Dispatches

The San Francisco Symphony played my piece Dispatches four times on their first subscription series of the 2015-16 season. This was the culmination of the "New Voices Residency," a partnership of the SFS with Miami's New World Symphony, and the music publisher Boosey & Hawkes. It was through this program that I was commissioned twice - for an orchestral work and a chamber work - to be workshopped and premiered in Miami and then given a hefty West Coast premiere in San Francisco. 

Writing for a full orchestra - and working with a group of laser-focused professionals like the SFS - is an ongoing journey for me, and in many respects I still feel like a fish out of water. I didn't grow up playing an orchestral instrument, and of course most of the music I listen to currently isn't something you'd hear in an orchestra hall. Part of the reason for writing Dispatches was to grapple with this distance.

[I talked a little bit about this in an interview with I Care If You Listen, which you can read here.]

DISPATCHES [mvt. 4]

Ted Hearne

with conductor Christian Reif

“There are times when Dispatches calls to mind the nostalgia of a composer like Alfred Schnittke, with his heartbroken invocations of a musical past that is beyond recovery. The difference is that the gap that interests Hearne is stylistic, not chronological — and that he shows it to be bridgeable after all.”

— Joshua Kosman, San Francisco Chronicle

Read Joshua Kosman's review of the San Francisco's premiere performance of Dispatches in the San Francisco Chronicle

YOU'RE CAUSING QUITE A DISTURBANCE

YOU'RE CAUSING QUITE A DISTURBANCE

ensemble Erykah Badu, three female backup singers, 40-piece orchestra with rhythm section
duration 50 minutes
commissioned by Brooklyn Philharmonic, Alan Pierson, artistic director
premiere June 7, 2013, Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM)

notes You're Causing Quite a Disturbance weaves together original music by Ted Hearne and arrangements of songs from Erykah Badu's 2008 album New Amerykah: Part One into an evening­-length work. Badu performed this work in June 2013 with the Brooklyn Philharmonic, under the direction of Alan Pierson, in two sold-out nights at BAM. 

PRESS

"Erykah Badu didn’t move much in the time she spent onstage at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Howard Gilman Opera House, in front of the Brooklyn Philharmonic and a rhythm section. She stood next to the conductor Alan Pierson in a top hat, high-heel boots, blue tights, heavy necklace, and a long coat, which she never took off. She occasionally made a slow, alert swivel toward the backup singers on her right, with a look of approval. Once she turned 90 degrees and methodically played a solo on a theremin, at her left. That was about it.....

"Mr. Hearne wrote material to complement six tracks from the record — “Amerykhan Promise,” “The Healer,” “Soldier,” “Master Teacher,” “Twinkle” and “Me” — as well as four interludes and compositions in themselves. His arrangements weren’t perfunctory, or there to class up the funk; they had rich harmony and tonal range and pulsation. You heard suspense­movie stabs, a high and stringent violin feature (played by Debbie Buck), sets of great pastoral chords with strings advancing to the front of the sound­mass and bending them toward slight dissonance. Or you heard new sounds written to complement old material — like the strings in Curtis Mayfield’s 1972 “Freddie’s Dead,” which were already cut up and fragmented in New Amerykah’s version of “Master Teacher” by the producers Shafiq Husayn and Georgia Ann Muldrow." 

-Ben Ratliff, The New York Times (6.9.13) read the whole article here

Erykah Badu with Ted Hearne and Alan Pierson

Want-World/Twinkle

Erykah Badu / Ted Hearne / Brooklyn Philharmonic (live)

Interlude 1 / Soldier

Erykah Badu / Ted Hearne / Brooklyn Philharmonic (live)

MIVOS QUARTET + SAUL WILLIAMS

'The answer to the question that wings ask'
for Saul Williams and MIVOS

“The vital [Mivos Quartet] embraces toothy modernism with punk-rock verve.”

— The New York Times

“Hip hop’s poet laureate.”

