Gregory Wanamaker

composer

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Oncoming Traffic features Robert Spring’s definitive recording of my Duo Sonata with Timothy McAllister. See more in my discography. »

09.01.11

New month, new season! This enjoyable summer was spent on some new territory for me - in collaboration with Carrie Mae Weems on a project for the Syracuse, NY based Society for New Music. The new work, A Story Within a Story, brings Carr’s stunning visual imagery and my sounds together in a new work that explores social and political identity over the past 40 years and beyond. I also had the pleasure of working on some sound design for her The Maddening Crowd, part of her Slow Fade to Black exhibit, showing at Legacy Gallery in North Adams, MA through September 25.

A new season also brings new projects and possibilities. I am pleased to be a part of a few consortium commissions and other projects that will keep me busy for quite a while. More details about those when the time comes... In the meantime, please check the 2012 Calendar for upcoming events!

The Capitol Quartet’s Five Works for Four Saxophones is to be released this fall on the White Pine label. This cd features my work virtuoso work Run, which was commissioned by Capitol in 2009. The Capitol Quartet and Scott Burgess, producer and engineer of this album, were selected as recipients of a grant from the Aaron Copland Fund for Music to record new works by American composers.

Scott Burgess also received another Copland Grant this year to record works composed for Christopher Creviston and Oren Fader. This disc will include my Three Episodes in addition to works by John Anthony Lennon, Dorothy Chang, Eric Schwartz, David Claman, Michael Djupstrom, Brian Coughlin and Whitney Ashe. This will likely be released in 2012. Keep your ears and eyes open!

6.12.11

Summer, summer, summer! Busy with several exciting projects for several wonderful musicians. In the meantime, I am very excited about a few things (and most of them are, strangely, saxophone related):

PRISM Quartet’s new album Dedication was released on May 31 on the Innova label. Featuring my very short speed metal organum blues, this cool cd also features music by 22 other composers all composed in 2004 in honor of PRISM’s 20th anniversary. Check out my discography for details! PRISM performed the music for this disc in its entirety for two cd release concerts at the Stone in NYC and World Cafe Live in Philadelphia on May 29 and 31 to rave reviews.

The Capitol Quartet’s Five Works for Four Saxophones is to be released later this summer on the White Pine label. This cd features my work virtuoso work Run, which was commissioned by Capitol in 2009. The Capitol Quartet and Scott Burgess, producer and engineer of this album, were selected as recipients of a grant from the Aaron Copland Fund for Music to record new works by American composers.

I'd like to give a special shout-out to Dan Graser and his colleagues in the Donald Sinta Saxophone Quartet for performing speed metal organum blues several times during their tour of China and Los Angeles. They used the piece as an encore following performances of Bill Bolcom’ Concerto Grosso. Thanks, guys!

4.12.11

I know that I am not alone when I share that the presence of the arts are threatened in my local school district.

It’s not as if our music program doesn’t have support from the community. I am a member of a booster organization that provides additional support for the music program in our local public school system. It’s made up of taxpayers who have recently donated over $140,000 worth of instruments to the district. That’s a lot of instruments. That’s almost one third of the cost of one of those 110 Tomahawk missiles (based on 1999 cost data) that missed all of those targets in Libya on that Saturday a few weeks ago when we attacked them.

With this in mind, it seems to me that music programs are really not that expensive.

Music is one of the few means through which children may express themselves in a free society, which, according to our government, to whom in part public schools answer, is what we’re trying to promote with all of our expensive and sadly violent interventions overseas.

It is rumored that during the Second World War, when Winston Churchill’s finance minister suggested that Britain cut arts funding to support the war effort, Churchill answered, “Then what are we fighting for?” Whether or not that story is accurate, the question is more than valid.

As a country, we’re also in the middle of an economic crisis. School Boards and communities around the country are faced with tough decisions as to how to manage dwindling budgets for education. Many consider music and art to be luxuries and therefore, they are always the first on the chopping block before cuts to administrative excess and non-academic activities like extra–curricular sports. (Please note that I am not anti–athletics and I never want to turn this argument into an arts vs. athletics debate.)

