Ralph Lewis: Composer

I am very excited to be taking part in this year’s College Music Society Great Lakes Regional Conference. I will be presenting a talk based on my dissertation “Aaron Cassidy’s Second String Quartet: Resilient Structures, Indeterminate Localities, and Performance Practice” and “Straight Into Tangles,” my orchestra work commissioned by Dr. Tiffany Chang and Oberlin Arts and Sciences Orchestra. The full dissertation is now online in a free to all space here: https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/handle/2142/113049

CMS Great Lakes was my first toe-dip into College Music Society several years ago. I like attending because of its presentations always reflect the organization’s inter-departmental focus.

This weekend I will be presenting a talk based on my dissertation “Aaron Cassidy’s Second String Quartet: Resilient Structures, Indeterminate Localities, and Performance Practice” and my orchestra work commissioned by Dr. Tiffany Chang and Oberlin Arts and Sciences Orchestra.

This will be the first time I get to publicly share about my dissertation research. The talk overlaps with the paper in many ways, but I’ve tried to make it something that fits a 20-ish minute presentation space. The full dissertation is now online in a free to all space here: https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/handle/2142/113049

I have a series of events coming up the next few months, but one special thing that happened a bit ago was that I was interviewed by The Arc Project. The article can be found here: https://www.arcprojectmusic.com/post/composer-spotlight-ralph-lewis

Near the end of December, Tiffany Chang, Ava Simon, Carol Vang, and I presented a panel about our work on my live-to-Zoom orchestra piece “Straight Into Tangles.”

A few weeks ago Verdant Vibes officially announced that my cello and electronics work “Can’t Take You Anywhere” was selected for one of their call for works concert happening in Spring 2022.

This Friday I had the privilege to be a guest presenter for Heidelberg University’s composition studio. I had attended their concert a few weeks before was really looking forward to talking with them. I showed some of my recent work Straight Into Tangles for live-to-Zoom Orchestra and demonstrated DuoTube. What I appreciated was that as we talked about developing opportunities and meaningful collaborations, the questions kept coming. I discussed my experiences with the Urbana Arts and Cultural Grant program in creating All Score Urbana as part of a jumping off point and Dr. Kennedy already had a grant program that is happening Tiffin, Ohio on hand. I hope Heidelberg’s composers continue to be create, dream big, and explore programs and concerts they can do in collaboration with community members and spaces.

This Saturday, November 6th, as part of As if radio’s longform radio broadcasts about COP26, Dr. Mike Minarcek will be premiering a radio work for voice and percussion (a car’s interior) called “convenient words/exactly lost.” It is my setting of one 0f a handful of texts written by Bradley Njus. It will be broadcast at the following website from Glasgow, Scotland at 2 pm Central, with a short interview with Mike and me to follow – http://acousticommons.net/listen/

This summer All Score Urbana began its next Urbana Arts and Culture grant-supported program–Community of Song. We are current working on over a dozen projects with composers, songwriters, performers, and singers. We will be announcing the specifics of the upcoming February concert in the next few months. I have loved seeing the collaboration, question asking, and mentorship that have been coming out of these projects. While a lot of art-making involves technical feedback, it makes me happy that people seem to get how we try to make this a warm, empathetic working space (in this case, a mostly virtual working space).

A related project finds some of the teaching artists collaborating with former Urbana Poet Laureate Will Reger’s Red Herring Poetry Celebration, another Urbana Arts and Culture-funded program. ShayLyssa Alexander and Mike McAndrew will be performing Possibility of Routine, a new song I wrote that is inspired by “Migraine,” a poem by Anne Zysman-Schulman. I have wanted to write for ShayLyssa’s amazing voice for a very long time and I am excited to hear her performance this Friday at the Channing-Murray Foundation.

This weekend I had the privilege of presenting my paper about Rebecca Saunders’ music at Darkwater Womxn in Music Festival. I attended virtually and I deeply appreciate everything Sarah Busman did to create and facilitate the event. My presentation was part of the first event on the first day, so I was able to especially focus on the other presenters and presentations throughout the weekend. Some of my favorite presentations included Didaktic MK’s set, Hyun Ji Choi’s performance of Nadia Boulanger’s Trois Pieces pour Violoncelle et Piano, and UNCP’s Percussion Ensemble’s performance of Annika Socolofsky’s work. Charly Lowry’s keynote address and concert were absolutely spellbinding and so inspiring. I hope I can attend this event in person in the future.

Earlier this month Straight Into Tangles was finally released after a year-long collaboration with Oberlin Arts and Sciences Orchestra. On August 6th, it received its web premiere. I especially enjoyed the talkback we did afterwards with people who attended.

On August 16th, we presented the work at New Music Gathering. In addition to showing the work, we talked as a panel about making it, the different modes of experimentation and collaboration that happened throughout the process. I was particularly moved by the orchestra members’ thoughts and sense of stakes within the process and the piece. That they felt it was theirs and were proud of their work made me so happy.