4B —Thursday, October 12, 2017
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
COURTESY OF GABRIELA LENA FRANK
Composer Gabriela Lena Frank at work
Life outside a golden cage
with Gabriela Lena Frank
Acclaimed composer draws on her family’s rich, Peruvian
heritage with a compelling personal compositional voice
To a certain extent, creation
is, at its very core, a synthetic
act. Not synthetic in the sense
of artificiality or fakeness, but
rather in the sense that the
product of creation is nearly
always one of synthesis, the
coming together of disparate
elements to form some greater,
compounded
whole.
Artists,
like all of us, wander through
life picking up the scattered
pieces
of
the
things
that
come to form their identities,
borrowing
influences
and
welding
ideas
together
in
endless cycles of combination
and fusion. In many artists,
this manifests itself subtly, but
for others it can take on a more
overt appearance. For some, it’s
as if they take up the mantle of
synthesis as a kind of mission.
More than most, perhaps,
the
composer
Gabriela
Lena Frank personifies this
particular ethic. Born in 1972
in Berkeley, California, Frank
came into being in a country
(and city) that was flooded with
the tumult surrounding the
Vietnam War protest movement
and humming with the residual
energy of the ’60s. In a certain
sense, she is the daughter
of both immigrants and the
optimism of that decade.
“My father was a graduate
student at Cal, that’s why he
went to Berkeley,” Frank said
in an interview with the Daily.
“He had just finished a stint in
the Peace Corps, where he was
stationed in Peru, where he met
my mom.”
Frank’s father is a scholar
of Mark Twain, her mother
a stained glass artist and a
Peruvian women of Chinese
descent. The maternal facet
of Frank’s heritage has had
a profound influence on her
musical work; however, the
road to the complete blossoming
of this cultural influence in her
music was long and circuitous.
Initially — though surrounded
by culture and the arts through
her family — Frank wasn’t even
aware that she wanted to be a
composer at all.
“I didn’t think I was going
to be a professional musician. I
didn’t think that was possible,”
Frank said. “I thought music
was something that you did
for fun, and I didn’t know any
professional
musicians.
The
most professional musician I
knew was my piano teacher,
and she’s a wonderful lady, she’s
in her 80s, she still teaches, but
she’s a neighborhood piano
teacher, she’s not concertizing
on the road or doing something
like that.”
But Frank’s early artistic
and
cultural
influences
ran deep, and started early.
Unaware though she was of
the professional music world,
the roots of her future began
to expand even during her
childhood.
“We were always a creative
family, one that was invested in
reading literature, [consuming]
art, and so that was a powerful
influence,” Frank said. “My
father had the presence of mind
to get me started on a music
instrument when I was quite
young: I wasn’t quite five, but I
was already drawn to the little
spinet piano that was in the
house. This despite the fact that
I … was born with a moderate to
profound hearing loss.”
Reduced
hearing
notwithstanding,
Frank’s
early
affinity
for
music
manifested itself in ways that
were indicative of a curious
and creative mind. Though
still without an inkling that
professional music making was
a viable option, already in her
youth Frank was practicing
some of the same modes of
creation that would later form
the foundation of her career.
Taking
influence
from
the
traditional
music
of
South
America that she heard during
her youth, Frank would include
folk music and Andean elements
when improvising at the piano.
“Though I was playing what
my piano teacher gave me, the
usual diet of Clementi and
Haydn, she also encouraged
my experiments with mixing
styles,
just
improvising
on
my own, making up my little
songs,” Frank said. “I didn’t
write anything down on paper,
but I was already doing some
semblance of what I do now
professionally.”
Despite
this,
Frank’s
knowledge of this aspect of
her heritage was primarily
secondhand,
and
what
interactions
she
had
with
Peruvian music came mostly
from recordings. This period of
Frank’s life was also concurrent
with Andean music’s increase
in popularity in the United
States and Europe, as the Canto
nuevo
and
Nueva
cancíon
movements began to take hold
internationally.
