A composer of experimental music, Evan Mazunik is one of four Queens-based composers chosen as winners of the 2010 Con Edison Musicians’ Residency: Composition Program. He describes in this interview what Soundpainting is, how one "mulches" with sound, and his current projects.
Evan, can you describe what happens when you are using a language of signs to conduct an improvising orchestra?
That all depends on which signs I use and how the improvisers choose to interpret them! Most of the time, I use Soundpainting, a live composing sign language created by Walter Thompson. Some signs are very specific and technical (e.g. “Brass 3 enter slowly with a high fortissimo Db long tone on beat four”), while others are more open to interpretation (e.g. “Point to Point” – when I point at a performer, they begin slowly developing a motif, and when I stop pointing, they stop playing). I’m much more interested in the risk and surprise inherent in composing live with improvisers, where I provide a structure, and the player(s) provide a content. Otherwise, I’d just as soon write something down on paper and hand it to them to read.
Is the result ever transcribed onto sheet music? Or does it only exist documented on video (if taken) and in the minds of those who heard/saw it performed?
Good question. While the end results are often ephemeral and only exist in the moment, there are occasionally some exceptions. My experimental chamber ensemble, ZAHA, recorded their debut album “Shoot the Sun” on Snapback Records. For our CD release show, I transcribed a excerpt from one track titled “Boneshaker.” During the original recording session, the band had improvised within a structure I had given them (they could choose their notes, but I had given them parameters for when to change notes and how high or low they could move between notes). I then rehearsed this transcription with the band, and at the performance, we played this excerpt in the midst of the original “rules of the game” for the composition. It's kind of like mulching -- with sound...
What is Soundpainting and how has it influenced your work?
I’ll begin by offering the official working definition of Soundpainting from the website: "Soundpainting is the universal live composing sign language created by New York composer Walter Thompson for musicians, dancers, actors, poets, and visual artists working in the medium of structured improvisation." For me, Soundpainting is a versatile language that enables me to collaborate with creative individuals from diverse backgrounds and trainings while fashioning a composition in real-time from the improvised contributions of the performers. Even when I’m not overtly using it in my composition or improvisation, I’ve found that this language -- its concept and philosophy -- still seeps into the fabric of everything I make in music.
What project(s) you are working on now during your residency and what stage they are at?
I’ve started composing a piece with a working title of “Trigger’s Broom: an emerging suite for chamber ensemble.” Trigger’s Broom is a composition that plumbs the paradoxes of identity, change, decay, and growth. Soundpainting, graphic scores, structured improvisation, and traditional notation will be re-combined and re-arranged in an open-form, multi-movement suite that will gradually evolve over the course of several performances. I've written an assortment of “palettes” (i.e. pre-composed materials) and have culled signs from the Soundpainting language that will work well in both processing these palettes (as an electronic musician might “process” a pre-recorded sound) and generating related ideas from improvisers.
How has the Con Edison Residency helped you?
It has helped me in at least three ways. First, it’s provided me access to a studio space away from home. It’s difficult to stay productive at home, and “going to the office” has immensely helped my discipline as a composer. Second, it has provided some money during the slow months of the summer, when freelance teaching and gigs typically slow down in New York. Third, and perhaps most importantly, this residency has served as an encouragement to me as a composer, a gesture of support and interest, which can serve as food for the soul during the lean periods of struggle and doubt one often encounters in the creative process.
What’s next on your professional horizon?
I have a few irons in the fire -- ZAHA is performing at Brooklyn Lyceum on September 1st, and we're organizing a tour of the eastern U.S. for the spring of 2011. Also, every week for the rest of 2010, I'm releasing a new musical setting of a sacred text in a series of liturgical music titled "Sunday Songs."
Learn more about Evan and his work on blissstreetstudios.com, evanmazunik.com and on the Fractured Atlas blog.
Photo (c) 2008 Colette Mazunik
what are some of your inspirations when composing?
Besides composing, what other writing and/or music making do you do on a regular basis?
Other music is certainly one; although I make a concerted effort to not duplicate something I’ve heard and like, I do allow it to inform what I do. Another source of inspiration is language; I love to play with words and their meanings. For example, my composition “Mission Music” for solo marimba has three movements: “Emission,” “Transmission,” and “Admission,” and the music for each is based on the dictionary definitions of those words. 
How has the Con Edison Residency helped you?