Singing in the Dark
Marty Ehrlich, David Schiff and Andrew Cyr in conversation

Andrew Cyr:   How did this piece come about?

David Schiff:   The real genesis was the recording session for Shtik, a piece I wrote for Dave Taylor.

Marty Ehrlich:   We recorded that back in 1993 for New World for an album called Past Tells.

DS:   It was the first time I composed for a jazz ensemble.  For years I've been writing jazz–influenced music for classical musicians, dragging them kicking and screaming over to the jazz side. Shtik was a big step for me, and I didn't know how jazz musicians would deal with my music.  But when the CD came out a critic at Downbeat called the music “fourth stream” —a post–modern version of the interplay of jazz and classical that was called “third stream” in the 50s and 60s.  I guess that's what I was aiming for...

ME:   I remember that some of the players were unhappy with the look of the music —it was the first time they had seen computer–generated parts; they didn't look like jazz.

DS:    I should have used Jazz font! Anyhow we got past that. Dave Taylor had put together a fantastic sextet for the piece: Marty and Andy Laster on sax, Herb Robertson on trumpet, Mark Helias on bass, Phil Haynes on drums and Dave on bass trombone.  As soon as I heard them I felt like I was getting a test drive on a Ferrari.  The guys immediately understood the mix of composed and improvised sections in the piece — they had no problem at all with changing meters and things like that and when they improvised they showed that they understood the subtext of the music. Each soloist opened it up in his own way, with so much imagination, intensity and humor.   It was such a thrill for me.   I was so impressed with Marty's soulful playing that I decided on the spot that I had to write for him.  Then I went out and got all his recordings which was more than a little intimidating (and inspiring) since he's a master performer AND improviser AND composer...

ME:    Though it took a few years.

DS:    I finally got a commission from David Shifrin to write a piece for alto sax and string quartet for the 2002 season of Chamber Music Northwest. I had a lot of different thoughts about the piece, and then 9/11 happened.  Even though I've lived in Portland, Oregon since 1980 I'm still a New Yorker so the wounds went very deep.   My son managed to call us just after it happened, he could see it from his apartment in Jersey City. I didn't plan any kind of musical response and then about two months later I was at Friday night services, my wife is a cantor. At some point in the service I suddenly had a palpable vision of the piece —it had to contain a music of utter calm, something that would go beyond all the voices of anger that filled the airwaves.   It was as if I felt the presence of the entire piece even before I composed a note.   When I wrote that movement — I called it Almost Like Praying, I was guided by an intense image.  Our synagogue is a beautiful octagonal building with stained glass on all sides and on Yom Kippur when you spend the whole day in shul you are very aware of the sun slowly circling around the building.  In the music there is a very gradual motion through all the possible keys circling back to where it begins, all very slow and meditative and, I hope, healing. My sense of the piece from that moment in synagogue was so clear that when it came time to write the notes down they just fell onto the page in a half-hour.

AC:    That's the one movement with no improvisation.

DS:    Yes, but it's followed by a sax cadenza which is completely ad lib.!  Once I knew what the emotional core of the piece would be I had to figure out how to get there and how to go on from there.  I had the idea that the piece would start with the sax and strings playing in different idioms “at odds” and that they would slowly converge onto the common ground of Almost Like Praying —and from then on they would really be connected.  So at the beginning the strings are playing in something like a Bartok style while the sax seems to be communing with himself.   And then in the section called Meditation on a Shadow which is sort of an anxious tango the sax begins to improvise and the tensions rise.

ME:    The music sort of mirrored the real life situation.

DS:    Yeah there was a little tension between you and strings.

David Schiff

AC:   Tension?

DS:   I had rehearsed the string quartet without Marty and they were feeling sort of complacent —like “oh sure we can do this”.  And then Marty walked in with his porkpie hat on which was a fine provocation!

ME:   And the cellist of the Miami Quartet, Robby Robinson, looked at me funny and said “We've never played with a saxophone before.” He was smiling but it was a little hostile.

DS:   As soon as you started playing they realized it was going to be a whole different thing for them — the piece would be different every time you played it so they would have to be much more “in the moment”.  You just couldn't nail it down the way classical players are used to.  It must have been scary for them but the energy level in the room just went through the roof — and it continued to climb with every rehearsal and performance.

ME:   Your writing for the saxophone is wonderfully idiomatic, but fully integrated into the texture of the ensemble, so I don't hear a duality of jazz and classical.  I think you hear these elements in ways that honors how each musical style or language is itself a synthesis.  Which is fancy way of saying that I find the piece to be real “ear” music in its creativity.

DS:   Well it helps to be spoiled by great performers. Over the years I have become more and more opposed to the idea (taught at conservatory) that my job as a composer was to tell performers what to do as precisely as possible, and their job was to carry out my orders.

