UC San Diego UC San Diego Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Title 'Like cupcakes melting in the sun...' /
Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7ct1m88z
Authors Skaller, Philip Emmanuel Skaller, Philip Emmanuel.
Publication Date 2014
Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation
eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO
'Like cupcakes melting in the sun...'
A Dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements
for the degree Doctor of Philosophy
in
Music
by
Philip Emmanuel Skaller
Committee in Charge:
Professor Anthony Davis, Chair Professor Anthony Burr Professor Ricardo Dominguez Professor Philip Larson Professor Katherine Lynn Meizel
2014
The Thesis of Philip Emmanuel Skaller is approved and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication on microfilm and electronically:
Chair
University of California, San Diego
2014
iii TABLE OF CONTENTS
Signature Page...... iii
Table of Contents...... iv
Acknowledgments ...... v
Vita...... vii
Abstract of the Dissertation...... viii
Introduction...... 1
Chapter 1: The Infantilized Subject Consumes Cupcakes. Dialectically. …...... 8
Recordings on file at Mandeville Special Collections Library
iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank the many wonderful people who have made this dissertation possible, and supported me in my graduate studies these past 7yrs.
Jeff Kaiser was practically a 6th committee member. He proofed my scores, put together the horn section, and gave me countless hours of technical expertise and artistic inspiration. We've worked together these past 7yrs in the same program, and he has provided me with many more musical opportunities and guidance than our program has.
What more can I say? d00der.
Special thanks to Anthony Davis, my committee chair. Your ability to re-invent yourself and constantly explore new musical terrain has been, more than anything else, what has both inspired and critically informed my studies these past 7yrs. From the bottom of my heart, much love and respect!
Anthony Burr, you have helped me to read critical theory on my own terms, and you have led me down exciting new musical paths. Integrating theory and practice is one of the most difficult things for an artist to do. You taught me just how difficult that is.
This guy hosted me for two long months of miserable composing in rainy
London, and then he flew all the way to San Diego to kill it on the bass for my show.
Marcus Gilroy Ware, I could not have completed my third Div. III without you!
I've been blessed with a wonderful and weird committee. When Anthony Davis isn't the weirdest dude at the table, you know your onto something. Philip Larson
Ricardo Dominguez, and Katherine Meizel, thank you for your support and input along the way. I couldn't have worked on a PhD with any other group.
v Lastly, Ms. Bowden, I'm sure I'd be decomposing in the back of my van somewhere without you. Actually, just as easily with you. Much love and respect for the incredible amount of hard work and talent you brought to this project. You really know how to make shit happen.
vi VITA
2001-2005 Bachelor of Arts in Music, Hampshire College, MA
2005-2007 Freelance musician and concert curator, Berlin, Germany
2007-2014 Teaching assistant and Associate Instructor of music, University of
California, San Diego, CA
2007-2009 Master of Arts in Music, University of California, San Diego, CA
2009-2014 Doctor of Philosophy in Music, University of California, San Diego, CA
PUBLICATIONS
Capitalism and the Production of Realtime: Improvised Music in Post-Unification Berlin,
Master Thesis, University of California, San Diego, CA. 2009
FIELDS OF STUDY
Major Field: Music
Studies in Improvisation, Composition and Performance
Professors Anthony Davis, Mark Dresser and David Borgo
Studies in Musicology and Ethnomusicology
Professors Jann Pasler, David Borgo and Nancy Guy
vii ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION
'Like cupcakes melting in the sun...'
by
Philip Emmanuel Skaller
Doctor of Philosophy in Music
University of California, San Diego, 2014
Professor Anthony Davis, Chair
'Like cupcakes melting in the sun...' was a performance of 7 compositions that explored outsider jazz styles, including exotica, smooth, and free jazz. The compositions were arranged for an octet: Jeff Kaiser (trumpet), Drew Ceccato (saxophone), Andrew
Pask (saxophone), Michael Vlatkovich (trombone), Kjell Nordeson (drums/ percussion,
Leah Bowden (drums/ percussion), Marcus Gilroy Ware (electric bass), Philip Skaller
(keyboards). The performance was held at UCSD, on May 8th, 2014.
viii INTRODUCTION
'Like cupcakes melting in the sun...' is a dissertation work that seeks to realize the creative practice objectives of the Integrative Studies program by blending composition, improvisation, and performance within an aesthetically diverse and artistically self-aware framework. The work represents a continuation on a more ambitious scale of many of the musical practices that I have engaged with over the course of my PhD studies. However, the project was also conceived of as a new musical beginning for myself that more consciously and critically fused interests in exotica and smooth jazz with a more established background in free jazz and latin jazz.
