The composers rehearse or prepare for rehearsal with the Parker Quartet, and the pieces start to come to life.
The composers rehearse or prepare for rehearsal with the Parker Quartet, and the pieces start to come to life.
Visit missioncommissionpodcast.com for a full listing of pieces, performers, and recordings included in this episode.
Intro:
This is Mission: Commission [intro]
Melissa Smey:
This is Mission: Commission, a podcast where we demystify the process of how classical music gets made. I'm your host, Melissa Smey, and I'm the Artistic Director of Miller Theatre at Columbia University in New York City. For this podcast, I commissioned three composers to write new works of classical music and to do it in six weeks. This season, our composers are writing for the Parker Quartet.
We'll start with Kate Soper, [Kate in rehearsal] whose audio diaries this week, all come from her first meeting and rehearsal with the Parker Quartet in person at Harvard University, where the quartet is based. [Parker Quartet warms up]
Hi, Kate.
Kate Soper:
Hi, Melissa.
Melissa Smey:
So judging by the amazing audio diaries you sent us this week, you have had a busy week, and so you got to meet the Parker Quartet - the members of the Parker Quartet - in person and work with them. How was that?
Kate Soper:
So, yeah, that was nice. It's been a while since I've worked with musicians that I didn't know personally, I guess. And I haven't really had that many live music experiences as a composer in the last couple of years. So yeah, it was a little - you know, we were in the Harvard kind of practice room areas where their studio is, and I used to kind of sneak into the practice rooms or spend some time there when I was at Radcliffe and after that. So it was, I think, kind of all of these experiences of like going somewhere that you haven't been to since before the pandemic. So there's a little bit of a weird feeling, and we kind of commiserated about that. But yeah, it was great. I mean, they sounded incredible with everything, so great! I think they maybe read it through that morning, but also they're such pros, so then it was sort of, I had to kind of remember like, okay, this sounds really good, but I'm sure I could change something to make it better as a composer. And they had good questions, good suggestions. You know, you always learn some new technical thing and some new expressive thing. I'm looking forward to hopefully having one more chance to rehearse with them and then to the recording session.
Kate Soper:
So, can we hear the - just the opening chord progression? [Parker Quartet plays] And just a couple of times. That's fine. [Quartet continues playing]
Melissa Smey:
The reaction they had when listening to the first diary, which you titled "Chords," and it's the quartet playing the chords that you had introduced for us in one of your earliest audio diaries from the piano was like, hooray, I recognize this! Does it feel that way for you too? Or because you know it and you created it, does it not feel that way?
Kate Soper:
No, no, it definitely feels that way. Yeah, yeah.
Kate Soper:
[Quartet continues] Yeah, yeah, yeah - great. Thank you.
Melissa Smey:
I wonder if you could unpack something for us for a little bit, and one of them titled "Growl vs. Swish," and you ask them to have the growl be quieter than the harmonic.
Parker Quartet:
So first with the growls?
Kate Soper:
Yeah, okay. So this is letter B with the growls. And keep the growls quieter than the harmonic, so just flip the high dynamics.
[Quartet plays]
Great, and now with the airy, swishy, toneless stuff. [Quartet plays]
Melissa Smey:
We talked about a couple of things - have talked about a couple of things in your piece. You know, we talked about open string, we've talked about harmonics. Could you just say a little bit about those? Because listeners are coming from such a wide range of backgrounds, and for people who might not know what is an open string, what is a harmonic.
Kate Soper:
Basically, with contemporary instrumental writing, you have options about how the pitch is going to sound, and options about what are the other available sounds. Open strings and harmonics - those are two very different kinds of sounds. An open string means that if you can picture like a string instrument, usually someone's left hand is like doing something on basically the fret, and then the right hand has the bow. If you don't hold down any notes to change the pitch, you just sort of play the open string, it's a very rich and resonant sound. It also doesn't have vibrato because vibrato is created by like wiggling your finger on the string—I'm not a string player, but you know.
