Elizabeth Foster Comninellis (b. 1986) is a composer, singer, and pianist. She has studied under acclaimed composers Yevgeniy Sharlat, Chen Yi, Zhou Long, Paul Rudy and Carter Pann.
Comninellis is the Composer-in-Residence for the Boulder Symphony. Her most recent work, Fire and Glass, was written for the ensemble in December 2019. The ensemble also commissioned and premiered her symphonic works, “Rose Deep”, featuring Comninellis as vocal soloist, in November 2017, and “As Lightning Flashes” in April 2017. She has been commissioned by a number of new music initiatives, recently the Arapahoe Philharmonic, Beer-thoven Concert Series, and Tetractys New Music, for which she wrote “Lady Wisdom and Solomon”. Her piece “White Birds”, for clarinet and electronics, was presented at the 2015 New York Electroacoustic Music Festival. Her percussion trio, “Bringing in the Boat”, was chosen for the Women Composers of Hartford's 2015 international score call. She was awarded the Levy Graduate Composition Prize for her chamber work, “Flight”, in 2011, and was a recipient of the Kent Kennan Fellowship for music composition at the University of Texas at Austin from 2013 to 2017.
Devin Patrick Hughes: I'm very excited to be joined by Elizabeth Foster Comninellis. She was born in 1986 and recently completed her doctorate in music composition at the University of Texas, Austin. She completed her masters in composition from CU Boulder. She studied with some amazing composers including Chen Yi and Carter Pann. We’ve been very privileged to have her as the Boulder Symphony Composer-in-Residence. She's written some really amazing music, including Rose Deep and As Lightning Flashes. We're premiering her new work Fire and Glass December 6 and 8, 2019. She has been part of a couple of different cool new music initiatives, including Beer-thoven, and Tetractys New Music, along with the New York Electroacoustic Music Festival. Welcome, Liz, I'm very excited to be speaking with you and to get into your music a bit.
Elizabeth Foster Comninellis: Yeah, thanks. It's my pleasure to work with you and to speak with you today.
So I wanted to ask about your background. Your music is very unique in the way you incorporate your own voice as a singer. You're also a pianist. As a composer, can you talk about how your desire to create music for chamber ensembles and orchestras evolved with these influences?
Yes, absolutely. I began studying music at a young age like many of us, and I had a really inspiring teacher. She had a doctorate in vocal pedagogy, but she was an excellent pianist and just very inquisitive. She knew about history, music history, and theory. She was just very, very inspiring and very knowledgeable and she actually is not a composer, but her love for incorporating all aspects of music into our lessons really inspired me. So I went to school initially for vocal performance with a piano minor. And I then took composition as an elective and I found that in composition you get to incorporate all these elements into music, and get to be inspired by every part of the musical world - history and theory and collaboration and performing. And for me that was everything I had loved the most about music in a creative package - an opportunity to create something new out of all these different elements that I find fascinating and interesting. So I became a composition major in my junior year of college at the University of Missouri and I've been just fascinated by this world. I love the challenge of every project being something new and something different. And I still get to have all of the elements of the music world that I enjoy such as teaching and performing. Even as a composer it brings everything together, and I love that about about writing. One of the greatest joys of writing is collaborating with ensembles and musicians I love that aspect. The relationship that I have with you all at the Boulder Symphony is so rewarding. I really enjoy writing for you, it’s been a pleasure.
We've really enjoyed working with you and our audience and orchestra is really looking forward to this new piece we're doing in December. I'm wondering if you would talk a little bit about your inspirations getting into music, and how that ties to your work as a music teacher working with kids. You recently moved to Kuwait, and you're teaching music there. Can you talk about how that interacts with your professional composition life or how it inspires it? And I noticed that you’re into the Kodaly method. Can you talk about where that all came from, in terms of music education today?
Sure. I’ll start with my inspiration for this piece in particular. Now that I'm living in Kuwait I teach at an American school, and I teach students from all over the world and work with teachers from all over the world with crazy backgrounds: half Peruvian/half Kuwaiti, half Lebanese/half Canadian. Everybody is coming different places with a mixed background which has gotten me thinking a lot about my Greek heritage. My family is from Greece, from the island of Limos, and I traveled there recently because now I'm much closer to Europe being in Kuwait. I wanted to incorporate my heritage into my music for the first time. I've never done that before. That's why I chose some Greek folk music as the inspiration for Fire and Glass. I was inspired by the fact that I'm living in a world of people from everywhere. We have teachers, students, and colleagues from all over the world with all sorts of different stories who've lived in all sorts of different places. It really has sort of helped me to appreciate the beauty of culture and heritage. So I think that that's definitely affected the way that I think about writing. And actually, my next commission is to write for a choral festival in Lebanon. It will be a meeting of choirs from the UAE, Kuwait, Oman, and Lebanon. That's a really incredible opportunity that I'm sure I never would have had if I wasn't living in this part of the world.
