I'm glad that the article(s) previously posted started some fires. We seem to be spiraling back towards the gravitational pull of that question we so often discuss as groups of composers: who cares if [they] listen?
I'd like to clarify my thoughts on argument (in general), and values in music.
First of all, I tend to approach all argument from a diplomatic angle. Maybe I like to take a philosophical high road, in order to prevent my own position from being eroded. I usually will attempt to synthesize the various sides of the arguments in play and find common ground - in the process, I can be "friends" with everyone (maybe it is just my personality, but at a very basic level, I want everyone to like me, and thus I will attempt to see the multiple sides of every argument and understand where they might come from. Possibly this comes from growing up in extremely conservative rural areas as a liberal with quasi-cosmopolitan values, where it was necessary to be apparently congruous with the prevailing culture, for the sake of social "lubrication").
So the core of my previous post rests on how I posited the (universal?) value of a cross-cultural dialog between composition in the western-classical tradition and more popular or folk composition styles. The claim was that cross-fertilization was valuable because it would engender new forms of music, that were more "genetically," or "memetically" diverse, and thus able to survive in a variety of cultural contexts.
Notice my emphasis on "new forms of music" - therein lies an assumed value that I did not isolate and discuss in the previous post (in fact, I think I left out "values" altogether). I do value newness and experimentalism highly in music (and, to a logical extreme, maybe music is not a great term anymore for the novel sonic arts that I value in addition to my beloved western classical tradition... organized sound might be better, and that alone might put me at odds with many people). I don't necessarily value this newness at the expense of methods in older musics, and I also understand that this might simply be a facet of my personality. I think that I just love the way that our cognitive faculties, with the aid of our sensory organs, detect and analyze pattern in our environment - to me the statistical changes in the textures of Ligeti's orchestral music are just as interesting as the tonal-syntactical patterns of J. S. Bach's music.
I do think that the memetically diverse contexts I mentioned before will create an array of musics with many different values present. These values might not all be present at once in one entity, mind you - I think I'm speaking here of entire ecologies of composition (have you noticed that I'm trying to take a high road philosophically?). I guess my hope is that by erasing the boundaries between musics, some composers and listeners will slide not only into populist aesthetics, but also the reverse direction into the styles of the late western classical tradition, possibly even further (or diagonally?) into the realm of organized sound.
I suppose, after analysing my statements, that I do value the presence of listeners (maybe this is because I've become accustomed to freakishly large 100+ audiences at Pendulum New Music concerts?). Without them, whose cognitive faculties could I test my ideas on? However, I think that assuming you will have listeners and composing for the audience are two different things here. Does "composing for the audience" mean you attempt to connect with as many listeners of different backgrounds as possible (assuming then that audience means "any audience")? What factors would go into such an effort? What is "connecting" in this context?
Blog Archive
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Monday, March 30, 2009
Erasing the Boundaries of New Classical Music
by Paul Hembree
Conrad Kehn, director of the Playground ensemble at Denver University and a friend of the Pendulum New Music series, turned me on to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal. Titled "A Young, Hip, Classical Crowd," and written by composer and critic Greg Sandow, the article describes the scene at Le Poisson Rouge in New York, including the presence of Gabriel Prokofiev, the grandson of Sergei.
From what Sandow reports, it seems like the boundaries are slowly being erased between popular music and the classical world. Gabriel Prokofiev had performances of his String Quartet No. 2, followed by releases of material from the piece, recast into various types of club music.
Similarly, Alex Ross reported in 2007 in this New Yorker article about the blurring of boundaries, highlighting the Wordless Music series, which basically treats all small groups of instruments (jazz, rock, or classical) as chamber music.
To the often audience-starved classical world, this type of boundary crossing should be viewed as an extremely valuable lesson. In particular, new music will always benefit from genre blurring, because as composers with omnivorous tastes, our music is genetically diverse, drawing inspiration from numerous sources. As the multifaceted stylistic surfaces shine out from our work, each angle can attract a different kind of listener with a different kind of musico-cultural background.
Obviously, there is danger here - as Alex Ross puts it, "sometimes blurring of boundaries leads to over-amplified mush." I suppose the trick then is finding ways to keep the integrity of each stylistic stream sound. One recent performance that I was blown away by, that crosses boundaries successfully, was Nate Wheeler's Apotheosis, for solo violin and electronics, played by Rachel Sliker on the March 18th ATLAS Black Box Pendulum. Nate and Rachel go further than just crossing stylistic borders for fun; philosophically, Nate is "healing" the divides between musico-cultural communities.
