Robbie Ellis

Yo quiero Liberty Bell.

I’m in Philadelphia. I’m so near the end of my travels. There’s an organ concert on in two weeks’ time in Auckland, which contains my piece Relish in Immature Bombast. I made a video, because I’m staying just a few blocks away from the biggest (working) organ in the world.

This was made at the request of SOUNZ – The Centre for New Zealand Music. They do great things – music retail (scores, CDs, DVDs, books), reference library services, music promotion – for New Zealand art music. Normally they’d send someone with a camera to get me to answer questions, but last time I checked they didn’t have a branch office here… or anywhere outside Wellington.

If you haven’t booked your tickets for Organ Spectacular, this whole paragraph is a link to the event page on the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra’s website. The APO has a Buy Tickets link and tickets are only $15 for students and $25 for real humans. You really should buy said tickets and come to this concert on Thursday 23 May.

And there’s a Facebook event too.

Now ONTO THE VIDEO! You can hear four tiny bits of my piece scattered throughout the four-minute span. And you should go to SOUNZ’s transcript which has linky links to information and stuff.

And thanks to my improviser friend and Philadelphia native Bobbi Block for doing some of the videoing.

Right now I’m ensconced in Chicago. The change in climate from Austin’s glorious spring sun to the Lake Effect has been shocking – far worse than when I made a similar transition from Guadalajara to Seattle in mid-February. Last week I bought my first ever pair of gloves, for instance.

I designed my trip so that I’d be able to catch up on projects now, instead of constantly travelling. With three weeks in Chicago, I have no pressure to see all the sights in a short time, and I’ve been able to spend lots of time in the public library and a café being a creative.

First I had to edit my 15-minute segment about SXSW for Music 101 on Radio New Zealand National. Embedding is disabled for this piece of audio, but you listen to it here. Then the deadline approached for show and workshop submissions for Improvention 2013 – that had to be adhered to.

Since that time, I’ve been flitting from project to project. Arrangements for a band I want to form when I get back? 15% complete, then BAM I hear about Short+Sweet Song, a festival/competition of 10-minute musicals happening in Auckland a few weeks after I get back. I buckle down, attempting to transform a Thomas Sainsbury playscript into a singable libretto, but that’s haaaaaaaard.

Then Jess Rodda tweets me out of the blue asking for a short piece for her horn, trombone and tuba trio. Why not procrastinate on a new creative project? I write 95 seconds of fiddly ragtime music in just under four hours.

I first call it Rag to a Bull (geddit? geddit?), then Trolling the Trio. I settle on Trolling the Tuba because it’s an inherently funnier word.

Two days ago I got “commissioned” and wrote the notes, yesterday I revised and tidied up the score and parts, last night Jess blogged about it (complete with my programme note) and today I complete the blogging echo chamber. All within 46 hours.

Looking east onto North Pender Island from the Gulf of Georgia, taken as I write this post.

I write from the ferry between Victoria and Vancouver, in the territorial waters of British Columbia/Washington State/British Columbia. It’s Wednesday 20 February here in North America, but en Nouvelle-Zélande it’s a Thursday at a particular time of the month. This means Song Sale is on in Dunedin!

Now, it is a little odd and a little superfluous for me still to be spruiking for this monthly gig. Yes, I founded it in Dunedin and it was my baby, but now that Daddy has moved to a new city some foster parents have taken responsibility for the rambunctious toddler. Or something. I’m not good at parent-and-guardian analogies.

Regardless, I look from afar wishing all the best for this year’s gigs. I know it will thrive under new management: Corwin Newall is a fantastic writer and performer, and even though he’s young I can see him developing into a really good teacher and director of talent. Gabby Golding is one of the most enthusiastic and organised people I know in the Dunedin arts scene, and late last year she enthusiastically took the reins to organise this mother. (Told you my family member analogies weren’t good.)

They’ve secured funding from both Creative Communities and the Dunedin Fringe Festival, so they must be doing something right – importantly, this means the gigs remain free entry. They’ve also engaged Angus McBryde, a professional, to do their graphics. This is instead of retaining my, uhh, ‘idiosyncratic’ design principles of textual overload. Compare December 2012 and February 2013:

But beyond who manages it, Song Sale is not only an entertaining show for an audience, it’s a valuable vehicle for many different types of creatives.

For a songwriter in the generally-popular-music world, it’s a chance to submit one’s self to a deliberately constrained process: writing something in a hurry. If the song is no good, it can die after its first outing. If it’s great, all the better. If you write enough songs in a hurry, you develop good instincts about which is which and this helps you early in the writing process.