Also, as a composer, you can make choices about how much these kinds of things matter, so open strings occur in all different kinds of contexts. It's an easy way to get around the instrument. So it's not as if every time an open string occurs, it's this like special thing. But for me writing this quartet, I wanted to make use of the specialness. So in that chord progression, there's an open string between each instrument that is being held across. And I think when I heard it, I hadn't actually thought about it at all, but I was immediately like, oh, we need to swell the open strings and have a little bit of lift for everyone else. Like, it just was clear that there was like a little bit more chiseling I needed to do just to kind of like emphasize that because for me, I was always focusing on those open strings. So, that's one kind of special string pitch sound.
Harmonics is another one. This is a little more complicated to describe, but it's not that complicated, but when you have a string, it's vibrating at its whole length - that's the open string. And then if you - you can do a technique by lightly pressing your finger on the string, which will basically break the soundwave apart into component frequencies that are actually present in the full rich string sound but are not detectable as individual sounds to our ears. Harmonics tend to have a flutey, kind of light, ethereal sound. So for me, the open strings have this connotation and the piece as being part of this sense of grounding and sense of returning to something, and the harmonics, I'm essentially using as the answers to the questions in the story of the piece. So every time …you know, whatever… my character and her string quartet ask a question, the response comes back in harmonics, which was an interesting challenge. It limited the pitch material limited the range, but it was important to me for the timbre.
So, then the second kind of category of sounds, non-pitched sounds. That is what I was sort of talking about in this audio diary. So I had this idea that the sound of like, you know, turning the machine on or whatever - just this kind of like static bass sound was going to be some kind of noisy thing. And we would hear within that these like harmonics kind of filtering in as the machine starts to work or whatever.
But you can make all kinds of noises with instruments. And again, just like with the open strings, noises are constantly occurring, even when you play a Mozart string quartet, there's still the noise of the hair on the bow, or the click of the, you know, or whatever. There's noises going on that we just don't listen to, but we can also - and, you know, 20th/21st-century composers like to do this - we can focus on the noises themselves, and they can be part of the musical content even. So the first idea I had for them to do was this kind of growl sound, which is where you, if you imagine, like somebody bowing an instrument.
[Quartet demonstrates growling]
If they kind of dig down a little bit too much, you can get - it's almost sort of like the equivalent of a vocal fry, like: [vocalizes on one pitch] ah, I can sing, [speaking with vocal fry] uh, but I can also do this. [speaking normally] So it's that kind of sound like it's actually pretty easy to control. It can be quiet.
[Quartet continues]
It's kind of a block, a concrete block of sound. And it was a little too dense and a little too foregrounded. So the second thing I asked was, can you do like a… I don't know what I said exactly, but you know, of course they know all the tricks. So just like, can you do like this kind of a swishy circle, bow thing?"
[Quartet demonstrates swishy bowing]
So normally, you bow the strings in a perpendicular manner, but you can also kind of swish the bow around while sort of lightly damping the strings so that pitches don't come across. And that was a more airy, whispery, kind of textured, but much lighter sound. So it allowed the harmonics to kind of like whistle through in a way that just worked a lot better.
[Quartet continues]
We tried that a couple times and then it was like, yes, that's the thing. So everywhere in the score where it says noise, just do that swishy thing. Yeah, it was just sort of a matter of trying to figure out the balance, like, you know - you want the sense of something coming through the noise, so then the noise has to be present, but it can't be too present. And that was just sort of something that we talked about. So that was a lot, but, you know.
Melissa Smey:
No, it's really perfect. It helps to give insight into how that works. And then I think that once we're able to hear the piece, it will make it that much richer because we'll kind of have a little understanding of how are those sounds being made and what were the choices that you made as a composer that resulted in that aspect of the piece.
Kate Soper:
[Quartet plays through chord progression] Yeah, yeah - great. Thank you.