Allow me to indulge a universal Darwinist angle, at least briefly, although it often raises more questions than answers (such as whether composers even have free will or agency in their compositional choices?).
Speaking of genetics, - or maybe more appropriately, the memetics of music - I think that cross-fertilizing cultural communities is vital to the survival of our art. The more genetically diverse an ecosystem is, the more likely its constituent organisms are to survive various types of cataclysmic events (plagues, climate change, etc.). One might draw analogically from this that the more memetically diverse (or the more diverse the pool of musico-cultural units we draw our inspirations from), the more likely our music will resonate with numerous listeners with many types of backgrounds.
I make this case not to promote a gray, cultural mush. Instead, from the reunification of numerous geographically divided musical subcultures (aided through, among other things, the incredible boon to the infosphere that is the internet), a rich meme pool will develop, which will lead to many diverse and interesting musical organisms, each adapted to its own cultural environment. Then again - is it illogical to posit that such a process resulted in the current cultural divides that we have now, or that we are evolving away from (such as the "concert-hall" institution versus the "arena-rock" institution)? Or were the previous institutional boundaries the result of strong verbal-conceptual memes adapted around the commidification of culture, and promoted through pervasive phemotypical artifacts (mass media)? Where is Adorno when I need him?
Conrad Kehn, director of the Playground ensemble at Denver University and a friend of the Pendulum New Music series, turned me on to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal. Titled "A Young, Hip, Classical Crowd," and written by composer and critic Greg Sandow, the article describes the scene at Le Poisson Rouge in New York, including the presence of Gabriel Prokofiev, the grandson of Sergei.
From what Sandow reports, it seems like the boundaries are slowly being erased between popular music and the classical world. Gabriel Prokofiev had performances of his String Quartet No. 2, followed by releases of material from the piece, recast into various types of club music.
Similarly, Alex Ross reported in 2007 in this New Yorker article about the blurring of boundaries, highlighting the Wordless Music series, which basically treats all small groups of instruments (jazz, rock, or classical) as chamber music.
To the often audience-starved classical world, this type of boundary crossing should be viewed as an extremely valuable lesson. In particular, new music will always benefit from genre blurring, because as composers with omnivorous tastes, our music is genetically diverse, drawing inspiration from numerous sources. As the multifaceted stylistic surfaces shine out from our work, each angle can attract a different kind of listener with a different kind of musico-cultural background.
Obviously, there is danger here - as Alex Ross puts it, "sometimes blurring of boundaries leads to over-amplified mush." I suppose the trick then is finding ways to keep the integrity of each stylistic stream sound. One recent performance that I was blown away by, that crosses boundaries successfully, was Nate Wheeler's Apotheosis, for solo violin and electronics, played by Rachel Sliker on the March 18th ATLAS Black Box Pendulum. Nate and Rachel go further than just crossing stylistic borders for fun; philosophically, Nate is "healing" the divides between musico-cultural communities.
Allow me to indulge a universal Darwinist angle, at least briefly, although it often raises more questions than answers (such as whether composers even have free will or agency in their compositional choices?).
Speaking of genetics, - or maybe more appropriately, the memetics of music - I think that cross-fertilizing cultural communities is vital to the survival of our art. The more genetically diverse an ecosystem is, the more likely its constituent organisms are to survive various types of cataclysmic events (plagues, climate change, etc.). One might draw analogically from this that the more memetically diverse (or the more diverse the pool of musico-cultural units we draw our inspirations from), the more likely our music will resonate with numerous listeners with many types of backgrounds.
I make this case not to promote a gray, cultural mush. Instead, from the reunification of numerous geographically divided musical subcultures (aided through, among other things, the incredible boon to the infosphere that is the internet), a rich meme pool will develop, which will lead to many diverse and interesting musical organisms, each adapted to its own cultural environment. Then again - is it illogical to posit that such a process resulted in the current cultural divides that we have now, or that we are evolving away from (such as the "concert-hall" institution versus the "arena-rock" institution)? Or were the previous institutional boundaries the result of strong verbal-conceptual memes adapted around the commidification of culture, and promoted through pervasive phemotypical artifacts (mass media)? Where is Adorno when I need him?
