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take out the 100 grand they’ d saved their entire lives so that their wife could get surgery, and I had to say “ Sorry sir, your assets are frozen.” I knew the facts of the case, that basically the Board had cut themselves million-dollar bonuses three years in a row, then declared bankruptcy and ran off to the Cayman Islands to live in luxury. Why that Board wasn’ t tarred and feathered I’ ll never know, but my tenure answering those calls coincides with my most depressing time in the City, and I simply couldn’ t write a note the entire time, it was utter malaise. The kicker? I actually got laid off from that job!

now away

In the Midcoast, we’ ve gotten quite a bit of the “ From Away, Now Here” influx. So, this is a new feature to highlight people who’ ve grown up here and are on a journey elsewhere to shine their creative light. If you don’ t already know Nathan Scalzone, who grew up here in Thomaston and moved to New York City, you’re about to meet someone who crackles with energy and music. He’ s a composer of classical music, and a producer of classical, jazz and Broadway in New York City. He’ s got a brain I’d like to borrow for a day just to hear what’ s in it. He’ s about to debut a new choral composition at Bowdoin College on November 19 and 20, conducted by Anthony Antolini. The piece is called “ The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls” and is an a cappella setting of the Longfellow poem of the same name. Here’ s a little Q & A to get you warmed up.

Q: Your up-and-down journey is like a lot of artists’ journeys. How did you turn it around?

A: Well, finally I was hired by Columbia Artists Management, Inc. (CAMI) and ended up as the Managerial Assistant to the Senior VP of the company, and Nathan Scalzone. PHOTO COURTESY OF JAMIE JUNG Q: How young were you when his portfolio included the New York Philyou began composing music? harmonic, the Violinist Anne-Sophie MutA: I was eight years old and on a walk with my grandter, the principal guest conductor of the Metropolitan Opera, and many others father when I made the decision to be a composer. I can point to the exact who, in sum, made up the cream of the classical music crop. Following my stint at piece of concrete upon which I stood as I made the announcement, havCAMI I served a year as personal assistant to Sir André Previn (the composer and ing just completed the composition of what I thought was a full symphony informer conductor of LA Philharmonic). There’s a lot more to it than that; I’ ve been side my own head. My main inspirations at that age were Mozart, Vivaldi and scraping together an existence since the moment I arrived here. I would be absoBach, but that grew to include among many others—Rachmaninoff, Coplutely nowhere without the support of my family. And ironically, that #7 train that land, Gershwin, Ives, and more recently Sciarrino and Grisey. dropped me off into the middle of this intoxicating city soup back in college? I take it everyday to work now from my apartment in Queens.

Q: Did you go to high school in Thomaston? Where did you go to college?

A: I went to grades 1-12 in Thomaston, SAD 50, and attended the Hartt School of Music in Connecticut.

Q: Why did you feel opportunities were better elsewhere for what you wanted to accomplish?

Kay Stephens

Q: Do you come back to Maine often? Are there places here that you “carry” with you in your compositions?

A: Not NEARLY often enough. But in a way I’ ve never really left. I carry all of Midcoast Maine with me in all my compositions. That’ s not hyperbole. I can picture as I write every detail of Long Cove Quarry, my own backyard, Marshall Point Light House, the woods behind my cousin’ s old house in Spruce Head, Maple Juice Cove overlooking Christina’ s World... the entire coast in general. The ocean has the biggest impact on me, the surging tide is very powerful and it affects me deeply. My favorite place to be is the summit of Mt. Battie overlooking the ocean and the Penobscot Bay and Camden Harbor. Like many Mainers my “ home” really consists of a few towns; in my case the SAD 50 towns of Thomaston, Cushing and St. George and those peninsula communities. I could drop dead anywhere within those limits and feel just fine about it since I’ d know I died at home.

