Critical Correspondence

Kevin Schlottmann in conversation with Douglas Johnson

As Evening Approaches

Thumbnail photo: Courtesy of Douglas Johnson

On Friday October 31st, director choreographer Lisa Niedermeyer’s As Evening Approaches will have its New York premiere at Dance Theatre Workshop as part of the DanceNOW [NYC] Festival. The piece is performed by Lisa Niedermeyer and Reba Mehan, set to a saxophone quartet, four traveling musicians sit waiting on the platform for their train as evening approaches, composed by Trinity College professor Douglas Johnson. I, Kevin Schlottmann, decided to chat with Dr. Johnson and discuss this composition and how it came to be set to a dance piece. We also talked more broadly about music and what inspires the creation process.

Kevin Schlottmann: Tell me about the genesis of four traveling musicians sit waiting on the platform for their train as evening approaches.

Douglas Johnson: Some years ago my publicist, David Shephard, came up with an idea to have the composers among his clients write for the performing groups he represented. He kindly mediated the match with the Berliner Saxophone Quartet.

Kevin: Where does the title come from? How does it relate to the music?

Dr. Johnson: I thought that these folks probably spent more than a few hours waiting for trains in their time together, and this little scenario gave me a loose-enough structure to work into. The first motif is a take on the Doppler effect, the bending of sound waves in motion. A syncopated duet suggests chords, and the long melody line unfolds over that. A contrasting section is built on the Doppler motif, and this pair of musical shapes is treated in variations. Near the end, as if it were getting late, the music attenuates, as a peaceful hymn-like variation brings the little piece to a close.

Kevin: What is your relationship to the choreographer Lisa Niedermeyer, and how did she come to create a dance piece using your music?

Dr. Johnson: Lisa and I met one summer at Jacob’s Pillow. Her husband, James Latzel, a key colleague at the arts center at Trinity, worked for years at the Pillow in the summer. I remember that the following year, my partner and I were guests at their wedding. I have followed Lisa’s dancing and choreography with interest since then. We have had some great conversations about teaching, learning, and living as creative artists in our society, in our time, and in our culture. Lisa is an inspiration for me on many levels; she is wise and awake to life. She needed a short piece for a performance opportunity, and asked me for a couple of short examples of my music, which I happily supplied.

Kevin: It must be interesting to watch your music put to use in a different art form. What was it like seeing how she imagined your music into moving characters and a story?

Dr. Johnson: It is one of my joys, re-hearing and learning more about my music as it is used and re-used, to make more art with. I imagine singing, and dancing too, to all my music. Often when I play a recording for others who have expressed an interest to hear some of my music, I end up dancing it somehow, acting out the gestural and rhythmic life of the music for them.

Kevin: You’ve written for ballet and opera. When you write simply for music performance, do you ever have other art forms in mind? Do you take inspiration from other forms?

Dr. Johnson: I am inspired by pretty much anything and everything. I respond to colors and light, to sounds of every type, especially those that many would not deem ‘musical,’ and shapes and textures both from the natural world and from the hands of craftspeople.

Kevin: Were you startled that the first sound of the dance piece, before your quartet begins, is a toilet flushing in the dark?

Dr. Johnson: My first reaction was a big chuckle, it’s delightful. My composition is for fun anyway, and I hope it has room in it for the sounds of life, all of them! Besides, that moment sets up the reason for all the rest of the dance narrative.

Kevin: The sax quartet is a slightly unusual group to write for, at least as compared to, say, the string quartet. Are there any particular quirks to writing for sax quartet, and are there any analogous groups? Seems to me that an SATB chorus might be similar in setup?

Dr. Johnson: The sax quartet is a great vehicle for a wide range of expression. Saxes are ornery though, so you need the very best players, which I was so fortunate to have! The most striking thing for my ear is the subtle tone color difference between the velvety smooth E-flat instruments (alto and baritone) and the starker, edgier timbre of the B-flat instruments (soprano and tenor). In addition, I am interested in the effect of the sheer physical effort that is embodied in playing, for example the difference in energy between the three registers of each instrument. I used these characteristics as a jumping off point, and often have the instruments play in close range to bring out these inherent contrasts.

Kevin: The Berliner Saxophone Quartet is a highly regarded chamber ensemble. How did they come to record this piece?

Dr. Johnson: As I mentioned above, the piece was conceived and dedicated to the BSQ. They performed it a lot both in Europe and in a US tour when it was new. They chose to record it for their BIT release “Four musicians, 12 notes, and the Blues”, I was delighted and honored. Besides the CD recording which is still available, the score and parts for piece have been published this year by BIT Musikverlag, Berlin in a collection on a CD-ROM in pdf format, and included in its mp-3 examples.

Kevin: You were born and educated on the West Coast, but you’ve been at Trinity for 20 years now. What are your thoughts on the relative merits of the artistic atmosphere in the Bay area versus Hartford?

Dr. Johnson: Two different worlds, really. I do think that opportunities are what you make of them. One of the reasons I moved to New England was to take advantage of audiences in Boston, where my music has been warmly received. I am happy that New Yorkers will hear some now too! I have tried to stay true to the inspiration I derive from working with live performers, and that has brought me many satisfying artistic relationships. My teaching activities have greatly impinged on my time of course.

Kevin: On a similar topic, John Adams had a personal history published in a recent New Yorker, and he says about the Bay area in the 1970s, and of teaching at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music that “There was a keen interest in all kinds of avant-garde music, something unimaginable at any of the East coast colleges.” Does that resonate at all with your school days?

Dr. Johnson: Yes, especially the 60’s and early 70’s! The cultural mix of the West coast, especially with its openness to Asia, was the soil I grew up in. It fostered a kind of openness that militated against the formation of dogmatic ‘schools’ of compositional thought and practice, though of course these always flourish too. It seemed that everyone was interested in possibilities of all kinds.

Kevin: Your performance background is as a violinist, but a look at your compositions reveals lots of writing for voice. Is that a particular interest of yours, or is it merely coincidence?

Dr. Johnson: The voice is a model for all my music. It is first of all embodied, like dance too. The breath, the gestural quality of phrases, the physical place in space, the energy inside a musical ideas, all these seem most direct with the voice as the medium. I agree with my teacher Andrew Imbrie, who often said, “All music is singing and dancing.”

Kevin: What are you working on right now, and are there any performances coming up?

Dr. Johnson: I have a long-long term project, an opera on a theme of displacement and loss in rural Depression-era Indiana. And I am trying to get text permissions for a poem of Uruguayan poet Mario Benedetti that I am attracted to. Since I will be retiring from the college after this year, there will be several opportunities there to hear my music. On Saturday October 4, at Trinity College’s Austin Arts Center, I will play in and present “Palabra, Obra y Corazon,” a song cycle on poems by Medardo Arias-Satizábal. It will be in an interesting format: bilingual, meet-the-composer, meet-the-poet, meet-the-performers. It’s a wonderful chance to go in depth about the interaction of text and music. Then, on December 2, the Ives Quartet from San Francisco will play my big string quartet, based on a canto from Dante’s Inferno: il terzodecimo canto.

Kevin Schlottmannenjoys music in all forms. Since graduating from college, he has lived in New York City, working in the legal industry and in public radio on WNYC’s music program Soundcheck.