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Modern Miscellanea
by Paul Hembree
Two weeks ago, my work Nyx & Eris was performed in a new version by the Playground Ensemble in Denver, and I am pleased with the changes I made from last year's version, as well as the excellent performance. Most of the changes stemmed from a composition seminar last year, during which there was quite a bit of constructive criticism, mostly lead by Brandon Vacarro. I find generally that composers are too soft to each other (in many of the contexts I've experienced that involved numerous composers interacting with each other - festivals, master classes, seminars, etc), and in order for us to grow as composers we should both give and take constructive criticism effectively. Though it might not have been a Paul Hembree love fest at the time, the criticism I received, particularly on the Eris movement, encouraged me to continue crafting the work into the improved version that now exists (I'll post a video when get all the material - check it out!).
Eris was changed extensively in the new version. That movement particularly suffered from a lack of breathing points - something have been prone to in recent years. Part of this stems from my almost obsessive-compulsive urge to fill all the staves on the page with some kind of material at all times, preferably contrapuntally independent material. However, considering the size of the Nyx & Eris ensemble (woodwind quintet, piano, and string quartet), this type of textural saturation was not as viable. The new version uses gaps in the texture for breathing points. Furthermore, I believe the orchestration is much more successful in the new version - typically only three layers are in play at any one time, and though those layers may each consist of many different components, they are united in gesture to form a single nuanced layer, with an "inner quality."
(A long tangent: The term "inner quality" I first heard from Wayne Vitale, a composer for and director of Sekar Jaya, the highly successful Balinese gamelan ensemble. My take on progressions or gestures with an "inner quality": they have an internal structure which reveals nuances that are perceptible only on the periphery of consciousness, while their entire outline is apprehended in the foreground of consciousness as a Gestalt unit. Debussy seems to be good at both this type of gesture, an example of which might be the opening chords of Nuages, and a much more "flat" gesture: "planing," that is, simply using successive, identical quality chords.)
The other main change to Eris that was a drastic improvement was the rhythmic simplification of sections of the piece that did not require a vigorous "aksak" feel (an asymmetrical rhythmic feel composed of chaotic alternations of groups of 2 or 3 eighths, creating a kind of kaleidoscopic Eastern European / Balkan dance). While the aksak rhythms created an appropriate intensity for some of the jarring chromatic lines of the movement, it was not appropriate for the "Tapestry" sections, during which the performers should feel much more relaxed and expressive. Though not tonal, the Tapestry material was certainly conceived of as being beautiful. The new version ironed out the aksak rhythms during these sections, instead employing a lightly mixed, pervasively compound meter throughout. The conductor, Jonathan Leathwood, described these sections as moments of "sanctus" - I feel that this is certainly an appropriate analogy. I love the balance of heavenly and hellish sound worlds, sometimes even simultaneously, because to me it is one of the best ways to express the feeling of apprehending something sublime in the cosmos.
Two weeks ago, my work Nyx & Eris was performed in a new version by the Playground Ensemble in Denver, and I am pleased with the changes I made from last year's version, as well as the excellent performance. Most of the changes stemmed from a composition seminar last year, during which there was quite a bit of constructive criticism, mostly lead by Brandon Vacarro. I find generally that composers are too soft to each other (in many of the contexts I've experienced that involved numerous composers interacting with each other - festivals, master classes, seminars, etc), and in order for us to grow as composers we should both give and take constructive criticism effectively. Though it might not have been a Paul Hembree love fest at the time, the criticism I received, particularly on the Eris movement, encouraged me to continue crafting the work into the improved version that now exists (I'll post a video when get all the material - check it out!).
Eris was changed extensively in the new version. That movement particularly suffered from a lack of breathing points - something have been prone to in recent years. Part of this stems from my almost obsessive-compulsive urge to fill all the staves on the page with some kind of material at all times, preferably contrapuntally independent material. However, considering the size of the Nyx & Eris ensemble (woodwind quintet, piano, and string quartet), this type of textural saturation was not as viable. The new version uses gaps in the texture for breathing points. Furthermore, I believe the orchestration is much more successful in the new version - typically only three layers are in play at any one time, and though those layers may each consist of many different components, they are united in gesture to form a single nuanced layer, with an "inner quality."
