Hello Friends!
 
          For the next week or two my friend and collaborator Lise Kroner (Åkervinda and 11th House Collective) is visiting Chicago from Malmö, Sweden. Thanks in large part to the Dansk Musiker Forbund (Danish Music Association) we have a not-so-secret mission to build a bridge for artists between these two magical cities. To do this, we are continuing work on our music project that began at the Inter Arts Center in Malmö last August.  Everyday while she is here, we will brainstorm, improvise, create, learn, and grow. We will then reflect through a blog post on the day’s effort toward finding a way to create music that opens productive conversation about the refugee crisis. Currently there are a lot of unknowns, and the overarching question of the day was, “how do we figure out where to go in order to figure out the next step?” In addition to planning major points during her visit, including a visit with Matt Turner at Lawrence University in Appleton, WI, Lise and I spent a lot of time free improvising music. Eventually we found a compelling melodic idea and paired it with text that resonated perfectly:
 
There are silences so deep
you can hear
the journeys of the soul,
enormous footsteps
downward in a freezing earth.
                        John Haines
                        from “Listening in October”
 
If you wish to be involved in this project in any way, we would love to hear from you!! Please send me an email.
 
Stay tuned for more updates.
 

          I am thrilled to announce that I have received the Performing Social Justice Seed Grant through Roosevelt University City College of Performing Arts, and have been offered a residency at the InterArts Center in Malmö, Sweden this August. In Sweden I will begin work on Concert Music Documentary: Refugees in Sweden in collaboration with Swedish vocal quartet Åkervinda. Concert Music Documentary: Refugees in Sweden will be an electroacoustic concert music documentary that will record the live’s of refugees living in centers throughout Sweden. This will not be a traditional documentary with video footage; instead it will feature audio-recorded interviews and interactions with people living in these refugee centers. These audio recordings will be the source material for a fixed media piece performed in tandem with live musicians from Åkervinda and hopefully an instrumental chamber ensemble.
          Social justice driven work often ends up accomplishing one of two things: 1) it reaches within a community to provide solidarity or 2) it educates people about the problems the community is facing, and hopefully inspires action to change their circumstances. The victims of the refugee crisis are equally in need of both solidarity and action, and music as a form of communication is effective at accomplishing both. Concert Music Documentary- Refugees in Sweden intends to focus equally on these two important and necessary goals.
          Being inspired by the heroism of refugees and the unimaginable hardships they face regularly, we are hoping to provide solidarity within the community by opening opportunities for refugees to share their stories through music. Also being disgusted by the overall reaction from the west with the refugee crisis, we want to educate people on the misperceived threat of refugees toward western society by humanizing their experiences. I am so honored to have this opportunity.

​          The winter solstice is today; the shortest day of the year in the northern hemisphere. Every year this darkness allows me to slow down and reflect. There are so many things to make sense of from this past year, but a common theme among them for me is questioning some of the roots that have built my life. For me, reflection has historically been an inward and individual experience. I can’t help but question whether my process of reflection is a product of the individualistic society I have lived in my entire life.
          One of the easiest ways for me to reflect is through music. The other day I decided to put my iPhone on shuffle, and let music be played at random. If you’ve never decided to shuffle all songs on your mp3 device, I highly recommend you do at some point. This only works if you surrender your musical fate, and trust in the order of the songs. What continued for me was a narrative that was completely engaging. It began with an Antiphon from the Monteverdi Vespers performed by Apollo’s Fire, followed by an inexplicably beautiful arrangement of Det Brinner En Eld by Swedish vocal quartet Åkervinda, then followed by Beth/Rest by Bon Iver, and finally That the Night Comes: He wishes his Beloved were Dead by Donnacha Dennehy, performed by Dawn Upshaw and Crash Ensemble.
              Two things immediately struck me:
             1) The diversity and varying perspectives of these pieces
             2) How individualistic the reflective experience was
         This diverse music was experienced in a context that, ironically, lacked diversity; I was experiencing it alone. I was moved by the music only I could hear through my headphones on my way home as the sun was setting at 4:00pm in Chicago. Musical experiences often happen on an individual level, and they should be able to. But I also want to find places where these experiences can be communal.  Dance clubs provide a communal experience through music every night around the world, arguably, so do dinner parties with music playing in the background, karaoke, music played over loudspeakers at the mall or grocery store, and of course, live performance.
          I can’t help but imagine how much more powerful my reflective experience would have been in the context of a live performance, where a group of people could listen together. The problem is, not all music being performed live opens the potential for me to feel reflectiv, in part because it doesn’t seem to demonstrate the diversity and variety I see in the world outside of the concert hall. I know the virtue of live performance is worthwhile because it provides an opportunity to reflect both inwardly and outwardly. I know this because I have been lucky enough to experience this type of live performance a few times in my life so far. So I am going to keep looking for performances where I feel I can reflect in this way. If I can’t find them, I’ll try to make those experiences with friends and colleagues!
            In the meantime, thank you for reading and thank you for being the community that shows me who I am. If you don’t understand what I’m saying, try putting your mp3 device on shuffle! Enjoy your solstice.
 
