BY STEPHANIE ESLAKE
In the past three years, composer Alice Humphries has produced new music with fascinating artists, moved from Melbourne to make a new home for herself in Perth, and even welcomed a new baby into her family.
Her newly released album SALT is a record of this time in Alice’s life — at once eventful and challenging, with reflections on the patience required of motherhood, the ways people can come together to create new music, and the wild and natural world that surrounds us through it all.
Hi Alice, congratulations on releasing your new album SALT. First up, I must tell you I’m thoroughly impressed with the talent — yourself included. You worked with Syzygy Ensemble, the Letter String Quartet, and trumpet soloist Callum G’Froerer. When you’re working with such high-calibre musicians, how much do you learn from each other? That is, placing you and these players in the same room gives each of you such a rare opportunity to grow and to understand music in new ways.
Hi Stephanie, thank you — it’s great to be chatting with you. That’s a great question, and I think it highlights how important the composer-performer relationship is and how fruitful it can be. Syzygy, LSQ, and Callum all bring such diverse and incredible personal musical skills to what they do that the three pieces just evolved to be specifically written for them.
Every rehearsal, workshop, recording session, and performance was a massive learning opportunity for me, and a chance for us all to build an understanding of our respective approaches to music.
From my perspective, it’s all about clear communication and collaboration between the performer and composer. So, I need to be open to criticism and different ideas, whilst still being the ‘creative director’ of the work and taking ownership of musical decisions.
Let’s talk a bit about the pieces on SALT. You wrote Nautical Twilight for the Letter String Quartet — and it was a combination of composition, recording, manipulation of the ‘tape’ from the session, before even more composition again! What did you learn from the process of creating a piece that actively responded to the way your performers approached it?
That it is time-consuming! Also, it is a wonderfully organic and enjoyable way to make music.
The Letter String Quartet is a really interesting group. The musicians are comfortable in several different genres, and are all great improvisers as well as working with traditionally notated music. There are several semi-improvised sections in the piece that were designed to highlight and make use of their musicality and ability to interact with each other in an improvisatory context.
We had several workshops where we could troubleshoot and experiment with the notation and work out solutions to the challenge of coordinating the live score with the tape part. I think composing the piece across that extended process you mentioned allowed the necessary time to work through those challenges in a collaborative and organic way.
That piece is highly representative of the album’s theme, and even its title and cover artwork: you’ve included themes and techniques that take a scientific approach in portraying the ocean and the natural beauties of twilight. How much calculation goes into using musical notes to portray scientific phenomena, compared to using your intuition to write a piece that ‘sounds’ natural, or simply reminds us of the ‘feeling’ of nature?
That’s a great question, and one that I was definitely thinking about as I wrote the piece. The use of scientific data relating to natural phenomena was very much a part of the generative phase of composing the work.
I did a lot of general reading on the three stages of twilight — civil, nautical, and astronomical — and it really informed the structure of the work. I wanted to recreate the sense of stillness and gradual change that we associate emotionally with twilight, and combine it with the underlying busyness that is evident in the scientific data – many animals and insects become active and hunt at twilight, stars become visible, and there is actually a lot going on. I used scientific data such as the rhythm of firefly flashes to generate musical material, set constraints, and make little rules for myself. However, as I moved through the compositional process, those rules and constraints relaxed, and I allowed the more instinctive side of composing to take over.
I guess I used that scientific data to build a sort of scaffolding for the piece within which I could freely explore and use my intuition to make musical decisions that reflect that more emotional ‘feeling’ of nature.
Patience seems a world away from these natural sounds we hear in Nautical Twilight. A demanding and hyperactive trumpet solo opens the piece, and it’s quite relentless throughout the full nine minutes. I understand the name is a reflection of your experience navigating life with your newborn son, which is very telling of the themes we can hear! How and why did you translate the ‘patience’ required of motherhood into a piece for solo trumpet?
Patience was my first dive back into composing after becoming a mother. The concept of patience was very much at the forefront of my mind at the time. I had to learn to be patient not only with my newborn son, but with myself, with my body, and my mind.
The piece isn’t so much written for double-bell trumpet as it is for Callum personally. We’ve known each other a long time, and actually studied jazz together at WAAPA, so when Callum approached me to write him a solo piece it felt like a great way to re-engage with composing and my own creative expression.