— CNN on Saul Williams

On April 26, 2016,  I returned to the Twin Cities' bold Liquid Music series for the premiere of The Answer to the Question That Wings Ask: a new piece I've written for the MIVOS Quartet and Saul Williams. This is a dream project in many ways. I'd worked with the MIVOS crew many times in many settings, but had never composed a piece for them and have been long searching for the perfect project that could help make that happen. Saul Williams is an artist I've admired from afar but never met or worked with before. He speaks so musically and sings with insanely powerful language:

The Answer to the Question That Wings Ask is an incredible poem of Saul's. My piece incorporates his words into an interactive piece for Saul to perform with the quartet, where the five musicians share and shift responsibilities for setting and maintaining flow and pulse. You can read more about this project in an interview with JP Merz here. 

Saul Williams and the Mivos Quartet have continued to perform this work around the world as part of an evening of collaborative works, including music by Jace Clayton and Thomas Kessler. 

The Answer to the Questions That Wings Ask
by Saul Williams
 

Is it a quest
for celebrity?

Validation?

A desire to be seen
as one who counts?

To be among
the counted?

 A limited number
of seats given to some
denied to others.

The latest American religion, taking off where
Scientology
left off?

The Great
Mind Control.

The belief
you can become.

The belief
that you can know?

Is it a matter
of cultivating envy?

Making others wish
they could have
what you have,

 live the life you live? 

The God of those
who beat the odds.

Cultivating talent?

Investing
10,000 hours?

Cultivating ideas
or exploiting them?

Thinking of what others
have not thought of?

Making communication easier.

Exploiting the unknown?

Fulfilling people’s
unwanted desires?

Making them feel
they can't live without
something they have
always lived without?

Is it self-actualization
or self-image actualization?

Is it the desire
to see one's name in print
or in lights?

Do the successful
escape the everyday travails
of worry, disappointment,
debt, and doubt?

Heroes?

Mothers?

Martyrs?

Is it about self-sacrifice
or having to sacrifice nothing?

Is it about changing
the times in which we live?

Exercising compassion through entrepreneurial individualism?

Striking gold?
Being of service?

The Golden Rule?

Divine intentions?

Raising families that
share those intentions?

Is it more about
ambitions than intentions?

Setting a goal?

Having a drive?

Libido?

Are we acting out
a sexual fantasy?

To control?

To dominate?

To be controlled?

To be dominated?

Is it about
philosophy?

Described and prescribed
patterns of thought?

Delineating
a structure,
a framework?

Are we talking
to ourselves?

Are we addicted?

Cultivating addiction?

Should we replace
weed with tobacco,
or tobacco with weed?

Water with wine,
wine with water?

Sugar with
honey or agave?

Meat with tofu?

Ridding ourselves
of toxins, is that it?

Ridding ourselves
of the unwanted,
the undesirable,
the unhealthy?

Are your thoughts
simply an echo
of how you feel?

Are your feelings
as good as thoughts?

Can you distinguish
between the two?

What is the purpose?

Money?

Does that solve
the problem?

What is
the problem?
What is
the question?

Will how I ask
the question,
determine
the answer?

What time is it?

Who set
the clock?

Who coded/decoded time?

Are there
different ways
of keeping it?

What is
the standard?

What is the
guiding principle?

Get rid of fear?

Every individual
knows what it feels like.

Everyone is wrapped
in their own emotions,
beliefs, timelines, and connections.

You can make
as much sense of it
as you wish, or retreat
into your shell
of beliefs and disbeliefs.

Will you observe,
take action, build,
contribute, sit back,
doubt, grow fat
through comfort
or through worry?

What if nothing
you are convinced of
is actually the case?

What if it works
the way it does
in your presence
because it's what
you expect of it?

What if the truth
is not enough?

What if it is not
enough to be sincere
in your actions and deeds?

If you must also
learn to listen
and not blame?

To see your own faults
and not list those
of others?

What if
the other
is a lie?

If nothing is original,
Unique, or without purpose?

What if it means
that you must sometimes
sit in silence and not
defend yourself?

What if you are
not alone
and alone,

unable to see
the reason or understand,
and your understanding
in all of its glory
manages to still
get in the way?

What if your mind
works against you?

What if it is simply
not your time

and the stars
are right where
they belong for it all
to make sense?

And if you choose
not to believe it?