Partly
as
a
result of this, Frank began to
see musicians who “looked a lot
like (her) mom.”
“My awareness of Peruvian
culture was from a distance,
because we did not ever go to
visit Peru,” Frank explained.
“[Peru] was really in troubled
times, particularly during the
’80s, when Sendero Luminoso,
the Shining Path, it was known
as — a terrorist group inspired
by Maoist philosophy — was
really
tearing
the
country
apart. So we stayed away.”
As Frank grew up, receiving
good grades in high school
and “with an eye towards
Russian studies” (as a result of
the intense interest generated
by
Gorbachev’s
perestroika
and
glasnost
reforms,
the
fall of the Berlin Wall and
the
slow
disintegration
of
the Iron Curtain during the
’80s), the course of her life
was permanently altered by a
summer experience.
“I took a music program at the
San Francisco Conservatory of
Music over the summer before
my last year in high school,
and
it
changed
my life, because
I was exposed to
this whole music
world
I
didn’t
know
existed,”
Frank said. “This
idea of becoming
a composer came
to me right away.
I
didn’t
know
what that meant,
or what it was
like, but I had
written my first
piece
down
on
paper, and heard
it come to life at
the hands of other
kids my age and
younger, and I was
hooked, instantly.
Instantly.”
Not long after,
Frank was accepted to the
music
composition
program
at Rice University — a turn of
events which Frank describes
as “very lucky” — and began
studying composition formally,
a course of study that later
brought her to the University
of Michigan’s School of Music,
Theatre & Dance, where she
received
her
doctorate
in
2001. While at Michigan, she
studied with current faculty
member
Michael
Daugherty
and former faculty members
and
Pulitzer
prize-winning
composers William Bolcom and
Leslie Bassett. Frank, who in
addition to composing is also
a prodigious and Grammy-
nominated pianist, later went
on to record the complete piano
music of Bassett (who sadly
died last year).
While
working
on
her
doctorate,
Frank
began
to
remember her love for South
American
folk
music,
and
inspired by composers like the
Hungarian Béla Bartók and the
Argentinian Alberto Ginastera
— who did similarly with their
own cultures — started to
combine elements of Andean
music
with
her
classical
training, like she did as a child.
“I realized that I had found
my mission,” Frank explained.
“I wanted to, in a very general
way, be as mestiza in my music
as I was in my person: I’m
multiracial, I’m multicultural,
and
I
think
that
that’s
something deeply American.
I love my country, and I’m
ARTIST
PROFILE
IN
DAYTON HARE
Senior Arts Editor
surrounded
by
daughters
and sons of immigrants that
contribute and work hard —
that was uppermost in my
mind then, and in the course of
recent events in our country it’s
uppermost in my mind now. It’s
something that has become more
urgent in my work as a musician,
not less so.”
According
to
Frank,
the
intervening
years
of
study lacked some of the
earlier and later Peruvian
influence largely because she
needed to build up her musical
fundamentals. But following her
exposure to the music of people
like Bartók and Ginastera, she
started to think about it again.
“I had so much to do before
I even began to blend styles
… Bartók and Ginastera are
still heroes to me,” Frank said.
“And I studied with another
[composer who blended styles],
William Bolcom at Michigan,
who welded turn of the century
American song and cabaret with
ragtime and dixie and his own
personal style. So it was a natural
reawakening — I’m not even sure
that awakening is quite the right
term, it’s more that I had to focus
on getting tools.”
During her doctoral studies
and after deciding on her path,
Frank began to delve deeper
into her cultural roots, seeking
out the musical traditions of
Peru with vigor. At this time she
started to travel to the South
American
country,
bringing
along her mother and getting to
know a branch of her family that
resides on the other side of the
Earth’s curve.
“While I was at Michigan
I
found
grants
—
because
nobody goes to Latin America
for
classical
music,”
Frank
explained.
“Everybody
goes
to Europe, you go to Austria,
Vienna, Paris — you don’t go
to Ayacucho, you don’t go to
Arequipa, you don’t go to Lima
or these places in the Andes.”
