Two composers, one celebration: Armer and Susa at SFCM

August 27, 8:57 PMSF Classical Music ExaminerScott Foglesong

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A conservatory is a place of protection, as witnessed by the word itself — to conserve, or hold safe against the ravages of time. It is no accident that a conservatory can be filled with either plants or musicians; both are there for nurture.

In simpler terms, a conservatory is an institution designed for the care and feeding of musicians — seasoned masters, incipient pros, harried apprentices, and nervous neophytes alike. (I have a longish article in the pipeline about the innards of a conservatory; stay tuned.)

From time to time, a conservatory may put on a public concert that celebrates a private joy, as happens at the San Francisco Conservatory on September 6, when SFCM honors longtime composition faculty members Elinor Armer and Conrad Susa in a full evening concert of their music, performed by the Conservatory Orchestra, with various soloists, under the direction of Andrew Mogrelia.

If you've read the bio over there by my picture, you know that I'm a longtime SFCM faculty member, so I'm adding my own little piping-woodnotes-wild tribute to the general festivities in honor of my dear friends and colleagues.

Conrad Susa and I spent a delightful afternoon recently at his home discussing his two works on the program — orchestral work The Blue Hour and selections from his opera The Dangerous Liaisons. Upon my noting that we haven't heard a lot of purely orchestral Susa works, Conrad explained: "I have done nothing but these gigantic operas! The Blue Hour is one of my few [orchestral works.]"

We listened to a recording of The Blue Hour's 2004 premiere performance, Matthias Kunzsch conducting the Denver Symphony.

What I heard was music of private sensuality, brimming with alertness but unhurried, at ease. Apparently I got the point just fine.

I've put together a little YouTube video which blends Conrad's description with an excerpt from the work, the visuals consisting of a few photos taken during our interview together:

As he put it a bit later: "In case you wonder what’s going on when I’m meditating, it’s that. It’s not music to meditate by, but it is music that embodies the organic aspects of a meditation."

Conrad Susa's music is of a fashion some writers may call accessible, a reprehensible term deserving a lifetime Sour Grapes Award on behalf of twitchy academic composers everywhere. Forget the term, and forget everything some well-intentioned sap has told you about contemporary music.

One is not required to understand the music, or appreciate it. It's perfectly OK simply to enjoy it, let it be what it is and refrain from labels, -isms, -ibles, cubbyholes and pigeonholes. Susa offers the notion of "a transfiguration of an ordinary moment. And it puts a halo around a time of day and makes it blessed, something is conferred on it, or it confers something."

So unfurrow your brow and unclench your jaw, and for heaven's sake don't sit there all ramrod-straight Being Very Attentive to This Important Work by This Significant Composer.

Not only is that an unpleasantly grim attitude to take towards something as wonderful as music, but it's also really tiring.

Susa's opera The Dangerous Liaisons was originally commissioned and performed by the San Francisco Opera in 1994, to a libretto by Phillip Littell from C.M. Le Clos's Les Liaisons Dangereuses. (You might remember the movie version with John Malkovich and Glenn Close.) This is not an easy work, whether heard in excerpts or whole, but the students of the San Francisco Conservatory are definitely up to the challenge.

In fact, these scenes were originally performed as part of the Conservatory's opera workshop classes, with piano accompaniment. Conrad says: "I was flattered that they would undertake such difficult music in a normal class situation." Conservatories are great places for dissolving the boundaries between student and professional, classroom and public, as this forthcoming concert so aptly demonstrates.

Elinor Armer (right) tells her students: "Having fun is serious business, nothing that should ever be taken lightly. You’ve got to indulge yourself...have fun with it! Indulging yourself is really your first responsibility…if you serve yourself, that is the most generous you can be."

Elly's pieces on the program, Call of the West, and Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (with soloist Lois Brandwynne), both reflect her lifelong desire to write music that clicks for its players and audiences alike. She and I shared a happy schmooz together about these two compositions.

Call of the West bears touching witness to a musician who is teacher and composer in equal measure; it was commissioned by the Oakland Youth Orchestra for their 2007 tour of Greece and is therefore written very much with young players in mind.

The four-movement suite offers a musical tour of California, beginning in the East (Mountain Sunrise) proceeding through the blazing Valley Heat, then jazzing it up with City Beat, concluding with the benediction of Pacific Night in the far West.

All along the way, Armer has given the players of the orchestra music "that young people like to play and are able to play and can relate to. I was able to call on my youthful self, and just write things for the pure fun of it, and some things that I had always wanted to write in styles that I really feel very much at home with."

That includes bird calls in the first movement, string slides (suggesting heat waves) in the second, big-band jazz chords and hot syncopations in the third. For the final movement, Armer hit upon bottle-blowing as foghorn — resulting in a quasi-treasure hunt throughout the tour of Greece, as the orchestra players sought just the right bottles to create an authentic Bay Area foghorn sound. (Large glass bottles, by the way, turned out to be best, far better than plastic.)

Elinor pointed out that kids, "when they premiere something are really in on the creation of it — that’s what the orchestra will feel like at school with the piano concerto." She is referring to her new Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, receiving its world premiere at this September 6 concert.

As Call of the West references Armer's extensive teaching career, so the Concerto reflects her longstanding professional collaboration with Lois Brandwynne, for whom the work is expressly tailored.

"It’s not possible to compose a piano concerto without being haunted by ghosts—Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Tchaikowsky, Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, Bartók, Ravel, and for some of us, Clara Schumann and Amy Beach. Experience as a pianist is both a help and a hindrance. Finally, in order to hear my own concerto voice among all those echoes, I had to focus intently on two musical personalities––my own and that of the soloist, Lois Brandwynne."

In fact, the materials that went into the concerto also gave birth to a piece for solo piano, Etude Quasi Cadenza. Brandwynne has graciously made her recording of it available online, so you may treat yourself to a sneak preview of the Concerto by listening to the Etude.

We musicians aren't in this business to make money. There isn't very much to speak of, and the government gets most of that. Nor are we in it for personal fame (there isn't much of that, either), or ego gratification (ditto). In fact, taken at face value, it's a lousy deal all the way around.

Then why?

Because it's fun, that's why. To be sure, some folks burn out and lose that excitement and visceral joy that brought them into music in the first place. But a lot of people don't; in fact, they just glow all the brighter with time and achievement, continually psyched about the music they're making, whether through composing, playing, teaching, or communicating.

Conrad Susa and Elinor Armer know a thing or two about the happiness of making music, and on Saturday, September 6 at 8:00 PM, in the main concert hall, the community of artists known as the San Francisco Conservatory is sharing that joy with everybody.

All you need is a ticket...

• Tickets for September 6, 2008 8:00 PM  may be purchased from the Conservatory.
• Elinor Armer can be heard on Sarah Cahill's Then and Now on KALW, FM 91.7, on Sunday, August 31 from 8:00 to 10:00 PM.
• Lois Brandwynne's web site
• The San Francisco Conservatory of Music