                Cheers!

            Sorry I have been absent so long! I have begun pursuing my master’s of music composition at Roosevelt University CCPA, and have several projects I am currently working on (I will announce them all soon).  Needless to say, life is a little busy in the best ways! Being involved with an academic institution opens so many doors it can be easy to have projects pile up quickly. Learning in a structured environment is a huge privilege. It is one I never want to take lightly. All of this is to say, education is hugely important. It is, for example, the difference between understanding O Fortuna from Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana as the perfect music behind a Carlton Draft beer commercial, or as the bleak cries of a medieval monk feeling enslaved by fate.  Learning changes how we see and understand the world. I’m not an expert on Carl Orff’s life, but given that he started a school and music curriculum I feel safe guessing he would agree.
 
          Appleton West High School Wind Ensemble director Mike Ross and Director of Choral Studies Kevin Meidl have commissioned me to compose a piece that will premiere on a concert with excerpts from Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana arranged for wind ensemble and choir. I am composing an electro-acoustic piece for wind ensemble and choir that will feature audio-recorded discussions with a variety of teachers and educators. Similar to Carmina Burana, this music will aim to reveal aspects of an institution we may not fully understand. The goal of this piece is not only to demonstrate that education is hugely important, but more importantly that good education is impossible without dedicated educators and teachers. This commission will premiere May 2017. More details to come soon!
 
          In addition to the compositional work on this project I have been reading about Carl Orff’s life. This research has been eye opening in the context of this presidential election. The political climate in the United States right now has been equated to that of 1930’s Germany with the rise of the Nazi Party. It is debated how involved Carl Orff was with the Third Reich. I am not saying any of this to condemn Carl Orff or his music, I believe in nuance. But it has made me reflect a lot on my role as a composer, and what my work can do for the world. More on that another time! 

Thanks for reading! 

​-Sean

          So, there is this incredible violinist named Mariela Shaker, with an absolutely astounding story you can read about here, here, here, and here. 
          I am excited to announce that Merula Choir will be collaborating with Mariela on our upcoming concert that will musically map the journey of Syrian Refugees to Sweden. This concert will take place June 5th at the Swedish American Museum. The performance will feature Mariela's dramatic, emotional, and virtuosic performing  through several solo pieces as well as an arrangement of Syrian, Swedish, and Greek folk songs performed with our choir. 
       Stay tuned for updates! 
          

          As a composer I am biased. I think music effectively crystallizes a unified goal among large groups, often more effectively than anything else. In an effort to use music to implement political and social change I have been interested in using parameters of a specific scientific study to inspire a piece of music. I think global climate change is perfect for this project.

          I will collect the past 100 years of climate data from seven to nine regions around the world. My vision is to create a fixed-media track for each region. Climate change has been indexed in many ways, from temperature shifts, to sea-level elevation, to increasingly erratic weather patterns. This tremendous array of data will provide ample opportunity to produce sounds.

          For example, each year can be represented by thirty seconds of music, and the average temperature of a given year can translate to a specific drone frequency. In this example, each month will be distilled to 2.5 seconds of music, the decibel level for which will be determined by the month’s average temperature in relation to the average temperature of that year. This is only one example. There are a multitude of ways I can use music to represent how our world climate is changing.

          The fixed-media tracks that I create for each region will provide a harmonious soundscape of the global climate from 1915 to the present. The most effective means of displaying this music is to showcase it publicly as an art installation. Each region will be represented by speaker systems. These speakers will be spread throughout a large space where audience members can “walk through the world” and hear the global climate changing over the last 100 years!

           Similar work has been done recently, and it is important to highlight these individuals:

•           Composer Daniel Crawford from the University of Minnesota composed Planetary Bands, Warming World,  earlier this year. It is a beautiful acoustic string quartet in which, "each note’s pitch 'is tuned to the average annual temperature in [four] region[s], so low notes represent cold years and high notes represent warm years.'"
•           Composer Matthew Burtner and media artist Scott Deal created Auksalaq in 2011, an  “opera [that] integrates music, sonic and visual art, science, and social commentary to provide a stirring statement on global climate change.” It was the 2011 IDEA Award Winner form Internet2.

 
          Please comment and let me know if there are any other artists and musicians doing similar work! I would love to connect with them!