We composers are a sensitive guild. We pour ourselves into our work, navigating an environment set as a zero sum game, of oversupply of dreamers ripe for professional abuse. All in the hopes that our voice will somehow, somewhere make an impact.
There is something defiant, revolutionary, even, about putting one’s nose to the grindstone in the midst of troubled times; about asserting our right as a community of curious souls, to explore the nitty gritty world of sounds.
I had, more often than not, operated from the standpoint that composition needed to be strictly serious. A vessel for humanity’s deepest torments and spiritual profundity. If my music was funny, was I somehow doing it wrong? My initial reaction was confusion, followed quickly by embarrassment. Gabriela doubled down. “This is a special ‘Aaron ’ quality,” she said. “You should embrace it.” I sat with that for a while.
Read MoreAs a child, I loved creating with legos. Instead of following an instruction manual, I’d try to design my own bridges and skyscrapers. The moment I realized music composition was my calling was when I felt that same warm, fuzzy feeling as I had building with legos––the joy of having created something from scratch.
Read MoreSo, a Composer… today? I might be biased, but I believe it is not only a useful contributing career; it is also a necessary one that, if pursued with the right ideals, is life-changing, enriching, and unifying, even in the face of violence, cruelty, or an uncertain and changing world. So, if there was a time to create music, that time is now, and I will continue to—sometimes afraid, and sometimes emboldened, but always committed—seize it with the next pieces I will create, as a work of passion, but also as part of my career.
Read More“What kind of life do you want to live?” is a question frequently posed by Gabriela during the 2024 residency, and one I now frequently ask myself. Even after prolonged thought, I am not sure; I do not know.
Read MoreThis idea of a toolkit brings me back to the Hebrew word for workshop, sadná, which comes from sadán (סַדָּן), meaning anvil. This image resonates with me: the musical idea as a bulky piece of metal that you hammer like a blacksmith into shape. It reflects an artisanal approach to composing, one that focuses on craftsmanship over the sanctity of one particular musical idea. It’s as if, through workshopping, you’re saying, “Don’t be so precious about your ideas; it’s just a chunk of metal—hit it hard enough in the right way, and something good will come out.”
Read MoreIn front of my parents’ home stands a beautiful, towering tree. As I raked the fallen leaves, I picked one up and examined it as if it were something mysterious and precious. I reflected on its life cycle—starting vibrant and green, then turning golden before fading into brown. I began asking myself: why do we admire trees when they bear fruit and bloom but often overlook them when their leaves no longer flourish? I imagined trees as silent witnesses to human creation and destruction, holding whispered echoes of past seasons—stories of love, joy, and injustice. That day was a revelation. I started thinking metaphorically, and suddenly, I had my concept. The image of fallen leaves and their cycle of life became the foundation for my composition.
Read MoreTo be Vietnamese American is to be a contradiction; a life and identity born from war. Part of the diasporic experience is to exist between disparate cultures. Constantly in a state of translation, many speak a language of the colonizers and a language of the colonized.
Read Morewritten by Ivette Herryman Rodríguez
The Bahlest Eeble Readings were my third program with GLFCAM. As a composer, it was a luxury to have performers read my music with intention, ask questions to understand what I was trying to convey, and offer alternatives to show me a more idiomatic way to execute an idea for their instruments.
written by Liza Sobel Crane
I first met Gabriela at the Aspen Music Festival when she came for a performance of her piece, La Centinela y la Paloma, in the summer of 2018. When Gabriela spoke at the Composers’ Seminar, the session completely flew by. I hoped I would have the opportunity to work with her one day.
written by Erin Busch
In my opinion, one of the great failures of a formal composition education is the narrow perspective that students are provided regarding the variety of career paths available to composers. At this point in my life, I’ve earned a bachelor’s, master’s, and PhD in composition, and while I have learned so much about my own creative practice and craft in that time, I also feel like there was little to no formal advice given about the practical application of my skills. How might I go about making a living as a composer?
written by Shane Cook
I’m a little embarrassed to admit that I have spent a large percentage of my twenties worrying. The worries come in all sorts of colors, shapes and sizes, and my mind sometimes fixates on one like it is selecting a pastry from a dessert case: which will it be today?
