Re: Being Trained and Playing the Classics--What Do You Loop?

[Richard Zvonar <zvonar@zvonar.com>]

At 4:09 PM -0800 1/14/03, Clayton Gary Lehmann wrote:

>Dr. Z, are you classically trained?

Not really. Other than a year of trumpet lessons in fifth grade I 
never studied an instrument. I picked up guitar on my own and took 
lessons only after I'd played professionally for several years. 
During my undergraduate years I took four music classes. One of these 
was a basic survey course (basic theory, ear training, and music 
history), one was a composer/performer workshop, and two were a 
sequence of counterpoint and harmony theory classes (the teacher was 
good, though, and later ended up directing the Eastman School). A few 
years later I undertook music study full time at a community college. 
Although this was a lower division curriculum, the faculty was quite 
good. I learned enough and built enough of a portfolio to be accepted 
with a Regents Fellowship to the composition program at UCSD. I faked 
my way through this to some extent but managed to earn a doctorate in 
five years.

On the question of whether classical studies can put a damper on an 
artist's native creativity, I'd have to say that it certainly CAN 
happen but that it doesn't have to. I personally went through about a 
year of arrested development when I focused more attention on 
deterministic notation-based composition when my natural proclivities 
were to use improvisational processes in the context of intermedia 
theater. I sorted it out in time and spent the rest of my doctoral 
program creating theater works that didn't use any musical notation. 
This might be viewed by some as a bit of cheating, but my feeling is 
that I put together the kind of graduate curriculum I needed to 
support my creative work and that it just happened to fall within the 
music program.


>Do you ever play "classical" music?

No, but I did sing in several choral groups during 1975-79. The 
groups ranged in size from an octet to a large group comprised of two 
college choirs joining forces on Verdi's Manzoni Requiem. The best of 
these ensembles was the Cabrillo College Chamber singers, under the 
direction of Dr. Allen Illick. This was quite an accomplished group 
of 18-20 voices. Our repertoire ranged from Renaissance motets by 
Ockeghem, Lassus, Palestrina, et al.to 20th century works by Poulenc, 
William Schuman, and various jazz composer/arrangers. I normally sang 
bass, though I also faked my way as a first tenor for the Verdi.

>Also, here's some loop content--what classics do ANY of you loopers
>integrate into your performances?  Any familiar tunes pop up?  Is 
>everybody
>improvising?

Since most of my recent performances have been based on commercial 
recordings, there is always a mix of "classic" works. Some of these 
are "classical" in the common sense of being pieces of art from the 
Renaissance through the 20th century. Some are "classic" in the sense 
of being significant "oldies" in a particular genre. Therefore any 
given performance might have Gabrielli, Bach, and Satie comingling 
with Stockhausen, Xenakis, and Cage or Dick Dale, the Who, or Dion. 
My performances are almost always improvised but are not always 
completely "blank slate" improvisations. I select source materials 
and practice with them in the days leading up to the gig. Then I 
spend as much time as possible fine-tuning on the day of the 
performance. I usually have the source CDs (and sometimes cassettes) 
laid out in a rough order, but from the moment the master fade comes 
up I'm winging it.
-- 

______________________________________________________________
Richard Zvonar, PhD
(818) 788-2202
http://www.zvonar.com
http://RZCybernetics.com