This conversation featuring composer/performers Mike Duffy, Colin Holter, Josh Musikantow, Schuyler Tsuda, and Jeremy Wagner and conductor Bob Whalen illuminates the preparations the CMW has undertaken toward a performance of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s cosmic epic Ylem.
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It Plays You
by Colin Holter
John Cummins (alto saxes) and Scottie Wright (tenor saxes)
Two ideas informed the speculation that led to It Plays You: first, the somewhat mystical tradition of post-bop virtuosity in which the instrument may be said to be playing the performer rather than vice versa; second, the media furore that holds popular entertainment such as music, cinema, and video games responsible for the criminal behavior of children. The confluence of these ideas lies in the uncertain freedom of ostensibly free play.
About Colin: Colin is a composer and writer on music based in Minneapolis.
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Brett Wartchow interviews Colin Holter.
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On tasteless music:
There’s a little bit of a thrill about writing music that’s a little bit tasteless but that looks like contemporary music. One of the things that it’s taken me a while to do is write tasteless music. I’m really kind of invested in that now. If there’s one thing I would say for my music in the past three years, I would hope that I’m more willing to violate taboos now than I was before. I’m certainly more willing to be gaudy and tacky, as a composer, than I used to be, and in fact I think it’s really important for me to do that. Because, again, in order to identify these contradictions in culture you have to be willing to use the words. You have to be willing to cite the material that you’re identifying contradictions in, and that requires sometimes being tacky. >>>>