Kyle Rowan

It’s been a while since I’ve posted here, but I’ve been up to a fair bit.

In August, I became the interim music director at Santee United Methodist Church, and I’ve been working hard getting the choir ready for our December 20 Christmas concert.

In September, I performed at the San Diego Toy Piano Festival at the downtown library with Figmentum. Our program included Daria Binkowski’s Fight or Flyte, Niloufar Iravani’s Infinite, and my own Wanderings (B).

In October, I traveled to Eastern Illinois University to the SCI Region V conference, where I performed my piece Reconnections. This was a great time catching up with old and recent friends alike, especially those I met at Western Illinois last spring. Hearing Ashlee Mack performed James Romig’s Pulitzer finalist piece Still was an incredible experience – I think more conferences should find space for longer works.

In November, Figmentum performed two concerts. On the 6th, we traveled down to Southwestern College, where bandmate Ania Sundstrom teaches now. We played a program of our greatest hits, including my own Windhammer. Then, only one week later, we played another concert at Mission Hills UCC in collaboration with Matt Kline on bass and Pablo Gomez Cano on guitar, with music by Missy Mazzoli, Sarah K Snider, Eliza Brown, Kenneth Gaburo, Alex Temple, and the premiere of my own A Brief Illumination.

In the Spring, some things have already been added to the calendar! I’ll be at the Music By Women Festival at MUW in Columbus, MS from March 5-7, performing a total of nine pieces. Then, at the end of March I will be heading to UT Arilington for the Society of Composers National Conference to hear a performance of Komorebi and mingle with a lot of other composers and hear their music. Finally, in June Frigmentum will be roadtripping it up to Reno for ClarinetFest 2020!

For the first time in my Spotlight series, I have the opportunity to focus on a piece written for me.

I’ve been friends with Ania Sundstrom for a few years now, and performing with her in Figmentum for the last two. When developing a program for the Music By Women Festival at the Mississippi University for Women last year, I wanted a new piece to pair with Liza Lim’s Sonorous Body. Ania came through with her excellent ONI, which I premiered at the festival and performed again on Figmentum’s June 14 concert in San Diego.

Continue reading “Spotlight – ONI by Ania Sundstrom”

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted, but how better to return than with a new Spotlight post?

Composed in 2008 for clarinetist Richard Haynes, Liza Lim’s Sonorous Body is a wonderful exploration of the instrument’s microtonal possibilities. I had the opportunity to perform this piece on Figmentum’s “Rock, Paper, Toy Pianos” concert on February 15, and again on March 7 at the Music By Women Festival at the Mississippi University of Women.

In a lot of ways, this piece is quite approachable – the range is conservative by contemporary standards, with few notes above E6 (and those that are higher are the result of easily produced multiphonics); there are few virtuosic passages that are exceedingly fast or rapidly shifting register; and the whole work is extraordinarily idiomatic (a testament to her work with Haynes). However, because of the wide variety of techniques used throughout the piece, Sonorous Body is perhaps best suited for a player already familiar with contemporary clarinet techniques. This is an excellent piece for anyone seeking to become more familiar with the clarinet’s quarter tone scale, as every quarter tone between A3 and E6 is utilized.

Here’s Richard Haynes’ performance from late last year:

On November 30 at Bread and Salt in San Diego, I’ll be performing a concert as part of Figmentum. Titled “Shapes and Sounds”, we’ll be presenting several open and graphic scores as well as premiering a new piece by Daniel Meyer-O’Keeffe. You can check out the full details at the Facebook event here, or at the Eventbrite listing here.

The program will kick off with my piece Wanderings (B), a score for any number of performers (though it seems like it would work best with small chamber set ups – we’ll be performing it on three toy pianos surrounding the audience).

Continue reading “Figmentum No. 3: Shapes and Sounds”

I am honored to have been selected to perform at the 2019 Music By Women Festival, hosted by the Mississippi University for Women from March 7-9 of next year. Founded by Dr. Julia Mortyakova, this is the festival’s third year presenting music composed by women composers past and present.

I’ll be performing a solo clarinet set including Sonorous Body by Liza Lim and a new piece that Ania Sundstrom is writing for me.

Figmentum has also been selected, and we’ll be playing new pieces by Niloufar Iravani and Kari Besharse, as well as Ania’s Another to Echo, part of our repertoire last season.

I’ll post more information her about specific dates and times as they are available. In the meantime, I think I’ll start doing some spotlight posts on clarinet solo pieces by women. This was a blind spot of mine in my training, and I’ve been determined to correct it, and hopefully this will be a resource for other clarinetists and teachers to diversify their own repertoire.

Today, Okami HD releases on the Nintendo Switch, and I am extremely excited. The original is one of my favorite games, and it quite simply has had a more direct effect on my work as a composer than almost anything else outside of music.

You play as the Japanese sun goddess Amaterasu, awakened on Earth in the form of a white wolf. You are accompanied by the tiny traveling artist Issun, and the two of you travel Japan solving problems and defeating demons and monsters pulled straight from Japanese mythology and storytelling. Kaguya-Hime and the bamboo cutter are here, as are Urashima Taro and the clan of sparrow from the Tongue-Cut Sparrow. These tales and many more are woven organically into the game world and told colorfully and with great humor – the best example is perhaps the transformation of the god of storms Susano into a lazy descendent of a great warrior who gradually learns his true potential. Continue reading “Okami”

Like many of you, I have been alternately in a state of anger or hopelessness regarding the Trump administration’s zero tolerance policy at the southern border, resulting in thousands of children separated from their parents, and have been wondering what, if anything, I can do to help.

Then I saw a post by composer Jen Wang regarding her beautiful plan: for a $100 donation to RAICES, an organization dedicated to providing legal help to immigrants and refugees, she would write a 1-minute piece for the solo instrument of your choice. Since that initial post, she has raised over $5000 for RAICES and 10 other composers have joined her in the project, including myself.

If you would like to participate as a commissioner, all you need to do is:

1. Donate to the RAICES bond fund
2. Send me, Jen, or any of the other composers an email with a screen shot of the receipt
3. Let the composer of your choice know the instrument of your choice

It’s that easy! If you can’t donate the full amount, you can donate a smaller amount and join an existing commission. Or you can simply donate and not commission at all! Even if you are not in a position to donate, you can help by sharing the initiative with your own network.

Even after the separation policy was ended, there are still families that need to be reunited, and there is a threat that this could just result in families – together with their children – being detained indefinitely. Whatever you do, please find a way that you can help.