Reflections

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From Troy Public Radio. In the College of Arts and
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Humanities at Troy University. I'm Scott Sexton, and I'm Diane
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Orlofsky, and you are listening to Inquire: Conversations
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About Choral Music, the Arts, and Life. In this podcast,
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we want to tell you the stories behind the songs. We want to
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go directly to composers and thinkers and supporters
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of the arts to learn how they explore sound and
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universal texts and shared human experiences.
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Scott, I want you to go back in time with me when we were sort
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of developing this concept of Inquire.
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We talked then about how much we love,
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both of us, new music, music that perhaps
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is undiscovered, new composers,
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composers at the very beginning of their career.
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And I remember back to that first episode inauguration,
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which it sort of was an example of that. Yeah,
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that's something that we really wanted this podcast to be.
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Yeah. But today, I think we're
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going to go to ACDA,
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which is one of our main professional organizations, the American Choral Directors
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Association for choral conductors, educators, and singers.
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It was founded back in 1959, and they are
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a driving force for the choral arts in our country, and their mission
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is to inspire excellence and nurture lifelong involvement in
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choral music for everyone through education,
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performance, and composition and
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advocacy. But they offer— they award
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several prizes, and one of those prizes is the Raymond
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W. Brock Award for Student Composers.
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And it was established back in 1998 to recognize a choral composition
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of high quality. We thought it would be neat to talk to 2 composers
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who are recipients of the Brock Award separated by a little
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over a decade. Michael Mills was awarded this in 2010
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for his piece Crossing the Bar, and Patrick Vu
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was awarded the prize in 2023 for his
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piece On the Hillside. Each of these composers
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have gone on to play important roles as conductors
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and composers and music educators and advocates for
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all things choral. So first up,
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our conversation with Michael Mills.
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We are fortunate to have Michael J. Mills as part of our community
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here in Troy, where he is a member of our faculty at
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the John M. Long School of Music at Troy University. Welcome, Mike.
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Mike, this is so special for us to be able to kind of sit down
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and pause and have a conversation with you about your piece,
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Crossing the Bar. I appreciate you, you inviting me to be
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part of your show. So I'd love to hear more about your whole compositional
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process with Crossing the Bar. Can you walk us through
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how you chose the Alfred Tennyson text and how it informed
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your musical choices as you started writing the piece? Yeah,
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really, it was actually quite a long process writing
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this one. I'd say it took a couple
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of different years of work going into it. I remember
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hearing this text in a church service
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once. They used it in a sermon, and I loved the text.
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Me too. Yeah, just, it stuck with me. So I
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wrote it down somewhere. I just, I save poems different
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places to use for later use. When I'd get a chance and
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I could sit down at the piano, I would tinker. That's my
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process, is just mess around with things. And so I'd have
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the poem in front of me, and for a long time it was just this
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chord progression that I'd play over and over again and it wouldn't
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go anywhere. And eventually I was able to hammer out
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a melody that went with several different things,
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informed it along the way. And,
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you know, ironically, my setting of Crossing the Bar only includes 3
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of Tennyson's 4 stanzas.
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So, when I finished writing the 3 stanzas that I
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had of the Tennyson text, I I sat there and I, you know, I'd play
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through it and I'd look at it and just something seemed missing. And that's,
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that's when I went and found the, the 4th stanza of the Tenison Text.
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And I said, well, I, I like it. It's just in the wrong— it's in
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the wrong spot of where I felt like something was missing musically.
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And it took some time for me and I'd play
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it when I'd have a moment. And then there was, there was a time
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that I was, I was, I was at church again. At the time I was,
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I was the organist for, for the church.