Melissa Smey:
Does the fact that you're working as a performing musician and the composer of this piece - how does that inform the rehearsal process? Like, so starting with this first rehearsal and then kind of going on as we, you know, - you have a further rehearsal, we're going to record the piece. What is that like? How is that same or different if you’re not a performing member of the piece that you're in?
Kate Soper:
Yeah, I mean, that's where it gets a little bit tricky that the timeline is so short, just because there isn't a lot of time for me to move between those roles. So I think if this were a little more normal or if I had more access to the quartet if we were in the same city, I might have just listened last time and not bothered to sing. And then, but then I thought I probably ought to, and I think like a couple days before the rehearsal, it sort of occurred to me like, "Oh, I should probably like look at my music and practice it." And it's like - I thought, I mean, it's not that hard, but it's not that easy. So we basically went through the piece and kind of like chunk by chunk. And then, I think we went through it chunk by chunk together with me, and then we recorded a run through.
Kate Soper:
[excerpt of Quartet rehearsing with Kate] Here's the problem. We never know what's coming, so when it comes, we're unprepared. In order to meet the challenges of existence, we need to have some sense of what those challenges are going to be. Otherwise, we re- remain in a state of dread and bewilderment. The best solution would to be - would be to be in contact with the future. [out of character] Sorry, can we start over? I have like made 8 flubs already. Okay.
Kate Soper:
There wasn't a lot of time for me to enjoy the experience of like rehearsing with them as the soprano. I think I was trying to focus more on the composer, but then I needed the soprano to sing, so I could kind of like listen back to it, but it felt very comfortable. I mean, I think I'll - I'm making a few revisions based on Wednesday, and then I'll get them the new score. And next time we meet, I probably will flip the proportions, so I'll maybe talk about a couple of things I want to hear as a composer, and then I think I will - I would want to just rehearse with them.
Kate Soper:
[Kate and Quartet rehearsing] Our questions were going through. And something was coming back! On the other end of the line, from an unimaginable future, responses were being sent into the past, into our present. The answers to our questions, flickering into existence!
Melissa Smey:
Now that the first rehearsal with Parker is done, what's going to happen for you in the coming week? What's next with the piece and with the process looking ahead to next week?
Kate Soper:
I'll make these changes in the score that based on rehearsal and a couple other— I'm not going to do much, like I said last week, I think, because there's not time - and actually, I think it's okay. I mean, if we had a year, I would - this would become an hour long opera, but we don't, so this is a good 10-11 minute thing.
Melissa Smey:
For now, for now. Who can say?
Kate Soper:
Yeah. Yeah. [both laughing] That's true! Keep your season open. No, I'm just kidding.
Kate Soper:
So, I'm going to finish that. I'm going to try to get that done quickly. We're going to look for some time to rehearse just those one or two hours the weekend before the recording session, which hopefully we’ll mostly just check everything out, and then I'd love to just get comfortable with the vocal part. There won't be time to rehearse on the recording day. So yeah, that's the plan.
Melissa Smey:
Okay, good. Well, I'm excited to see what next week brings.
Kate Soper:
Mm-hmm, yeah, me too.
[more rehearsal audio - Kate vocalise with Quartet]
Melissa Smey:
And on to our next composer, Vijay Iyer.
Vijay Iyer:
I'm without a piano.
Melissa Smey:
On our very first episode, Vijay said he was getting a new piano - Chick Corea's piano. Well, this week, they took his old piano away; the piano he's had for 23 years; the piano he became a pianist on. But his next piano isn't going to be delivered just yet.
Vijay Iyer:
So they had to postpone it a week, so I'm without a piano for like the next 10 days. I mean, it affects my work, but it's mainly that I found myself sort of unraveling yesterday [laughs]. I mean, I haven't been without this instrument for 23 years, so... I mean, except when I'm traveling of course, but to just know that I won't have it around anymore - the Steinway S that, as I've said before, I became a pianist on that piano - and so, to not have it is a little unmooring for me.
Melissa Smey:
Yeah.
