Reflections on Music and Nature

In Chinese, the word for university (大学) translates literally as "Great Learning." For composer Lei Liang (prof. at UC San Diego), composing at a university means one has the ability to collaborate with and learn from other scholars in vastly different disciplines. The work of Huang Binhong (1865-1955) served as the inspiration for Lei's orchestral work, "A thousand mountains, a million streams....

How can we collaborate with the environment around us as theater-makers? What is the relationship between "process" and "product"? How can we see beyond the goal of a project to understand and honor its surprising reverberations outside the so-called "actual project"? Dramaturg Allyssa Schmidt and movement artist Alli Ross, both professors at Boston Conservatory at Berklee, help me ask and answer...

Visual artist Peter London grew up in Brooklyn NY, which perhaps makes him a city kid. But for his entire life, he has been obsessed with escaping the limitations of cities and human perception, seeking insights not from other humans, but from the natural world. He sees the cosmos as the ultimate teacher for all of us. In our conversation, we discuss a wide range of topics, from how one's artistic...

feat. Kurt Rohde (musician/composer), Dana Spiotta (writer), and Marie Lorenz (artist) Why write a normal opera when you can write one for an outdoor performance on top of a polluted urban creek? Is it simple? No. Is it worth it? Absolutely. The creators of Newtown Odyssey, an actual floating opera, ask us to get our shoes a little dirty, let birds and machinery join the opera, and appreciate the...

What's to come in Season 2 of RMN: www.ryansuleiman.com/rmn   Newtown Odyssey opera Kurt Rohde , composer/musician Dana Spiotta , writer  Marie Lorenz , artist Lei Liang , composer  Chromic Duo (Lucy Yao, Dorothy Chan) Alyssa Schmidt (dramaturgy) & Alli Ross (movement) Peter London , visual artist

from Oct 4, 2020: "Gabriela Lena Frank is 48, but wants to live to be 100, when we've re-imagined a better, greener society. For her, that starts with her music-making. GLF is a composer and pianist based in Northern California and founder of the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music. In our conversation and by example with the GLFCAM, she articulates what a genuinely eco-friendly musical...

from Sep 3, 2020: Composer/pianist Carlos McMillan Fuentes and clarinetist/multi-instrumentalist Brennen Milton are a Sacramento-based duo known as "Carlos and Brennen." We talk about their February performance with soprano Robin Fischer at Sacramento's Crocker Art Museum complementing American impressionist Granville Redmond's (who was deaf) landscape paintings. Other topics include the meaning o...

from August 6, 2020: Humans aren't the only ones who make music. The whales were not available for this interview, but I was able to chat with the lovely humans of "Song Sessions," an ensemble that performs music inspired by the complex structures underneath the surface of whale song. We talked about the ensemble's work, songs and improvisations of whales, past composers inspired by whales, and th...

from July 9, 2020: Omari Tau feels at once like a student and an old man. He does it all - and well! He's Sacramento-based singer, actor, composer, musical director, and co-founder of Rogue Music Project and Trio MôD. Omari talks with Ryan about the notions of "mastery" and well-roundedness, one's naturally evolving career, ideal environments for creativity, his opera about Dorthy Parker, and a mu...

from July 2, 2020: New York-based composer Nell Shaw Cohen draws an analogy between her process and the "Landscape" visual artists. Nell talks with Ryan about her music, her work on the LandscapeMusic.org publication/network, the notion of the audience, and the role of an artist as someone, among other things, uniquely positioned to imagine alternatives to the ridiculous and destructive society we...

from June 25, 2020: Megan Roth and Evan Leontis, two tremendous singers and co-directors of Calliope's Call talk with Ryan. Calliope's Call is an art-song collective based in New England dedicated to diverse and inspiring programming. Topics include activism in music, curating programs, calls for scores, and the complexity of writing and performing vocal music, among many other things.  Calliope's...

from June 18, 2020: Sacramento-based Citywater's Tim Stanley (cello) and Cathie Apple (flute) talks with Ryan about collaborating on large-scale works by Griffin Candey and Derek Keller, not consciously seek inspiration from nature, and the intersectionality of issues artists must face. Tim also reveals a few things about Sacramento State School of Music's Festival of New American Music 2020 (spoi...

from June 11, 2020:  What does it mean when musicians invoke a "natural" sound, or method of music making? This week's guest, violist/scholar Vijay Chalasani, explores this question and other topics, discussing musical pedagogy, tuning configurations, and artists he enjoys performing from the last many centuries. We also discuss his work on the music of Pauline Oliveros and a future project of his...

from May 28, 2020:  San Francisco Bay Area-based Left Coast Chamber Ensemble's Anna Presler (violin/artistic director), Tanya Tomkins (cello), and Stacey Pelinka (flute) discuss their collaboration with composer Clarice Assad on "Lemuria," about ancient mythical people and their work on George Crumb's timeless Vox Balanae. They get philosophical about the question of what does an artist do in time...

from May 21, 2020: Composer Juhi Bansal talks with Ryan about her work and shares excerpts from two of her compositions, including "Sirens," a collaboration with the Los Angeles Opera on a multimedia work performed outdoors on a historic dock. Topics include composing music that integrates ambient sounds (which sometimes includes a surprise Mariachi band!), plastic, the joys and challenges of writ...

released May 14, 2020: PREMIERE EPISODE: Ryan talks with composer Marti Epstein about the role of nature in her work and we listen excerpts from two of her compositions. Topics include Nebraska, Boston during quarantine, the meaning of sounds, climate change, and one of our mutual heroes, Toru Takemitsu. Marti Epstein: https://martiepstein.com/   Hothouse: https://soundcloud.com/marti-epstein/hoth...

Reflections on Music and Nature. What is this thing about? Why is it important? www.ryansuleiman.com/rmn