Ray Lustig composes and teaches at The Juilliard School, and his music has been hailed as “entrancing…surreally beautiful…ecstatic… [and] rapturous” by The New York Times. Intriguingly, Lustig spent several years in molecular and cell biology research at Columbia University before returning to his passion of music .
We caught up with the NYC based creative to talk about LATENCY CANONS, his current project on RocketHub.
Your project has a unique set of layers that’s very different from a lot of other modern recordings. What was the catalyst for creating this album?
I’ve always thought a lot about how music brings people together in the world, and how as our world rapidly changes that will always take on new meanings. After the birth of my daughter we started using FaceTime and Skype a lot to be in frequent contact with grandparents and great-grandparents all over the world, so they could watch her grow. I remember trying to sing happy birthday once over FaceTime, and how we couldn’t stay together in time because of that tiny delay, or latency, in the transmission. We’d be slowing down to try to stay together with the delayed video we were receiving of them, and they’d be slowing down to try to stay together with the delayed video they were seeing of us, which only made us slow down further; one person wasn’t listening as much to us and had gone on ahead. We were all over the place. Sometimes the delay was pretty short, but sometimes it would get very long; the speed just depended on the overall internet traffic at the given moment. It was actually kind of cool, chaotic. And I remember thinking that it will be great someday if the technology could advance to eliminate the latency so that people could try to play music together with faraway friends. There is specialized technology with very low latency, but it’s expensive, high-end, the kind of thing most people wouldn’t even know about or be able to figure out how to use, or even get ahold of it. Meanwhile, there are all these wonderful user-friendly and free video conferencing services that people are already using all the time. What if we didn’t wait for the latency situation to improve, but instead found a way to work with it? Even better, what if I could write music that didn’t just work around the latency but actually NEEDED it, music that without latency would actually not be as rich.
In my teaching at Juilliard I enjoy teaching students about canons. “Canon” literally means “rule,” and in music usually refers to some kind of strict procedure that a composer adheres to, most often having a single line of music be layered over an exact or precisely modified copy of itself that may shifted in time, ie. delayed by a measure, as in rounds like “Row Row Row Your Boat.” This simple ancient concept has been varied in infinite ways by composers throughout music history, yet shows no signs of growing old. Just when it seems all of the possible combinations have been tried, or the very idea of canons is tired, along comes someone with a fresh idea. Canons are described in terms of their time delay (ie. two beats, one measure), their pitch adjustment (if the copy is higher or lower than the original), and any other modifications to the original (ie. backwards, upside down, twice as fast or slow, etc.) In the experiment-obsessed 20th century, all of these parameters were questioned. What if the time delay were extremely short, or the pitch difference extremely small? (György Ligeti’s “micro canons”) What if the time delay were not simple but instead described in terms of complicated mathematical relationships (like log or Pi) that could only be realized by a machines? (Conlon Nancarrow’s player piano canons for player piano rolls) What if the time interval of delay was not a fixed number but instead was gradually growing? (Steve Reich’s Piano Phase) For me, I wondered, what if the time interval of delay were not only not fixed, but not even stable, outside of the control of the composer or performers or anyone? Do you see where I’m going with this? What if we got our faraway friends playing together over the internet and used the internet’s unstable delay as the time interval of delay for canons? Thus the idea for Latency Canons was born.
I proposed the idea to American Composers Orchestra, one of the most forward-thinking major orchestras in the world. And they commissioned me to create the new piece as a part of their CoLaboratory Play it UNsafe program, which fosters experimental projects that would make a lot of the other major orchestras a little nervous. Latency Canons was definitely one of those nervous-making ideas. But that’s the kind of thing ACO is game for. So we partnered with a talented UK string quartet, Gildas Quartet, to play together in concert, with ACO onstage at Carnegie Hall, Gildas Quartet at the Royal College of Music in Manchester, UK, and even two other string quartets tucked away in different rooms within Carnegie Hall, a total of four ensembles in the chatroom, playing together though they were in different places.
Latency Canons is a piece about reaching across an ocean or around the world to commune in music with faraway friends, a new bridge that we have to make our world smaller. An imperfect bridge, but one with its own special character. It’s one that allows us to forget, momentarily, just how far apart we are, to hold hands across an ocean. The music has been described as sounding like a resonant cathedral that wraps around the world.
It always makes me think of the first trans-Atlantic telephone call, how it must have been nearly unintelligible, but it must have been such an emotional moment to have made any connection at all across that vast ocean. That harsh muted crackle must have been, to some ears, one of the most beautiful sounds they’d ever heard. Today, we can even try to make music together with friends far away, both seeing and hearing them, and we don’t have to let the limitations frustrate us but instead we can make use of them as the most interesting thing of all.
You seem to be bridging two very different worlds – one being very classic and disciplined, and the other being very modern and digitally intertwined. Can you touch on how this approach effects both the craft and end result of the work?
