RPI celebrates composer Neil Rolnick's unique electronic music
By JOSEPH DALTON, Special to the Times Union
First published: Sunday,
November 11, 2007
Neil Rolnick has spent most of his career putting music and musical
ideas into machines, and making them spit it back out again. But it's
only in recent years that the composer and longtime Rensselaer
Polytechnic Institute faculty member, who turned 60 last month, has
found the unique musical voice inside himself and been able to embrace
it.
"I
have figured out what my music is about: material that grows
organically out of little seeds and with instruments interacting with
electronics, so that the electronics become magic. It's important for
me to be able to hear the architecture of a piece," he said in a recent
interview.
Rolnick's birthday and his music will be celebrated
on Saturday evening in a concert produced by RPI's Experimental Media
and Performing Arts Center in the university's Academy Hall. The
program focuses on Rolnick's recent works and features a world
premiere, but it also includes "Ever Livin' Rhythm," a 30-year-old
piece for electronics and percussion.
FACTS:Too
American Rolnick's first effort with electronics, "Rhythm" was written
shortly before he moved to Paris to study at the famed IRCAM (Institut
de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique), the center for
advanced musical research headed by composer Pierre Boulez.
Rolnick
made valuable contacts during his time there, but IRCAM is a place for
dense thought and denser compositions -- not such a good match for
music that's as lively and playful as something called "Ever Livin'
Rhythm."
"Pierre Boulez said you're too American, go back to
America," recalls Rolnick, who took the advice. He later concluded: "If
I'm a composer, then it's my job to write down what I hear. Why write
difficult and complex stuff if that's not what I hear? I've always had
a gift for melody. I used to be embarrassed by it."
As Saturday
night's program will attest, Rolnick is no longer blushing at his
inherent musical gifts. Says the composer, "Whatever it is I'm meant to
do, I'm doing it now."
Art-technology link
What Rolnick has
also been doing for years, besides writing music, is building the arts
programs at RPI. He began as a junior faculty member in January 1981,
arriving in Troy, as he recalls, "with a kid, a wife, no money and a
piano, which was pretty much my only possession."
"He was
energetic, very smart, and very ambitious," says sculptor Larry Kagan,
also a young faculty member at the time. "He saw the real possibilities
of growing an arts program that relied on technology."
"I
presumed it was going to be a temporary deal," Rolnick says of his
early days teaching at RPI. "I'm a musician. I didn't see how I could
be long term at an engineering school."
Despite such concerns,
Rolnick got busy pulling together some semblance of an electronic music
studio. At the time, composer Joel Chadabe was running the electronic
music program at the University at Albany. He provided Rolnick with
crucial advice as well as spare equipment.
"Joel told me to get anything I could working, and then ask for funding to expand it," says Rolnick.
The
first major hardware was an IBM PDP 11/10, something that Chadabe no
longer needed at UAlbany. "It was an old computer even then," says
Rolnick, who describes it as measuring about 19 inches wide, 2 feet
deep and 6 feet high. Together, the two musicians transported it across
the Hudson in Rolnick's Volkswagen van.
Shortly after its
installation, Rolnick put in a request to the higher-ups at RPI for an
equipment upgrade. That, of course, is something he's done again and
again over the years, as technology marches on. Lately though, the fact
that every student owns a laptop computer has eased the pressure for
ever-new equipment. "There are still things you need a studio for,"
explains Rolnick, "like space, microphones, and a video or sound stage."
A matter of degrees
Besides
pushing for access to the latest tools, Rolnick has been a driving
force in making the arts a prominent and respected part of the
university. During his two nonconsecutive terms as chair of the arts
department, he supervised the expansion of arts at RPI from being
merely a variety of enrichment courses for students from other
departments, to the offering of bachelor's and master's degrees in
"integrated electronic arts."
Rolnick remembers during his early
days hearing a now-retired arts faculty member tell him, "Our job is to
interest engineers in the arts enough to be future board members and
supporters of arts organizations." He still groans at such a limited
mindset.
Growing bored with teaching introductory-level courses
only, Rolnick and his colleagues decided to seek students who would be
interested in the arts as a career by offering a master's of fine arts
degree. The multidisciplinary ("integrated") focus made the program
unique in the nation when it was first offered in 1987.
An
undergraduate program, which began nine years later, was the most
successful new undergrad program in RPI's history, according to
Rolnick, with an enrollment that grew from 40 to 300 in four years.
"The
timing was right, at the beginning of the tech boom," he says, adding
that it was a good fit for "students who play video games and have
various music and graphic programs on the computers and they would say,
'Can I really made a career of that?' "
The new building
The
latest manifestation of arts and technology at RPI is the prominent
glass building on the hill above downtown Troy -- EMPAC, the
Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center, a unique lavishly
expensive facility scheduled to open next fall. Rolnick had a role in
its genesis as well.
"The germ for EMPAC was an idea that Neil
brought to me," says Faye Duchin, an RPI faculty member who was dean of
the humanities and social sciences from 1996 to 2002. "I brought (the
proposal) to a president's retreat with the deans, and (RPI President
Shirley Jackson) loved the idea as soon as it was on the table."
Concert celebration
"Neil
basically prepared the ground for EMPAC at RPI," says Johannes Goebel,
director of EMPAC. "So I think it is most appropriate for EMPAC to
throw a birthday party in the form of a concert."
Among the
half-dozen Rolnick works on Saturday's program is "Digits," a 2005
piece for piano and electronics. Earlier this year, Anthony Tommassini
of The New York Times caught a performance at the Juilliard School in
New York City and described it as "an exhilarating interactive piece."
"Digits"
was written for Kathleen Supove, a Brooklyn-based pianist who is known
for tackling the most demanding contemporary scores. Rolnick has lived
in New York City since 2002. In the piece, computer programs sample and
transform portions of the piano music as it unfolds live. Managing such
electronic trickery is nothing new for Rolnick, which was a relief to
Supove.
"I would put him at the top tier of people to work with.
He knows a lot about the technology of the piece, and has made it easy
for me to be able to do it," says Supove. "I've had some other pieces
that are terrific, but the composer knew what he wanted but didn't have
a clue how to realize it, and I had to go talk to an engineer and
figure out how to set up."
Amid the virtuosity and technology, Rolnick's personality comes through.
"His
music has lively tunes and rhythms, and is immediately understandable,"
says Chadabe. "And it is has a very good disposition, a sunny
disposition, very much like Neil himself."
Joseph Dalton is a local freelance writer and a regular contributor to the Times Union.
Celebrating Neil Rolnick at 60
What:
A concert of mostly recent works with pianist Kathleen Supove,
violinist Todd Reynolds, singers Amy Fradon (http://amyfradon.com/) and
Leslie Ritter (http://www.leslieandscott.com/) and other artists.
When: 8 p.m. Saturday
Where: Academy Hall Auditorium, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute campus, Troy
Admission: Free
Info: http://www.empac.rpi.edu or http://www.neilrolnick.com/
Also
coming up: The Albany Symphony Orchestra has commissioned a new work
from Rolnick, "Love Songs," which will feature vocalist Theo Bleckmann
and violinist Todd Reynolds, for a special Valentine-themed concert
also with music of Mozart and Schumann. 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 14,
Canfield Casino, Saratoga Springs. Tickets $23-$46, call 465-4663; 8
p.m. Friday, Feb. 15, Troy Savings Bank Music Hall, tickets $23-$46,
call 273-0038; and 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 16, Colonial Theatre,
Pittsfield, Mass.; tickets $27, call (413) 997-4444. |
small.jpg)
