Michael Kurek
Michael Kurek is a classical music composer and professor from Nashville Tennessee. He has just released a CD titled "The Sea Knows" and it has gained national attention like a category 5 hurricane. Within a few months, it had 54,000 hits on Spotify and reached No. 1 on the Billboard traditional classical music charts. The trend today in classical music composition is to create avant garde - atonal music. Michael decided to buck this trend and create a work that contains catchy lines, reminiscent of the 18th and 19th century work of Haydn, Beethoven and Chopin... or 20th century work of Copeland, Williams and Gershwin. What he created was a wonderful piece of music that can be listened to at home... at work... or just driving in your car.
After receiving his doctorate in composition at the University of Michigan, Michael has taught at prestigious schools such as: Roosevelt University in Chicago and SUNY Fredonia in western New York. He currently serves on the faculty of Vanderbilt University, where he chaired the department of composition/theory for 14 years. Many composers of today share educational duties with their composing career and Michael has produced a nice resume of musical output. His work has been heard throughout the world - on five continents - and been performed by numerous symphony and chamber orchestras. He has received many awards from the classical music community for his work, for example: The Academy Award in Music from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (the Academy’s top annual award for lifetime achievement in composition). I recently talked with Michael about his career and the new CD The Sea Knows.
R.V.B. - Hello Michael. This is Robert von Bernewitz from New York. Congratulations on your new CD "The Sea Knows". I found out about it while I was driving home from a rehearsal. I had a classical music station on. They play new material at night sometimes. I missed the introduction of it but I became intrigued by the music as I was listening to it. I was like "Wow! I really like this. What is this?" It turned out to be you.
M.K. - I was hoping that would happen on some radio stations. (Hahaha) People would call and say "What is this?"
R.V.B. - That is exactly what happened. Form the minute I heard it, I knew it was something special. I know it's relatively a fresh piece. When did you write the sections for this?
M.K. - It varies. The Sea Knows was written in 2016. It was a commission for a music festival in Brazil... where I was a guest composer. It was a string festival in San Palo. The guest artist was a cellist, so they wanted something for cello and string orchestra. I wrote the piece for that. The only other performance was the one that was associated with the recording... here in Nashville. It's basically a new piece that has only been played twice.
R.V.B. - Something worked because it hit number one on the Billboard charts quickly.
M.K. - The record label is very good about getting the word out. I used social media to get people interested and when Spotify featured it on its play list, a lot of people discovered it there. So far we've had 54,000 plays on Spotify. For a classical piece, it's a pretty remarkable number. That goes into the Neilson rankings which Billboard uses. It's not just sales and downloads, but it's also streaming plays.
R.V.B. - You've done some violin pieces in the past, did you approach this music differently than your previous work?
M.K. - Not from what I've been doing for the last several years... which is the Neo-Romantic style. It's not what most people are doing in contemporary music. Most people are still doing either atonal music or some kind of collage of post-modern music... or minimalism. Very few people that I know in classical circles are writing straight ahead, traditional narrative, tonal style music. I wrote a lot of music that was in that kind of modernist style for a long time. Then one day I looked at myself and thought "I never put on my own music to listen to." I didn't care to listen to it. That's a shame when you have an award winning piece and you don't really want to listen to it. There are a lot of pieces that you hear once and that's all you need to hear.
R.V.B. - You have to be in a mood to listen to avant garde, modern music.
M.K. - They work well in a concert hall when it's live - and it's interesting to see the players playing it - but you're not going to rush out and buy the recording. I would do that and then get in my car and put on Daphnis et Chloé... there was a disconnect. I finally said "I want to write music that I would like to listen to on the radio... in my car or at my home. Not just in the concert hall." Not something that's just interesting but has a sense of emotional connection, like traditional classical music and romantic style music.
R.V.B. - You definitely achieved your goal because it caught my attention in the car. This morning I played it for my wife and she enjoyed it also.
M.K. - Thank you. A lot of people want a melody. It sounds naive that we were told in school that the melody is passé... but in the end, the pieces you remember, and have lived on, are the ones with a great melody. As naive as it may sound, to talk about... "I want a good tune" in the end its still the thing that causes us to go back to it. I think the music that's played in 20th century orchestras are still pieces like Appalachian Spring of Copeland, Ralph Vaughn Williams, Gershwin, Rachmaninoff... the things with a melody. It's simply what most people want to hear. There are maybe a few people like you, who know more and interested in what's being done currently with the new trends.
R.V.B. - I like some things that Milton Babbitt did but not everyone does. It's very complex and he usually has to explain why he does it. He adds all of those notes and shortens things. The average listener will not hear that.