Vijay Iyer:
And then also knowing that the next 10 days will be a lot of provisional situations, although certainly very hospitable ones. The nice folks at Steinway Hall also said I could come over there and so on. I'll have to be much more deliberate. You know, like when you live with an instrument? Peter Evans and the bowl of M&Ms - did I tell you about this?
Melissa Smey:
No, but I want to hear about it.
Vijay Iyer:
[laughs] Well, someone asked him in some interview about practicing. You know, like, what he practices, when he practices, how much, etcetera. And he said, you know, I just leave the trumpet out all the time. So I'm kind of always in it, but I'm also not really too deliberate about it. You know, like, he said it's just like having a bowl of M&Ms in the house, and every time you walk by, you reach in, and you grab some. So the trumpet was like that for him - like it's just always out. So that's how the piano has been, like having a piano in the house is like that.
[Vijay playing piano]
And certainly that's how I became a pianist was, in my kind of idle moments, or just sort of in between things, or on my way somewhere, you know, I’d just find myself at the piano just kind of rummaging or just discovering things without really any agenda, you know.
[piano continues]
But now that it's more constrained in that I have this week and change of time when I have to say, "Okay, this is now going to be my time on the piano." It can both create like more discipline around it, and also a little bit of... you lose something, you lose that sort of serendipity, you know, that chance for that.
Melissa Smey:
Thinking about transitions and thinking about loss and thinking about how much you have been grappling with over the last six months, you know, earlier in the podcast, we talked about the fact that you lost your father over the summer. And something that, for me, when I lost my mom, I found that that loss hit me in weird moments. Like there were milestones along the way that I could not possibly have anticipated where the loss would hit me again. And so I'm curious for you knowing that you'd had this piano for 23 years, it was such a part of your life. Are there connections there for you? Are you mourning the loss of more than just the piano? And if that's too personal, we don't have to talk about it.
Vijay Iyer:
There's some truth to that. And as I've been saying, I mean, this piece is largely dedicated to Greg Tate and it's kind of been written with him in the background. And then I was also just kind of reminding myself in the last couple days before the piano left that the working title for the piece is a quote from him. It's— one of the last things he texted me back in April was, "Always leave room for the ghosts." So that's why this piece is, at least for the moment, called "Room for Ghosts." And so it was about like basically allowing the unforeseen to become part of the form, you know, become part of the plan. [laughs] To plan that something - not even plan, but accept and understand that the most important things are not going to be planned; the most important moments.
And so that then made me reconsider the piece in that way, and particularly my role in it, I suppose. Like how do I want to function in this piece as someone who is used to operating that way as a musician? As a player, you know, as a music maker - it's about that. So the tiny clip, I think I uploaded the other day are some of my last moments on that piano.
[Vijay plays piano]
Vijay Iyer:
Well, that was me exploring not what's written in the piece per se, but the ingredients of it and kind of reworking it as a player in the way that I do. Which in the way that all of us do in that way of making music, which is that you build form from these elemental ingredients.
[piano continues]
And that's what playing is. It's not just executing or delivering - it's actually building.
[piano continues]
Melissa Smey:
In December, we had our first live concert at Miller in - I don't even know how long - in a very long time. And in the rehearsals for that concert, and then in the concert what I was most struck by, because it featured piano, is how loud the instrument was. And I had never sat in the seats at Miller and heard our piano sound so loud to my ears. And it wasn't objectively that loud, but it just that I hadn't heard a piano in a room, in that room in so long, and hearing the actual sound of that instrument was a revelation.
Vijay Iyer:
Yeah. And you’ve mentioned something pretty pivotal about the piano, which is that you're also playing the room. It produces sound in every direction. And then it's about how it bounces off all the surfaces around it. It's almost like it probes the entire space and reflects what it is, you know? So it's a way of understanding the space you're in, you know? Basically my earliest memory of the piano was this kind of like clangorous just banging on it. And part of it was like, I remember how it felt vibrating back at us, you know? The physicality of it, the physicality of its activation; the acoustic vibratory activation like that. And the way that that then is transmitted to you and through you, you know, so that you also become a kind of resonating chamber, yourself. All of that, like you can't really simulate that.