The classical tradition is very much alive; there remains a powerful thirst in our world for those sounds and ideas, the great composers and their contemporary experimental progeny. And like all musical traditions, it’s evolving with the times. The orchestra, gigantic and complex ensemble that it is, evolves a bit more slowly because it’s this huge ship that needs to be steered carefully. But it is evolving nonetheless, some orchestras more rapidly than others. American Composers Orchestra’s whole identity is to exist at the leading edge of that evolution. ACO is, however, a symphonic orchestra of classically trained musicians of top caliber, and with that training comes a great deal of inheritance of all those norms, traditions, standard practices, leadership hierarchies, unwritten rules, written rules, compensation packages, etc.etc. that have allowed these enormous and unwieldy ensembles to hold together and not fall apart for decades or centuries. And it’s not just orchestras but all of us in classical music, and all of us in any tradition, that have inherited norms without even realizing it. What’s special about ACO is how they’re open to recognizing those norms that are inherited, ready to pinpoint them, call them into question, adapt them, change them, even drop them if needed, for the sake of the art form.
There is very little that’s normal about what they needed to do to help me put Latency Canons together, so they offered me something that is increasingly hard for orchestras to give to new pieces: the golden commodity of time, time to workshop my ideas and try them out with the whole orchestra, time to figure out if (yes, IF, it was a big IF) and how something like this could work. Everything from the technical connections, to the troubleshooting, to figuring out what will actually sound interesting under these strange circumstances.
The first of the three workshops I showed up with a just single sheet of paper. “That’s all? Where’s the rest of the music?” Well I wasn’t going to write a big fat symphonic score until I had a better sense of what I’d be writing. I was using the workshop as a true lab; I just wanted to hear them do a few things for me, and see what happens. The second workshop, I again showed up with just a single sheet of paper. Some of the orchestra personnel started to look a little nervous, justifiably so, for the technical side was also giving us trouble that day. After all, this thing was already scheduled to premiere at Carnegie Hall, the publicity had already gone out, tickets had already been sold. But we were getting closer, and the ACO is nothing if not adventurous. For the third workshop I was finally able to take what we’d learned and put together an actual passage of real music for all the players to play. But it wasn’t a piece yet, just some stuff. As a matter of fact, after squeezing in an extra fourth workshop, we even went into the dress rehearsal still pretty nervous about whether it would work. At the dress rehearsal, it seemed to work, but anything could happen. The performance would be anyone’s guess. What would the internet traffic be like at 8pm on a Friday in New York? Would our musicians in Manchester, UK, where it was 1am in the morning, have any tech problems with no one around to help? And how was it going to sound to an audience that hadn’t followed us through all the trials and tribulations?
I actually think every composer, great and small, has faced many a nail-biting moment like this. Even Beethoven could probably sympathize. I’m sure he was going bonkers at the premiere of his ninth Symphony. New century, new technology, same old feeling.
How is the crowdfunding campaign going? What have you learned in this process?
I have to say I was terrified at the prospect of having to run a crowdfunding campaign, so much so that it took me far too long to kick myself in the pants and get started. I feared I’d never get up the nerve to directly ask people for money for my projects. I felt the pressure of having to make the project like the greatest thing since sliced bread. I worried the campaign would go nowhere and I’d finally have to face that no one cares about my work. However, I recognized that crowdfunding is pretty much mandatory for artists these days, so I knew I’d have to step up to the plate.
I’ve been very pleasantly surprised that the process has shown me how wrong I was. People seem to really want to jump on board. It’s exciting for them. It makes them feel good. Some because they like me, others because they like my work, some both. It’s helped me realize that my project is actually very cool, and people feel cool when they’re associated with a cool project. It’s very gratifying for me to realize I do have a serious community of supporters and friends. It’s all broken down that wall of terror that paralyzed me for so long, and when it comes time for my next campaign, it will be a lot easier to get going. A big thanks to Rockethub who have created a great system, and provided friendly approachable help videos to get me started.
On the more concrete end, I recently learned that Rockethub partners with NYFA to offer fiscal sponsorship for those who qualify, so that individual artists or new projects can offer tax deductibility to their donors. Good to know for next time! Lots of generous people out there could use a tax deduction, especially the really big donors.
Any advice for other artists leveraging crowdfunding for similar endeavors?
I’ve realized that it’s still a lot of work. People aren’t just going to know about your campaign because you posted it on Facebook. People don’t see everything you post. I’m not a heavy-duty player on Facebook, so my posts aren’t rewarded with heavy presence on everyone’s timelines. There were people who I know would give me a like or even a share who after repeated posts had not done a thing, and I realized that they’re probably not seeing the campaign. They have no idea. I’ve tried to be a little more regular about my postings on FB, Twitter, and LinkedIn and actually downright obsessive now that I’m in the final week. But more important is actually directly contacting a few close allies and asking for them to do something to help you get the word out. You can leave it a little open-ended so as not to put them on the spot; most people wouldn’t feel comfortable posting someone else’s campaign on their page, but let those people know that even a “like” would help. Real inner-circle people, like my sister, actually sent a personal appeal to a subset of her network, and that has definitely kicked things up a notch. So get in the habit of posting about it, yes, but more importantly of talking about to friends and family, and asking them for ideas for more people you could reach out to. I was very surprised to learn how big my network actually is. I had no idea.
Also, watch Rockethub’s Success School videos. They’re full of good ideas. Even if you only have time to watch a few minutes, it can help get you in the spirit. The CEO Brian Meece, who does a lot of the videos, is a very charismatic guy in a very friendly and low-key way. Watching him made me realize I can adapt my campaigning to my own personal style. I’m better off being myself and not putting on a calculated show. And it can actually be fun!
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