M.K. - It just sounds random to them. So does Elliott Carter. I celebrate the pluralism of having all styles being done at this time. There is room for everybody. When I was a student, I was told that there was this revolution to make anything possible. It turned out to be anything but traditional music. That seemed a shame to me. I want Milton Babbitt to be possible... I want minimalism. There is some great minimalist stuff and post-minimalist stuff. I want somebody to still be doing a melody or traditional narrative kind of style. I can't be all things to all people. I do and hear the music that I hear and that's what I need to write down. You spend so much time writing it, that you want to enjoy writing it. You're spending 400 hundred hours on it... I want to enjoy that time. It's not just listening to it later but it's actually writing it.
R.V.B. - Do you have a room or special area where you do your writing?
M.K. - Yes. In my home I have a studio that has all the bells and whistles of computer technology. But often, to write the music originally, I'll go for a walk. I especially like to go to the ocean... which is where I got the idea for The Sea Knows. My parents retired to Savanna Georgia, so I spend a lot of time walking the beach there. I'll hear in my head a musical idea that comes to my imagination, and I'll write it down right there on the beach or sing it into a tape recorder. Then later I will go notate it on the computer.
R.V.B. - That's a nice way to go about it.
M.K. - I'll make pencil sketches first before I put it into the computer. The Sea Knows was completely engineered by me also. That's because I can't afford to hire the professionals. (Hahaha) I got the software and learned how to do it myself.
R.V.B. - It sounds real nice... you did a good job. Where did you grow up and how did you get involved in music in the first place?
M.K. - I grew up in Nashville and went to the University of Michigan. I lived in Michigan for seven or eight years. Then I taught in Chicago at Roosevelt University. Then I taught in Western New York at SUNY Fredonia. Then I got hired at Vanderbilt - which by coincidence is my home town where I grew up - but my family had moved away. The town had completely exploded. Nashville is now a relatively large city of over a million people. When I was growing up it was approximately 100,000. It's a whole different place now.
R.V.B. - I went there about four years ago and was amazed at the construction going on.
M.K. - It's still going on. It's basically going to become Atlanta. (Hahaha)
R.V.B. - The economy is booming in Nashville.
M.K. - Our symphony orchestra is now a major orchestra and it has won Grammy awards. The recording industry is not just country music anymore, it now involves all genres. They record music for the history channel... TV news themes... the kind of things that used to be done in LA. You get a lot of different musicians here. My wife is a musical theater singer and performer. There's 51 musical theaters in the greater Nashville area. (Hahaha) it's astonishing to me. Broadway is very big here.
R.V.B. - It's truly "music city". As you're waiting on a street corner, you hear it coming out of the street lamp poles.
M.K. - What brought you to Nashville?
R.V.B. - I had never been there and because I am so involved in music, it was on my bucket list. I wound up playing one of my original songs at the Bluebird, which was an exciting experience for me. Of course I had to follow a very, very talented girl.
M.K. - In the small neighborhood musical theaters here, there's Broadway caliber singers. They all moved here to make money in the music industry. They sing in the churches and in the theaters.
R.V.B. - The thing that amazed me was the talent level of the musicians on the main strip. Everybody in that town is so talented.
M.K. - Yeah. They come from all over the country and stay for a few years and if they don't make it they go back home. While they're here, we have them. Today to get a record deal, you have to bring money to the table. I heard Taylor Swift brought four million dollars to the record company to get her first deal.
R.V.B. - In your college years, you studied with Bolcom, Henze and Kurtz... is there anything that you may have picked up from them that is apparent in your music?
M.K. - I think that a lot of the stuff you learn in writing modern music is applicable from tonal music. For example, counterpoint. Leslie Bassett - my main teacher in Michigan - taught me to think in terms of lines of melody and counter-melody. Always have a part that's interesting to listen to. If someone else is holding a long note, there's somebody else moving in the background. It's not just a tune played over a whole note chorus, like some movie music. There's always a base line in contrary motion. Something more than just a tune. That stuck with me very much to my tonal music... although I did write in a modernist style for a long time. I just gradually heard melodies. "I want to write them down and I don't care what anybody thinks." (Hahaha) By then, I had tenure. I learned orchestration from those guys also. Eugene Kurtz was at Michigan when he left France for a year. At the time, he was known as one of the best orchestrators in the world. I wrote orchestra music with him and spent the whole time learning from him... how to effectively write for the instruments. My basic training came from those guys. I have much to be thankful for from them. The academy doesn't like what I'm doing now. It was twice as hard to get tenure in that sort of thing. They're still entrenched people that want to only do modernist stuff. It's threatening to them if you write something that more people like. The more people that dislike it, the better it must be. I don't want to spend hours and hours on something that only five people will hear. If I'm going to spent the time writing it, I want someone to hear it. (Hahaha)
R.V.B. - I guess the modernist theory is that maybe they're writing something groundbreaking that will be popular fifty years from now.