What if you are
too tired to write
or think and the music
is too loud to concentrate
or fall asleep?

what if when you
turn off the music,
your mind starts
to orchestrate the silence

and every creak of wood

the wind through trees

the call of birds

Your heartbeat

is enough
to dance?

Dance.

I am currently working with Saul on the libretto for a new project -- an evening-length piece directed by Patricia McGregor -- commissioned by the LA Philharmonic, to be premiered by the Phil with Gustavo Dudamel conducting in April 2018. More information here. 

Outlanders

OUTLANDERS is an album of songs near and dear to my heart that I started writing in 2008, which came into focus during my first residency at The MacDowell Colony in 2009, and which I adapted and recorded with some of my best musician friends over the course of the next 6 years.

They're mostly love songs. And they're a record of the ways I was working through the tensions between compositional hybridity and clear, direct songwriting.

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The core group of musicians involved is:

Nathan Koci, keyboards/vocals/occasionally French horn (which he plays way better than anyone who never practices should play that instrument)
Ron Wiltrout, drums
Taylor Levine, electric guitar
Leah Coloff, cello

Some tunes involve much larger forces, including Timo Andres on piano, Miki Cloud and Caroline Shaw on violin, Erin Wight (viola), Eileen Mack (clarinets), Matthew Wright (trombone), Chris Coletti (trumpet), Michelle Farah (oboe), Kelli Kathman (flute) and Kris Saebo (bass).

Eventually, I combined this into an album produced by Philip White.

Outlanders was released on New Amsterdam Records in February 2016, with album art by Gabriela Salazar.

KATRINA BALLADS EDUCATIONAL INITIATIVE

A new program brings together high-school students from different communities to discuss equity and social justice and to attend a live performance of Katrina Ballads

This educational initiative, created and led by music education professor and researcher Colleen Sears (Eastman School of Music, Columbia University), consists of a 2½-hour discussion group in which students engage with an interdisciplinary, multi-media curriculum that explores issues of race and class, media literacy, and the politics of crisis through the lens of two pieces of art: Spike Lee’s documentary When the Levees Broke, and Ted Hearne’s oratorio Katrina Ballads. This gathering is followed by a live performanceof Ted Hearne’s oratorio Katrina Ballads, and artist talkback/Q&A. 

2015 marks the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. The storm forced the nation to engage with issues of race, socioeconomic status, climate change and sustainability in a raw and emotionally charged way. As a new generation of Americans confronts the challenges of an unequal society, it becomes all the more important to critically examine the ways in which the events of Katrina revealed, altered and/or magnified perceptions about race and socioeconomic status in this country. Through dynamic partnerships with ensembles and presenting organizations, we hope to bring this exciting and challenging initiative to cities across the country.

David Vickerman leads a performance of "Katrina Ballads" as part of an educational social justice initiative at The College of New Jersey in March 2015.

Through direct aesthetic experience with music and video, students are called to consider challenging questions:

• What happened during Hurricane Katrina? 
• How did Katrina reveal, alter or magnify perceptions about race and socioeconomic status here in the United States?
• What have we learned about (in)justice as a result?
• How does Katrina force us to engage with ideas about truth, fairness, equality, opportunity, generosity, love?
• Who decides what truth will be told?
• What are the rights of citizens?
• Which populations were affected by the storm? 

The culminating performance of Katrina Ballads completes the students’ experience, illustrating how music and art can be used as social commentary that is relevant to current national and global issues, and a catalyst for powerful discussions about equity, access and social justice.

ABOUT KATRINA BALLADS

Ted Hearne’s acclaimed 2008 oratorio Katrina Ballads uses as its libretto primary-source texts from the week surrounding Hurricane Katrina. Aired on national media and immediately archived forever on the internet, these are the words of survivors, relief workers, politicians and celebrities, interspersed as an emotional and journalistic song cycle. Featuring four singers and a mixed chamber ensemble of 11 musicians, Hearne’s music combines elements of many different musical styles into a compelling hybrid, challenging both expectations about the sounds and purposes of contemporary music, and our relationships to genre in art.

The hour-long performance of Katrina Ballads is accompanied by devastating and haunting film by renowned filmmaker Bill Morrison. This work, shown concurrently with the music, manipulates news clips and source footage of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast after the hurricane into a visual world that is both slowly undulating in its texture and highly narrative.