For composers – those trained in a classical, dots-on-paper tradition – Song Sale teaches timing, audience interaction, and Seeing What Works. So many composers are nervous wallflowers, afraid to put themselves out there. While the gig may look terrifying to total introverts, the vibe of the show means The Audience is On Your Side. Even if you try and fail, the audience will still love and support you.

That’s a precept of improv theatre as well – worth mentioning since many Song Salers are members of Improsaurus. The audience doesn’t come to a show to see the perfect response to any situation, they go along to see what on earth the response ends up being. There’s always a little thrill for an individual audience member when that person’s own suggestion is picked up and turned into a scene (for improv) or a song (for Song Sale), but even if the suggestion didn’t come out of your own mouth, you still feel like you have a stake in it: it came from the room and You Were There.

Added to this, many improvisers are also stand-up comedians and many stand-up comedians incorporate music. Song Sale is a pretty sweet song development laboratory, and it bubbles up musically comedic moments that don’t occur when you deliberately craft songs on your own. After a year-and-a-half of Song Sales in both Wellington and Dunedin, I have a heeeap of songs that have had several outings, become more refined and cogent, and could be turned into a solo show and/or an album.

If you’re reading this from Dunedin, do turn up tonight: 7pm at The Church, 50 Dundas St. The gig has a new structure (or a structure full stop): an established act performs for the first half – tonight it’s Reed Street Posse from Oamaru – and the commissions come after the interval. As always – and with gracious thanks to Creative Communities funding – entry is free and commissions are $5 per song. Here’s the Facebook event – go forth and spread.

Juliet Palmer, a New Zealand-born Toronto-based composer, alerted me to Redshift Music Society the other day.

This Vancouver new music outfit has put out a call for scores, with a deadline of 1 March. Basically:

The idea is simple: the entire score, musical concept or set of instructions for the piece has to fit on a postcard.

Also:

Please submit by REGULAR MAIL only! (not email)

As I was coming to the end of my travels in Spanish-speaking countries (Cuba and Mexico), I figured I was finished hearing a particular type of sound: the pregón. The dictionary definition of the word is ‘proclamation’ or ‘announcement’, but more typically it refers to the repetitive patter of street vendors, market stall-holders, touts, jineteros, etc.

I had been notating down these cries as approximately as I could in iPhone Notes. Sitting at a restaurant in Guadalajara Airport, having consumed my rather meagre and overpriced chicken burger, I transcribed some of them for alto sax and various voices. Thus, my first composition of 2013 is called 8 Pregones – it’s up to you whether you whether you pronounce it “eight” or “ocho”. (Or for that matter, “chicuyei“.)

Hopefully Redshift has someone willing to give the Spanish language and Latino accents a go…

For the moment, this piece exists only in two hard copies: a draft on the back of my A4 flight itinerary, and this postcard winging its way from México to Canadá.

I do intend to write out another copy (I have a couple of spare Guadalajara postcards) and send it to SOUNZ though. It would probably be appropriate for it to bear a Vancouver postmark – I should be there next week.

By the way, here’s the obverse. This is José Clemente Orozco’s sweeping mural of Mexican independence leader Miguel Hidalgo, in the Palacio del Gobierno.

Here’s a llama.

This afternoon, Buz Bryant-Greene gives the première performance of my solo piano piece #llamadrama. That’s right, I’m so social media my composition is a hashtag.

Buz first played my music in May 2009, specifically the Sonatina for clarinet and piano with Anna McGregor. Before long, he followed it with Seven Banana Songs for soprano & piano, Maeve for piano & tape, and a silly little microscore called Drying Music.

However, still by then I had written no substantial solo piano piece for anybody, so Buz applied to Creative New Zealand in August 2010 for funds to commission me for a 10-12 minuter. Six weeks later we were granted success. I even got paid up-front!

This was momentous for me: it was my first fully-funded CNZ commission (link is a .doc). I was suddenly a “real” composer! Some years previously I had made a resolution that I would stop attending the Nelson Composers Workshop as a participant once I received my first professional commission. The day had arrived.

I got feverishly down to work… if I recall, this was when the cast of Austen Found: The Undiscovered Musicals of Jane Austen was supposed to go to Sydney to perform at World’s Funniest Island, before that festival was cancelled nine days before opening. That would have been my first getting-flown-overseas-to-do-a-show moment… ah well. Just the one major career milestone per month then.

Progress stalled when my girlfriend and I broke up the following month – we’d been living together, it was a less than straightforward separation, it sent me pretty down. I well and truly lost compositional momentum – in fact, it took me a further eight months to finish the work in fits and starts, writing the last note on 18 July 2011.

