Courtney Bryan
Program Notes by Tim Munro
Miller Theatre commissioned the acclaimed writer and musician Tim Munro to write profiles of the composers featured onstage this season, with the goal of connecting listeners to both the creator and their music.
Sometimes it is a sound. Sometimes a chord progression drifts by. Sometimes she just can’t get a piece of art out of her head. Or sometimes the circumstances of a commission pique Courtney Bryan’s curious mind.
A concerto commission for Branford Marsalis had Bryan asking herself about the personality of the soloist. “I love the process of writing concerti for people, because I really get to study their musical identity and see what comes out in my own voice.”
Sometimes the inspiration comes pre-baked. For instance, Bryan was asked by the New York Philharmonic for a work on the theme of March to Liberation.
But occasionally—and more often now—the question comes: “What is your dream project?”
“‘What is my dream?’ was how I worked when I was younger,” says Bryan, then laughs, 'because nobody was commissioning.' Now firmly established across the country, Bryan finds that more people now trust her to bring the thing she wants to do.”
“‘What is my dream?’ was how I worked when I was younger,” says Bryan, then laughs, “because nobody was commissioning.” Now firmly established across the country, Bryan finds that more people now trust her to bring the thing she wants to do.
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Hums breathe music into existence. Warm but not untroubled. The voices open: “All come from dust”. “Dusssssst” hisses, then resonant voices fill the hall, alternating hope and uncertainty. Later, a provocation: “Listen!” they sing.
Requiems had been on Bryan’s mind. “When I’ve gotten a chance to pick my own project,” says Bryan, “interestingly they've been more traditional genres, like a piano concerto, or a requiem.”
The form, a ritual of death, came naturally, “based on my work dealing with police brutality.” This specific inspiration gave way to a more general inspiration, “just really thinking about life and death, the passing of time or the passing away.”
Bryan didn’t feel kinship with the requiem as some sort of dramatic fight against death. She turned to funerals of her native New Orleans, “which are a real celebration of life.”
Her Requiem’s instrumentation hints at the New Orleans brass band, without drawing on the musical style. ““It’s more abstracted from the original inspiration. There’s a part where the bass drum does the kickoff rhythm they would do in a jazz funeral, but the music is really slow and really sparse.”
At the core of Bryan’s Requiem is the sound of a vocal quartet. Quince is an ensemble of classically trained singers who are firmly committed to the music of living composers.
Composer and ensemble were drawn to each other immediately. Bryan says she was “fascinated with their way of working together.” And Amanda DeBoer Bartlett, one of Quince’s sopranos, says the group loved how Bryan tailors her vocal music “for the voice of the person she’s writing for.”
Later that night, according to DeBoer Bartlett, “we all busted out our tarot cards and bonded over chocolate chip cookies.”
“The vocal writing feels very tailored to our ensemble. The tessitura and melodic gestures fit like an old pair of jeans, and it always feels wonderful to sing this piece.”
Quince is interested in “slow music,” says DeBoer Bartlett. “Not slow in tempo, but slow in development. As a rule, we never schedule a premiere until a score is in hand, and we love when a composer takes their time to create something from a deeper place.”
Quince initially commissioned a short vocal quartet. But Bryan felt the music expanding in scope. Enter happenstance…or fate. Composer Missy Mazzoli, then the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s Composer-in-Residence, brought Quince and Bryan back together. And Requiem was born.
“When the piece finally emerged,” says DeBoer Bartlett, “we were all completely blown away. None of us could have imagined this piece in our initial commissioning conversation, and if we had rushed it, it might never have been.” Bryan hints at fate. “It’s almost as if it was the plan all along.”
“The vocal writing feels very tailored to our ensemble,” DeBoer Bartlett adds. “The tessitura and melodic gestures fit like an old pair of jeans, and it always feels wonderful to sing this piece.”
