UW-Milwaukee Welcomes Pulitzer Prize-Winning Composer

An empty stage, riddled with bright white lights. The crowd quietly rustles about, waiting for the performance to being. They begin to clap as the musicians enter the stage, and begin doodling, or warming up.

That’s how a typical concert night might begin.

But this wasn’t a typical concert for the ensemble.

The Wind Ensemble performed the latest piece of acclaimed composer Joseph Schwantner, titled “Luminosity.” Schwantner is a Grammy and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer from Chicago, now living in New Hampshire.

Schwantner won his Pulitzer Prize in 1979 for his orchestral composition Aftertones of Infinity, and a Grammy award in 2012 for “Best Classical Instrumental Solo” with his Percussion Concerto.

After studying at the Chicago Conservatory and Northwestern University, Schwantner spent nearly 30 years teaching music, 20 of them at the Yale School of Music, as well as at The Julliard School and Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York.

Despite being a widely known composer, UW-Milwaukee Wind Ensemble conductor Dr. John Climer said it wasn’t that difficult to get him to come to the university.

“I simply emailed him to find out if he might consider a short residency at UWM.  He made some adjustments to his schedule and I was thrilled he was able to make the trip.”

It also wasn’t the first time that UW-Milwaukee has been graced by visits from talented composers.

“Just two years ago, another Pulitzer Prize winning composer, Michael Colgrass was in residency to work with the UWM Wind Ensemble,” Climer said. “I hope Mr. Schwantner’s visit will bring awareness to all of the great things going on in the Peck School of the Arts.

UW-Milwaukee is part of an organization called College Band Directors National Association (CBDNA), and were one of the 35 universities across the country to commission Schwantner’s piece.

“This piece has been a couple years in the works,” Schwantner said. “All 35 universities have a one-year exclusivity where they’re allowed to play it before anyone else. It was first premiered last spring, at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.

Schwantner said he doesn’t go to all the performances of his piece.

“I’ve gone to the schools that I thought might be interesting.”

Milwaukee was one of those schools. “I’d heard about this school, it has a fine reputation. It’s a terrific music school,” Schwantner said. “They invited me to come out, and I thought ‘Yeah, I’m from Chicago. I haven’t been to Milwaukee in a long time, but I know about the school.’”

Schwantner said he was pleased with his visit.

“I’ve enjoyed myself, it’s a terrific school, and they’re doing really good things here. It’s in a big city, lots of cultural activity, so that’s a reason I came out here. And I couldn’t be happier with the way they’re playing, they’re doing an enormous job.”

Speaking to the entire music department, a simple piece of advice than Schwantner gave them was that location means everything.

“When I taught at Yale, the School of Music, it’s only a 90 minute train ride down to New York City, and more than half the graduate performers were in New York gigging. Making connections, playing professionally.”

Schwantner also said that eventually it’s only your body of work that will get you through the door.

“At some point in time, it’s not the school where you studied, it’s where you’re gonna hang out. I think that’s the way it works. I understood early on it’s all about location.”

One of his first teaching jobs was in the state of Washington, to which Schwantner only stayed on year.

“I was in the middle of nowhere. My pieces were being played in Chicago and New York, but I was nowhere near where they were piece performed. So I simply quit my job.”

Schwantner believes that what the students get out of the experience of playing his piece is simply, but vitally important to the job prospects in the near future.

“This is a challenging piece for them, they’ve never played a piece quite like this before,” Schwantner said. “That’s adds to their ability to engage a wider diversity of music when they leave an institution like this. This adds to their ability to play new and, I guess, challenging material they haven’t seen before.”

Schwantner’s example was that during auditions for symphonies, they might be asked to play a few lines from pieces you’ve prepared, but would then be given one they had never seen before and asked to play on the spot, without ever having studied the chart.

“That’s where this having this past experience of playing challenging and unusual music is going to pay off for one of those players who does the best job at that,” Schwantner said. “The more experiences were you’re taking musicians out of their comfort zone, they’re prepared for that. They need that experience to make them more fully rounded musicians.”

Climer, the conductor for the Wind Ensemble, said that having a composer like Schwantner visit is invaluable.

“There is no substitute for working with the creator of any work of art. As a three-time Grammy nominated composer, Grammy winner, and recipient of the Pulitzer Prize in music, Joe is perhaps todays most renowned living composer,” Climer said. “Having him work with the students was an incredible experience. He was able to describe aspects of the music in a way that only the composer could. It brought greater meaning to the work and helped us interpret the music in a more informed way.”

Schwantner ended his talk by stating that it’s his passion with the art of music that propels him forward.

“It becomes more than a career option, it has nothing to do with that. It becomes a lifelong engagement with the way you want – look, it’s the way I want to live my life, through music,” Schwantner said. “I don’t want to do anything else. And if I can avoid doing anything else, I will. And if I can get by doing that, that’s what I’m going to do. It’s the most fulfilling way that I can find a way through my life, and has been for me.”