There are plenty of resources that illustrate the positive effects music and the arts have on mental development and learning, and that explain the history of music’s function in early education models. I don’t want to rehash these important points, simply because they have been made repeatedly.

In fact, school boards and school administrators don’t care about educational models because they measure the success of their public school systems by two things:

1. the relative altitude of standardized test scores and

2. university or job placement following graduation.

Well, if success is about money and numbers, the administration and the board should understand that the Arts bring in far more money to the economy than they cost so any cutback to their subsidy is just bad business.

In a country that supports multi–trillion dollar corporation that outsources jobs, it’s not surprising that we are forced to import goods – not just unnecessary plastic junk from big box stores – but essentials like clothing and food. Go to your produce section and look at all that fruit from South America.

There is one thing that we do export, though.

Art.

Music.

Musicians and teachers didn’t destroy our economy.

Here in Potsdam, New York, we have an amazing group of teachers in our award–winning program who use band, orchestra and chorus as means for teaching and demonstrating all of those connections music has to history, literature, science and math. These are actually classes we’re talking about – not rehearsals, but classes.

Classes where children learn about music and its historical context by listening and discussing.

Classes where children learn about music and its physical makeup by performing and composing.

Classes where children learn about music and its connection to math by studying theory.

Classes where children learn how to listen and respond thoughtfully.

Classes where children learn how to communicate peacefully by making music with – not against, but with – each other.

Our teachers teach our children how to understand an art form they already love a little because music is everywhere. It’s inescapable! There is nowhere to go where it doesn’t exist. TV, movies, uptown, downtown, restaurants, doctors’ offices, airplanes, department stores. YOUR car. And that little boombox in the corner of your store to help you pass the time when business is slow. And if, eventually, you find that bit of Adirondack solitude to get away from all the city noise that Potsdam affords, don’t be surprised if you don’t have an earworm of the freakin’ Piña Colada Song stuck in your head.

Seriously, music is a part of everyday life. And it’s the one thing that everyone can relate to. Real, true, honest education is taking what a kid loves and can do, and expanding it – not taking away anything – but expanding it to a larger world, so that they can experience more and love more.

Music is essential to the development of every child. It allows them to find who they are, and and to be creative. Music encourages peaceful communication. It’s not about being better than anybody else, or winning trophies, but there is great enrichment and great fulfillment from it. Music fosters education connection to all academic subjects. Music is essential. Further cuts to music programs in the United States will jeopardize the education for every student in every school district.

1.03.11

I am pleased to announce that I am part of a project funded in part by The National Endowment for the Arts. The award of a 2011 Access to Artistic Excellence grant will support the commissioning and presentation of a new work for the Syracuse based Society for New Music. The work will be written for a large chamber ensemble to accompany a collaboratively created video by Carrie Mae Weems. As part of the agreement, I will also conduct free workshops at area universities and education centers.

I am honored to be a part of this project and am proud to live in a country where the arts still matter on a national level. I also hope that the 112th Congress understands how important it is to continue funding The National Endowment for the Arts will continue under the new congress to support the creation of new artistic works. Many of the newly elected officials mistakenly (I believe) cite the desires of the "American People" to cease government support of many important programs necessary for a free society.

While I acknowledge the frustrations of all of those citizens of the United States of America adversely affected by the current state of economy, I hope that all will understand the importance of art as commentary on the current times. Indeed, students of history in college, high school, elementary school, and even those who continue studying history and her effects on today's events regularly note the presence of art, music and literature in their readings as an integral part of historical culture.

Let us also note that today's art comments upon the present and looks to the future. Nurturing all artists' need to comment on current events will have the same effect on the future as works by artists like Shakespeare and Beethoven have today.

Stephen Sondheim accurately wrote in his Sunday in the Park with George that children and art are the two most important things that a society can leave behind. I wholeheartedly agree.

Thank you to The National Endowment for the Arts and The Society of New Music for this wonderful opportunity.