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I remember I was sitting there listening to something going on,
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and all of a sudden came to my mind these verses of Scripture that I
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ended up inserting between the 2nd and 3rd stanzas
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of the tenet. You know, from 1 Corinthians about, O death,
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where is thy sting? O victory,
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thy grave? And strangely, and it's
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so funny how things work, compositionally. I told you
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that sometimes I just sit down at the piano and I mess around with it
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and I play. Yeah. Once I— once the text
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came to my mind, so did the music. I'm sitting there going,
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I've got a keyboard right next to me and I wish I could just sit
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down and play, but I can't interrupt the service that's going on. So I,
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you know, I'm sitting there going over it over and over and over again in
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my mind. I'm sitting— I feel bad, but I'm like, okay, this service And
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sooner or later, because I really need to get to a keyboard so I can
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make sure that I can, you know, hammer this out. And, you know, luckily my
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brain held on to what was there. But once
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I put it down, I realized, oh, you can't
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predict where the creative muse is going to hit you, right? Happens at the
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strangest spots. Yeah. Yeah.
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I printed out the lyrics, all of the stand—
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all of the poem. And is it the last one?
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That didn't make it where it's, I hope
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to see my pilot face to face? That is the last stanza, yes.
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Yeah. There are so many symbolisms in
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this text, and I went and kind of looked at those,
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and I'll get to them, but just keep talking
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to us about— I love that image of you at the piano playing the,
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you know, the chord progression over and over and over again. It's— there's so
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much variety in the piece, and so
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much beautiful text painting. So why don't you talk about the text painting
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of the 3 stanzas you use, and then I'm going to come in and
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we'll just talk a little bit about the symbolism in the 4th.
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So the first stanza, for me,
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you know, I think about this, the image of the text,
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sunset, evening star, I think of calm,
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And so I really wanted for really
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slow-moving melodic lines,
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stuff that was— that just developed, you know, not,
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not, not at a quick pace. As part of that,
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part of the reason with that is when I read this part of the text,
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there's, there's a peace and determination
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that the author seems to be expressing,
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that there is— maybe another word is acceptance.
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Know, Sunset Evening Star, your call for me.
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It's— there's no doubt in the author's mind.
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So there's, you know, there's no rapid heartbeat or anything
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of that nature. And so everything to me needed to be— needed
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to be slow rhythmically. And you can hear that in the way that
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the harmony moves in, in the vocal parts, right?
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The way that the melody floats throughout it.
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I was in my undergrad when I was, when I was writing this, and one
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of the pieces that we sang in our choir was Ronald Staley's setting of Peace
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Like a River. And one of the,
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the devices that he used was— inspired
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the devices that I used in the second stanza, where it has
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this wave-type feel. The oscillating
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motion between the sopranos and some of the other parts
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where, you know, twilight, twilight, evening, evening,
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and it creates this wave-type
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motion that you can hear. And he did that in
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his arrangement. I said, I wonder if I could incorporate
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that kind of style in this to symbolize the
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water. And I I felt like I really needed to put
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it as that transition from the first to
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the second, to the second stanza that I used. And you can
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really hear all of a sudden we're pushing out to sea because of the waves.
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And that was definitely intentional right there. Yeah. And there's a lot of imagery throughout
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this about going— a homegoing, you know, and wanting
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for there to be a quiet crossing,
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you know, so isn't a lot of sound in foam, it talks about,
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right? And then, you know, the journey of time,
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and then just for the audience, the bar is that whole
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idea of the sandbar sort of symbolizing the boundary
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between life and death, you know? And then my favorite
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image, I think, of the poem is the use
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of the word pilot to— I hope to see
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my pilot face to face when I have crossed the
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bar. And to me, that was that's just such a wonderful,
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you know, beautiful image, and you've talked about how you've musically captured
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this particular text. I think this might be a good time for us to
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just stop for a minute, and let's listen
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to Michael Mills's adaptation of Crossing the Bar.
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Sweet sound,
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sweet sound,
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as my dear
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voice was true.
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Hail, hail,
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hail, glory,
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glory,
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hallelujah.
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And on earth, peace divine.
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And in thee do I trust,
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my heart I hide, and in thee will I rest,
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till I rise again
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in heaven above.
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Christ, Christ,
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our God. All hail Christ,
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head of thy busy
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arms.
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Jesus, Lord, make heaven
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before.
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I hope to
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see my God.
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You've been listening to Crossing the Bar by Michael J.