Melissa Smey:
Well, so let's talk a little bit about the piece and about the quartet who will be working with you and playing the piece with you. We're almost to the end of our six weeks together, which is pretty unbelievable. How's it going? How's it going with them? What's going to happen between now and the next time we talk?
Vijay Iyer:
I haven't been in direct touch with them yet, but you know, I've kind of taken it for granted a bit because I know them well, and I've worked with them quite a bit. We're pals. So I mean, I guess in the coming days, that's the time when I'll be touching base with them. Maybe I'll send them a draft, but I don't want to get too ahead of myself on that. I mean, I will say that the piece requires a bit of work to play, you know? Like it doesn't exactly play itself, so that'll include quite a bit of work on their end and on mine. So yeah, that’s stuff before we come together - I probably just need to coordinate some rehearsal time with them [laughs] and that's the main thing.
Melissa Smey:
And so to unpack that a little bit, will you have a printed score and then they will get that? And then they kind of go away and learn their parts individually and then together? And then is it that then the five of you come together and you're just - you're kind of reading through and working through making what's there happen to kind of match what you hope and imagine the piece will be? Is there, you know, collective work together? Unpack that for us.
Vijay Iyer:
Yeah, I guess I hadn't thought to spell any of that out, but all of that - yeah - all of that is true. [laughs] Yes, like that's what happens. And you know, I guess I've been thinking like, okay, they can work on this passage together, then we can expand on it from there. So it's a lot of that. There are some moments where like I play unison with Kee [the cellist], for example, and kind of fast, I guess, unless I delete those bars. [laughs] No, but I wanted to do that. I wanted to have a moment like that.
But, so yeah, there'll be little moments here and there where I need to be on top of my thing. You know, like I have to be ready to try to synchronize with them, but the way rhythm works in the forms of music that I've been a part of, the traditions that I've been a part of as a pianist, is a little different often from how it works for a string quartet or for people in the Western Classical practice. It tends to be a more fluid thing. So, you know, there's going to be just a bit of negotiation. And when I say negotiation, I don't mean like on the floor of Congress or something. But I mean, when we play together in a kind of body to body way, how do we sound in time together? You know? And how does pulse work? Where is it articulated? Who kind of leads it? What I've found certainly in the past working with great quartets, like Brentano, is that that's an interesting space of discovery, and it can create some challenges because we're coming from some different perspectives on that, but it's productive too.
[theme music]
Melissa Smey:
And our third composer for this episode is Oscar Bettison.
Oscar Bettison:
Another installment in my composition diary for this one, I wanted to talk about the framing of the piece. I've started to think about the kind of tone of the piece and the things, as I say, the things that sort of surround the piece. And I think that this piece, for various personal reasons that I'll go into in a second, is in some ways a kind of piece that's in memoriam somehow. In my personal life over the course of this pandemic, I have two siblings of my mother who've died. My uncle in Spain and my aunt, I just found out died just before the New Year. And you know, it wasn't entirely unexpected, but still, it marked something for me. I mean, I was quite close to them growing up, and you know, I thought of my aunt sort of as my grandmother in a sense. Those deaths mean something to me, but also, professionally, last year, my teacher for undergrad, who was a big influence on me, Simon Bainbridge died.
And a few months later, one of my teachers in Holland who was hugely influential on me - Louis Andriessen died. And I think both those deaths have sort of hit me. It's a strange thing when your teacher dies, you know, because you sort of - you feel that you are kind of somehow the adult. There's something that I feel might come into this piece. So maybe this is the piece that I want to sort of think of as a piece that's somewhat in memoriam.
Melissa Smey:
So let's talk about your audio diaries this week. I always appreciate so much what you share with us in those diaries, and this week, I was so sorry to hear about your aunt.
