Meet the Composer
Charles Coleman is a brisk walker, a lively talker and a still-living composer.
That’s as opposed to a “dead composer,” he adds, because it’s the specter of “those famous dead guys” that he has sought to banish on his visits to Cincinnati.
The native New Yorker, composer-in-residence with the CSO this year, has spent five weeks in the city since January. His residency is made possible by the American Symphony Orchestra League’s “Music Alive” program in partnership with “Meet the Composer,” a national organization serving composers and new music.
Coleman’s “Deep Woods,” commissioned by Paavo Järvi and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, will receive its world premiere at 7:30 p.m. tonight, 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday at Music Hall.
“Deep Woods,” a 15-minute work inspired by the painting of the same name by New York artist Charles Yoder, is just one of the things Coleman has accomplished during his Cincinnati residency. On prior visits in January and March he also:
[] guided members of the Cincinnati Symphony Youth Orchestra in a theme and variations project, by which the young musicians wrote variations on a theme provided by Coleman
[] visited area schools to “de-mystify” the image of the composer
[] lectured on the compositional process at the Contemporary Arts Center
[] participated in a teacher’s workshop at Music Hall March 15
[] attended the U.S. premiere of his work “The Lime Factory” on a CSO Young People’s concert March 27.
[] done interviews for “CET Connect” (see www.cetconnect.org )
To meet Coleman, 38, is to shed instantly any notions one may have had of a composer. He doesn’t scowl or wear glasses, mutter to himself or walk around listening to tunes in his head. He doesn’t look the least “bohemian.” Tall, red-haired and ebullient, with a ready smile and a handshake, he speaks with conviction and passion for what he does.
Call it “arrogance,” Coleman cracked.
“One kid asked me about the future of classical music (supposedly dismal) and I suggested, ‘don’t worry about the statistics. It’s not about the statistics. It’s about you as an artist, a musician, trying to hone your craft and promote it.’ When I read an occasional article about whatever the statistics are, I don’t care. If I used that to pursue my career, I wouldn’t get anything done.”
“A little arrogance goes a long way with a little respect,” he said.Cincinnati audiences who attended Järvi’s inaugural concert as CSO music director in 2001 (or have seen it on the CSO’s commemorative DVD “The First Concert”) will remember Coleman’s “Streetscape,” a valentine for New York City given its world premiere on the concert.
It was three days after 911. The “eerie affinity” of “Streetscape,” with its jazzy street bustle and heart-on-sleeve echoes, still clings to it, almost six years later.
“We knew after ‘Streetscape’ that we wanted to work together again,” said Coleman, who lives with his wife, soprano Janet Elizabeth Coleman, in the same low/middle income housing project in lower Manhattan’s Tribeca neighborhood, where he witnessed the destruction of the World Trade Center that September morning.
“We looked into this grant by “Meet the Composer,” applied for it together and were one of 15 composers and orchestras that won.”
Yoder’s painting “Deep Woods” struck Coleman at first sight, he said.
“One day I visited a little gallery in SoHo and the first thing I saw was this big, dark painting, mostly black. It’s of a wooded area at night, with lights shining through the bottom portion of the trees.”
Coleman calls it “a chorus of trees” and knew he was going to write a piece about it someday.
A digital photo of the painting has been enlarged into a poster and will be on display in the Music Hall lobby during this weekend’s concerts.
A baritone, who sang the role the boy czar Feodor in Mussorgsky’s “Boris Godunov” with the Metropolitan Opera at age eight, Coleman studied composition at the Manhattan School of Music. There he met Jarvi’s younger brother Kristjan (Kristjan Järvi will conduct John Adams’ “Nixon in China” for Cincinnati Opera in July.)
“He (Kristjan) formed his orchestra and needed a few composers to help out and I become one of them.” The orchestra, Absolute Ensemble, a cutting-edge electro-acoustic chamber ensemble, was nominated for a Grammy in 2002 for Best Small Ensemble Classical Recording for its CD “Absolution,” which included Coleman’s work of the same name. He has been AE’s composer-in-residence since 1997.
Coleman, who often takes his cue from visual media, describes his style as “classically based, with a funk edge to it.” He has composed over 60 works, with titles like “Absolution,” “Rut Strut” and “Monologue Blue.” He has also done many orchestrations and adaptations of music by Eduard Tubin, Frank Zappa, The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Compay Segundo and Mark Kostabi. His work can be heard on recordings by the Absolute Ensemble and the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra, both led by Kristjan Järvi.
“The Lime Factory,” was inspired by a photo of an abandoned New England lime factory (part of the steel-making process). It made a strong impression on its young audience at Music Hall in March with its pounding hammers and “whoosh” of lime (lots of percussion, including brake drum).
“Red Oak Dawn” was commissioned by the New Jersey Symphony in 2006 (the red oak is the state tree). His one-act opera, “Redemption” will be performed May 17-20 at the 14th Street Y Theater in New York, with Coleman a member of the cast.Coleman, an avid walker of his native city, is cheerfully pursuing life as a free lance composer. He publishes his own music and “does lots of vocal jobs on the side” (visit his web site at www.charlescoleman.com). His hero is the enormously successful Adams, whose 911-insired “Transmigration of Souls” will be heard on CSO concerts next season.
Coleman has “a few odd jobs,” he said, including playing piano on a public access cable show in New York called “Name That Painting.” “There are three contestants, usually arts critics and an occasional celebrity, who are asked to give a title to a painting displayed in front of them. There’s a panel of 10 or 15 people with paddles that show their approval or disapproval of the title. Winner gets $20 and my job with the band is to play grand chords accompanying the announcement of the winner.”
Coleman is ever optimistic, he said.
“Every time I finish a work, the first thing I know is I’ve got a commission for another. In that respect, I’m very lucky.
“Guys like Beethoven and Schubert didn’t do worse than I have in their lifetime.”
Charles Coleman’s “Deep Woods” will receive its world premiere by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra led by music director Paavo Järvi on their final concert of the season at 7:30 p.m. tonight, 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday at Music Hall. Also on the program are Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 with Finnish pianist Olli Mustonen and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 (“Pastorale”). Tickets are $18.50-$77, $10 for students, half-price for seniors at (513) 381-3300 or visit www.cincinnatisymphony.org.