WNMF curator Matthew Patton shares some interesting thoughts about last week’s New Music Festival, and what music means to him.

Matthew Patton was composer and a curator at this year's New Music Festival! He was willing to let me pick his brain about the festival, and about what music means to him as a composer - here are some snippets from our conversation...

Sara Krahn: I’m interested in the criteria you followed for choosing this year’s line-up of composers and compositions? Are the programs structured around specific ideas, or do the ideas take shape based on the repertoire that has been chosen?

Matthew Patton: I would say both of those things, and other things. I don’t go into it with any kind of plan beforehand. It depends on the music that I already think is interesting, or the music that comes to me that I think is interesting, and it develops outward. For instance, The Rothko Chapel by Morton Feldman, which we did on Monday, we couldn’t do in past festivals because of practical considerations like choirs and stuff. But we were able to do it this year, because there were choirs available to perform it.
With me the artist always comes first. I always ask them, what would you want to do, what, of your stuff, would you want programmed. That doesn’t mean i’ll just do it because there are a million things to consider, but I would ask every artist, if money and resources were no object, what would you want done. David Lang mentioned that he wanted his piece The National Anthems to be done (which also happened to have a choir in it. So we had two big pieces for The Rothko Chapel, and The National Anthems for this vocal evening (Monday night). I mean, you can always find relations once you have a bunch of repertoire. But starting with one piece, it kind of unfolds once you talk to other composers. With Lang, he wanted to come.
With Music and Trauma, we decided we wanted to do Gavin Bryar's The Sinking of the Titanic at the Pan-Am Pool - because it changes the environment, right.
A major question I always ask is, how can the work expand outward. The Sinking of the Titanic definitely became about a bigger idea - music and trauma and tragedy. The ideas around this piece (and my piece - After-Life Mutilation) developed into a pre-concert panel on music and healing, how music can be used to actually, physically and physiologically heal people as it’s used in music therapy. We discussed how music can physiologically help you to deal with trauma, and transcend what has happened. So you can see there is a bigger idea.

SK: Right, there are all sorts of ideas swirling around in the festival, and the ideas are, for the most part, born out of the music that is chosen…?

MP: Not necessarily, sometimes the idea might come first, and sometimes the music might come first.

SK: What about the composers - do you have connections to the composers in one way or another?

MP: Yea, through my own music and work. I have alot of connections with people in all kinds of different countries, and I also work in other festivals to get projects up and going. I also am in the know about various projects in the works, and I love being involved in seeing these projects through and performed.

SK: So would you already have future festival programs lined up?

MP: No, not complete programs. There are different elements that are floating around. But to answer your question, it tends to be filtered down and finalized during the spring. I also don’t really like to nail stuff down right away - I like to keep the programs floating and open-ended.

For instance, next year, we’re working again on creating a program in a completely new environment - like in Music and Trauma - because the environment can completely change how your whole experience of the music. Right now we have a few different ideas for possible concert locations.

SK: Are you able to let on what some of these locations are?

MP: Well, the Museum of Human Rights - because of it’s strange and diverse interior, we would love to explore the acoustic potential of all the different spaces.

SK: You are both a curator and a composer in this year’s festival. How does your experience as a composer in the festival differ from your experience as a curator?

Well, there is certain music that I am very passionate about. But I think it’s important to say that music is WAY bigger than you or I or the audience. I won’t just program music that I like, that’s way too puny - programming has nothing to do with individual taste. I program all kinds of music that I don’t “like”, but I do this because it’s important that it’s heard. You know, you might not like something, but you know that it matters. So, as it relates to composing and curating?? I’d say, as a composer you’re starting from a certain spot. Like maestro Alexander Mickelthwate, whatever music is to him is very different from what it is to me. This is an important distinction. Creators of music (at least, interesting creators of music) think differently - our brains work differently. Alexander and I sit down together and discuss programming all the time, and it’s always extremely interesting, because our brains are really different.

SK: Would you say that the way you think is complementary to the way that Alexander Mickelthwate thinks?

MP: It is and it isn’t. We get into arguments, for sure, but this is fine. We both believe strongly in what we’re doing, and sometimes that creates some friction. But often the case is that i’ll open up some idea for him, and he’ll open up some idea for me. Like he had never heard of Stephen O’Malley, but he’s completely won over with it.
But coming back to your question, certainly being a composer informs my curating, because i’m starting from a certain experience and then building around it. But again, I will always come back to the fact that the music is bigger than all of us.

