people are. You have to make your best, most sincere and concerted contribution to the world without worrying about it taking too long.

The Ford Brothers’ proposal does none of this. Instead, it whines that the currently-planned development is going to take years, that it is not going to be shiny enough. It wants to cover our city in plastic. It screams “please like us!” without providing the substance that would be a reason for anyone to do so. This plan wants the corner office before it has learned how to work the photocopier.

What dismays me even more is the timing. Jack Layton, rest his soul, taught us how to build real things. His determination and focus on Parliament Hill showed that he understood the time and effort required to build a substantive country. His work in Toronto showed that he knew how to meet people, listen to them, and understand who they are. He knew how to make a place for people to live, not just a place for them to shop.

By cynically trying to play politics with the provincial Liberal government ahead of the upcoming provincial election, the Fords will simply turn more people away with their insincerity and greed.

At Jack’s funeral on Saturday, our city shifted. The streets were filled with people who had admired his work towards building a country with substance. This momentum now needs to be directed squarely at Toronto City Hall. We know what a real politician feels like. What we have in office right now is just plastic.

In Which I am having post-minimalist thoughts, post-production.

I had a great nerd-out this week with composers Adam Sherkin, Alex Eddington, Brian Harman, and Mitch Renaud. Our topic was post-minimalism, and as we started, it became apparent that our first task was to define post-minimalism. The scores that we brought in as examples of the style included elements of hard-core minimalism, but all seemed to use this minimalism less as a style to be adhered to than as one compositional tool available to be exploited. Minimalistic concepts were found to be in cahoots in various scores with post-modernism, DJs, drum and bass, theatre music, neo-romanticism…. From what I remember, the only conclusion we came to was that we will need to reconvene in 50 years, to see if we can make sense of the jumble of new sounds we were hearing. (Perhaps the others can provide a more conclusive conclusion for me?) But it was great fun to think about sound on such a basic level: what is a style of music? How many people have to practice the same style for it to become a movement? Where are its edges?

This is a pretty fun time to be a composer. As I confirmed in our discussion this week, we are intensely lucky to be writing music in a Western Classical tradition now; this is a time when so much has been built up in this art form, so many sounds discovered and tools provided, so many barriers between sub-genres broken down. As a composer, I have instruments, techniques, performers and ideas available to me from literally all over the planet and all throughout human history. I have unparalleled access to information about music, and brand new ways to document what I create and provide it to an audience. Many times, I think this panoply of stimuli leads me to act more as a curator than as a composer. It also opens up all of the questions of classification mentioned above.

These questions come at an interesting time for me. A few months after the monumental effort that was “Safe and Healthy Homes for Children,” I am still feeling a little lost musically. In post-production now (recordings coming soon!), I am completely baffled by the recording of this concert. Over 65 minutes of music, I pretty much pulled in every style of music that I know how to write (and a few that I discovered, listening back, I do not yet know how to write).  In the end, I seem to have produced a series of études about the edges of various contemporary pop music styles; this work is the outlines of some musical shapes that remains slightly obscured to me. Here in the Land of Outlines, I have written music that is so many different things that it is not actually a Thing. What remains now is for me to reason my way back inside to the Land of Things, to clarify the intention of each individual musical shape. It’s time for me to start being deliberate about classification.

To do this, I am going to step back from the current compositional track on which I’ve been careening lately. “Safe and Healthy Homes” will mark my last self-produced show on this scale. I’m going to take a break from Alligators and focus on writing music for smaller ensembles for the next year: upcoming projects include a piece of art music about contemporary wars for chamber strings and male voice; I’m also working on a pop music/performance art collaboration with poet Linda Besner and singer/songwriter Abigail Lapell about model trains (model trains!). With each of these projects, I am hoping to find myself more in the centre of each respective musical style, instead of mucking about with outlines. I look forward to reporting back in a little while from the Land of Things. 

——-

Footnote: There are MANY people to whom I owe very much for the time and creative genius they gave me for “Safe and Healthy Homes”. A more thorough thank you will be forthcoming, but right now, the work that Gary Gray is doing on the recording of the show is foremost in my mind. I can’t wait to post the recordings online shortly- Gary has somehow managed to make it sound like we spent days in a professional studio, instead of doing the whole thing live in one shot in a theatre…. Thank you Gary!

By Susan Bond

While Safe and Healthy Homes is in some ways a reflection of Caitlin’s personal experience and situation in Brooklyn, it’s also a meditation on a larger state of affairs. Living on a meagre (but greatly appreciated!) grant that didn’t allow her to work meant that she wound up living below the poverty line in a country with almost no social safety net.
 
Caitlin was disturbed to see that the local government thought it more responsible to post warnings not to lick the walls in older low-income areas (such as the one Caitlin was living in) than to provide health care for the citizens or provide for the clean-up of contaminated areas.  On a surprisingly visible level, the community was unable (or unwilling) to provide safe and healthy homes, be they for children or any other members.

Those of us watching the concert on Sunday are from (or at least in) a fantastic city that can sometimes feel very small, in a country that can seem, well, kind of bland.  Like the woman from the shoe in the first half of the concert, we can be tempted to strike out for more adventurous climes, but to do so we have to give something up.  Specifically, we have to give up a city and a country that care about their constituents enough that they have the goal, though not always met, of providing them with health care and adequate housing.  It’s a hard bargain, and one that we haven’t been willing to make.

———————————

Tiny Alligator Music presents

Safe and Healthy Homes for Children

A song-cycle for jazz orchestra and three voices

Sunday, March 13th, 8:00 pm

The Alumnae Theatre, 70 Berkeley Street

(near King St. and Parliament St.)

$20/$15 for students, seniors and arts workers

buy tickets now at www.tinyalligator.com/events

By Susan Bond

Caitlin’s note: Susan is a fantastic Toronto-based dramaturge who has been kind enough to help me sort through the jumble of ideas I have had about this show. She helped me to fix the libretto before I began reorchestrations this fall. Below, she miraculously pulls together my song cycle into one coherent narrative for you. Amazing!

As the title tells us, Safe and Healthy Homes for Children is about being brave and leaving home; but in many ways it’s more a story about leaving home and being brave.  A deeply personal work, Safe and Healthy Homes came about during Caitlin’s year living and studying in Brooklyn.  The title is taken from a Public Service Announcement about lead paint - one of the traumas of big city living that Caitlin herself got to deal with (a line in her lease forbade her from licking the walls).  
 
The piece starts with our hero(ine) still safe at home: it opens with her (a Sapphic fragment voiced by all three singers) lying in bed; safe, certainly, but isolated and somehow restless.  The second movement is the longest, and in many ways the focal point of the work.  It is a setting of “The Woman Who Lived in a Shoe”,  a short story by indie darling Sheila Heti from her work The Middle Stories.  In it, the protagonist takes stock of her current comfortable (but still lonely and kind of boring) life, and decides to leave home.  The moment of her decision is filled with excitement, and the actual leave-taking is a moment of triumph.
 
If the first half of the piece is about leaving home and what makes us do that, the second half is about being brave among the danger of the outside world and the unpleasantness we’re faced with when we try to live there.  Unlike the first act, the majority of the second is set to Caitlin’s own words, drawn both from her own experiences of living and working in Brooklyn, and other hostile environments.  The exception to this is the sixth movement, a setting of a poem by the American novelist John Updike.  “Vibration” expands the reach to more of the outside world - instead of just dealing with the nightmare that Brooklyn can be, it  shows the unfriendliness of a more general urban landscape.  It also serves as a good bridge to the last movement, “Public Service Announcement no. 2” in which our heroine considers the larger world, and possible homes that may or may no be healthy and safe.