Oscar Bettison:
Oh, thanks. Yeah, it's been a strange thing for me actually, you know, over the past couple of years, really. At some point since the beginning of the pandemic, you know, I have had my uncle died, and then my aunt, and then two of my teachers died as well. So it's been a strange time. I think that none of those deaths were a complete surprise. But at the same time, I think, especially with my teachers, just my feeling about all of this is just that... you know, I've been thinking about tribute pieces. You know, I just didn't really know if I wanted to do that, if I thought that was the right thing to do - I don't even know, but I just felt that somehow in this piece, there was something of that; that I think there's something to this in this piece that's sort of a little bit - I think I want to sort of go there.
Melissa Smey:
Mm-hmm. And what would make you feel like that was the right choice?
Oscar Bettison:
I think it's actually - it comes from the music. It actually comes from the material. I just think this piece has some kind of quality of that. But, you know, so this is the first piece really where I've actually sort of - it's sort of seeped in a bit, and then it seemed like it was okay to let it in. Yeah, it feels right, I think, but for me, it has to come from the music. I don't ever want to like sort of shoehorn things, you know? That's not really - but it just feels like this is the kind of- yeah, it's the right quality of music.
Melissa Smey:
Mm-hmm. Well, that's certainly the way that you've talked about - in our previous conversations - the way that you've talked about the music that it's as if the music guides you, even though the music is coming from you.
Oscar Bettison:
Absolutely. Yeah, it's just a very satisfying way to work for me to just sort of follow it. It means that there are a lot of false starts. I mean, you know, I had to think. I actually asked the quartet the other day - I had a lot of thoughts about the piece. I sort of backtracked actually somewhat on the piece. But anyway, I'm okay now, but you know... [laughs]
Melissa Smey:
When you say backtrack, do you mean questioning the choices that you've made? Questioning the direction? That you want to do something different?
Oscar Bettison:
Well, yeah, I mean, I tried some things out and actually, I kind of liked what I tried out with the quartet, but I had this original - I had this idea a while ago that I was working on, and then I sort of went in a different direction. And I've kind of found a way to sort of put those things sort of that they can live together. I think the piece has become sort of richer as a result, but that's the way that I work anyway. I mean, there's always like false starts and you know, I go too far in one direction. I'm like, no, I've got to pull it back, and it's got to go somewhere else. So yeah, like you say, have the music guide you. You know, as I say, in the moment, it's really quite frustrating, but in the end, it's kind of nice because you sort of end up somewhere where - I mean, sometimes, you didn't know that you were going to go there at all.
Melissa Smey:
So, you talked to the Parker Quartet this week, which is, to me, seems exciting, but you tell me how was it?
Oscar Bettison:
No, it was great. They're lovely. And we just tried some things out, and everything sort of went the way I thought it was going to go, so that's good.
Oscar Bettison:
Another installment of my compositional diary. This one comes right after I just got off a call with the Parker Quartet. We did a Zoom session, trying some things out in the piece, which was very useful for me. The first thing that I really wanted to try out was this idea with the phones - recording things with the phones and then playing on top of them, and that worked exactly how I thought it was going to work. So I'm very happy with that. It gives a really nice effect. I think it's going to - it just gives another layer to the piece that I think is just something that I've been looking for as part of my original idea. I was happy with that. We tried out a couple of other things which went well as well and just tried out the first section of the piece.
[Quartet rehearsal recording]
I got a sense of what I wanted, and I wanted to try out this very simple preparation that we tried out with all the quartets.
Oscar Bettison:
So, in the UK, this stuff is called Blu Tack.
Melissa Smey:
Oh yeah, we have that.
Oscar Bettison:
Right. Right. So about 30% - in my kind of informal study of Americans, about 30% of Americans instantly know what you're talking about when you say Blu Tack. And then there's another group of people that, if you start saying it a little bit more, you know - maybe you say it twice, and they go, "Yeah, I know what that is," or something, you sort of start describing it. And there's another like group of Americans who don't know anything until you go "the stuff that you would stick up posters in a dorm room with," and then they go, "Oh yeah. But that's called -," and then there's some other name for it.
