Music That Acquires a Soul
written by Adele Faizullina
2019 GLFCAM Cynthia Jackson Ford Fellow, Cycle 11
My family lives far beyond the ocean in Tatarstan in Russia, and now I live in Los Angeles to continue my education in music composition. I miss them endlessly and look forward to the holidays to fly to Kazan and see all my loved ones. In the family, we find support, good advice, understanding, people who listen to our ideas, thoughts and anxieties.
I was born in Uzbekistan, and when I was six years old, my family and I moved to Tatarstan. When I was seven, my parents did their best and found a music teacher for me: An amazing teacher and fantastic blind musician, Yevgeniy Fralov, who taught me the braille system. I also studied piano and music theory with him. I am very grateful to my parents for trying to give me a musical education, and it was very difficult in those post-perestroika times in Russia in the 1990s. Later, they supported every step I took on my creative path.
For the composer, and indeed for any musician, our musical family is a great support: Our mentors, teachers and colleagues. It seems to me that the interaction and relationship with the performer is very important for a composer. One of my very first compositions was a piece for solo flute. My flutist friend lived on the same floor in the student dormitory of the Gnesins Academy of Music in Moscow, Russia where I was studying. She often practiced in the shared kitchen floor. I often listened to her practicing. I decided to write a flute piece for her. Soon, I began to show her my drafts. I tried myself as a composer, and she showed me what is possible to play, including interesting flute tricks and various colors. Thus was born one of my first works in my compositional life.
Recently, my musical family was replenished with wonderful composers and musicians. During my second time at GLFCAM, as a Fellow in Cycle 11 in beautiful Boonville, CA, where dear Gabriela and her husband Jeremy welcomed us to their beautiful warm house, I met my amazing fellow composers Aida Shirazi, Aaron Garcia, Kyle Tieman-Strauss, Molly Joyce and my dear friend Soyoona Kim who I met a couple of years ago at the Butler School of Music in Austin, Texas where I studied for my Master’s in music composition. I met fantastic soprano mentor Tony Arnold and amazing guitar mentor Manuel Barrueco, I met their students, terrific vocalists and guitarists Camille Crossot, John Johnston, Colleen McGonigle, Andrea González Caballero, Jennifer Kim, Rubén Portillo, and Jesse Washburn. It was so great to meet Erika Oba and to see again good friend Joel Ponce, wonderful musicians and GLFCAM managers. It was so amazing to meet chef Stephen Hutchinson and help him for one of the dinners. Great great family!
Our Cycle 11 was held just before Thanksgiving and it really was a meeting of family and new wonderful friends. The nature of Boonville greeted us all with the warm sunny touch of autumn and we ourselves were imbued with deep respect, attention and kind feelings to each other, such a wonderful and heartwarming six days! We not only discussed pressing professional issues, various nuances and details of performance, interpretations and compositional process aspects, but also shared joint dinners with all the mentors, composers and performers in a cozy, full of positive energy house of Dear Gabriela and Jeremy.
For this cycle, we as composers are writing pieces for voice and guitar. And when I found out that I would be writing music for this combination, I was both pleased and scared. I was delighted because I write a lot for voice and I was afraid because I never wrote anything for the guitar, although I love this instrument and all its beautiful colors. But now, after inspiring readings and attention to our music, having heard my own work and the compositions of the other composers, with new valuable knowledge, I am very excited to work and finish my piece. Readings of our music by wonderful musicians, valuable detailed comments by the mentors, new knowledge, all this together creates the final project. Sometimes even for a whole year of learning a composition, you won’t get such a volume of knowledge and inspiration. And now, knowing personally the performers, taking care of them and feeling care and attention from them, you feel the music. You work on it in a completely different way. It becomes personal, real and acquires a soul. We, as a family of musicians, together create the magic of a piece of music!
Uzbekistan-born Adeliia Faizullina is a composer, singer, and instrumentalist. She studied in Russia at the Gnessins Russian Academy of Music and Auhadeev College of Music (Kazan, Russia), and received her MM in Composition from the University of Texas in Austin in 2018. She is now embarking on her DMA in Composition at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. Learn more from Adele’s bio page.