But nothing’s ever simple. By the time I finished #llamadrama, Buz had developed some pretty serious musicianly injuries in his shoulders and back. He wasn’t going to be doing any much playing for a while, especially the 12-13 minutes of physically demanding piano pounding and fine motoric gestures that I’d composed for him. We thought there’d be the première in April this year, in fact, I even arranged a whole trip from Dunedin to Wellington around it, but Buz wasn’t yet up to it.

However, the time is now. Nearly two and a half years after Buz applied for the commission funding, he’s giving the première. He’s the accompanist for The Glamaphones, the choir of Wellington’s GLBTQ community, so it’s part of their end-of-year concert at St Andrew’s on The Terrace at 4pm today. He’ll be giving subsequent performances in Nelson, Auckland, and many other places, I hope.

It’s a programmatic piece, and the narrative is… uhh… long. It’s below!

—

Background

There’s a llama.

On the afternoon of 27 August 2010, an escaped llama made its way onto the Western Ring Road in Melbourne, one of that city’s busiest freeways. The story became a minor sensation on Twitter with this tweet from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s @abcnews feed:

Drama: Police are trying to capture a llama on Melbourne’s western ring road
12:54:07 Aug 27th 2010 (UTC +10) via Tweetdeck
Retweeted by 100+ people

Within two minutes, this message had been re-tweeted 15 times, spreading the news quickly throughout Melbourne and to the wider world. The news story generated a flash of amused responses and commentary, often under the hashtag #llamadrama. I’ve identified some factors which contributed to its sudden popularity: the simple linguistic device of rhyme; the involvement of an animal; the potential for Benny Hill-like chase scenes between police and said animal; the heightened attention to Twitter for breaking political news following the inconclusive result of the Australian federal election six days earlier; the inherent funniness of the word ‘llama’; and the fact that bored office-workers will tweet and/or retweet nearly anything for shits’n’giggles on a Friday afternoon.

Humorous comments came thick and fast. One was a tweet by @silencewedge parodying a 1961 Barry Mann pop song:

Who put the drama in the drama llama ring road?

Guitarist and music journalist Peter Hodgson, a.k.a. @iheartguitar, provided another rhyme for consideration:

Llama drama or Alpaca Fracas?

However, my favourite remark of the whole affair was a pun from market researcher and consultant Stephen Downes, a.k.a. @downesy on Twitter:

A loose llama on the Western Ring Road? It must have been trying to get to the Tu-llama-rine Freeway #llamadrama
13:25:17 Aug 27th 2010 (UTC +10) via Tweetdeck
Retweeted by 21 people

Some 80 minutes after the affair started on Twitter, @abcnews reported:

Breaking news: Police have captured the llama that was on the loose in Melbourne #llamadrama
14:16:40 Aug 27th 2010 (UTC +10) via web
Retweeted by 100+ people

From there, instances of the hashtag #llamadrama tailed off. For half an afternoon it had captured the imagination of a localised section of the “Twitterverse”, and as the story died a natural death it was quickly forgotten. (The sheer volume of traffic on Twitter with the lack of an effective archive search function means events more or less disappear after a week or so.)

Even in this world where cameras in mobile phones are ubiquitous, nobody took photos or video of the escaped animal – or at least no such images made it to the internet, despite appeals from news media. After the event, the websites of ABC News and The Age newspaper carried brief text stories, light on details and specifics and probably based entirely on police communications (i.e. second-hand information). While there is no apparent reason to doubt the basics of the event or to call it a hoax, I felt a bemused unreality (or surreality) in following reports as they developed, best summed up by @cfsmtb:

Pics or it didn’t happen

This piece of news was arguably perfect for Twitter. The limited concrete information available was only slightly more than what can be contained in a tweet of 140 characters, and its bemusing nature and temporary news value meant the “Twitterverse”, including me as a composer, could imagine the zany and the fantastical. After all, who cares if it’s true or not, as long as it’s funny?

Programme

Starting in a field close to the Western Ring Road, a llama lives a placid and slightly bored existence. Absent-mindedly picking at a chain-link fence, a gap appears: the animal can fit itself through and escape its confines. After a few cautious steps, it lurches forward and runs in sudden jerks. Making its way down a grassy hillside, it reaches the freeway crash barrier. Occupants of moving vehicles begin to notice the animal: “there’s a llama!” After a few tries, it successfully vaults the crash barrier and makes it onto the road itself. Vehicles whizz by and drivers honk their horns, but the llama is enjoying its freedom too much to be affected by them. Reports begin to reach news services: we hear a radio news theme and the growing noise of the Twitterverse.