(A long tangent: The term "inner quality" I first heard from Wayne Vitale, a composer for and director of Sekar Jaya, the highly successful Balinese gamelan ensemble. My take on progressions or gestures with an "inner quality": they have an internal structure which reveals nuances that are perceptible only on the periphery of consciousness, while their entire outline is apprehended in the foreground of consciousness as a Gestalt unit. Debussy seems to be good at both this type of gesture, an example of which might be the opening chords of Nuages, and a much more "flat" gesture: "planing," that is, simply using successive, identical quality chords.)
The other main change to Eris that was a drastic improvement was the rhythmic simplification of sections of the piece that did not require a vigorous "aksak" feel (an asymmetrical rhythmic feel composed of chaotic alternations of groups of 2 or 3 eighths, creating a kind of kaleidoscopic Eastern European / Balkan dance). While the aksak rhythms created an appropriate intensity for some of the jarring chromatic lines of the movement, it was not appropriate for the "Tapestry" sections, during which the performers should feel much more relaxed and expressive. Though not tonal, the Tapestry material was certainly conceived of as being beautiful. The new version ironed out the aksak rhythms during these sections, instead employing a lightly mixed, pervasively compound meter throughout. The conductor, Jonathan Leathwood, described these sections as moments of "sanctus" - I feel that this is certainly an appropriate analogy. I love the balance of heavenly and hellish sound worlds, sometimes even simultaneously, because to me it is one of the best ways to express the feeling of apprehending something sublime in the cosmos.
Monday, January 19, 2009
Alarm Will Sound
by Paul Hembree
I'm sitting inside the belly of the beast right now, so to speak - an Alarm Will Sound rehearsal. They are currently shedding some insanely fast chromatic licks in Derek Bermel's Three Rivers. It has been a rather exciting experience simply assisting them during their residency here at CU.
Last night, they read through three works by student composers: Anthony Green's Three Groups, a compressed version of my thesis, The Antikythera Mechanism, and Hunter Ewen's Ultradian Bipolar Disorder. Curiously, we are all graduate assistants in music technology.
The speed with which AWS tackled Green's unique aleatory notation was astounding. Only performers who are extremely comfortable playing with each other can purposefully de-syncronize and remain so confident and musical. Also, though they broke the piece into chunks, it was still quite apparent Green had created an extremely well-formed dramatic arch throughout the piece, molding apparent chaos into a striking form.
My work, at just two minutes, was read probably five times in its entirety, with additional spot checks. The short time frame and incredible talent of the group enabled the ensemble to quickly grasp the works two halves - the first, with its chromatic antiphonal smears, and the second, with it's asymmetrical, quasi-periodic accents juxtaposed against a phantom 4/4 rock feel.
Unfortunately, I missed Ewen's reading because I was fulfilling my duties as production manager outside of the concert hall at the time. Maybe he will relate his experiences personally!
Previously today I witnessed a few other works in rehearsal - John Adam's Son of Chamber Symphony, and an arrangement of Edgard Varese's Poeme Electronique. The dedication that this ensemble has to rhythmically difficult work is quite amazing, although the rhythmic quality of these two works is vastly different. The Adams requires immense amounts of endurance, both physically and mentally, as the players churn through innumerable permutations of various interlocking patterns and quirky Nancarrow-esque airs. The Varese requires just as much mental endurance to precisely place the gesticulating and almost irrational events within their proper rhythmic framework. In both instances the ensemble does marvelously, though it certainly requires tremendous amounts of talent and hard work.
I'm sitting inside the belly of the beast right now, so to speak - an Alarm Will Sound rehearsal. They are currently shedding some insanely fast chromatic licks in Derek Bermel's Three Rivers. It has been a rather exciting experience simply assisting them during their residency here at CU.
Last night, they read through three works by student composers: Anthony Green's Three Groups, a compressed version of my thesis, The Antikythera Mechanism, and Hunter Ewen's Ultradian Bipolar Disorder. Curiously, we are all graduate assistants in music technology.
The speed with which AWS tackled Green's unique aleatory notation was astounding. Only performers who are extremely comfortable playing with each other can purposefully de-syncronize and remain so confident and musical. Also, though they broke the piece into chunks, it was still quite apparent Green had created an extremely well-formed dramatic arch throughout the piece, molding apparent chaos into a striking form.