ME:   As someone who has performed in a broad range of musical contexts, and whose own music uses many forms, I am often thinking of the role performance practice plays in communicating a work.  Singing in the Dark touches on a few key performance challenges. It has rich cantabile sections. And surely one of the “soul” practices of the Euro–American classical tradition is the connected legato sound, striving for an intensity of the melodic line through time.  Other phrases in the piece call for an approach that touches on the African-American tradition, where certain notes should be foregrounded and others backgrounded, leaning more to a musical approximation of speech patterns.  The internal rhythm of the melodic line. And within these and between these approaches are a hundred shadings and variations.  As the interpreter, my goal is to bring some possible shadings and variations to light in the work.   As an improvisor within the form of the work, my goal is to highlight and extend the creative intention of the work.

DS:   I always seem to be combining different traditions in my music.   A lot of my feeling for music was formed by my father's taste from when I was very young.  He loved cantorial music--and I grew up in a congregation that had a great cantor, Lawrence Avery. But at home he listened to Nat King Cole, Pearl Bailey and Paul Robeson--three very different artists but each of them put their own stamp on every single note and phrase.   Even though I've never been a jazz performer I've always been submerged in the sound of jazz. (I think the first album I bought, when I was 14, was Miles Ahead — still love that!)   The formative jazz experience for me was hearing Mingus live on many occasions in the 60s — and listening to his albums over and over again, and of course that led me to Ellington who is my aesthetic ideal.   I called the last movement of Singing in the Dark is:WWDD — or What Would Duke Do?  As a composer this is the question I ask myself every day.  I think that Mingus and Ellington experimented a lot with improvisational situations — in a way they were improvising with form and that meant changing the context for solos.  I have tried to use a whole range of situations for the soloist, from written out passages that, I hope, sound improvised, to improvised sections bases on melodic ideas, or on modal scales, or on chord changes, to completely free passages like the cadenza before the last movement —at that point in the piece I think the soloist is ready to take over completely!

ME:   There are a limitless amount of ways to combine the compositional tools of pre composed material and improvisational material in a single work.   I am looking forward to the challenge that you present in Singing in the Dark.  I think that you've been successful at putting both these techniques at the service of the work's narrative.   It's my challenge as an interpreter/improviser to give expression to these elements so that the listener hears only the narrative.

Marty Ehrlich

DS:   When I listen to you play the piece what always impresses me is the way you tell both your story and mine — you improvise within the language and feeling of the notes I have written but you bring your own angle, sensibility, creativity to every moment.  I think that this is really what great performers do even when they are not improvising—in the sense of making up notes.  Real expression, bringing out the music in the music, taking the music beyond itself is something all musicians aspire to whether we are composing or improvising or interpreting a score.

AC:   I was pretty amazed when I rehearsed with Mark Helias and Marty the other day — they transitioned so naturally from improv sections to what was written that there was never any sense of disruption of the musical flow — it certainly makes you realize how much structure actually goes into improvising.   It also helps that David sets it up in such way that themes and ideas sort of cross-pollinate each other. His solo writing is already so idiomatic that without a score in hand, it might be tough to discern what's actually happening, which I think is really exciting.

ME:   And I'm looking forward to the new version with string orchestra.   For one thing I'll be able to play louder!   I think the larger instrumental body and the rhythm section will make a big difference.

AC:   For certain, the rhythm section will really be able to generate lots of drive and energy, as well as help expand the dynamic range.   The drummer has so much carte blanche in certain sections, he'll be able to really interact and respond to the strings, and to Marty. What'll be interesting to see is how the strings react to the rhythm section's ideas, which will be different for every rehearsal and performance.   I think this will help impart this feeling of riding on the edge, of really listening and reacting to what's happening in the moment and being open to where things might go.   When your notes are set in ink, but everyone else's changes from time to time, that alters the meaning of what's on the page every performance — it creates new contexts for the written music to fit into.  I think this will help free up what the orchestra musicians do with the spaces between the notes — these players are definitely into and up for these types of musical challenges, so I can't wait to see how this all plays out.

DS:   And I'm delighted that we'll be working with Andrew and the Metropolis Ensemble.   I first met Andrew at the Conductors Retreat at Medomak in Maine.  It was the perfect place to meet you Andrew because, as a total Mainer, you were really in your element.

AC  —and I could tell that you were a total New Yorker completely out of your element up in the woods —but musically we soon discovered that we had a lot in common.

DS:   At the retreat Ken Kiesler teaches conductors to “become the music.” When I saw you conduct —I think it was some Fauré —I knew you had that rare ability and that there was a real spiritual quality to your music making which I know will connect with Marty's playing. And Angel Orensanz is the perfect place to put it all together —the space has such a special feeling.  It's great that this new music, new each time you play it — will be heard in a beautiful old synagogue.

ME:   Speaking of synagogues — should I wear my porkpie hat?

DS:   I insist!