"A composer can be a powerful cultural witness. That is, if she truly believes in the legitimacy of her experiences — From the personally raw to living through contemporary events at large, both of which shape history. This means much more than just aiming to collect dust like a bronze Beethoven bust."
— Gabriela Lena Frank
by Gabriela Lena Frank
When I’m really under a deadline, and need to get new ideas quickly, I don’t usually listen to music, as some composers do. In fact, I do the opposite: I take off my hearing aids and stay in silence for a few days. In the absence of sound, my imagination goes to different places. It’s a bit like being in a dream when unusual and often impossible events come together, the perfect place from which to compose.
by Gabriela Lena Frank
I was well aware of taking up the time of a man who had been a young soldier in one of the world’s ugliest wars, who later experienced what no parent ever should in losing a young child, and whose own face was startlingly altered after fighting serious illness. You still believed in teaching and writing great music, and that made me even more devoted.
by Gabriela Lena Frank
I still have a tiny speech impediment and if I've not been wearing my hearing aids for a couple of days — like after sequestering myself in my studio to meet a composing deadline — my speech gets pretty funny, like a brown lady Elmer Fudd.
by Gabriela Lena Frank
It is a simply ravishing album, an aptly effective antidote to the more humbling moments of dog ownership. But as I was throwing away soiled paper towels, I felt twinges of unexpected and not altogether pleasant nostalgia.
by Gabriela Lena Frank
In the middle of the day, I can expect that solar lights and car headlights will turn on and the crickets will chirp as if it's dusk on Mars. What is this world?
by Gabriela Lena Frank
If ever there was a time for social activism, this would be it: Thus far, 2020 has birthed a planet-wide pandemic, cataclysmic economic decline, and a chilling reckoning with historically-embedded racial violence. In my native California, we also face a predicted worse-than-usual fire season, already made hellish these past three years from climate crisis which ominously predicts more pandemics in the future.
by Gabriela Lena Frank
It's so much to bear. I’ve got nightmares coming back. But we have to eat. Have to get ready."
by Gabriela Lena Frank
The real impetus for GLFCAM is a hate crime. And I honestly couldn't say those words until recently. I'd been mainly framing this pivotal incident during a cross-country trip with Jeremy as a run-in with an a**hole at a truck stop who suddenly announced his presence with a bodyblow from behind, knocking me down and showing me his gun in MAGA solidarity.