Katrina Ballads is the recipient of the 2009 Gaudeamus Prize for composition. The work was premiered at the 2007 Piccolo Spoleto Festival in a production by Yes is a World and Charleston's New Music Collective, received its New York premiere in 2008, and was included in the New York City Opera's 2009 VOX Festival.

A full recording of the work was released on New Amsterdam Records (with distribution through Naxos of America) in August 2010, and garnered rave reviews including a place on The Top 10 Classical Albums of 2010 of The Washington Post and Time Out Chicago.

A new theatrical production of the work featuring film by Bill Morrison, from Beth Morrison Productions, was premiered at New York's (le) Poisson Rouge and at the Hobby Center in Houston, Texas. The New York Times called this performance "barnstorming... [with a] tough edge and wildness of spirit."

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ABOUT COLLEEN SEARS

 Dr. Colleen Sears is an assistant professor and the coordinator of music education at The College of New Jersey. Dr. Sears also leads curriculum development and interdisciplinary programming for The College of New Jersey’s Institute for Social Justice in the Arts and Humanities. She holds a Bachelor of Music degree from The College of New Jersey, a Master of Arts from the Eastman School of Music and a Doctor of Education in music education from Teachers College, Columbia University.  

Dr. Sears’ research explores issues of equity and access in music education.  She focuses on uncovering and examining stereotypes and transparent, oppressive power structures that exist inside the music classroom and within the professional community.  Her research on gender issues in music education has been published in Music Education Research, GEMS (Gender, Education, Music, Society), Tempo Magazine, and The Woman Conductor.  Her work has recently been presented at the 2015 NAfME Eastern Division Conference, the 2015 Colloquium for Teachers of Instrumental Music Methods, the 2015 Music Education as Social, Political, and Cultural Action MayDay Group Colloquium, and at the 2014 American Educational Research Association’s Annual Meeting.

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TO MAKE IT HAPPEN

Katrina Ballads Educational Initiative is a lean and flexible program that does not require many resources to implement. We will work collaboratively with the educational outreach contact from your presenting organization to enhance the Katrina Ballads performance with this innovative program.

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stills from Spike Lee's "When the Levees Broke"

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Coloring Book (2015, 30 min.)

Colorado Public Radio hosts Roomful of Teeth in the CPR Performance Studio on January 17, 2017. Letter to My Father (in three parts), the fourth movement from COLORING BOOK by Ted Hearne

Coloring Book

ensemble vocal octet (SSAATBBB)
duration 30 minutes
written for Roomful of Teeth
commission Barlow Endowment for Music Composition
premiere October 2015, SONiC Festival, Brooklyn NY
publisher Unsettlement Music
recording 2020 release, New Amsterdam Records

“Whiteness is not a kinship or culture... Whiteness is not who you are. Which is why it’s entirely possible to despise whiteness without disliking yourself.”

— Eula Biss, "White Debt" (2015)

---

notes Coloring Book is a collection of 5 songs for the vocal octet Roomful of Teeth.

I set the words of three Black American writers of different generations (Zora Neale Hurston, James Baldwin, Claudia Rankine), to be sung by a mostly white ensemble for largely white audiences, as a way of better understanding whiteness and structures of white supremacy.

Not to attempt to embody these writers and never to speak for them, but because I wanted to know: Could I better understand their words by speaking them in my own voice? And if whiteness was not a kinship or culture but rather a classification invented merely to exclude those who were not-white, could we best reckon with the construction of race and ourselves as white people by learning from the words of non-white writers?

I talked a little more about the process of writing this piece and the idea of creative appropriation in this interview.

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TEXT

1. The game of keeping
    [The position of my white neighbor is much more difficult.]
No brown specter pulls up a chair beside me when I sit down to eat.
No dark ghost thrusts its leg against mine in bed.
    [The game of keeping what one has is never so exciting as the game of getting.]                                          

Zora Neale Hurston
from “How it feels to be colored me” (1928)

2. You are not the guy
And you are not the guy and still you fit the description because there is only one guy who is always the guy fitting the description.

