Timothy Michael Powell: Carnegie Hall, Part 2

Today I'm concluding my interview with accomplished conductor and composer Dr. Timothy Michael Powell, who conducted the world premiere of his Wedding Mass at Carnegie Hall last month.

LeAnne: How did this experience grow and challenge you?

Tim: Professionally, I approached the concert with Winston Churchill's mantra forever in my mind: "Never give up, never give up, never give up." I was more than prepared artistically for the concert, but had never recruited for an event this large and I found my personal resources stretched beyond what I thought I could accomplish. To put it into perspective, the budget for the trip was probably in the neighborhood of $270,000 and involved almost 180 people. There were many weeks, particularly through the late fall of 2007 and early spring of 2008 when we expected that the concert would be cancelled at any point due to low participation in the choir (they wanted a minimum of 150 singers and we were only able to recruit 130 for the performance). This would most likely have been devastating to my career and reputation. Concert organizers would have been unwilling to take a risk scheduling me or my music for future concerts in the event of a cancellation. I don't even want to imagine what the legal and financial toll would have been to the various participating ensembles.

The low point was in late February when I was told we needed 45 more singers by April. We recruited 36 new people in 6 weeks, which seems an almost impossible task in retrospect, particularly so close to the concert (each singer paid $1500 to participate). To maintain the level of excitement in the ensembles, working each day to perfect the music, without conveying my panic and desperation was a huge accomplishment. I lost count of the sleepless nights when my wife and I laid awake in the dark brainstorming over how to convince more people to participate, and the times I prayed myself to sleep. If there were ever an equivalent of taking a gamble and rolling the proverbial dice, the last two years of concert preparation have been that. The rewards, of course, have been worth the work.

LM: What's next for you? What are you working on now?

TP: I'm working on another Mass right now--a much smaller, more intimate setting with just choir and organ. It's quite a different piece and is in part a monument of remembrance, an Ebenezer, to my late father, the Rev. Danny Powell, who died a year ago of leukemia. In addition, I've been brainstorming about the possibility of a new opera or sacred oratorio, perhaps based on the book of Esther or the book of Ruth. It takes about a year and a half to write an hour-long major work, so chances are, I'll spend most of the next year writing smaller works (motets, spirituals, songs, etc), while I continue to develop ideas for the piece in hopes of developing a performance opportunity or commission for the opera. Further, I'm very excited about possible plans for more Wedding Mass performances by ensembles in South Carolina and in Connecticut, the latter as a result of contacts made at Carnegie Hall after the concert.

Timothy Michael Powell: The Carnegie Hall Premiere

This week, I'm doing  a follow-up interview with Dr. Timothy Michael Powell, an accomplished conductor and composer. On June 14th, Dr. Powell conducted the world premiere of the full-orchestra version of his "Wedding Mass". (For more information about how the premiere came about, check out my original interview with him on January 14, 2008.)

Dr. Powell holds a DMA in Conducting from the University of South Carolina. He was a Fulbright scholar to Bulgaria in 2002-2003, and a 2002 Fellow with the prestigious South Carolina Conductors Institute, and the 1999 National Choristers Guild Scholar. His compositions include numerous major works, samples of which can be heard here. 

LeAnne: What was it like to conduct the world premiere of your own work in Carnegie Hall?

Tim: On some level, it was no different than any other concert that I conduct. I had conducted the chamber version of the piece three times in concert in April in Houston, TX, with many of the same singers, so there were no real surprises going into this event. For me, as a conductor, once you turn your back to the audience and face the choir, the audience becomes secondary to making music. They never go away, particularly for the choir since they face them, but a conductor's perspective is much different. The "laser beam" focus that is required to shepherd 130 singers and 35 orchestra players through 45 minutes of complicated music leaves very little room for distractions, so to a great degree you have to tune out the audience and crawl inside of the moment and the music.

That being said, in Carnegie Hall it is much more difficult to ignore the audience and the venue. They are very close to the stage and very close to the conductor. The venue is a bit overwhelming in and of itself. I lost the ability to be nervous in front of people a long time ago, but the adrenaline level is not something that I have much control over. The hour leading up to the concert, I was high as a kite and spent much of it either laying on the couch in my dressing room trying to calm my heart rate or pacing up and down the hall. When the stage door opened and I walked onto the stage with Suzannah Moorman, the soprano soloist, I was struck by the sheer size and majesty of the hall and the crowd (I believe it was somewhere around 2600 people). 

From a musical standpoint, the greatest difficulty was staying objective through the performance. I've lived with the simpler chamber version of the piece for almost seven years. The first time I heard the symphonic version was the day before the concert in an orchestral rehearsal. It was very hard to turn off the analytical part of my brain that wanted to process the sound of the brass and winds and determine if what I wrote really worked or not and focus on leading the ensemble in concert. That was probably the most dangerous aspect of the entire concert: turning off a part of myself for 45 minutes.

LM: What was your favorite moment?