“Everything for Bryan, musically, began in church. St. Luke’s Episcopal Church was her childhood church in New Orleans, 'a very international church, with people from all over the African diaspora'”
Communication
Everything for Bryan, musically, began in church. St. Luke’s Episcopal Church was her childhood church in New Orleans, “a very international church, with people from all over the African diaspora: folks from the Caribbean, Central America, South America, West Africa, and the U.S.”
“There is this eclectic mix of musical styles,” Bryan says. “The church is Episcopalian, so there are old English hymns, and we sang a lot of negro spirituals. One day you might hear West African style drumming, on another day some type of Caribbean rhythms.
“Growing up,” Bryan says, “that mix felt natural to me—all these things going together.”
Away from church, Bryan felt most at home on her piano bench. “Music was my main communication. If I was feeling something, I could express those feelings clearly at the piano. It took more work with words. With the piano, it has always been very automatic.”
Back then, she didn't separate playing and composing. “It was all the same to me. I wrote music since I was five.” An early teacher helped Bryan give this work a name. “She would make room for whatever I was interested in. I always had a song that I’d written. At some point, she taught me to use the word ‘composer.’”
St. Luke’s became a haven for Bryan during the pandemic. Before the pandemic, she would occasionally attend, but in 2020 she found her way back to her role as a church musician. That year, the church would take its own important role in one of Bryan’s works.
“When I was in the studio recording tracks for 'Blessed,' it was right after the last presidential election. As we’re performing it, we’re once again at a pivotal time.”
Blessed
For a number of years before the pandemic, Bryan had been prioritizing her composition career. I was writing for other ensembles—focusing less on my own performance.” During the pandemic, she found herself back at the piano.
“With everything that was going on at the time—the protests after George Floyd’s murder, the pandemic, the loneliness, and losing people,” she says, the piano came back into the heart of her artistic life.
A commission took full advantage of this new connection. Bryan was invited to compose for a digital premiere. “Sarah Williams (Director of New Works & Creative Producer) from Opera Philadelphia asked me to really think about the word ‘opera’. To be open about what it could mean.”
The work would be composed, prepared, and recorded remotely. “I realized the visual element would be extremely important,” says Bryan. She was already collaborating on a project with visual artist Tiona Nekkia McClodden, and the pairing seemed to fit the new project.
“The pandemic was a time to shift my thinking. To challenge the, ‘Oh, I do things a certain way.’” Since the trio of musicians—two singers and Bryan on piano—couldn’t gather in the studio to workshop and record, Bryan was forced to experiment.
“Instead of starting with the score, I recorded at the piano.” She recorded 90 minutes of improvisations inspired by Matthew 5:5, “about how the lowly would ‘inherit the earth.’” She chose these verses “in response to the righteous uprisings and in anticipation of the November election.”
Bryan shared those recordings, alongside some written prompts, with the singers, who were encouraged to improvise. Bryan took the singers’ recordings, and stitched together a sonic quilt. “I quilted everything together on Logic Pro, then worked with a sound engineer, Rob Kaplowitz, on fine details.”
McClodden created the video component before the final recording of Blessed was complete. Working from the same prompts as the singers, “she came to New Orleans, and filmed scenes at my church. Then she went to New York and filmed the vocalists in different outdoor locations.”
But how to create a live version of the work? “Blessed doesn’t have a set score,” says Bryan. The performers have two notated themes, alongside a series of prompts. “The Miller performance will be something completely new.”
The timing strikes Bryan as significant. “When I was in the studio recording tracks for Blessed, it was right after the last presidential election. As we’re performing it, we’re once again at a pivotal time.”
“Courtney brings intense and deeply heartfelt spirituality to her life and work. This results in a compassion and generosity of spirit that she brought to our academic program that can be directly recognized in her music.”
Mentors
Bryan speaks with openness and warmth. Sentences end with deep, rich laughter. Her smile opens widest when she talks about the mentors in her life. “I’ve been very lucky to have so many great mentors, right from the very beginning.”
