Phil Collins’ 37th New Music Works features music from Morocco, Israel, Lebanon, and Turkey
As Santa Cruz rolled its alternative way into the 1980s, artistic nonprofits began to sprout up like psilocybin mushrooms. Always at the edge of our avant-garde inner circle is musician/composer Phil Collins, who, for the past 36 years, has probed, pushed and exploded as many musical cliches as he could find.
Collins’ most enduring and provocative nonprofit endeavor—New Music Works—continues to take no prisoners, as it launches into its 37th season with an all-new Night of the Living Composers. Irreverent yet utterly serious, this never-boring music/theater showcase for eight regional composers promises electrifying and electronic musical magic, including a world premiere String Quartet by Michael McGushin and line-dancing to Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring.
Lanky music maverick Collins, like many touched with genius, appears to inhabit three planets at once. Always peering into a future most of us can’t even imagine, Collins and his off-kilter grin never rest, especially now that the New York-based Ratajova Publishing is inhaling all the guitar music Collins can compose. His repertoire over the years has ranged from atonal and gamelan variations, to cabaret, baroque and a jazzy hint of klezmer. All of the above come into play in the current season’s “Beyond Borders” theme.
“It started with teaching world music,” Collins says, seated in front of his 9-foot Steinway grand piano, which is wedged between the kitchen table, a wall of digital sound equipment and the late Lou Harrison’s celeste. “Whereas western music today seems to be trying to impress,” he says with a grin, “this music is emotionally informed right away,” he says of the upcoming exploration of the Middle Eastern roots of contemporary music.
For the New Music Works 2015-16 season, Collins brings in guest artists such as Israeli vocalist Etty Ben-Zaken, composer Eitan Steinberg, and pianist Kate Campbell, to explore contemporary music from Morocco, Israel, Lebanon, and Turkey. “Music has always operated as a social enabler and unifier,” the NMW conductor explains. “Music is what we share. It is inherently cohesive.”
Infamous for positioning genres onto collision courses for maximum playful tension, Collins happily acknowledges his own inspirational debt to pioneer musical fusionist Lou Harrison, and his epiphanies thanks to Phillip Glass—who “spoke above the herd, and yet beautifully in a baroque way.”
When he composes, Collins is admittedly “tortured.” “I walk and I sit. I go to the piano to test an idea. Then it goes into Finale software,” says Collins, who contends that, “software programs allow lots of junk to be easily produced.” Yet computer manipulation of sounds, harmonies and timing can also kick-start an infinity of compositional options. “Listen to this,” he commands playfully, clicking on a remote control. I hear a shimmering wall of sound that gradually gathers and morphs into subtle tonalities. Is it Brian Eno? “That’s Handel,” Collins reveals triumphantly. Somehow a slowed and stretched electronic riff of Handel’s Water Music popped out of composer Steed Cowart’s musical inventions, and for the season-opening concert, Collins has composed real-time musical responses that will be performed live, simultaneously with Cowart’s electronic artistry. Some strands of avant-garde music lead in that direction, and Collins continues to ride point in that territory.
Musical from early childhood, Collins recalls sitting as a kid, drawing, under the piano played by his mother. “My mother believed in me,” he says. Yet like all composers, Collins’ path has been one of struggle. “I was studying at SF State and UC Berkeley, and I made my living playing guitar in Herbert Mim’s band in San Francisco,” he says. “But my friends were here in Santa Cruz. And Lou Harrison was here.”
So in 1975 Collins came here, too, introduced himself to Harrison, whose work had demonstrated that “you could have dissonance and beauty in music.” The relationship took. Employed by Harrison to copy the celebrated composer’s music “from pencil to ink,” Collins says he lived in the woods and finally began to be a composer on his own. Seeking the company of others—“I was getting too obscure”—he and four fellow musicians formed New Music Works to perform their own music together. “Lou wrote a piece for me,” he says. In the meantime, Collins studied conducting with Nicole Paiement and took an M.A. in Music from UCSC.
After the first NMW concert, Collins recalls being so in debt that he started teaching, which he continues to do at Hartnell and Cabrillo colleges.
Tireless in his vision to expand the audience for new music, Collins admits “the network is everything in this business—everyone knows someone,” he grins. That network has powered Phil Collins’ life as a conductor, composer and performer—and shows no sign of letting up.
New Music Works: Night of the Living Composers is at 8 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 24, Samper Recital Hall, Cabrillo College. See NMW Facebook page for details.
WELL COMPOSED Phil Collins’ New Music Works: Night of Living Composers comes to Cabrillo College on Saturday, Oct. 24. PHOTO: CHIP SCHEUER