M.K. - They'll be appreciated later. It was true with Beethoven. They didn't understand his music at first. Since Schoenberg invented the 12 tone method back in 1923, and writing atonal music even before that - it's been almost 100 years now. If our ears were going to catch up to that, why isn't everyone listening and playing Schoenberg today? He thought he was a visionary, but I don't think it turned out to be true. Maybe in another 400 years? (Hahaha)
R.V.B. - Well I think something different had to be done at that time.
M.K. - I agree with that. You have to break the mold before you can put it back together again.
R.V.B. - Which instruments were you trained on?
M.K. - I did take piano lessons, but never at a level where I could perform. I reached a very high level as a percussionist. I played all the way through college. I played jazz and big band percussion - drum set and rock - timpani in the orchestra -xylophone and marimba. I was playing in a theme park in Nashville called Opryland USA... which has since gone the way of Wally World. It was like Disneyland with country music. I played drums there. I was in a Dixieland band. It was fun but we did six shows a day on weekdays and eight shows a day on weekends. We had one weekday off. It just turned into a job. I couldn't spend the rest of my life playing there. I was playing jazz in clubs for a bunch of drunks at night. I was around 21 years old. I love the music but do I want to stay out to 2 AM every night? I wanted to settle down, have a family and get a job with benefits. At that time there were plenty of college teaching jobs, so I went to graduate school to get qualified to become a college professor - and that's what I did.
R.V.B. - I would say that was a good move.
M.K. - It's a hard life. It sounds like you know what it's about?
R.V.B. - I do my share of playing in front of drunks.
M.K. - You're always thinking about the next gig with freelancing... where is my next meal coming from.
R.V.B. - It's not the most stable environment... with club owners and bar managers.
M.K. - I said to myself "I'm a really good drummer but my real heart is in composing." Ever since I was a little kid, I was making up tunes. I wrote stuff for the marching band in high school. I did arrangements of pop songs for a pep rally... before basketball games. Then I wrote a march for our concert band, so I majored in composition.
R.V.B. - What kind of pop music did you like? Did you have any favorite bands or artists?
M.K. - In my generation, the gods were Led Zeppelin and The Beatles. In high school we had a record player and you could stack records on it. They would automatically drop down and play one at a time. I would have Beethoven piano concerto playing and the next record would be Led Zeppelin. Then the next one would be Grieg's Peer Gynt. The next thing would be Dave Brubeck. I had a wide taste as a listener and I still do.
R.V.B. - You don't have a record player anymore?
M.K. - My wife picked up one recently. She has a bunch of albums from her parents and things that she collected. She has a cast recording of Oklahoma, and My Fair Lady with Julie Andrews. We put them on for fun when we're doing chores around the house. I'm usually writing music. It's a chance to get out of my system, what's in there. Sometimes it drives me crazy until I write it down. (Hahaha)
R.V.B. - It has to be gratifying to take an idea through the process to the final product of a lush arrangement.
M.K. - It takes many years. One of the tragedies to me as an educator, is that all the prizes for composers are for young composers under 25. They're looking for the next Mozart. So what the kids do to win the prize is, they write something really clever, that doesn't take a whole lot of technique. The prize should be for people over 50, who have actually had a chance to learn the craft. (Hahaha) When I got my Doctorate in Composition, my teacher wisely said to me , "Today, you're a journeyman. In 10 years you'll be a composer." It was about 10 years before I felt like a composer. There is really that much to learn. You go through mistakes, like writing trills that can't be played and writing things with no balance. The computer stuff now is really deceptive because you put your score through Finale or Sibelius and the flute plays back just as loud as the trombone. The students will come to a lesson with the flute in a low register and four trombones playing over it. You can hear the flute in the playback but in the real orchestra, the flute will be buried. The volume is completely artificial. You learn these things on the job. I've got yelled at by many players for years, until I learned what not to do.
R.V.B. - You mentioned young composers. You're a judge in a composing competition. What do you look for in something like this?
M.K. - I look for a potential to develop a certain voice. Not just generic things, that they've taught to mimic. I look for beauty. If there's sensitivity and musicality in the phrasing. Some of these people write a run on sentence. They don't know when to breathe.
R.V.B. - How do you go about teaching the up and coming generation of today. What are your goals as a teacher?
M.K. - That's a great question. I try not to produce a clone of myself or make them sound like me in any way. I want them to find out who they are. Some people have different temperament and personalities. Some people are very dark and they write dark music and others are not. I use a lot of psychology in my work. I try to discover who the person is and what they're trying to say. Then, they go from there. I try to challenge them not to use the same lick over and over, and get them out of their normal comfort zone. I play the devil's advocate a little bit but I still respect who they are as an artist.
R.V.B. - You do a lot of great work in the music field as a composer and as a teacher. I appreciate you taking this time to speak with me.
M.K. - Thank you very much for contacting me. I feel like you're a kindred spirit on the other end. Have a good day.
Interview conducted by Robert von Bernewitz
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For more information on Michael Kurek visit his website. michaelkurek.com
For information on this site contact Robvonb247 (at) gmail (dot) com
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