She recognizes their importance all the more now that she is the Albert and Linda Mintz Associate Professor of Music at Tulane University. “I have an extra appreciation for teachers that go out of their way for their students—how much extra work certain people do.”
The community of teachers at the Louis Armstrong Jazz Camp in New Orleans looms large in her memory. “Their art and their education roles were equal. They were equally invested in being experimental artists in whatever style.”
Later, at Oberlin College and Columbia University, Bryan “made all of those places my umbrella. At Columbia, I was in the music department, but I had mentors in the Columbia Center for Jazz Studies and African American Studies.
“I’m kind of like, ‘How can you not be interdisciplinary?’” Bryan says. For instance, she feels a kinship with writers and thinkers outside the musical world. In this she doesn’t feel alone. “Our world is so much more interdisciplinary now. A lot of artists today create in so many different modes.”
One of Bryan’s deepest connections is with the composer, musicologist, and trombonist George Lewis, the Edwin H. Case Professor of Music at Columbia University, and also the Artistic Director of the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE).
“Courtney brings intense and deeply heartfelt spirituality to her life and work,” says Lewis. “This results in a compassion and generosity of spirit that she brought to our academic program that can be directly recognized in her music.”
Lewis has been deeply influenced by Muhal Richard Abrams, the co-founder of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians. “The AACM encouraged everyone to find their own voices,” says Lewis. “This is actually the highest ideal of Black American music, which overcame the silencing of slavery. So Courtney’s naturally exploratory bent was easily encouraged in such an atmosphere.”
DREAMING
Two cardinals call playfully to one another. A sparrow joins, then a hummingbird. A dawn chorus, singing with the freedom and joy of an open blue sky. A voice enters, “Out of the depths of slavery has come this prejudice and this color line…”
DREAMING began with George Lewis. “When I was at Columbia,” says Bryan, “I heard George Lewis ask, ‘What is the sound of freedom?’ That question has stuck in my mind ever since. So much so that I am doing a series of works on that theme.”
Lewis says he “first encountered the discourse of the sound of freedom in working with the activist sound art collective Ultra-red. They posed this question directly and created workshops to explore the topic.”
But the topic is complex. “Whatever the sound of freedom might be, it is contextual, contingent, culturally connected, and incredulous at narratives of genre and cultural purity. I’m imagining that for Courtney, the sound of freedom is part of the sound of survival.”
Searching for a text, Bryan looked at the opinion of Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson in the recent affirmative action case. “My father is a retired lawyer, and was talking about the brilliance of her language, how she wrote her decisions for everybody to read.”
Bryan read the decision, “and I heard the music in it.” She began reading other dissent letters from Justice Jackson and Justice Sotomayor in cases dealing with reproductive rights and LGBTQ rights. For this performance, Bryan has added some text from the recent Supreme Court case questioning Donald Trump’s immunity from prosecution.
Bryan wanted to find a musical language that would emphasize the freedom she found in the texts. “I wanted a mix of notated and free music.” She worked closely with ICE players on improvised sections. At the opening, the ensemble creates their own improvised birdsong. Later, the musicians are asked to “think of something or someone you love (alive or passed on),” and to “tell them you love them through your instrument.”
The way that I share
“I have a certain freedom in what I choose to do,” says Bryan. “I’ve chosen a career in academia, where even though sometimes it competes with my time, it gives me the ability to put my heart into projects I believe in.”
Bryan finds her heart drawn to two areas: the religious/spiritual and the political. “Blessed is an equally religious and political piece. Requiem is a religious piece. Dreaming is more political…but really everything I do has a spiritual aspect.”
She stops for a moment, considering the crossover. “The religious traditions I see myself in are ones where religion helps make our world better now. That’s part of liberation theology, where it’s not just about where you go after you die. The spirituality is really here and now.
“While some may voice their opinions through protest or other forms of speaking out, my form of expression is often through the music first. I see things that are imperative to speak on. Music is my best way of doing it.”