'Like cupcakes melting in the sun...' was performed in front of a live audience at the Conrad Prebys Concert Hall on May 8th 2014, in partial satisfaction of the requirements for a PhD in music. The performance consisted of the premier of about 80 minutes of written and improvised music performed by an octet which also featured me on Piano and directing the ensemble.
The choice of a creative project instead of a more traditional written dissertation was not easy given how intensely academic my qualifying exams were, and that I had spent the past few years moving away from so called improvised music and prepared/ extended piano technique in search of different artistic territory to explore. But the chance to really dig in and get back to composing and playing music full time after all that academic work was important given my objectives upon entering the I.S. program of pursuing both artistic and academic interests equally.
By engaging both academically and as an artist over the past few years with musical territories that were less familiar to me (outsider and popular music genres,
1 2
performance art, keyboards and synthesizers), I was in a place as a performer where I was unsure how to meet the intensity of a dissertation project. However, the idea of integrating some of these newer interests within my pre-existing skill sets as a jazz pianist and a composer seemed to be a quite promising and pragmatic approach for my dissertation work. In order to realize this work, I therefore drew upon a number of skills and interests that I have cultivated over my entire 7yrs of graduate studies.
My creative practice studies included many years of work with committee chair
Anthony Davis and committee member Anthony Burr, as well as earlier work with
Professor Mark Dresser. In the years leading up to my qualifying exams, Professor Davis and I worked together extensively on both long form composition and large ensemble improvisation. With composition, we worked on a number of short opera/ theatrical works, including Teenchat, Webcam Chat, and the Steve Irwin and Rousseau inspired
Nature Musics of the West. I also worked with him on a solo vibraphone composition in memoriam of anarchist hero, and assassin Leon Czogolsz, Temple of Music. Webcam
Chat, Nature Musics of the West, and Temple of Music were performed as part of my
Integrative Studies Juries, in the run up to my qualifying exams.
Often composition studies with Professor Davis seemed to be a cutting contest to see who could come up with the most fucked up idea to put into opera format. Indeed, we have both agreed that during the course of my studies I was partly a surrogate for ideas that were just too weird and perverse for Professor Davis, in his role as 'respected' opera composer, to realize himself. Watching Professor Davis and his wife, Cynthia, perform the internet chatroom generated libretto for Teenchat,was an academic highlight of my 3
graduate studies. However, composition studies also were technical in nature – working on orchestration, phrasing, rhythmic ideas, etc... Professor Davis' unique skills in composing both long form jazz and classical music provided the foundation for approaching the forms and orchestration in my dissertation work.
Professor Anthony Burr and I worked on exotica and popular music styles when I was leading the seven piece band Smooth Badger. The band played original compositions as well as Japanese and latin/world pop songs. The best part of these studies were the emailing back and forth of increasingly obscure exotica, new age, and world pop songs. I am deeply indebted to Professor Burr for truly making me aware of the absolutely awesome and endless musical discoveries and journeys that lie waiting just beneath the surface of the musical cannon. It might sound cliché to say that there is great, mind warping music everywhere. But I don't think this 'everywhere-ness' is taken seriously and literally enough. The great trombonist Ray Anderson once told me that to stay inspired as a composer and performer, it was a good exercise to simply clear one's mind and play without thinking, and without any preparation or particular intent for 10 minutes every day. From Anthony Burr I learned to make a regular activity of simply looking around for music – it doesn't matter what kind, where, or how – on just as regular a schedule as any form of instrumental practice.
From both Anthonys I learned the best of all musical lessons, which was without a doubt the most important personal goal of my dissertation project: to simplify and make as direct as possible both compositional and improvisative/ performative ideas. Often times grad school has felt like a game of hiding behind increasingly complex ideas. But 4
it's hard to bullshit and hide behind simple ideas – indeed, 'Like Cupcakes Melting in the
Sun...' consisted of a series of compositional and improvisatory ideas that aimed at a directness and transparency that could trip up the composer and performer in embarrassingly obvious ways. I prefer to remember the good parts of the show, but certainly my solo on Reification Blues is just such an example of mediocrity rendered transparent by a simple musical idea. 'Like Cupcakes Melting in the Sun...' is a work that, while perhaps not simple on the surface, does go a long way towards realizing my personal artistic and intellectual goals of simplification. And I am quite proud of that.
Notes on the Compositions
The Alienated Subject and the Fetish Object
This was the last piece I composed as part of the project. I wanted a more stripped down, dark exotica feel, with unison lines, call and response and modal harmonies. In contrast to the melodic lines of the A section, the B section features a rhythmically complex accompaniment played in unison by timpani, trombone, synth, and bass. The improvisation section on the end is partly a conducted improv.