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Mills. So, Mike, I'm literally across the hall from you.
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I hear all this wonderful stuff that you're doing with concert chorales
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and collegiate singers. You know, they're fortunate that they get to
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sing some of your arrangements and some of your compositions.
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So what's, what's next? What's on the horizon for you in way of your
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compositional projects?
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That's, that's tough. That's a heavy sigh right there,
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Mike. It's, it's a struggle
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when you are educator,
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and composer, conductor, when you wear so many hats, right?
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That is— that has really been the story of my career. I wrote
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this first piece, Crossing the Bar, as I finished up undergrad, and then I started
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teaching full-time and my full
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brainpower went to developing the programs where I was at.
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And I bounced between some programs and, you know,
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I'm a father, a husband. I— there's so many different hats that
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I wear. So in terms of composition, I always try to be
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working on stuff, but it's— I'm definitely not churning things out
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at a Patrick Vu pace or— so I love
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to do arrangements. I look at the choirs that I'm conducting,
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and as I start thinking or working towards concert programs,
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I go, well, what exists there? So, you know,
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like right now, one of the themes that I'm thinking about
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whether it's this year or coming up, would, would focus
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on dance. And so I've been, I've been looking up different texts that would,
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that talk about dance and especially the, the way
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that music and dance are inseparable
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and cultures are literally inseparable. They're the
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same. They mean the same thing as far as the words that they use to
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talk about it. And so trying to find texts that would go
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along with that. And I've found a couple that I want to work on.
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And, you know, the other thing I think about when it comes to dance is
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I can't help but think about Whitney Houston and I Want to Dance with Somebody.
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I think it'd be really fun to sort of get that going. I love
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the connections that you make. And, you know, I think at the heart of all
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of us, all 3 of us, you know, we are music educators first,
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right? And so we do wear all of the different hats,
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but we look at the students in front of us or the singers in front
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of us. And we, you know, I don't know about you, we always ask ourselves,
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what do they need from me, you know, now? And so I love how you've
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just described that you were and you are open to
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kind of just going with the creative muse. I will— I'm curious,
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when you found out that Crossing the Bar was a
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recipient of the Brock Award, what was your reaction?
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I was just totally shocked when I applied for the award
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or before. I didn't even know it existed. I had a friend
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I was going to school with who sent me a message and
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said, have you seen this? And I told her,
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no, I've never heard of it. And she says, well— and she didn't
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know I had been writing this piece, Crossing the Bar. She had looked at some
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of the other things that I had written and she said, I think you should
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submit something. And I knew I was working on Crossing the Bar. I knew I
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was close. And I said, well, I'll see what I can do. And I submitted
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it and it takes some time for them to get back to you.
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And I think by the time I did hear about it,
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I, I had kind of forgotten about
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it. So I remember I was sitting with my wife,
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we were watching a show, and I get this email and I said,
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hey. Well,
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that's— that kind of serendipity is really wonderful. And it's
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my hope that choral directors that hear Inquire,
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you know, will go and find Crossing the Bar, you know,
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um, or go and find Patrick Vu's On the Hillside
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and just, um, you know, program it for their choir.
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So we are super, super grateful you took time out
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of your schedule and all those many hats to sit here and
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add one more hat and become a guest of ours on Inquire.
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Yeah, thank you, Mike. You're very welcome. Thanks for
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the opportunity. Now let's listen to our conversation with composer
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Patrick Vu.
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We've been listening to the very beginning of Patrick Vu's
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composition On the Hillside, which was awarded
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the ACDA Raymond W. Brock Award for Student Composers
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in 2023. Welcome to Inquire, Patrick.
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Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, Patrick, both Scott
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and I are pianists and conductors and vocalists. And we were
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both really impressed with how the piano accompaniment
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and the voices in this piece— I don't know, I was trying to think how
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to describe it— seemed to be extensions of each other.
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You know, that doesn't always happen, but in the case of On
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the Hillside, I think it's masterful. Can you talk a bit about
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your compositional approach to the piece and your
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approach specifically to using instrumental
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accompaniments, maybe even verses a cappella?