Kay Stephens, a Maine freelance writer, has covered both mainstream and underground events, people and scenes since moving to the Midcoast in 1993. She helps small Maine businesses in the creative fields get media exposure through www.kaystephenscontent.com To get daily A & E updates, follow The Killer Convo through Facebook: www. facebook.com/killerconvo and Twitter: http://twitter.com/thekillerconvo

A: Well, there’ s no question that New York City is the cultural capitol of the country, however, I did not necessarily feel opportunities were “better” elsewhere. I was simply drawn to New York City. When I was in college I took my first trip to NYC and I got lost among the subway trains, finally taking the #7 into Grand Central from Queens. Complete madhouse! I remember literally FEELING the energy in that space, being physically shaken by the rumbling trains and grumbling people all around me, and I just became intoxicated with that sensation of climactically chaotic humanity. I had never experienced so many different souls sharing such a condensed space. It was utterly foreign to me, it was exciting, and it proved irresistible.

Q: What have you done for the “jobby jobs” in order to work on your dream?

A: I moved to the city exactly one-week prior to September 11, 2001. Leaving aside everything else, that date also marks (for me anyway) the beginning of a decimated arts market in this country. 9/11/01 was literally the day I had my resume all set to go, new suit laid out, arts institutions targeted for employment opportunities... I jumped in the shower and when I got out it had already happened. I went up on the roof of my building at 104th and Broadway and saw the smoke rising. This was the environment into which I was birthed as a young artist. Depression, recession, and an immediate, across-the-board hiring freeze. And all this is to say there isn’ t much I haven’ t done to continue eating and living in this town, let alone working on creating. At first, I was walking dogs and scooping their poop, then a brief stint in “landscaping” (in NYC that often consists of spray-painting pine cones gold and glue-gunning them to front gates), until finally I was appointed Managing Director of the Czech World Orchestra, which was a pick-up group being formed to tour the USA to memorialize 9/11. That broke me into the music business, and also gave me my first NYC performance at The Town Hall, and a New York Times review of my composition.

Q: From scooping poop to a New York Times review? Was it that easy?

A: No. After that tour, of course the economy was still in tatters, so I finally had to accept a job as a call center operator in a Chapter 11 bankruptcy firm. I’ ll never forget when the temp agency called me and asked if I wanted to answer phone calls from devastated creditors who would never see a dime on their investments. Have you ever shaken your head “no” but forced yourself to say “ yes” at the same time? My sole client at that firm was to be, of all things, Agway. I grew up next to an Agway farm. They gave me my first job stacking bales of hay, and now farmers were calling me, telling me they were sorry because they had to

Q: Tell us about your upcoming choral composition, how it came to be and how much work it took for you to create it.

A: I had known the poem, “ The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow for quite some time, and had begun thinking of it musically and even started brewing up some melodies, none of which satisfied me (I always work like that, by the way, I develop stuff in my head for a long time, YEARS sometimes, before the final percolation ultimately boils over). But nothing ever came of it. Cut to this past January. I was in the middle of a major production. The day before opening night, a long-time stage hand and dear friend died in a traffic accident. His name was Vernon Jordan. We all buried our feelings as best we could (we had to, the show must and did go on). Anyway, that first night off I fell asleep and dreamt of a pulsing purple-yellow meteor descending down the horizon, looking out my back porch on the West Meadow Road. The meteor was descending slowly over the hill and seemingly into Rockland Harbor, and when the meteor “ touched down” out my view, it released a tremendous amount of energy that just blew through me... it felt a lot like that energy in Grand Central when I first visited NYC, and it rocked me awake. Alone in the night, I started humming the melody to this composition, and I knew what I had to do. I worked on it furiously for several weeks, then set it aside. This piece was composed to memorialize a friend. Yet there is so much more to it than that. Maine was very much on my mind when writing this piece.... the poet is a Mainer, the poem is about the permanence of the tide and the fleeting existentiality of the human experience, and the tonality I’ ve employed is evocative both of my childhood choral experience on the one hand and my adult urban kaleidoscope experience on the other. Anthony Antolini was one of my mentors in high school. He conducted the Downeast Singers of which I was a member all through high school, and it was while singing with that group that I learned everything I know about choral writing. Anyway, to have Tony directing this premiere is very much a thrill for me. He was such a mentor to me, and now he’s performing my music!! That the premiere is with the Bowdoin Chorus at Bowdoin College, Longfellow’ s alma mater, is even better. Still, anyway you shake it out, when I am not there I am always missing Maine. That will never change; it will always be part of my art.


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