Skeptical Thinkers Just Want a Debate!
I wrote this piece as a feature for Kjell Nordeson on drums. Originally titled 'Free
Jazz is Dead', I wanted to write a free jazz sounding, yet fully notated score that would be conducted. As Anthony Davis is fond of pointing out, it's especially crucial to make sure 5
every note in a free improv has the utmost of rhythmic intent. To do this in written form, I took a small bass lick from Reification Blues (the next song in the performance), and turned it into an ostinato. I then improvised some angular, free jazz styled licks into midi and edited them into two sections. Finally, I removed the ostinato line for the most part, only having the bass play fragments of it at the very beginning and at a few other choice moments.
Using an ostinato to write the free jazz 'score' over, and then removing that ostinato was a way of explicitly mimicking this core element in free jazz improv: playing over and against an imagined pulse/rhythm. For me, free improv is always set against a very strong, often imaginary, pulse: a dialectic, where the displaced/ disjointed/ free feel of the style by definition comes to exist only in contrast, dialogue, and violation of these pulses.
Reification Blues
I chose to get back into playing and composing via the blues, and Reification
Blues was the first piece I wrote for this project. My approach to the blues was informed by working with Mark Dresser's music, in which he often uses the blues as a sort of matrix and springboard for unusual rhythmic ideas. I learned from him that the blues was a great medium in which to try out new compositional ideas. Much like Dresser, I built the piece off of the bass line, setting out to create my own blues experiment that combined a smooth jazz and exotica feel. The initial idea was to combine an ornamented, exotica melody over a smooth jazz feel. However Reification Blues turned into more of 6
an experiment in juxtaposing very short, condensed ideas, particularly in the bass line, into a very short form, especially over the last five bars. It was clear that this was going to be a blues that was inspired by an additional artist: Webern.
Hot Latin Grooves
In the spirit of Les Baxter's teen drums. I took two grooves that were part of some other compositions that did not make the final cut onto this show. I put the grooves back to back and let the percussionists do most of the work. Also for those at the show, note that in the spirit of authentic exotica, someone was spontaneously playing the wrong clave against the Montuno in the second section (sadly not audible on recording).
The tumbao written to the 2-3 rumba in the second section is one of my favorite lines from the dissertation project.
Who's there...? Althusser?
This smooth jazz feature was one of the highlights of the concert. The head was written in a similar vein to Reification Blues in that both the melody and the accompaniment consist of very short, complete ideas. Who's there...? Althusser? was one of the more difficult charts to execute. The challenge of performing it was twofold: First, the brevity of each idea requires precise execution, and the diatonic melodies and lush chordal accompaniment likewise leave little room for error. Second, the melody and accompaniment had precise off beat phrasing, with the rhythm section and horn section needing to lock in at key moments to preserve the 'smooth' flow of the overall piece. 7
The B section consists of a layered exotica/funk groove, followed by a long, directed improvisation. I used conduction cues to bring players in and our of the improv, change the dynamics, etc... And I also used cue cards to signal more complex ideas. At approximately 7:45, I held up a cue card that had the words 'smooth jazz' written on it.
Jeff Kaiser immediately picked up on the cue and started to play muted trumpet. The free improv smooth jazz section that followed was one of my favorite improvisations of the performance.
Exotica Fragment
Exotica Fragment was written similarly to Skeptical Thinkers Just Want a
Debate! I made a number of improvisations over a repeating ostinato, and edited the improvisations into the vibraphone part. I wanted the vibraphone part to flow freely over the 11/8 ostinato pattern. In this case, not having to improvise fluidly with the 11/8 ostinato was an advantage: I improvised as freely and fluidly over the pattern as possible
(almost as if in 4/4), only trying to find my place in the pattern during extended rests.
Originally the top line was going to be doubled by soprano voice, to play with the idea of the estrangement of the voice that exotica often performs. However a last minute cancellation led to Andrew Pask volunteering on clarinet.
The Infantilized Subject Consumes Cupcakes. Dialectically.
This was the most ambitious, long form composition in the project and it was very much influenced by the work of one of my favorite composers, Eddie Palmieri. His 8
twisted montunos, contrapuntal horn lines, complex and extended forms, and even his strangely indulgent piano cadenzas (which for the most part all sound the same) are what inspired my early interests in latin jazz and salsa. CHAPTER 1:
The Infantilized Subject Consumes Cupcakes. Dialectically.
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