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Yeah, first of all, thank you for your kind words about my piece.
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It's so wonderful to hear that people are responding to it
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and really enjoying the music that I've written. This piece
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in particular, I mean, in recent years I love that there's a
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change in vocabulary from accompanist to collaborative pianist,
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and I think that that change in vocabulary also kind
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of inspires me to allow the piano to be a voice in
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the compositions, as well as any instrumentalists to be a voice
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in their compositions. And I really think that the piano
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has such an ability to paint a scene, especially in a
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piece like this where the poetry is so vivid.
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I wanted to create that mood with the piano, and so having some obscure
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chordal harmonies, sort of washes
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of sound, sort of to create that impressionistic
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landscape. And then allowing it to have little moments of text
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painting as well to draw attention to the pianist,
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because the pianist is so important. Yeah, so going with the
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text painting, as we were learning about the piece, we saw
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the story. You were inspired to write this piece talking
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about watching someone you love sleep and the
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vulnerability that comes with that. So take
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us from the beginning. How did that inform like the tonal language
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or how the piece was driven rhythmically?
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Help us connect that to your text painting intentions.
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I read this poem in the very beginning of
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the COVID shutdown, and I was just reading through poetry and scrolling
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through pages after pages of poems and found this one and was struck
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immediately there was a subtitle of the poem and it was A
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Memory. I'm on the hillside and then a memory and then
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the poem. I like exploring this idea of stillness,
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and so I wanted to try to create that feeling when
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you're watching this person that you love so dearly,
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whether it's a family member or a loved one or a
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significant other. Just have that trust to fall
23:54.572 --> 23:58.819
asleep and be so vulnerable. This juxtaposition of stillness,
23:59.349 --> 24:02.700
but then later in the poem, the warm air stirring in your veins.
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So there's that motion there, your heart's beating fast,
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but in this motion there's stillness. But you slept,
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and I let you sleep. And that's the last line of the poem. And for
24:14.490 --> 24:17.326
me, my imagination took it one step further, and I thought, what would it be
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like if the person also fell asleep with them. And so I
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like when pieces just happen and they go away.
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And music is interesting because it happens through time,
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but if I can allow music to feel
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like I'm looking at a painting and it just feels like it goes on forever,
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that is a goal of mine. And so to have this piece just fade
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away to nothing, I feel like it captures that.
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Whenever this piece is performed and the last little piano
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note gets played, the silence that sits in that room is so powerful.
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You know, I was particularly struck, and I don't know how this— if
24:56.844 --> 24:59.871
it plays in or not, with your tonal shifts. You know,
25:00.031 --> 25:03.799
I'd be listening to it, you know, eyes closed, kind of getting
25:03.895 --> 25:07.742
into that moment of stillness, and then you would do this, what I would consider
25:08.242 --> 25:12.070
to be rather unexpected tonal shift, and my
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eyebrows would go up, and I'd go, ooh, or something like that, you know?
25:15.661 --> 25:18.691
And then later on, I think something about the rhythm. Yeah, well,
25:18.787 --> 25:22.219
you know, Patrick, you talked about going back and forth from memory
25:22.476 --> 25:26.357
to the poetry. Was that perhaps it? I mean, I don't
25:26.501 --> 25:29.756
know. Is that what Diane's asking? I'm not sure.
25:29.869 --> 25:33.204
I don't know. To me, that tonal shift and then
25:33.236 --> 25:36.396
the use of the rhythmic motifs, I knew were
25:36.428 --> 25:39.924
connected to the text painting, but so original. Like, you know,
25:39.972 --> 25:43.179
you're listening along, this is like, you love those moments where
25:43.679 --> 25:47.309
you just sit back and go, Wow. Thank you. Yeah, some of
25:47.809 --> 25:51.886
those tonal shifts I really love, especially in those
25:51.918 --> 25:55.833
moments early in the piece where it's like so still or so still and the
25:55.849 --> 25:59.709
second time has this warmth to it. I always want
26:00.209 --> 26:03.507
to create moments where the audience can sort of like sigh,
26:03.813 --> 26:06.783
like— Well, you did.