My work, at just two minutes, was read probably five times in its entirety, with additional spot checks. The short time frame and incredible talent of the group enabled the ensemble to quickly grasp the works two halves - the first, with its chromatic antiphonal smears, and the second, with it's asymmetrical, quasi-periodic accents juxtaposed against a phantom 4/4 rock feel.
Unfortunately, I missed Ewen's reading because I was fulfilling my duties as production manager outside of the concert hall at the time. Maybe he will relate his experiences personally!
Previously today I witnessed a few other works in rehearsal - John Adam's Son of Chamber Symphony, and an arrangement of Edgard Varese's Poeme Electronique. The dedication that this ensemble has to rhythmically difficult work is quite amazing, although the rhythmic quality of these two works is vastly different. The Adams requires immense amounts of endurance, both physically and mentally, as the players churn through innumerable permutations of various interlocking patterns and quirky Nancarrow-esque airs. The Varese requires just as much mental endurance to precisely place the gesticulating and almost irrational events within their proper rhythmic framework. In both instances the ensemble does marvelously, though it certainly requires tremendous amounts of talent and hard work.
Monday, January 5, 2009
Graduate School Applications
by Paul Hembree
I am almost done with this season's gauntlet of doctoral applications to various PhD and DMA composition programs around the country. One thing that I noticed during the process is that my materials improve as the application season progresses. Thus, the December 1st deadline schools received materials that were a little rough around the edges by comparison with the January 15th schools.
Of course, the portfolio stays the same - all the laborious hours spent writing pieces, gathering the players, and putting them on concerts have past already. At least then the pieces are all as high quality as they can be.
However, the supplemental materials, including statements of purpose, analytical papers, my curriculum vitae, all went through a slow metamorphosis over two or so months. Given the chance, I revised the essays continuously, eventually coming up with a lean two page statement of purpose, which was tailored to each school's strengths and faculty.
My CV evolved considerably. I scoured around the web for some examples and used them as a model to explode my previous versions. Each school successively wanted a little more information, so I included not only every major performance of my works, but also a list of performances where I participated as a performer on an acoustic instrument (such as the epic Worker's Union adventure of 2007). One school even asked for a sample of printed programs that I've participated in, which forced me to dig around in storage. I scanned each important program, and compiled a lengthy pdf file out of them (maybe it was a bit excessive, but I am all about being thorough).
The season is almost at an end now, and I just recently discovered Apple's Motion and DVD Studio Pro. The last school of the season needs a portfolio on DVD, and not on paper, and I believe with the above programs I will be able to construct a professional looking product. My previous versions, constructed simply in iDVD, will be far surpassed. If I have time, I may even use Motion to create a moving-images analog to Descent Into the Amygdala.
Interstingly, the first schools of the season stated that they would not review DVDs, a policy I believe will inhibit their ability to evalute applicants who work with multimedia. I can only forsee that the number of composers working with visual music will increase in the future, and flatly refusing to evaluate a significant dimension of their work seems unwise. There certainly is no technical impedance to evaluating DVDs - all modern computers can read the medium.
Unfortunately, evaluating surround sound compositions is still a problem. Most composers I know do not encode to Dolby 5.1 surround sound for their spatial works, instead using MAX/MSP or the like and their own interfaces for diffusion. Even if Dolby 5.1 DVDs were distributed with a portfolio, I imagine very few faculty members would have 5.1 surround sound setup in their offices. I dream of a day when some sort of standard 8.1 channel surround sound is common everwhere.
If any of our readers wish to submit their own experiences with applications, please let me know!
I am almost done with this season's gauntlet of doctoral applications to various PhD and DMA composition programs around the country. One thing that I noticed during the process is that my materials improve as the application season progresses. Thus, the December 1st deadline schools received materials that were a little rough around the edges by comparison with the January 15th schools.
Of course, the portfolio stays the same - all the laborious hours spent writing pieces, gathering the players, and putting them on concerts have past already. At least then the pieces are all as high quality as they can be.
However, the supplemental materials, including statements of purpose, analytical papers, my curriculum vitae, all went through a slow metamorphosis over two or so months. Given the chance, I revised the essays continuously, eventually coming up with a lean two page statement of purpose, which was tailored to each school's strengths and faculty.
