My name is Charles Waters. I am a composer and performer living in Brooklyn. I am originally from North Carolina via Atlanta now in beginning my second (?) decade here in the Big Apple. I started this blog to explain some of my compositional working methods - in particular this new style or form of works that I call CONCERTIMENTO. But also to write about shows I see(a lot), thing I see ( strange!) encounters I have and just basic musical life in my late-thirties. I would be part of what I call the SUBMERGING COMPOSERS GROUP. So first disclosure and second definitions about my work because I think "owning" words about ones art is vital in the post-post modern - what I refer to as REMODERN -times.
So first I am rather uneducated in terms of being a 21C composer. I was trained pencil and paper style in 80's with Dr. Scott Meister at Appalachian State University. And still to this day I compose on pen and paper. I have rarely had problems with any one understanding my music and yet I can't help feel that I've fallen behind because I can not email a part to someone or produce cookie-cutter looking scores churned out by most composers. More on this later.
But also of note I hold no degree in music. I begin playing professionally (semi?) during college and have for the last 17 years continued to play. I have played in the dankest DYI freejazz closets and I have played at Carnegie Hall. So my experience as a player is broad.
And as cliche and boastful as it my seem and I have often critically been compared to John Zorn.
I love Zorn. Not all of it, but most and certainly feel some connection.
Re-reading Duckworth's interview with Zorn in "Talking Music" our early experiences are remarkably similar, though for the record I am of the Radical Southern Baptist Culture persuasion! The bottom line is that I've trained myself. It started very early and continues to this day. I would have a masters degree from New York Public Library if it were offered. When I went to school we didn't even have a Feldman score..I had to use my imagination. So I went deep. When the arts library closed I followed - to 40 and 5Th Ave..where I cleaned up all of the over-sized scores that were left in such disarray..poor Stockhausen and Kagel and Crumb! And all the way to the holding branch on 10Th Ave and 43..where I dutifully read Ruth Crawford Seeger's teachers theory books. More on all of this too.
Definitions. What the hell is a Concertimento? We'll it is a style I devised that combines a divertimento with a concerto - concertimento. I know it sounds like a candy and I don't mind that. I think music is funny in the way life is funny. Sometime ha-ha sometimes..uh..not! As of now I have worked for two years on the Concertimenti and have composed 14 (working on #15) pieces and heard about half, though only one was of the commissioned variety - you know those things that most composers need to write these days.
More soon, please stay tuned.
So first I am rather uneducated in terms of being a 21C composer. I was trained pencil and paper style in 80's with Dr. Scott Meister at Appalachian State University. And still to this day I compose on pen and paper. I have rarely had problems with any one understanding my music and yet I can't help feel that I've fallen behind because I can not email a part to someone or produce cookie-cutter looking scores churned out by most composers. More on this later.
But also of note I hold no degree in music. I begin playing professionally (semi?) during college and have for the last 17 years continued to play. I have played in the dankest DYI freejazz closets and I have played at Carnegie Hall. So my experience as a player is broad.
And as cliche and boastful as it my seem and I have often critically been compared to John Zorn.
I love Zorn. Not all of it, but most and certainly feel some connection.
Re-reading Duckworth's interview with Zorn in "Talking Music" our early experiences are remarkably similar, though for the record I am of the Radical Southern Baptist Culture persuasion! The bottom line is that I've trained myself. It started very early and continues to this day. I would have a masters degree from New York Public Library if it were offered. When I went to school we didn't even have a Feldman score..I had to use my imagination. So I went deep. When the arts library closed I followed - to 40 and 5Th Ave..where I cleaned up all of the over-sized scores that were left in such disarray..poor Stockhausen and Kagel and Crumb! And all the way to the holding branch on 10Th Ave and 43..where I dutifully read Ruth Crawford Seeger's teachers theory books. More on all of this too.
Definitions. What the hell is a Concertimento? We'll it is a style I devised that combines a divertimento with a concerto - concertimento. I know it sounds like a candy and I don't mind that. I think music is funny in the way life is funny. Sometime ha-ha sometimes..uh..not! As of now I have worked for two years on the Concertimenti and have composed 14 (working on #15) pieces and heard about half, though only one was of the commissioned variety - you know those things that most composers need to write these days.
More soon, please stay tuned.
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