26:07.686 --> 26:10.722
And that— thank you so much. And that kind of adds to this that feeling
26:10.818 --> 26:14.205
of like if you're, I don't know, admiring this, the beauty of this
26:14.705 --> 26:17.528
person across from you, like you might let out like a little sigh,
26:17.576 --> 26:20.193
like gosh, like they're so pretty. And,
26:20.931 --> 26:24.318
um, but then having certain harmonic
26:24.818 --> 26:28.219
shifts that brighten things up, um, and startles
26:28.235 --> 26:32.361
you in a way that sometimes love does. And then when
26:32.861 --> 26:35.876
it gets to the timid things, it's very simple, but it went from D-flat major
26:36.376 --> 26:40.049
to D-flat minor or C-sharp minor, just because, I don't
26:40.549 --> 26:44.301
know, a parallel harmonic shift like that I
26:44.801 --> 26:48.761
thought captured this idea of timid things being scared and scurrying around,
26:49.499 --> 26:52.837
just to add some variety. And then when it returns back to D-flat major,
26:52.885 --> 26:55.709
it feels so bright. I'm curious,
26:56.800 --> 27:00.041
what was your reaction when you found out that this piece had
27:00.186 --> 27:03.250
indeed won the Brock Award? Oh my
27:03.750 --> 27:08.033
gosh, I remember I was leaving a supermarket
27:08.531 --> 27:11.694
because I was going to make myself some dinner, and I got into my car
27:11.742 --> 27:14.440
and got this email, um, that it had won.
27:15.114 --> 27:18.213
My heart started racing and I was just so excited, um, and I started calling
27:18.309 --> 27:22.131
everyone, literally everyone. Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, this piece that I
27:22.179 --> 27:25.423
wrote in like the middle of the night during COVID um,
27:26.097 --> 27:30.593
you know, reaches this, this peak. I remember
27:31.093 --> 27:35.021
trying the Brock competition my first year I
27:35.521 --> 27:38.598
was in, um, I guess the first time I felt like I had a piece
27:38.711 --> 27:42.240
to give for the competition, I submitted a piece called A
27:42.740 --> 27:46.539
Golden Day. And immediately when I got the results and
27:46.571 --> 27:50.678
didn't see my name, um, I was a little bummed. But Dr.
27:50.726 --> 27:54.656
Brandon Boyd emailed me separately and was like, hey, I wasn't
27:54.672 --> 27:57.303
on the committee, but I really liked your piece, and I think that you got
27:57.803 --> 28:01.553
to try this again. Next time. And so 2
28:01.634 --> 28:05.322
years later, I submitted On the Hillside, which started off as an art
28:05.822 --> 28:08.209
song and turned it into a choral piece.
28:09.267 --> 28:13.004
And then to see it kind of be recognized for this
28:13.036 --> 28:16.500
choral setting, it was very, very affirming, and I just felt so excited.
28:17.270 --> 28:20.541
Well, that helps us put what we're going to hear now in context even
28:20.557 --> 28:25.003
more. So we're going to put ourselves on that hillside while
28:25.503 --> 28:27.351
we listen to On the Hillside.
28:52.770 --> 28:56.241
So still in
28:56.418 --> 29:00.358
the sunshine, so still in
29:00.520 --> 29:03.073
that most sweet home.
29:06.140 --> 29:07.333
So still,
29:08.769 --> 29:11.867
so still, so still.
29:15.630 --> 29:20.396
So still,
29:21.355 --> 29:25.868
in the
29:26.368 --> 29:29.504
stillness, Jesus. So still,
29:30.608 --> 29:34.341
the last
29:34.422 --> 29:34.503
watch,
29:34.650 --> 29:38.943
Jesus.
29:39.088 --> 29:40.287
So still.
29:41.256 --> 29:45.261
But what spirit reigns
29:46.806 --> 29:52.727
above this
29:53.227 --> 29:54.851
carnal chaos?
30:07.168 --> 30:10.038
I will call your name.