My CV evolved considerably. I scoured around the web for some examples and used them as a model to explode my previous versions. Each school successively wanted a little more information, so I included not only every major performance of my works, but also a list of performances where I participated as a performer on an acoustic instrument (such as the epic Worker's Union adventure of 2007). One school even asked for a sample of printed programs that I've participated in, which forced me to dig around in storage. I scanned each important program, and compiled a lengthy pdf file out of them (maybe it was a bit excessive, but I am all about being thorough).
The season is almost at an end now, and I just recently discovered Apple's Motion and DVD Studio Pro. The last school of the season needs a portfolio on DVD, and not on paper, and I believe with the above programs I will be able to construct a professional looking product. My previous versions, constructed simply in iDVD, will be far surpassed. If I have time, I may even use Motion to create a moving-images analog to Descent Into the Amygdala.
Interstingly, the first schools of the season stated that they would not review DVDs, a policy I believe will inhibit their ability to evalute applicants who work with multimedia. I can only forsee that the number of composers working with visual music will increase in the future, and flatly refusing to evaluate a significant dimension of their work seems unwise. There certainly is no technical impedance to evaluating DVDs - all modern computers can read the medium.
Unfortunately, evaluating surround sound compositions is still a problem. Most composers I know do not encode to Dolby 5.1 surround sound for their spatial works, instead using MAX/MSP or the like and their own interfaces for diffusion. Even if Dolby 5.1 DVDs were distributed with a portfolio, I imagine very few faculty members would have 5.1 surround sound setup in their offices. I dream of a day when some sort of standard 8.1 channel surround sound is common everwhere.
If any of our readers wish to submit their own experiences with applications, please let me know!
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Steve Martin on getting "Good"
I picked up Steve Martin’s autobiography Born Standing Up, and couldn’t put it down. It’s just far enough from my life to feel “safe” to identify with the arbitrary ups and downs of another performer’s life, and at the same time close enough for me to intimately appreciate his artistic experiments and calculations. I just wanted to share one quote: “I learned [that] it was easy to be great. Every entertainer has a night when everything is clicking. These nights are accidental and statistical: Like lucky cards in poker, you can count on them occurring over time. What was hard was to be good, consistently good, night after night, no matter what the abominable circumstances.” Wow, I have been waiting for someone to articulate that. Audience expectations constantly grow, and so does the number of distractions- a lousy piano or a delayed flight or a spotlight right in my eye or young kids rustling magazines three feet below my dress in the front row, and best of all, that perfectly timed inappropriate comment from someone backstage or in the CD signing queue… The focus of a professional is too often “how am I going to get through this cloud of junk that threaten to obliterate my artistic intensity?” And then there is the fact that no matter how thrilling a job you may have, eventually it will, and must, become a routine if you want to survive. There is only so much adrenaline a body can produce in one lifetime. And somehow, the most surprising circumstances always appear at the most crucial moments.
Martin's creative journey of remaking comedy, and shifting the focus away from traditional expectations towards absurdity and increasing the physicality of the performance, really fit our post-modern hunger for novelty and visceral experience. It reminded me of Henry Cowell's forearm punching, inside-the-piano string plucking pieces that shocked American and European audiences in the 20's.
Back to the book, it is a good stocking stuffer: highly entertaining and very easy to read. The ending could have been a lot more flushed out, but may be there will be a sequel...
Friday, December 5, 2008
Story on 2007 Unsilent Night from Daily Camera
Check out this Daily Camera article by Wes Blomster about Unsilent Night:
"Phil Kline's "Unsilent Night" is moving music — at least in the physical sense.
Pendulum, the dynamic new-music program at the University of Colorado, hopes that more than 50 people will gather tonight to walk up and down the Pearl Street Mall while performing Kline's score.
"It's like a holiday caroling party — except that participants don't sing," says CU composition professor Daniel Kellogg, mastermind of the project. "Instead, each carries a boombox that plays a cassette, CD or MP3..."
(Continue on the Daily Camera)
"Phil Kline's "Unsilent Night" is moving music — at least in the physical sense.
Pendulum, the dynamic new-music program at the University of Colorado, hopes that more than 50 people will gather tonight to walk up and down the Pearl Street Mall while performing Kline's score.
"It's like a holiday caroling party — except that participants don't sing," says CU composition professor Daniel Kellogg, mastermind of the project. "Instead, each carries a boombox that plays a cassette, CD or MP3..."
(Continue on the Daily Camera)
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