Melissa Smey:
Oh, well, I don't have the other name.
Oscar Bettison:
I have no idea. It has no... Anyway -
Melissa Smey:
So what are they doing with it? They're - no, they're not hanging posters probably, and probably not hanging your music on the wall.
Oscar Bettison:
[laughing] I got totally distracted with this. Yes, Blu Tack. So the stuff that you stick up posters with. What you do is you just take a little blob and put it on the string, sort of close-ish to the bridge. It can't be too close to the bridge, but actually kind of where you would bow, if you're bowing fairly loudly. So you have to actually move the bow a little bit closer to the fingerboard. And what it does is it creates a really distorted sound.
[Quartet experimenting with Blu Tack in rehearsal]
Oscar Bettison:
That's beautiful.
Parker Quartet:
Oh, that's much better. [clapping]
Oscar Bettison:
That's the one!
Oscar Bettison:
It can create - actually, it can kind of get you two or more pitches as well. It gets really fuzzy, distorted - it's a really, um, it, and - it kind of makes the instrument sort of sound a bit kind of… folky as well. You know, it sort of sounds like a very - it can make some sense kind of, I suppose, primitive, in a way, you know. It doesn't - you know, these instruments are so sophisticated, and it kind of just goes in a completely different direction. So anyway, what I like about the preparation is it's super simple, and you can take it on and off and all you need to - it's really about placement and the amount of Blu Tack. The thicker the string, the more Blu Tack you need to actually do something, but that's it. And so, I love the lo-fi - you know, it's like value for money. That's a real value for money preparation, you know? It's that you get a lot for very little. So, the quartet had the Blu Tack, we tried things out.
[Quartet plays with Blu Tack on strings]
Oscar Bettison:
So my plan was to use it for everyone on the lower string, but actually I think I'm not going to do that. And I'm going to just leave it for one player at a very specific moment in the piece. So that gave me some real direction, actually, so that sort of changed my plans a bit, too. It's just great because so often preparations can take some time and some effort and, as to say, it's just like, it's value for money, this one.
Melissa Smey:
Good. So we have a week left in our six week process. What's next for you?
Oscar Bettison:
I have to figure out - yeah - another bit of this notation, is this other thing. I have to figure out how to do that. I would say now everything is kind of - [laughs] I'll say everything's in place. There’s a – see, I say that; that's like famous last words, you know?
Melissa Smey:
That's tempting the universe, my friend. [laughs]
Oscar Bettison:
Yeah, I'm not going to say that. Things are more in place than they were. How about that?
Melissa Smey:
I like that. That's good.
Oscar Bettison:
Let's do that for getting there.
Melissa Smey:
[laughs] Excellent. Well, Oscar, thank you so much. It is always a real, genuine delight to chat with you. It's a masterclass in composition - really. And so thank you.
Oscar Bettison:
I'm very happy to - I love these chats. It's really fun.
Melissa Smey:
Yay! [theme music]
That's it for this episode. Thanks for listening. Next week is our final episode of this season.
Mission: Commission is a production of Miller Theatre at Columbia University. Major support for Mission: Commission is provided by the Francis Goelet Charitable Lead Trusts. Support for Miller Theatre is provided by the New York State Council on the Arts and the Howard Gilman Foundation. Additional support is provided by the National Endowment for the Arts. Support for contemporary music at Miller Theatre is provided by the Aaron Copland Fund for Music and the Amphion Foundation.
This episode was produced by Golda Arthur and me, with Adrienne Stortz, Lauren Cognetti, and Taylor Riccio. Erick Gomez is our sound designer and engineer.
This episode featured audio excerpts of pieces written by Oscar Bettison, Vijay Iyer, and Kate Soper.
Visit missioncommissionpodcast.com for a full listing of pieces, performers, and recordings included in this and every episode.
If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and even better, leave a review on apple podcasts. It really helps the show. Thanks for listening. See you next week.