TP: Even though the walk out on stage was overwhelming, it is one of the moments that is cemented in my memory. After that, I had to get down to business. Much of the concert I actually don't remember. It is kind of a wash in my mind of sound and gold and red light (the colors of the hall). But more important than the narcissistic moments of the standing ovation and acclaim that we received was the three times in the piece when I felt safe enough in the moment to wink at my mother Debra, my sister Katie, and my wife Jen, all of whom were singing in the choir and all of whom had an immediate personal and historical connection to the piece in some way. My sister, because the main theme of the Mass was used in her wedding and my mother, because I had dedicated the last movement to her and my late father. I winked at my wife because I wrote the fourth movement for our own wedding and it uses Brian Wren's hymn text, "When Love is Found," which I think is a template for the love that we share. Further, the success that I experienced was a result of two years of shared labor and planning. Without her help, we wouldn't have been on that stage.

On Thursday, more from Tim Powell.

Timothy Michael Powell, Part 3: An Expression of the Human Experience

This is the conclusion of my interview with Dr. Timothy Michael Powell, an accomplished conductor and composer. He is the Director of Choral and Vocal Studies at Lee College and directs the Lee College Chorale and the Baytown Community Chorus. Dr. Powell holds a DMA in Conducting from the University of South Carolina and was the 1999 National Choristers Guild Scholar, a 2002-2003 Fulbright Scholar to Bulgaria, and a 2002 Fellow with the prestigious South Carolina Conductors Institute. He received both his Bachelors (cum laude) and his Masters degrees in Church Music from Belmont University.

He was the Rhodes College Conductor-in-Residence for the 2004-2005 Season and the Director of the Honors College Choir at the University of South Carolina from 2001-2002. His compositions include numerous major works, including his "Wedding Mass" which will be premiered in Carnegie Hall in June of 2008, and his opera "His Terrible Swift Sword" which was premiered in April of 2007. Go to www.DCINY.org for more information about the concert.

Dr. Powell is an active clinician and scholar and holds memberships in the Pi Kappa Lambda Music Society, The Texas Music Educator's Association, and the American Choral Director's Association. He serves as the Director of Music at St. Matthews United Methodist Church in Houston, TX. Samples of his music can be heard at www.myspace.com/timothymichaelpowell.

LM: Your MySpace site lists about two dozen musicians who have influenced you. Pick two or three and tell why and how they influenced you.

TP: I think that Giovanni de Palestrina is my model for small-scale motet construction. His music is so beautiful and loses none of its emotional impact, even after 400+ years. Yet at the same time, there is a certain succinctness and crystalline sparseness of form, almost a conservatism, that allows the climatic moments to develop and emerge and then hit you over the head like a hammer. I'm thinking particularly of his piece In Monte Oliveti, which is a setting of this biblical text: "On the Mount of Olives, he said to his Father: ‘Father, if it be possible, take from me this cup: Let it be your will.’" There's a moment in the last line which gives me goosebumps just thinking about it.

As for living American musicians, I would say that I have an affinity for composers like Eric Whitacre and Morten Lauridsen, who are part of a neo-tonal movement in classical music. I think the text painting of Whitacre has been influential for me, and the large-scale motivic construction of Lauridsen's music has influenced my larger works, particularly the Wedding Mass. As for pop stuff, I'm definitely influenced by country and bluegrass. I spent some time in grad school playing in a rockgrass band, which was a great outlet for writing songs. The band, Salt Creek, produced a studio album which included a number of my songs. However, I feel like there is an approach to musical climax in my pop music that actually comes from groups like U2 and Coldplay. They have a rhythmic drive and energy that explodes on you that I just love.

LM: Does your faith impact your music? If so, how?

TP: In the sense that I am a Christian and a composer, then yes, but I do not consider myself a "Christian musician" in the sense of the Nashvegas CCM world. I hope that my faith impacts all that I do, and I don't think it would be possible for there not to be some bleeding of my faith into my art. Art is quite personal. You can't create something artistic in a vacuum and also cannot expect that you can create art without exposing vulnerability. My classical music is almost exclusively Christian, because I set sacred texts for choir. That, however, is also driven as much by the practicalities of being a church choir director and an administrator of a collegiate choral and sacred music program.

I don't shy away from secular subjects, however. Music, and its composition, to me is an expression of the total human experience. I think that Christ is incarnate in the every day, as well as in the highest worship. He's present at the conversion of new believers, but also in the midst of the relationships between people, the suffering in the world, politics, war, hunger, etc. As such, I don't see much disconnect between being a composer who writes music for the church, and who also can write a pop song that doesn't refer to God at all, or in fact references taboo subjects like sex. My opera His Terrible Swift Sword, as an example, is based on characters from Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath as well as the Biblical story of Job. It tells the story of a preacher who loses his faith after having an extra-marital affair under the temptation of a devil-like figure. It is certainly PG-13, and deals with very difficult questions about morality, faith, and providence. But so does the Bible, I think, and you have to ignore a great deal of messy stuff to believe that God doesn't have something to say about all of it (which He does), or that everything is black and white and cut and dried (which it is not).