30:15.504 --> 30:19.690
This faith is where I'm
30:21.219 --> 30:22.845
from.
30:32.340 --> 30:36.742
Scarcely breathing slumber,
30:37.500 --> 30:42.068
so sweetness it was, so sweet
30:42.568 --> 30:43.117
to me.
30:46.071 --> 30:50.162
While thou
30:50.679 --> 30:54.140
wast there
30:54.640 --> 30:58.694
beside me.
30:59.379 --> 31:04.136
In my days
31:05.948 --> 31:07.937
I cried,
31:11.117 --> 31:15.762
even as my bones broke,
31:15.827 --> 31:20.850
O just and
31:21.697 --> 31:23.455
kind.
31:49.920 --> 31:57.149
Thy blood,
32:00.242 --> 32:08.375
your sweat,
32:08.940 --> 32:12.536
your sweat,
32:13.168 --> 32:15.096
your sweat.
32:23.680 --> 32:29.206
One night I had
32:29.706 --> 32:32.704
to sleep,
32:33.801 --> 32:36.811
so I'll sleep,
32:37.120 --> 32:38.372
sleep.
33:24.837 --> 33:28.608
We've been listening to On the Hillside, written by composer
33:29.108 --> 33:32.059
Patrick Vu. So Patrick, what's next for you?
33:32.139 --> 33:35.477
What sorts of compositional projects do you have on the horizon?
33:36.793 --> 33:41.205
Yeah, so I have been talking to a couple people about some
33:41.705 --> 33:45.345
commissions, and hopefully— there's one project that I'm particularly
33:45.361 --> 33:49.100
excited about. It is the Texas Boys Choir in Fort Worth, Texas,
33:49.934 --> 33:53.641
and this director had this idea where Peter
33:54.141 --> 33:56.721
Pan, the novel and the play, are both in public domain,
33:57.475 --> 34:00.909
and he thought that it would be really interesting to have a set of miniatures
34:01.423 --> 34:04.555
that quote Peter Pan for this boys choir. And I just
34:05.055 --> 34:08.153
thought that was the coolest idea. Um, and so I,
34:08.169 --> 34:12.008
I can't imagine— I mean, the, the text, second star on the
34:12.508 --> 34:15.156
right and straight unto morning, have not been set, but it's public domain now.
34:15.317 --> 34:18.401
And so, um, really, really looking forward to working on that.
34:18.610 --> 34:22.288
That's really neat. That's one of my all-time favorite stories, so I'll be looking
34:22.368 --> 34:25.854
for that. And there's a— there's an inherent richness in that. I can't believe it
34:26.354 --> 34:29.754
hasn't already been set or done something with. Yeah, that's terrific.
34:30.576 --> 34:33.948
Well, we're going to look forward to those new projects with you, and so we're
34:33.980 --> 34:37.367
really, really grateful to you for taking time to talk to us today.
34:37.449 --> 34:40.715
Thank you so much. Absolutely. Thank you so much for having
34:40.748 --> 34:40.797
me.
34:50.156 --> 34:53.688
You've been listening to Inquire: Conversations About Choral
34:54.188 --> 34:57.759
Music. The arts, and life. Inquire is produced and
34:57.855 --> 35:01.143
edited in the studios of Troy Public Radio by
35:01.223 --> 35:04.768
Austin Toy, Kyle Gassiott, and Diane Orlofsky.
35:05.394 --> 35:09.885
Our production assistant is Mia Sanchez. Our logo was designed
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by Rachel Arnold. Special thanks to the John M. Long School
35:14.251 --> 35:17.728
of Music and the College of Arts and Humanities at Troy University.
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Please subscribe to the Inquire podcast and let others know
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about it. Us. You can also leave a review in the podcast platform of
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your choice. It will help others to find the show.
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We hope you join us again for more conversations about
35:33.251 --> 35:36.799
choral music, the arts, and life. This is Inquire.
35:37.120 --> 35:40.235
I'm Diane Orlofski. And I'm Scott Sexton. Thank you
35:40.735 --> 35:40.765
for listening.