Each time it begins in the same way, it doesn’t begin the same way, each time it begins it’s the same. Flashes, a sired, the stretched-out roar—

And you are not the guy and still you fit the description
            –roar—
still you fit the description because there is only one guy who is always the guy fitting the description.

This is what it looks like. You know this is wrong. This is not what it looks like. You need to be quiet. This is wrong. You need to close your mouth now. This is what it looks like. You can’t drive yourself sane. You are not the guy.

And you are not the guy and still you fit the description because there is only one guy who is always the guy fitting the description. Get on the ground now. Then I just knew.

Yes officer rolled around on my tongue, which grew out of a bell that could never ring because its emergency was a tolling I was meant to swallow.
                                                                                               
Claudia Rankine
from Citizen (2014)

3. What feels
What feels more than feeling?
You are afraid there is something you are missing, something obvious.
A feeling that feelings might be irrelevant if they point to one’s irrelevance
pulls at you.
What feels more than feeling?

Claudia Rankine
from Citizen (2014)

4. Letter to my father
Him. He
He has only heard what I
I felt. He
He is far away but I
I see him.
Him but dimly across the ocean and the continent that have fallen between us.
Us. He
He is so pale with his whiteness then and I
I am so colored.
Music. The great blobs of purple and red emotion have not touched him.
He is so pale with his whiteness then and I
I am so colored.
               

Zora Neale Hurston
from “How it feels to be colored me” (1928)

5. Your people
Your self and your people are indistinguishable from each other,
really, in spite of the quarrels you may have,
and your people are all people.
                                                                       

James Baldwin
 from an interview with James Elgrably in The Paris Review (1984)

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WORKS
 

LARGE WORKS WITH VOICES

Farming (2023, 60 min.)
24 voices, 6 instruments
Place (2018/2020, 80 min.)
6 voices, 18 instruments
In Your Mouth/Dorothea (2019)
voice and ensemble; voice and piano
Sound from the Bench (2014/2017, 40 min.)
mixed choir with 2 electric guitars and percussion
Coloring Book (2015, 30 min.)
vocal octet
The Source (2014, 65 min.)
7 instruments, 4 voices
Partition (2010, 20 min.)
mixed choir with full orchestra
Katrina Ballads (2007, 60 min.)
11 instruments, 5 voices

ORCHESTRA

Brass Tacks (2018, 6 min.)
large orchestra
Miami in Movements (2017, 35 min.)
large orchestra with video
Dispatches (2015, 18 min.)
large orchestra
Respirator (2015, 13 min.)
chamber orchestra
Stem (2013, 25 min.)
large orchestra
Law of Mosaics (2012, 30 min.)
string orchestra
Erasure Scherzo (2012, 6 min.)
large orchestra
Word for Word (2011, 10 min.)
large orchestra
Shizz (2010/2017, 4 min.)
versions for large orchestra and chamber orchestra
Build a Room (2010, 20 min.)
concerto for trumpet and orchestra
Patriot (2007, 9 min.)
large orchestra


SOLO WORKS

Lobby Music (2021, 7 min.)
solo cello, with electronics
Inheritance (2021, 5 min.)
solo piano
The Luminous Road (2020, 2 min.)
solo piccolo
Distance Canon (2020, 3 min.)
solo violin
Another National Anthem (2019, 5 min.)
solo piano
DaVZ23BzMH0 (2016, 7 min.)
solo cello, with electronics
Parlor Diplomacy (2011, 20 min.)
solo piano
Nobody's (2010, 4 min.)
solo violin or viola

 

CHAMBER MUSIC
(2-5 instruments)

Exposure (2017, 18 min.)
string quartet
To Be the Thing (2017, 10 min.)
voice, electric guitar and percussion, with live electronics
The Answer to the Question That Wings Ask (2016, 11 min.)
string quartet and narrator
Furtive Movements (2013, 14 min.)
cello and percussion
Interlude for Fingers (2013, 4 min.)
two vibraphones
Candy (2011, 8 min.)
electric guitar quartet
Thaw (2009, 12 min.)
percussion quartet
Ghostspace (2009, 8 min.)
mixed quartet (accordion, electric guitar, piano, drums)
Vessels (2008, 10 min.)
trio (violin, viola, piano)
Crib Dweller (2007, 8 min.)
mixed quintet (bass clarinet, elec. guitar, trumpet, trombone, horn)
23 (2005, 8 min.)
mixed quintet (flute, horn, elec. guitar, piano, drums)
Warning Song (2006, 7 min.)
voice and cello, with electronics
One of Us, One of Them (2005, 8 min.)
piano and percussion
Forcefield (2004, 5 min.)
viola and vibraphone