The din of chatter around Melbourne becomes overwhelming and little more than indistinguishable noise, so the llama retreats into its head and to its elated thoughts: “I’m free! I’m my own animal! This is my dream, I’m no longer bound by a chain-link fence! It’s a whole new world! There’s a smile on my face for the whole…”

SQUEAL!! Its reverie is interrupted by an SUV with an absent-minded yet aggressive driver: the vehicle has to brake extremely suddenly to avoid hitting the llama, and misses it only by inches. Police have arrived on the scene and have begun to divert traffic. The llama becomes outnumbered to a greater and greater degree: there’s one last chance for escape, one tricky path to freedom, one last high-stakes roll of the “OOH TASTY TASTY LLAMA TREAT ON THE GRASSY BANK!! I LIKE TASTY LL… oh damn.”

Thirty minutes later, in the same field close to the Western Ring Road, the llama is once again bored. Picking at the chain-link fence, there’s no chance of escape. The fence has been repaired, the gap closed, the llama’s life restored to its former boredom.

–

Written 15 October 2010 to 18 July 2011 in Auckland and Wellington.
Commissioned by Buz Bryant-Greene with funding from Creative New Zealand.

Duration: 12-13 minutes.
Pronunciation note: The title should be said “hash-tag llama drama”.

First performed by Buz Bryant-Greene, 9 December 2012, St Andrew’s on The Terrace, Wellington.

Charmian Smith interviewed me for the Otago Daily Times – article m’nyahr.

Just had an interview with Eva Radich on Radio New Zealand Concert’s Upbeat programme. I talk about:

• In meinem letzten Leiden for Auckland Youth Orchestra (tomorrow in Whangarei, Sunday in Helensville, Friday 5 October in the Auckland Town Hall);
• Relish in Immature Bombast for Tim Noon, Jono Sawyer and the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra (Thu 23 May 2013 in the Auckland Town Hall);
• The Piano Tuner’s Performance Appraisal for Estrella, the eight-hand two-piano quartet (probably never getting performed again);
• and Song Sale Dunedin.

Eva joins the list of people who don’t like the title ‘Relish in Immature Bombast’. I suggest it’s still no less ridiculous than ‘Concerto for Organ, Drum Kit and Orchestra No 1′.

Listen below:

Upbeat – 28 September 2012 – Robbie Ellis

A month ago I was informed that my application for the 2013 University of Otago Mozart Fellowship was unsuccessful.

Given the largely consistent pattern in the last decade of Mozart Fellows having two years on the trot, I was under the illusion that a second term was assured as long as you were doing good work and got your application in on time.

Obviously I was wrong – all applications are assessed against each other fairly and without favouritism. Consequently I offer my congratulations to composer Samuel Holloway and the four other fellows just announced.

I’m grateful one of the selection panel rang me to break the news personally. Extending the courtesy of a phone call sure beats the terse two-sentence letter subsequently posted to me by the university’s HR department.

Still, it hardly lessened the effective kick in the guts. I went into a disbelieving stupor – after all, two years in a row was standard. What the hell had I done wrong? How was my application deficient? Had I made an irrevocable departmental political faux pas at some point? Had I spent too much time outside Dunedin? (..he asked during his fourth trip to Auckland that year.)

Fortunately for me, I had to put all that bullshit aside and project positivity onto two high school music events later that day. At lunchtime, the St Peter’s & St Mary’s Sinfonia rehearsed my piece General Intransigence and I contributed the composer’s opinion. In the evening, I definitely needed an upbeat demeanour to present the monstrously large Westlake Music Gala, part of my high school’s 50th Jubilee: four hours of music from 17 different ensembles over two sessions.

In the intervening month, when I haven’t been wallowing in my own pity and being unproductive, I’ve had time to think about what I could get up to next year. I’ve reached the following conclusions with myself:

• Shit happens. You had no divine right to a second year.
• You’ve still got just half of your Fellowship time left. Pull your head in and do some more bloody work – that’s what you’re getting paid for.
• Sometimes it’s nice to have your plans messed with. As Patti Stiles would say, every offer is a gift.
• As annoying as it is to move cities twice in one year, Dunedin is not the place for a theatrico-comedic composer to make a freelance living. Without full-time employment, full-time study or any family ties here, I’ve got to move away. The lease on my unit comes up on 31 December, so it’s got to be before then.
• As much fun as the busy annual summer festival season is (Wellington Fringe, Auckland Fringe, Dunedin Fringe etc), it’s financially a slow start to the year if you’re not in full-time employment. It’s not essential to my livelihood to be around for it.
• It’s high time I did some sustained overseas travel. Consequently I will go to Central and North America from January to May next year, moving from south to north as the weather improves. First to Mexico to hang out and indulge my once-upon-a-time obsession with all music Latin American, then onto major hubs such as LA, Chicago, Toronto, NYC, etc for improv theatre and sketch comedy. Take some workshops, sit in on some gigs, see what comes.
• The first commitments I have in 2013 are both in Auckland (reminder: APO Organ Spectacular, 23 May 2013, Auckland Town Hall), so it’s high time I based myself in the city of my birth for a while. Since moving away in 2008, I’ve continually kept up useful professional connections there, so I have enough opportunity to make a freelance living. Let’s do that then.
• Despite working within in a university department this year, I still have no grand desire to embark on further postgraduate study. But if I change my mind, depending on what I want to pursue, the University of Otago and Dunedin would be quite pleasant places to work indeed. I will keep them in mind.
• Nobody can hold the Mozart Fellowship for more than two years. Being rejected for 2013 means that I can apply for a second term some years in the future. If I’d retained the Fellowship for next year, I wouldn’t have that opportunity.

On that optimistic note, I leave you with this YouTube embed. Two years ago I went through a relationship break-up. At the same time, I had recently seen the episode of Making Tracks where Nick D visits Trinidad. Sitting at my desk at RNZ, unable to do any work, I played this relentlessly positive Soca hit over and over and over again. Actually, “hit” is an appropriate word – every time I played it, it was like getting a dose of cheeriness morphine.

So, PALAAAAANCE!

I’m in Auckland until this afternoon. I came up on Wednesday to see my former composition lecturer’s new piece LEN LYE the opera, and to review it for Theatreview. (Actually there are more like four of my old teachers among the core creative team…)

It’s “a major statement of advocacy for the overlooked genius and forward-thinking artistry of Len Lye”. My review’s here. The NBR and the Herald carry shorter write-ups.

Today I meet with Penny Ashton, Thomas Sainsbury and James Wenley about musicals in various stages of development.

Next week I sing as a “baritone” on the stage of Marama Hall in Dunedin and play with the Court Jesters in Christchurch.

The week after I get to play Michael Parekowhai’s red carved piano at Te Papa in Wellington, and I do my first gig in Invercargill.

Life’s pretty good.

The Royal New Zealand Ballet and the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra have just announced Leaps & Sounds, and it’s a bloody great idea.

Since 2005, the NZSO has held an annual Young Composers Award, supported by the Todd Corporation. After a call for scores, the orchestra chooses a dozen or so pieces to be rehearsed and recorded. All the composers come to Wellington and get to work with the orchestra and a conductor, and Radio New Zealand Concert makes a programme of them as well.

For many of the composers, it’s the first time their works are played by a professional orchestra. It’s a chance to learn how to maximise limited rehearsal time – an essential skill in working with orchestras.

Now that the Todds have been running for seven years, there are several dozen five-minute pieces languishing on the commemorative CDs, many of which are really quite good. Some bright spark at the NZSO had an idea for some orchestral down-time: send the CDs to the Ballet, get some dances choreographed, and hold some performances.

There are so many awesome elements to this:
- There are two performances in the Michael Fowler Centre.
- Both performances are free! As in, no money needed free. How often does your national orchestra cost nothing to see? Or your national ballet company?
- According to the Ballet’s website, this is the first time the NZSO and the RNZB have performed together in twelve years.
- These are public performances of works that until now have only been heard in workshop and on radio.
- These are nine recent pieces for orchestra that are obviously all very danceable.
- One of the pieces is mine.

Each composer is linked with a choreographer. Mine is Jaered Glavin, who went viral-by-NZ-standards a couple of years ago for choreographing a Lady Gaga song with modified ballet steps. (It got on Campbell Live.) My piece is called Feral, and Jaered tells me he’s been inspired by animal movements – there’ll be some radical, visceral choreography going on to some pretty visceral music. Apparently there will also be fluoro ponytails…

I’ve had very little to do with the dance world – I’ve never composed for choreography and it was only 10 days ago that I did my only gig as a musician for dance. However after a Facebook chat with Jaered, I’ve got really excited about what he’s bringing to the work – I look forward to mid-June!

Leaps & Sounds
Saturday 16 June 2012, Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington
Two performances: 4:30pm & 7:30pm
Free, but bookings essential. Book through the NZSO.

EDIT Tue 29 May 11am: The NZSO website is saying it’s booked out. Well, that was quick.