Living with The Noise
For the past few days, I’ve had the great pleasure of doing a short residency at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls—where the Symphonic Band has been hard at work preparing a revised version of The Noise. Four years ago last Wednesday was the initial premiere of the piece, and I’ve been reflecting on that performance, the things I had to face in the wake of that premiere, and what this piece means now.
For my score-excerpt-loving readers, this post is more of a narrative post than a musical deep-dive, so check back again soon for a return to the music!
Inspiring The Noise
In January of 2018, a conductor I knew from IU (Dr. Andrew Chybowski) reached out to see if I’d be interested in writing a piece for his band in Pittsburg, Kansas. I had just left a pretty difficult living situation, and the ask came at a time when I had very little creative work on my plate (this was in my making-tortillas-at-Kroger-while-finding-a-full-time-arts-admin-job phase). It was a real lifeline and what I hoped would be a sign of better days to come.
He wanted the piece to be for wind ensemble and two vocalists, and recommended it be “at least 8 minutes long;” the final result was a four-movement work about 20 minutes long!
In the months following that initial ask, I met my now-partner. Having someone care so deeply about me made me start to realize that some habits I had picked up in school were maybe not the healthiest—pulling all-nighters, taking on too much work in too little time, allowing people to ask more of me than I had agreed to take on, etc. While he was a disciplined worker himself, however, he wasn’t in the arts professionally—so I initially chalked up his concerns as “not understanding the arts culture." I needed to do these things to be successful, it’s just how it was.
Besides, my habits had gotten me into Aspen - they couldn’t be bad, right? Right?
Over time, however, I started thinking more about how many of my friends were struggling with some of the same things I was out of school—trying to find opportunities to perform/write/teach, wondering if we all wasted our time/money on something we wouldn’t be able to do professionally, a bit envious of all the opportunities that seemed to bombard some of our colleagues, etc. I started to realize how messed up it was that we were all trying to out-burnout one another. I was only beginning to realize at the time that being “really, really busy” was not the hallmark of success we had learned it to be. That “doing the most” and “doing the best” were two different things—and neither were particularly meaningful on their own. A lot of my friends and colleagues also struggled with mental illness, stress, and difficult relationships with loved ones.
In the face of all this, I saw (and participated in) a lot of sharing/creating memes and posts that essentially boiled down to “haha I have depression” or “hahaha doing a second all-nighter in a row this is normal right ahahahaha.” While I thought those posts were funny—or even helpful in letting us feel less alone—I was beginning to feel like maybe those types of remarks were doing more harm than good. There’s a surprisingly fine line between destigmatizing mental health conditions and perpetuating a culture that exacerbates them.
While I had heard some really nice works dealing with mental illness, so often I felt like they made promises that weren’t realistic (this isn’t to say there are not pieces that did this well, just that I hadn’t come across them at this time). So, I finally decided to write something to try and capture the actual lived experience of someone with these internalized thoughts.
Writing down The Noise
In writing the text for the piece and starting to work on the movement, I slowly got the feeling that I might have anxiety. Everything I was reading about it and hearing from friends who provided insight for the piece just sounded like my everyday. Was it not normal to have two or three trains of thought going at once? To have conversations with yourself in your head? To replay every interaction and dissect what went well and what went wrong? To think over every bad thing that you’d done over and over again to try and learn something from it?
But I look so happy in all my interview pictures from the time!
At the time, I didn’t know what it meant—all I knew is that I had a lot to do and not enough time to do it. I figured I was just drenched in the piece and would be fine once I got through my busy period. I had finally switched to a real position with an arts organization and was balancing my time with composing. I had several big pieces being done in Dallas (where I lived at the time). I kept telling myself I should just be grateful and do the work.
My school habits kicked back in—I pulled multiple all-nighters in a row, I started drinking coffee (and way too much of it), I would forget to eat and then eat way too much and it was all junk, I tried to workout and diet even when I had no energy from the lack of sleep, I would push myself to go out with friends or help them out with things even when I didn’t have time. I spent time alone unable to shut off my brain and hardly ever felt relaxed. I would get upset about little things like a sock on the floor or a page turn I forgot to fix. I would make myself cry, hearing a voice in my head that people only needed me—no one actually wanted me around unless I could do something for them. For months this went on as I scrambled to finish the piece among everything I was doing, and I genuinely thought it was all normal stress.
Premiering The Noise
Work things were finally calming down, but my stress didn’t change. Finally, I had only one month to get through before I would be able to take a real vacation. Just get through the next few weeks! I had just come off a big premiere, had been prepping for a big move to a new place, and was driving to Kansas to hear a rehearsal for The Noise when it happened.
About two hours into my drive, I started to feel an unbearable pain in my abdomen. I was crying and it was so hard to drive, I pulled over and tried to wait it out—but the pain kept getting worse. I was worried by appendix had burst. My partner didn’t have a license or a car, but stayed on the phone with me as I sobbed trying to get to an urgent care. I went to three different places before I finally found one that would take my insurance (a conversation for another time!), and could finally be seen by somebody. Two and half hours after it had started I was finally taken to an exam room in an ER and I was still in so much pain.
