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