Happy Martin Luther King Day. Enjoy the holiday.

Timothy Michael Powell: Concert at Carnegie Hall

Dr. Timothy Michael Powell is an accomplished conductor and composer. He is the Director of Choral and Vocal Studies at Lee College and directs the Lee College Chorale and the Baytown Community Chorus. Dr. Powell holds a DMA in Conducting from the University of South Carolina and was the 1999 National Choristers Guild Scholar, a 2002-2003 Fulbright Scholar to Bulgaria, and a 2002 Fellow with the prestigious South Carolina Conductors Institute. He received both his Bachelors (cum laude) and his Masters degrees in Church Music from Belmont University.

He was the Rhodes College Conductor-in-Residence for the 2004-2005 Season and the Director of the Honors College Choir at the University of South Carolina from 2001-2002. His compositions include numerous major works, including his "Wedding Mass" which will be premiered in Carnegie Hall in June of 2008, and his opera "His Terrible Swift Sword" which was premiered in April of 2007. Go to www.DCINY.org for more information about the concert.

Dr. Powell is an active clinician and scholar and holds memberships in the Pi Kappa Lambda Music Society, The Texas Music Educator's Association, and the American Choral Director's Association. He serves as the Director of Music at St. Matthews United Methodist Church in Houston, TX. Samples of his music can be heard at www.myspace.com/timothymichaelpowell.

LeAnne: On June 14, you'll be directing the world premiere of your Wedding Mass in Carnegie Hall. The concert is produced in collaboration with Distinguished Concerts International New York. How did this opportunity come about?

Tim: I've been to Carnegie a number of times as a singer and participant in similar concerts and during the course of the last couple of years developed a relationship with Iris Derke, who is the executive director of DCINY. We sat down in Miami this year to discuss the possibility of me coming to Carnegie to conduct a festival concert. During our brainstorming we talked about a number of options for the concert, and I mentioned that I had a major choral work that I thought would be a great match for Carnegie. She asked me to send along a copy of the music and a recording, and I got a call a couple of weeks later from Jonathan Griffith, who is the artistic director, inviting me to premiere the piece. We decided to expand the accompaniment for full orchestra for the premiere performance (it was performed first in the spring of 2005 in a chamber orchestra setting for a small crowd in Memphis). It was a great honor to be invited to such a wonderful and historic venue!

LM: What inspired you to write your Wedding Mass? Tell me about your composing process.

TP: The melodic basis for the piece actually comes from a song I wrote about 9 years ago about an afternoon that I spent with my sister at the beach. When she told me she was getting married, I turned the melody into a processional for piano and cello that she used when she walked down the aisle during the ceremony. When I was beginning the composition of the Wedding Mass, the melody seemed to fit the tripartite structure of the Kyrie ("Lord, Have Mercy") which is the opening prayer of the Catholic and Orthodox worship service. Once the Kyrie was in place, I began to work on the other movements. The Agnus Dei ("Lamb of God") came next, followed by the Gloria, Credo and Sanctus. The Mass was basically finished, but then I lost the manuscript for the Agnus Dei. It worked out well, however, because after September 11, 2001 I rewrote the movement from memory and made some important adjustments to the structure and melody. I think these changes more accurately reflect the inherent tension between repentance and forgiveness, darkness and light, and grief and catharsis that is present in the Agnus Dei prayer, "Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, have mercy on us; grant us peace." I put the Mass away for some time, and then before my own wedding to my wife Jen in 2005, I wrote the middle movement "When Love is Found" using the beautiful hymn text by Brian Wren. When the Mass was sung for the first time in its chamber orchestra setting, I decided to include that movement. A choir of my closest friends also sang that movement during my wedding ceremony.

As for my compositional process, it really is different for every piece. I haven't settled on a specific process, mainly because I am not a full-time composer. In my day job, I'm a conductor and a department administrator, which means I have to squeeze out time to compose when I have free time. I'm also a bit "streaky", to use a baseball term. I compose in bursts, and then don't compose for long periods of time, sometimes months. I don't have an efficient system that allows me to crank out material on demand. My music tends to percolate, to languish on the piano, to get lost underneath huge piles of other work, and then to somehow work its way to the top in some kind of Darwinian process to emerge sometimes years later as a finished piece. In that sense, however, the editing process I have is exhaustive and always ongoing. The way that I approached my Mass was very different from the way I composed my opera, for instance, or the way I approach smaller works like motets, anthems, and songs. With the Mass, it developed over 5 years. The bulk of my opera, at least an hour's worth of music, was written in about 4 weeks. My most frequently performed motet, Mirabile Mysterium, was written in an hour but underwent at least a week's worth of revisions. If there is an over-arching inspirational process, it is certainly based on the text that I'm setting, which as far as I am concerned, should be the be-all and end-all of choral composition.

On Thursday, Tim Powell will talk about his song inspired by JRR Tolkien and his time in Bulgaria.