Colorado Symphony. Similarly, Miller says he had no formal training either. “But I would always be knocking on the doors of theory professors’ offices, asking for feedback,” he says of his graduate years at Juilliard. One can’t help but wonder if certain instruments lend themselves to a composer’s mindset. Of the seven musicians interviewed for this article, three are percussionists and three oboe players. For Berk and Miller, sitting in the middle of the ensemble allows them to pick out just about any instrumental voice from the orchestral texture. Meanwhile, as the rhythmic backbone of the orchestra, Wood points out, percussionists often spend a significant amount of time studying orchestral scores to learn how their part fits into everything else that’s going on. Either way, the constant exposure to other orchestral works provides a wealth of experience to draw on, and the composers are also able to solicit feedback on their work from the instrumentalists they sit next to all the time. The other play-
ers, in return, get the rush of having been part of the creative process. It’s the type of creative partnership that can help ratchet all music-making up a notch. “I’ve never known a composer who, if something doesn’t work, hasn’t said to change it,” says David Lockington, music director of the Grand Rapids Symphony, a composer and cellist in his own right. “I find that very instructive because we often hold up the score as the be-all-end-all that has to be held up slavishly. But each generation will define the music in a different way depending on their influences. There’s no definitive interpretation.” Michigan Trifecta
The ArtPrize Triptych project emerged out of an earlier piece Lockington had written for the Grand Rapids-based ArtPrize contest in 2009. When ArtPrize requested a follow-up, Lockington wanted to take things to another level by commissioning three musicians in the orchestra to each contribute a movement to a larger work. Principal oboist Alexander Miller was an
obvious choice. His track record as a composer already included a number of premieres with the Grand Rapids Symphony and other orchestras around the country, earning him the label “unofficial composer-in-residence” from his colleagues. Let Freedom Ring, his setting of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, has been performed by the likes of Bill Clinton, Danny Glover, and James Earl Jones since its premiere in 1998. But Schekman and Wood, two other musicians on the orchestra’s artistic advisory committee, soon became involved as well, and the three composers agreed on some common elements to tie the movements together: a piece of thematic material that would start mid-range, then go high, then low; and three chords—one chosen by each—that they all had to use. From there, they went their separate ways. “I think I was slightly nervous because I’d never written for orchestra,” says Wood, who nonetheless had already one Percussive Arts Society Award in 2006 for a percussion ensemble piece. “But I
Left to right: Grand Rapids Symphony Associate Conductor John Varineau, and percussionist Shannon Wood, clarinetist Joel Schekman, and oboist Alexander Miller speak to the audience prior to the premiere of ArtPrize Triptych, which included a movement by each musician.
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