Frank and her mother went to
visit their Peruvian family, and
through them Frank learned a
tremendous amount about the
traditions
and
repertoire
of
Andean music. Frank’s mother
comes
from
a
family of around
14
children,
many of whom,
of course, have
children of their
own.
These
aunts,
uncles
and cousins are
the
ones
who
helped
Frank
in her effort to
reconnect to her
familial past.
“My
family
likes
to
joke
that
in
any
town you’ll find
someone
we’re
related
to,”
Frank
related.
“And that was
really important
to me, and it’s
been really moving to hear
their stories and to know their
experiences, and to realize that
I’m the outlier, I’m the wing of
the family that went north to the
United States, that’s half Jewish,
and I’m a symphonic composer.”
During her trips, Frank would
bus around the country with
her cousins, going to festivals,
concerts and dances. Her mother
would
come
with
her,
and
together she and Frank would
see parts of the country that she
had been too poor to see during
the years before she immigrated
to the United States.
“All my trips are a little bit of
ethnomusicology, I guess, but it’s
actually more personal and more
creative and I get inspiration by
the music I hear,” Frank said. “I
often will suddenly recognize
[something] even though I’ve
never seen it before in Peru, and
I know that I must have heard it
when I was growing up, either
on the LPs that my dad had that
he brought over from Peru, or in
a concert that musicians were
giving, who were traveling from
Peru or Bolivia and Ecuador.”
This aspect of her identity
has become one of the foremost
features
of
Frank’s
music,
a
quality
which
she
has
consciously
embraced:
“My
music often is like a travelogue.”
“When I realized, ‘Hey, this is
something that I can do,’ it came
as a very conscious choice on my
part,” Frank said. “I thought it
meant I would not have much of
a career, to be honest … I thought
that I would be maybe a well-
loved teacher somewhere.”
Now in the middle of a
prosperous career, Frank has
started
to
branch
out
into
teaching, something which she
had set aside for many years. Last
year she founded an academy
of music at her home, where
she gathers together emerging
composers for a summer of
study.
No
longer
living
in
Berkeley, Frank and her academy
are located in the small town
of Boonville, about two hours
north of the San Francisco Bay
area, where she hopes to foster
a healthy artistic environment
that will simultaneously enrich
the musicians and the local
community.
“It’s a very diverse crew, and
my hope is to make each and every
one of my composers strengthen
their individual voices and their
individual stories and to be able
to craft a real income and a
living from what they do,” Frank
said. “[I also want] to try and
have them become aware of, yes,
working on their national and
international profile and getting
these great performances … but
then also focusing on something
extremely local, and trying to
volunteer at the high school,
with music, maybe an after
school program, or any way
that they can, because we’re
not meant to be just stuck in a
golden cage, we’re suppose to
be out in the community, and it
doesn’t mean that we’re less of
a thinker or less of an artist for
doing that.”
In its first year of existence,
Frank’s
academy
drew
composers
from
a
variety
of
diverse
backgrounds.
On
the
academy’s
first
concert
of premieres by the student
composers, there was music by
a Mexican-American composer,
by
a
Polish
and
Chinese
composer, an Irish composer and
a Hawaiian composer, among
others. To Frank, this element of
diversity is extremely important.
“It
was
beautiful,
really
beautiful to see the different
distinct American voices we
have,” Frank said. “And they
all had premieres, in this tiny
little community, to a standing
ovation in a packed house. It was
really magical.”
Part
of
the
uniqueness
of Frank’s new academy is
the
extent
of
her
personal
involvement. Unlike many of
summer
festivals
scattered
across the globe, Frank’s festival
opens up her own home to the
students, and she is deeply
involved in every aspect of the
summer. Because of this, in
its first year the academy was
somewhat of an “under-the-
radar” affair, quite intentionally.
“First of all I was thinking,
‘God, I don’t want to make
this big announcement: What
if I hate it, what if it takes too
much time and I can’t make my
deadlines?’ But you know, after
the first session I was hooked,”
Frank explained.
