and welcome back to the Wind Band Report. Today I'm finally getting around to doing something I've wanted to start doing for a long time - putting the spotlight on major composers in the wind band medium. In this issue, you'll get to find out more about Michael Markowski and some of his works for wind band.

Michael began his rise to prominence as a wind band composer by winning the first annual Frank Ticheli composition contest at the age of 19 with Shadow Rituals. The piece was a resounding success and several commissions soon followed. Since then he has written several works for band from grade 3 to grade 6. He has also dabbled in the realm of film music and has written for a number of short independent videos. His most prominent film project is currently his scoring for the web series (and upcoming movie) Voyage Trekkers, starting in season 2.  Check it out some time on Youtube, it's quite a hoot.

You can find out more biographical details about Michael on his website at http://www.michaelmarkowski.com, and in one of the chapters of Composers on Composing for Band, Volume 4, published by GIA. I asked Michael a few questions about his writing process and the wind band world in general. You can read the interview below. If you want to just skip to a listing and sound clips of his works, including his newest releases joyRIDE and The Cave You Fear, click here to jump down the page.

Michael Markowski

Tell me about your approach to composing a new work for wind band.

Every project is a bit different, I think, but for the most part I write almost exclusively on a computer. I suppose I "sketch" but they're digital sketches - nothing on paper. For my most recent piece, Our Illusion of Separateness (ed. note - in preparation, you can listen to a midi mock-up here), I actually sketched ideas in some sequencing software called Cubase, which is something I've never done before. As soon as I crafted a few small ideas and found an overall style that I liked, I jumped straight into Sibelius where I orchestrated and wrote (in tandem) the rest of the piece.

It looks like you still have plenty of commissioning work that you do. How much of it is for band vs other musical mediums? Do you have any works that you've done without a commission behind it?

I'm really lucky that most of my work comes from bands that are so excited to commission new music from young writers. However, I think a lot of people are surprised to learn that I actually never studied music in college. In fact, my degree is in "film production," which basically means that I watched movies and cartoons for four years and they somehow gave me a diploma for that. Because of that rather unique background, though, I often collaborate with my film and theater friends. They make the movies and I write the music. It doesn't pay rent or buy me peanut butter and jelly like band music does, but it's a lot of fun and I think it keeps my writing somewhat fresh. 

One project that I've really enjoyed composing for is called "Voyage Trekkers," which is a sci-fi comedy about "the worst crew in the galaxy" (think "Star Trek" meets "Arrested Development"). It's totally free and available on YouTube. I'm also really interested in writing for unique instrumentations (which is why I'm so drawn to smaller film projects that don't have million dollar budgets to hire the big orchestras). With any luck, I might also start writing for chamber groups soon, including a "Broadway doublers quartet," which I'm really excited about.

Have some of your views and approaches to writing for band evolved over the years?

I've written a lot of music since high school (something like 17 pieces for band), and the same questions keep coming up. For the first few pieces that I wrote (Shadow Rituals, Turkey in the Straw, Instinctive Travels), I was really only concerned with what sounded cool - what was wild, intense, exciting to listen to. But something happened that made me start to think more seriously about the content of the music -- about the bigger picture, the "why am I writing this?" 

Right after Instinctive Travels was published, I was commissioned to write two separate pieces in memoriam of band students that had passed away (Shine and Tidal Forces). All of the sudden I felt this incredible responsibility when I was writing to not only compose what I thought sounded cool but to also write something that might "mean something more" for those I was writing for. And over the last few years, this feeling has only become more defined and more ingrained inside me. This is partially why the musicians in Our Illusion of Separateness  are asked to step down from the stage and join the audience around the perimeter of the concert hall, to surround them and blanket them with sound. They quite literally step out of the spotlight to give themselves and their music to the listener, fully and lovingly.

Out of all your band compositions, which one(s) do you feel the strongest about, the most connected to, the ones you feel are your best works for the medium?

Of course, this is a difficult question to answer because every piece means something completely different to me. It's almost as if each piece is a time capsule, preserving whatever it was I was going through at that particular time in my life.

The piece that comes to mind, however, is City Trees, in part because of the significance of the commissioning organization and in part because it was the first piece that I wrote in New York City, after having lived in Arizona for 25 years. Leaving Arizona - leaving the town you grew up in - seems so simple in retrospect, but at the time, it was one of the most important decisions I've ever had to make. It takes time and patience to adapt to a new environment, and it takes time and patience for that environment to accept you. When I first moved to NYC, I would spend time walking around my neighborhood in Queens and couldn't help but notice the trees that lined the sidewalks. They're quite literally shackled by concrete pavement and road and it never quite made sense to me how these trees could live and grow and flourish in such an urban environment. They seemed almost out of place juxtaposed against big brick buildings, but I began to take solace in knowing that if they could learn to survive such a challenging environment, then perhaps I could, too.

What are some of the challenges you've faced as an emerging composer?

I think the biggest challenge I've faced and continue to face is the pressure to maintain "quality" and "honesty" with each new piece. I'm very fortunate that writing music has become my "day job," and since I don't have a music degree, I'm totally unqualified to apply for teaching gigs. That means if I don't sell music, I can't pay rent or buy peanut butter. It feels like there's this little voice in the back of your head, especially when you're first starting out and struggling to make a living, that tries to get you to write music that might sell a lot of copies. But that's ridiculous. Like, no one really knows when a piece of music will become a "hit" or whether it will just collect dust on a shelf for the next ten years. In my experience, the pieces I've hoped would sell haven't sold at all and the pieces that I felt like no one would ever really like have enjoyed many surprising performances. There's just no method to it. It's all madness. And I suppose the moral of the story is to just try to be as honest as one can in one's writing. That's the balance. The devil on my shoulder is the publisher inside me, and the angel is my love for creating.

How often do you travel, and for what reasons?  Do you find the amount you travel to have any effect on your compositional and publishing capabilities?

I always travel to the world premiere of new pieces. Other than that, I don't really travel much to clinic bands very often. I think most high school groups are just as excited to Skype with composers, which is much cheaper than a plane ticket and a hotel room. Of course, you don't really get the "personal connection," but Skyping with ensembles is still a lot of fun, especially when everybody's schedules are so busy.

Finally, what piece of advice would you give to other young wind band composers out there, and what piece of advice would you give to band directors who are rehearsing and performing your music?

To young composers: write a lot, take chances to try something new, and write as honestly as you can about the things in your life that are most important to you.

To band directors rehearsing my music: above all else, I value a strong musical spirit. Intonation, rhythm, and technique don't mean much if nobody's actually excited to play the music. My computer can do all that, but without soul, it's pretty boring.

Also, please e-mail me! I'd love to talk to you about the music you're rehearsing because, well, I'm (for the moment) still alive and only a few clicks away. And Beethoven doesn't know how to clear his inbox so it might take him a few years to get back to you.

Thanks, Michael, good luck with your continuing success as a composer!

Now, take a look and a listen to some of his Michael's works below. All of these are available through M-R Music, so give me a call if you're interested in any of these, or if you just want to peruse the score. 

Next week: David Maslanka 

Click the images to listen to each selection.