written by Ben Shirley
For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to belong...anywhere. I wanted to know the big secret everyone else seemed to know but me. How do you live, how do you make sense of the seemingly mundane slog through existence? How do you connect with someone? How do you care about anything? For crying out loud, how do you form an honest relationship with another human being? Where was my tribe? What is my identity?
Read Morewritten by Carolina Calvache
My name is Carolina Calvache. I am a pianist and composer from Cali, Colombia – a beautiful city at the southwest of the country. I came to the US to study jazz and be immersed in that style of music by writing and performing for the last 14 years. When I was back home, I started my interest in composition and showed my ideas to the classical composition teacher. He was not very encouraging, he told me, “Your melody does not make sense”… Basically, he did not like what I wrote. I was vulnerable, trying to show my music to someone. But that response did not help me get better and rather shut down my interest.
Read Morewritten by Monica Chew
It’s taken me several decades to come back around to the idea that there’s more than one way to do it, as far as classical music is concerned. The voices from my classical music education reverberate through my head whenever I sit down at the piano.
Read Morewritten by Seare Farhat
My conversations with Audre Lorde have been numerous, healing, inspiring, and entirely in my head. She has described herself as “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet,” and for me a voice of conflict and liberation. Lorde has defined liberation in her work as the rediscovery of the self and the reclamation of our past into the future. However universal her thoughts on liberation are, she is still adamant in centering herself in her discovery. When I first encountered her work, I did not understand the gravity of her subjectivity as revolutionary until I was required to question my own sense of the subjective. As a subjective artist situated in a context that did not value her personhood, she was distinctly aware that her silence and trepidation was a manifestation of her oppressor within her. The liberation of her art, and other oppressed artists, therefore became an urgent necessity for the community at large.
Read Morewritten by Kenyon Duncan
As I sit down to write, I must admit I’m only partially focused on the words I’m typing. Another part of me is listening to the first rains of the season as they graze the rooftops here in Boonville, CA. The air is crisp and sky, dark today, almost as if apologizing for the sweltering, stagnant heatwave that crawled through the Anderson Valley only 2 weeks ago.
Read Morewritten by Jeremy Rosenstock
I’ve been thinking about this blog post almost as long as I spent considering what to compose for GLFCAM.
Given the parallel, I should begin by saying that I usually compose for myself. It’s far easier to create a recording if I’m the performer, producer, and composer. It’s difficult to pick instruments knowing that each addition reduces the possibility that it’ll ever be played again. I’m not an optimist when it comes to these sorts of things. I assume the first performance is the last, unless proven otherwise.
Read Morewritten by Hannah Boissonneault
Whenever my friends and I talk about our childhood dreams, we usually reflect, laugh a little, and ultimately, we shake them off. Some of my friends are doing the very thing they wanted to do since they were five years old, and some followed completely different, ultra-cool paths. Some talk about how they never found one dream that stuck with them, or how they pursued many until they found the right fit. Some tell me that they never found their own “passion.”
Read Morewritten by Clifton Ingram
2019 GLFCAM Julius Eastman Fellow, Cycle 12
Lately, I’ve been noticing more that my work from the last handful of years has grown increasingly apocalyptic. To my ears, musical material is spread thin, technique obscures gestures, and a fragile vulnerability haunts even the most luminous of resonances in a hushed landscape.
Read Morewritten by Kyle Tieman-Strauss
2019 GLFCAM Fortuna Calvo-Roth Fellow, Cycle 11
To me, the best kind of music-making is enveloped in one’s community. No matter where you live—big city or rural town—you can find pockets of wild, outrageous music, and if you can’t, you can mind-trick your friends into creating one with you.
Read Morewritten by Rajna Swaminathan
2019 GLFCAM Florence Price Fellow, Cycle 12
Writing through-composed music for classically trained musicians is new and challenging for me… What feels particularly difficult in this process is transitioning from a social, dialogic workspace — where the resonance of the music-in-process and the presence of the people playing it can spur the imagination forward — to a relatively solitary workspace, where it feels like you have to be your own mirror.
Read Morewritten by Molly Joyce
2019 GLFCAM Chabuca Granda Fellow, Cycle 11
I have an impaired left hand from a previous car accident, and for nearly twenty years, I assumed I wasn’t disabled. I assumed I needed to conform to the norm and hide my inabilities; hide what I couldn’t control, and ultimately hide my disability’s possibility.
Read Morewritten by Adele Faizullina
2019 GLFCAM Cynthia Jackson Ford Fellow, Cycle 11
I was born in Uzbekistan, and when I was six years old, my family and I moved to Tatarstan. When I was seven, my parents did their best and found a music teacher for me: An amazing teacher and fantastic blind musician, Yevgeniy Fralov, who taught me the braille system.
Read Morewritten by Iman Habibi
2019 GLFCAM Lucy and Jacob Frank Fellow, Cycle 9
A few arts organizations around the United States had cancelled or postponed events. Philadelphia had only one known case of coronavirus, and we were barely alarmed. However, as I made my way through the backstage corridors of the Verizon Hall that morning saying hello to several musicians and staff, it was slowly becoming apparent that something was not quite right.
Read Morewritten by Samuel Winnie
2019 GLFCAM Anita and Leslie Bassett Fellow, Cycle 9
If you imagined that my daily time spent consuming media in the years following my undergraduate degree were a pie chart, about ninety percent of that chart would consist of my aforementioned comfort zone. That remaining ten percent, however, would constitute the music and other media that was beyond the confines of my box.
Read Morewritten by Aeryn Santillan
2019 GLFCAM Kelly Livingston and Ron Samuels Fellow, Cycle 11
When I was growing up, my mom never liked cooking, so in time, neither did I. My grandma —She cooked. She often cooked for us as we sat in her kitchen, her small TV playing Univision or Telemundo. I watched her quickly make a meal, and never thought I’d have the skills to handle a knife the way she does. If not for her, I don’t know how many more cut-up hot dogs or McDonald’s I would’ve ended up eating.
Read Morewritten by Grey Grant
2019 GLFCAM Lucy and Jacob Frank Fellow, Cycle 10
In North Carolina, where I once was born, I was surrounded by the foreboding culture of “the south,” full of its own folklore (which is really just mythology, as it is sacred), which is quite fantastic in and of itself. That said, queering southern mythologies is a particular method of occupying a space with the reputation known to be hostile to queer persons. Is an act of revolution. This is a task I have seen many queer Appalachian southerners take ownership of, and one I would like to join in kind.
Read Morewritten by Dawn M. Norfleet
2019 GLFCAM Chou Wen-chung Fellow, Cycle 10
I used to jokingly blame my lateness on my time of birth: I was born at 11:59PM, and I've been doing everything at the last minute ever since.
Read Morewritten by Doug Hertz
2019 GLFCAM Matt Marks Fellow, Cycle 10
Had I been familiar with the risk-embracing mentality that Gabriela nurtures at the Academy, perhaps I wouldn’t have been so shaken when she informed me that I would in fact be writing an Art Song. At the time, however, it felt like being sent on a fool’s errand.
Read Morewritten by Nicky Sohn
2019 GLFCAM Gerald Fischer Fellow, Cycle 10
Contrasting my inner turmoil to personal shortcomings, the Academy/Boonville was the most peaceful place I had ever been... Almost unbelievably, with the support of Gabriela, I even held one of her chickens in my arms. Its grotesque avian features were just a few inches from my face, but I trusted Gabriela and truly believed her when she reassured me that it would be ok.
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