Writing for solo trumpet comes with its own challenges, but having the extra bell brought up so many more possibilities. Callum was fantastic at explaining and demonstrating ideas, so it was a really collaborative project.
To go into detail, the concept of ‘patience’ informs several aspects of the work. Harmonically, it’s very suspended, and I really delay any resolution as much as possible till the very end of the piece. The textural elements involving the double-bell with different mutes explore that sense of hyper-activity, of needing to do a million things at once.
This textural ‘busyness’ is contrasted with more open, melodic sections that are really about being present in the moment, being patient, and just existing.
In the piece Salt, you write explicitly about the ocean and waves. Can we hear your experience of the ocean as a surfer, or did you write this piece in a way that interacted with research on the nature of the ocean and tides?
A bit of both, actually. The initial inspiration for the piece comes from my love of surfing and the ocean, and started with the question: How are waves made?
I love to watch the ocean and waves breaking as well as surfing them, and there is a definite rhythm to breaking waves. Through reading and research into how waves are generated, I found that even the terminology around ocean waves seemed to have a lot of musical possibility to me. Words like ‘pulse’, ‘swell period’, ‘set’, and ‘surge’ and the music seemed to grow organically from there.
Salt is less specific in its use of scientific data in the creative process than Nautical Twilight. It is a freer, more general musical response to the science of ocean waves and my personal experiences in the ocean.
Before settling in for this interview, you mentioned to me that during the scope of this project you moved across Australia, from Melbourne to Perth — and even had your son Arlo! Considering this album was composed over such a full three years, how did it change shape from conception to completion? Indeed, your life changed so much in this time.
The album was really conceived as I went along. I was composing on a commission basis, so working with lots of different ensembles on different projects. However, I knew I wanted to release another album at some point.
The electroacoustic nature of Nautical Twilight really lends itself to a studio recording, so it started with that. I originally planned to do more electroacoustic works for the album, but I was commissioned to write a 20-minute work for Syzygy Ensemble. It was a wonderful opportunity to write a work of more substantial duration and build on my relationship with the ensemble. It felt like a great chance to continue to explore the natural phenomena concept that I started with Nautical Twilight but in a totally different context.
Of course, life can be complicated. I fell pregnant and then had my son Arlo a few days after the premiere of Salt. I couldn’t attend the concert as I had moved back to Perth to be closer to family. So, the album was put on hold for a bit.
However, after I had finished writing Patience, I put the pieces together to form the album. For me, it’s a tangible record of my musical explorations during this period of my life.
I’d like to leave you with a note on genre. You have a solid jazz background — and you have chosen to move right into the contemporary classical sphere for this album. What gives you the confidence to move freely between these spaces, and why do you think some people feel restricted into either “classical” or “jazz” — or “contemporary classical”, to divide it even further?
That’s an interesting question. I don’t know if people feel restricted so much, or if that’s just the music that they are really into. Both ‘jazz’ and ‘contemporary classical’ are so big and diverse in themselves, and cross over in so many interesting ways, many musicians and composers now just tend to ignore the divide. I think for me it’s not so much confidence to move between them as it is curiosity.
I’ve always loved really diverse genres of music. I actually grew up playing classical music, learning piano and cello, and even flirting with the viola for a bit. However, I wanted to play in the jazz band, so I took up saxophone and just fell in love with the music. I was really deep into playing jazz for a long time, but I gradually got more interested in arranging and composing, and I began listening to more contemporary classical music.
I guess it just built my curiosity and led to the desire to study composition from that perspective, and explore what composing in that world would be like for me.
Any parting words about your album, and what you might like the listener to reflect on as they experience it?
I guess just that – experience it. While I put lots of planning and work into building the music’s structure, and there are patterns, rules, and techniques involved, I don’t want the listener to focus on any of that. I use all those things to try and build an evocative and engaging soundworld that an audience can just swim around it.
For me, the joy of listening to music is that we all ultimately experience it alone, inside our heads. You might not hear something the way someone else does, it might make you feel something different. Just dive in and let it wash over you.
Listen to SALT on Alice Humphries’ Bandcamp.
What does this story mean to you?
If you like, you can shout the writer a coffee for volunteering her time for Australian arts journalism. No amount too much or little, and any amount appreciated.
[purchase_link id=”12246″ text=”Add to Cart” style=”button” color=”red”]
Images supplied.