Each
of
the
composers
selected to participate in the
academy was carefully selected,
people who Frank had come
across and been impressed by
personally in some way.
“I hand picked everybody.
There was no open call for
scores,”
Frank
elaborated.
“These were all composers that
I had at least known something
of, who I might have met briefly
at one of my guest visits to their
school, maybe heard just one
piece of theirs. And I quietly just
asked about them, were they of
good character, were they going
to work hard — after all, when
it comes to Boonville, they’re
coming to my house, I’m opening
my home and opening my life to
people, so I wanted to be careful
about that.”
Moving into the future, the
academy now has a website and
is taking applications for its
second year. Frank is interested
in a broad variety of students,
not just in terms of cultural
background, but even diversity
of age.
“[The program is for] anybody
that
considers
themselves
emerging,” Frank said. “You
have a lot of people in their 40s,
50s, 60s, who started composing
not too long ago, and are just
as much in need of a boost as
those in their 20s. So I’m very
open. I just need to see talent,
a work ethic, good character… I
think it’s a myth that you need
to group together artists by
different levels.”
Through it all, Frank’s hope is
to foster strong and compelling
compositional
voices
from
each of her students. The final
destination of all of Frank’s
efforts remains to be seen, but the
road to it runs through her roots.
Her own unique compositional
voice is essential to who she is
today, a composer recognized
internationally for her abilities
and one of the leading voices
for multiculturalism in music.
She is a living example of how
something old can go into the
creation of the new: Despite the
importance that her heritage
and traditional Peruvian music
plays in her work, each piece
she writes is uniquely her own,
reshaped and informed by the
past but independent from it.
“[The
Andean
influence]
changes just because it has to
mix and blend with my psyche,
which was formed here, was
formed in the United States,”
Frank said. “I’ve spent most
of my time here, in my home
country. For me, again, I feel
like that’s very American. We
bring in a lot of cultures, eat it
up and make it into something
new. We’ve been doing that for
centuries.”
MUSIC VIDEO REVIEW
Aaron West has had an incred-
ibly shitty time since the
beginning of his fictional story.
Between the loss of his father
and a newborn daughter and
the subsequent divorce that
sent him into a tailspin, he’s
all too familiar with crippling
heartbreak. The story of Aaron
West — a character breathed
into life with 2014’s We Don’t
Have Each Other — is the brain-
child of master songwriter Dan
Campbell of The Wonder Years,
who personifies the character in
performance.
On his newest single, “Orchard
Park,” we find West and his
mother spreading his father’s
ashes at the title’s location. We
see him at his most somber,
speaking directly to the memory
of his father, trading in his char-
acteristic desperation with a
sense of closure. Over his quietly
reflective tune, West contem-
plates on the love of the Buffalo
Bills he shares with his father, a
common motif throughout his
story. He sings in the chorus,
“Come November when I’m
screaming at my TV in the dark
/ You’re screaming with me
from Orchard Park.” It’s heart-
breaking in characteristic West
fashion, but uncharacteristically
comforting in the context of his
story.
With “Orchard Park,” West
breaks his typically linear time-
line, taking us back to the after-
math of his father’s death before
his own breakdown. The song
expertly relays West’s emotional
state, with soft, steady guitar
harmonies accompanied with
violin provided by Yellowcard’s
Sean Mackin. It’s melancholy
and longing, but that’s in direct
contrast to his usual help-
lessness, or even his steady
rebuilding on his most recent
EP, Bittersweet. As beautifully
composed as “Orchard Park” is,
it serves only to fill a small gap
in West’s story. For now, we’ll be
left a little more knowledgeable
about West’s past, but in eager
anticipation for him to pick up
the story where he left off.
— DOMINIC POLSINELLI
“Orchard Park”
Aaron West
and the Roaring
Twenties
Loneliest Place
On Earth
The final
destination of all
of Frank’s efforts
remains to be
seen, but the road
to it runs through
her roots