SK: I’d love to talk abit about your own composition featured in the festival, After-Life Mutilation, which is part of a larger Requiem Mass that you’ve recorded with all the string players of Sigur Ros? I understand that this is a deeply personal work, would you be willing to tell me abit about the genesis of this work?

MP: I just want to start by saying that all of my work is deeply personal. With After-Life Mutilation, I went into the recording studio with certain musical ideas, I knew what kind of sound or sonic experience I wanted. For me it all starts with an idea. In order for a piece to be interesting, it’s gotta have a good idea: a good idea makes a good piece. Sometimes it’s an idea you can put into words, or something outside the music, or something about the music, but it’s important that I point out that, for me, it all stems from the idea. So i’ll go into the studio with all kinds of ideas, and often they don’t actually work, and it’s a real struggle to get them to work. With After-Life Mutilaton, though, all of my initial ideas did work - something that has never happened to me before!I But i’m also a real believer of listening to where the music is taking you - you can go into creating music with an original idea, but if the music is taking you somewhere else you have to follow it. Sometimes you can’t really explain why, it’s very intuitive and organic, and you have to follow it, because to impose something on it would be to ruin the creative process. To me, that’s what interesting composers do - if the music wants to go somewhere, you have to let it.

SK: Would you say that the music was inspired by the event of your brother’s death, and then you let the music develop organically from there?

MP: Hm, I wouldn’t say that things “inspire” me. Like, I say this because i’m inspired 24 hours a day - there are 100 pieces I would like to write right now, and i’ll never be able to write them. Of course, everybody’s different, but I wouldn’t say that I get inspired by things, i’m just always at a level of working where i’m trying to navigate how to do something. So I guess it depends on how you look at it - i’m in a mindset where you could say i’m inspired all the time, I just don’t look at it that way.
Another composer might use the word “inspired”, and that’s fine, but I would just say it’s my life, it’s what I do - there’s no distinction for me. If you say someone is inspired to do something, for me, that indicates that it’s different, or a departure from the way they normally perceive things.

So, coming back to After-Life Mutilation, this traumatic event happens, and I work organically or intuitively from there. I don’t know why I do stuff, and in this case I have no idea why I wrote this piece around this event specifically. It’s also important to point out that I did not set out to compose the piece around the death or my brother. I just set out to write some music, and then it started heading in that direction, it was completely unplanned. To give you another example, in the larger piece, there are all kinds of cockpit voice recorders- these recordings used in the piece are actually radio voice recorders from passengers in the plane crash - it’s pretty disturbing. And honestly, I had no idea what compelled me to use these recorders. But I did it, and there’s no explanation - it’s abit of a quandary. But you can tell that people are engaged, because they’re not just listening - they have questions. You can tell it’s really affecting people on a human level, and that the piece has literally taken on a life of it’s own.

SK: Isn’t this the kind of experience that the NMF strives to do with their programming?

MP: Well, there are many things that the festival strives to do with their programming. The biggest thing for me is that it’s gotta be inclusive - you’ve gotta want people to come. There are all kinds of music that pushes people away, stuff that’s just too academic - i’m pretty opinionated about how much I don’t like this stuff. But music is like magic - you can’t touch it. No one can really say what it is, outside of saying that it is soundwaves. I want to program stuff that people get excited about. Of course, at the New Music Festival, you’re allowed to dislike whatever you hear - the point is that you’re thinking about music, and considering why you don’t like something. It’s easy to go to things that you do like, but it’s the music that you have questions about that has to potential to open new doors for you.

SK: So how would you characterize this year’s festival?

MP: Well, it’s important to point out that the festival is just as much about the experience of it as it is the music - it’s really so much bigger than the music. In music you have an experience, you don’t just sit and listen (I mean you do, but there’s always something bigger going on). With Music and Trauma and The Pan-Am, or Stephen O’Malley on Friday night, we’re really trying to reach an audience in a more complete and effective way. Like, for me, there’s no difference between music and talking to someone. It’s a different language, obviously, but, for instance, I’m talking to you right now, and you could be thinking ‘This guy’s a jerk, or this guy’s really interesting.’ You know what I mean. Music is the same way. You’re listening to somebody. So if a conversation goes well, you’ll go home feeling great, but if you were out of synch with the other person, you’ll go home wondering why that was and where the connection was missed. The important thing, though, is that you’re world has been opened up a little bit.