Request elevates forces of creativity

Guitar player writes 2 pieces for violinist

Marc Shulgold, Rocky Mountain News

Published July 7, 2006 at midnight

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Sometimes, all it takes for a new piece of music to be born is a suggestion. That's how the seed of Mark Grey's Elevation was planted.

"I was at (London's) Barbican for a festival of John's music," Grey said, referring to longtime friend John Adams. The soloist in the Violin Concerto was Leila Josefowicz.

"She seemed very interested in my musical voice, so she asked me to send her some music," Grey said.

Two significant oaks have sprung from that acorn of an idea: the solo-violin San Andreas Suite and a violin concerto titled Elevation, which Josefowicz will premiere Sunday at the Colorado Music Festival.

"Leila champions a lot of new music," said Grey. But not just any new music. "She's been moving away from angular stuff and more into (traditional) harmony and rhythm. When she heard my pieces, she said she liked the harmonic progressions."

Searching for a contemporary solo piece to add to her recital repertory, the violinist requested an unaccompanied piece from Grey, and he responded with San Andreas - a work created in unusual fashion.

Though he was excited about writing a piece for Josefowicz, the composer faced a big hurdle: He doesn't play violin.

"I'm a guitar player. So, I wrote it on the guitar. The instrument simply served as a mechanical vehicle for my musical ideas."

Fortunately, through Grey's affiliation with the Kronos Quartet as sound engineer (see related story), he was quite familiar with the subtleties of the violin.

"All those years with Kronos," he noted, "the sound of violin-playing was ringing in my ears."

Grey acknowledged that hanging around the Kronos also provided a glimpse into uncountable contemporary compositional styles. So, who influenced him the most when he wrote San Andreas Suite?

"I've always looked toward Bach as a source of momentum. More as inspiration for style, rather than specific technique."

The experience of writing the suite encouraged him to think bigger, maybe a concerto. "It was inevitable," he said of Elevation. The piece would be his return ticket to the Colorado Music Festival, where he'd contributed a work to an evening of short experimental films in 2005.

While working on the sound mix for John Adams' opera The Death of Klinghoffer in Rotterdam two years ago, Grey befriended CMF music director Michael Christie.

"We talked on the train a lot and I told him about my sketches for a concerto. I played some of the ideas for him and he said, 'We've got to do this.' After that, a clarity developed in my work on the piece."

Only then did he contact Josefowicz with the idea of her serving as soloist. She agreed. By January 2005, the concerto was 90 percent completed, he said.

"I look at the piece as a tone poem, like the ones Sibelius wrote."

The title, Elevation, reflected "the optimistic sense of the word - a pull toward spiritual enlightenment," he noted. "There are plateaus that elevate you."

Grey acknowledged that the much-used format of the concerto continues to be relevant, even though it was born out of 19th-century audiences' worship of the dazzling virtuoso soloist.

"I'm looking for new ways to push that (concerto) form," he said, adding that he isn't alone in his pursuit.

"Look at the concertos written by Philip Glass and John Adams."

Colorado Music Festival

• What: Michael Christie conducts the CMF Chamber Orchestra in music by Mark Grey, Copland and Mozart. Grey will appear at a pre-concert talk at 6:30 p.m. in the tent.

• When and where: 7:30 p.m. Sunday, Chautauqua Auditorium, Ninth and Baseline streets, Boulder.

• Cost: $12 to $40

• Information: 303-440-7666

Shulgoldm@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-892-5296

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