MEDIUM TO LARGE ENSEMBLE MUSIC
(6-16 instruments)

To Be Whole Is To Be Part (2021, 7 min.)
14 musicians
Authority (2019, 30 min.)
10 musicians
Time is forever dividing itself toward innumerable futures [Speed is Pure] (2019, 40 min.)
for Pam Tanowitz Dance 4 horns, electric guitar, voice with live processing
One Like (2016, 7 min.)
14 musicians
For the Love of Charles Mingus (2016, 9 min.)
6 violins
Baby [an argument] (2016, 11 min.)
10 musicians
By-By Huey (2014, 10 min.)
sextet (fl, bcl, vln, vc, pno, perc)
"The Cage" Variations (2014, 20 min.)
6 instruments (fl, cl/bcl, vln, vc, pno, perc) with baritone solo
Crispy Gentlemen (2012, 15 min.)
7 instruments (fl/picc, cl/bcl, vln, vla, vc, pno, perc)
But I Voted for Shirley Chisholm (2012, 8 min.)
11 instruments+tape
Randos (2012, 8 min.)
7 instruments (L'Histoire septet)
Cutest Little Arbitrage (2011, 12 min.)
6 instruments (2 sax, trombone + rhythm section)
Is it Dirty (2010, 8 min.)
16 instruments with 2 singers
versions for 10 instruments and 6 instruments
Eyelid Margin (2009, 12 min.)
10 instruments (brass quintet + 5 double-reeds)
Snowball (2008, 6 min.)
8 instruments (bcl, tpt, tbn, vln, acc, egtr, pno, dr)
version for 7 instruments (bcl, bn, tpt, tbn, vln, db, perc)
Illuminating the Maze (2008/2016, 15 min.)
6 instruments (tpt, hn, tbn, egtr, pno, dr)
version for 11 instruments
Music from "Body Soldiers" (2008, 10 min.)
5 instruments + singer
Cordavi and Fig (2007, 8 min.)
13 instruments
Antiphon (2003, 8 min.)
9 instruments (3 cl, bcl, 3 tpt, tbn, pno)


CHORAL MUSIC

Animals (2018, 9 min.)
Fervor (2018, 3 min.)
What it might say (2016, 5 min.)
Coloring Book (2015, 30 min.)
Consent (2014, 7 min.)
Ripple (2012, 10 min.)
Privilege (2009, 14 min.)
Mass for St. Mary’s (2008, 10 min.)

Music for youth choir:
The Definition of Crisis (2020, 2-5 min.)
Room for Something (2011, 8 min.)
Away (2010, 6 min.)
Because (2006, 6 min.)
Murder on the Road in Alabama (2003, 6 min.)


SONG AND SOLO VOICE

Freefucked (2022)
voice and solo cello, with vocal processing and fixed electronics
Translation: Two Cigar Butts (2021)
two singers with electronics (optional piano and/or bass)
In Your Mouth/Dorothea (2019)
voice and ensemble; voice and piano
To Be the Thing (2017, 10 min.)
voice, electric guitar and percussion, with live electronics
Intimacy and Resistance (2010, 5 min.)
voice and piano
Charleston Songbook (2008, 20 min.)
voice and piano w/ lead sheets
I Remember (2007, 8 min.)
for three sopranos, or one soprano with electronics
I Carry Your Heart (2007, 5 min.)
voice and piano
Warning Song (2006, 7 min.)
voice and cello, with electronics

COLLABORATIVE WORKS

We Are Radios (2018)
Miami in Movements (2017)
The Answer to the Question That Wings Ask (2016,)
Hand Eye (2015)
New Dances for the League of David (2014) 
You're Causing Quite a Disturbance (2013)
R WE WHO R WE (2013)
Histories (2012)