FB post from getting out of the ER (picture not included)
Eventually I was discharged from the ER, with the diagnosis that I had an ulcer. It thankfully didn’t appear to be perforated (ruptured), but was rather severe. The doctors had told me that the ulcer was almost certainly exacerbated by stress, and if I didn’t address it there would be a lot worse in the years to come. I couldn’t eat solid food for several days and was too weak to do much but sleep for the first day or two. It took weeks before I was feeling consistently like myself. It was a real wake-up call.
I was able to make it to the premiere of The Noise, and I will be forever grateful that the ensemble did such a great job with so little time to prepare such a difficult piece. It was a great experience to have it premiered, but I also knew that—given how big and unwieldy the piece was—it would likely never be done again. I was grateful, but also disappointed in myself that I had let things get so out of control, that I wasn’t able to be 100% present for both writing and rehearsing the piece.
From the premiere of The Noise. So grateful to Andrew (left) and to Stella and Patrick (right) for taking on the challenge of this big, unwieldy piece.
Bringing The Noise Back Up
So, last fall, when Justin Mertz from UNI reached out about doing The Noise, I was pretty conflicted. I had been going through such a tumultuous time and it was so long ago—the piece had so many errors and bad orchestration decisions, I didn’t know if it was salvagable. I didn’t know if the text was cringey because it was so vulnerable or if it was just bad. I was worried it might take me back to places I didn’t want to go. I wasn’t sure if anyone really needed to hear this piece again.
But, talking with Justin, he was so enthusiastic about the piece. He told me he felt like the subject matter was really timely and strongly felt it would be a good experience for his students, that some of them really needed the piece. I tend to trust band directors to know their students, but I still wasn’t sure. He agreed to give me some time to make edits on the piece.
My workspace at the time - I was working on a different piece at this moment, but you get the idea!
Working through the piece again, I still had my hesitations, but it was a true gift to have the time and space to really think through things. I still struggle with anxiety, but I have much better support systems in place than I did—and far better working habits. No matter how the performance turned out, I was so grateful for the chance to give the piece the time and care I couldn’t four years prior. I didn’t let myself make any major changes to the material, just better solutions to some of the wilder passages to make them more playable.
Justin wanted me to come work with his students; I love working with students, but I was definitely more nervous about it this time around. Did they actually want to meet me? Did this piece mean anything to them? However, Justin’s enthusiasm for and already deep understanding of the piece persuaded me to just push through the fear and go—which brings us to this week.
Facing The Noise
I was pretty nervous in the days leading up to this trip, but soon I found myself in the Midwest. After a quick trip to Luther College to present some music, give a few lessons, and catch-up with my former composition professor Brooke Joyce, I was driving to UNI.
Before the first rehearsal, Justin took me to dinner and started to tell me a bit more about how rehearsals were going. With band directors always having so much going on, I always expect rehearsal time on things to be limited, but Justin knew the piece so well and had obviously spent so much time with the score. It was so invigorating to speak to him about the piece (and life in general) and about his approach to teaching/conducting; I started to feel less nervous and more excited.
Despite being an add-on Sunday evening rehearsal, the students were so kind and engaging—you could instantly tell that Justin has a great relationship with his students. The singers were also super nice and seemed excited about the piece. I heard a few people warming up, and was encouraged by how confidently the snippets I heard were executed. After a brief intro from Justin and a nervous ramble from me about the first movement, the students took a tuning note and got ready to play.
I was in shock, to be honest.
For years I had always chalked this piece up as a rushed failure—that there was only so much I would ever be able to do with it because it just had a lot of fundamental problems with the way it was written and orchestrated. However, hearing them play through that first movement was like hearing it for the first time. Lines were so clear, there was real momentum and shape to the sections, the singers were getting every change in tone and character, you could hear so many of the hocketing gestures play across the ensemble. I really had no idea it was possible for the piece to sound as good as it did.
Going through that rehearsal, I was electrified. I called with a few friends after the rehearsal to tell them how elated I was, how I was just overwhelmed by the obvious time and care the ensemble had put into the piece. When I got off the phone, I’ll admit—I was weeping a bit. I didn’t doubt that the ensemble was good or feel like the premiering ensemble had been bad, but I really thought the piece was just never going to be like how I had initally envisioned it. To get that after four years of thinking it wasn’t possible was a genuine treasure.
The performance is tonight (link information below to the livestream!), but no matter how it goes I am so, so grateful to Justin Mertz, to vocalists Michelle Monroe and Aaron DeSantiago, and to the UNI Symphonic Band. No composer is “owed” a performance or recognition of their work, or a listener’s time or attention—it can only be given to us. Something was healed by my time here this week that I didn’t even know was hurting, and it has been such a profoundly moving experience to have so many people dedicate months of their time to breathe new life into this work. Moments like these are not guarantied to happen, and I will revel in every second of it while it lasts.
From an evening walk at George Wyth State Park - a beautiful place!
Performance Stream Information
The piece is on the second-half of this short program. The concert will only be available during the livestream and cannot be accessed afterwards.
Stream time: 5:30pm PT | 6:30pm MT | 7:30pm CT | 8:30pm ET