Read Morewritten by Meilina Tsui
It was August 2021 when I received the wonderful news that I’d been accepted into Gabriela’s Academy to participate in the Bahlest Eeble Readings Program. I was so thrilled. It was hard to believe I was finally getting to meet with and receive mentorship from the legendary composer guru, Gabriela Lena Frank. I had been eagerly waiting for this opportunity since 2018, when I came to the US as a foreign student and heard about the GLFCAM for the first time…
Read Morewritten by Che Buford
When I tell people that I am a violinist and composer…
When I tell people that I am a violinist and composer, I find that many have trouble grappling with the fact that I do both as part of my practice. People either ask me to choose one or assume I'm far more proficient at one or the other. As a composer-performer, I continually question how my practices interact with one another. By exploring the mediums of electronic music and improvisation, I've found that they can inform each other while expanding new areas within each.
Having trained as a classical musician for 14 years, it is no secret that musical approaches and career paths are extremely narrow and limited. As violinists, we are trained to play and follow a repertoire sequence of canonical repertoire in the hope of obtaining an orchestral, chamber, or solo job. With composers, the training is centered around being a composer with a capital ‘’C’’ – which means your skill is judged on the number of works you’ve written for orchestras, choirs, and other traditional configurations. Fitting into these boxes never felt right for me. When the parameters of what a performer and composer should do are so constrained, it is hard to imagine how they could work together. I’ve thankfully found myself in spaces and have been inspired by today’s artists in the field who continually challenge these parameters. To name a few, Angelica Negron, Nathalie Joachim, Pamela Z, Darian Donovan Thomas, and Charmaine Lee.
Read Morewritten by Gala Flagello
You are stuck. Beating your head against the wall; throwing things at the wall to see what sticks; interestingly, a lot of wall metaphors in this kind of scenario. Perhaps let’s make this a literal, unscalable wall: You’ve been trying to climb for hours—days? Weeks? Months?—but your shoelace came untied and your foothold isn’t secure and your hands are aching and you’re sweating. And once you reach the top, you’ll still have to fight a giant roaring monster named Editing or Approval or good old Doubt, and it happens to take the form of that one teacher/colleague/family member who made you feel like you can’t do this.
Read Morewritten by Anya Yermakova
Bodies. My encounters with trained, virtuosic, sensitive musicking bodies leave me again and again with: what can I do as a composer to give them permission to really play? As in, be playful, play around, center the interpretation on jugar más que tocar. Center the interpretación – performance – in the interpretation, even in a reading. Notation so boring that they might have to invent ways to entertain themselves? Indications filled with absurdities or paradoxes so they find joy in the impossibility of their execution? Scores with color? Scores that ask for interactivity? Scores that ask the players to listen with touch, or with smell, or…?
Read Morewritten by Aakash Mittal
The first piece that I composed was titled Some Last Minute Blues. It was my sophomore year in high school and I had been playing saxophone for less than a year. Yet I was obsessed. I was listening to jazz and practicing morning, noon, and night. I must have been around fourteen or fifteen years old when the assistant band director, Mr. Perez, challenged me to write a tune for our jazz combo to play at the upcoming High School Jazz festival. Being a teenager, I waited until the last minute to write the piece. Hence the title.
Read Morewritten by Jonathan Mitchell
It’s 2018. Professor Smith points me to Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Five Mystical Songs, musical settings of religious verse by George Herbert. Gabriela Lena Frank visits the Blair School of Music for the first of several times that year. For my senior recital, I have the idea to write a large cycle of piano pieces—wordless songs, maybe—inspired by Chicago’s architecture. (Pick a topic already, Jonathan.)
Read Morewritten by Roydon Tse
“Process vs Result”
The GLFCAM experience was different from any workshop or mentorship programs I’ve done in the past. It has an emphasis on the idea of process rather than outcome. I have been part of many workshops where one simply writes a piece, sends it to performers, and then show up to the rehearsal and performance. Done. Rinse. Repeat. GLFCAM, however, invited me to converse with the musicians from the get-go. Relationships were formed. There was mentorship that felt intentional and genuine. All these things felt so valuable and rare in the small world of music composition.
Read Morewritten by Aida Shirazi
I was one of the composers of GLFCAM’s Bahlest Eeble Readings in 2019 and felt exhilarated to work with some of the most talented musicians of my generation under the mentorship of Gabriela, Tony Arnold, and Manuel Barrueco in the eleventh cycle of the program. Our first round of workshops happened in Boonville in November 2019, but alas the Covid pandemic didn’t allow for the second round and our world premiere performance to happen in April 2020. Nevertheless, my friendship and affiliation with GLFCAM has been ongoing ever since.
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