That's amazing. Can you kind of talk about like the symphonic and choral music scene in places like Lebanon and Kuwait? What kind of challenges do you experience over there that you might not experience in the States or vice versa?
Well, there's definitely not nearly as much Western music culture there and there aren't as many opportunities. You mentioned several new music initiatives that I've been involved in. Those were in Austin. You mentioned Tetractys and Beer-thoven. There's not a lot of that here - you have to search for it. But there are some Kuwaiti composers. Actually this week we went to a concert of the Prague Philharmonic, and they played three works by local composers, which was incredible to see. So there is a there is a music scene but it's very new. It's a growing music scene. They just built this cultural center with some pretty amazing venues, but they remain empty much of the year because they're still working on building that aspect of their culture.
But there are some excellent musicians here, excellent music teachers from different places, and there's also this whole Arab music which is very different. We have a friend whose dad is a pretty famous Kuwaiti traditional singer, and I'm sure that hearing that music, and those voices has influenced the way that I think about music. Those harmonies and those different scales have influenced, even just subconsciously, the way that I think about music.
We hear the call to prayer, every day. Many, many times a day. Sometimes overlapping mosques, you'll hear two or three on top of each other. So I'm sure that that has really affected my ears because we all are influenced consciously or subconsciously by what we're hearing, what we're reading, what we're seeing. It influences what we think about and how we think about it, and in our case as musicians, how we think about music and how we create as well.
So let's go back to Fire and Glass, that's the newest piece that that you've written. I've also been directly involved with a few different pieces of yours: As Lightning Flashes, Rose Deep, and Carol Waits, which is all very beautiful music. All of our collaborations have been very thematic which you seem to to deliver and produce brilliantly. For Fire and Glass it's on a concert with a fire theme with Haydn Symphony no. 59, Stravinsky Firebird and Manuel de Falla’s Ritual Fire Dance from El amour brujo. Can you talk about how that inspiration happens thematically. And is that something that you actually prefer to do?
I enjoy the challenge of working within parameters. As a composer, it's best to write for an ensemble you know is going to play your music. The goal is to write something that works for someone, that benefits them and benefits you, and so I like the challenge of being told, ‘here are the parameters, can you do something creative within these parameters?’ I actually don't find it limiting at all. The parameters give you a guideline, they give you a starting point, which I find helpful as a composer. I wrote many pieces early in my compositional career that I just wrote purely out of inspiration. And a number of them have never been played because I didn't have any kind of practical consideration in mind. I didn't have particular players in mind. I didn't have a particular venue or time in mind. So they sort of got shelved. And then I began writing more specifically for musicians who were friends or ensembles who needed music. I love that collaboration. I love being able to work with a group of musicians who say, ‘we need this for this purpose. Could you put something together for us, could you write something for us?’
The craziest commission I’ve gotten was this low brass player that had a large chamber ensemble. I never met him - he just found my website sometime last year. And he said, ‘hey, could you write a piece for in honor of my dog that died? We want to put it on an album.’ And they were producing a really nice recording - anytime somebody offers me a nice recording of something I've written them then I'm excited about that. It's great to have high quality recordings. So he sent me a little novella about his dog, and I wrote a piece in honor of his dog. I don't know if it did justice to the life of his dog because I didn't know the dog but it was a fun project, even though it sounds kind of silly. So I like the challenge of working within some parameters.
For Fire and Glass, can you discuss how you brought to life the fire theme and how that connects to some Greek folk music from your own heritage?
Sure. I didn’t grow up in the Greek Orthodox Church but I grew up going there on holidays with my family. I've always loved the music. I love the Greek scales and the modes that they use, not just in church music but in their folk music and so I did some research. When you commissioned me to write this piece I knew I wanted to incorporate at least the harmonic language and the modal language of Greek music into my into my piece. I just sort of studied Greek folk music and played through a bunch of folk songs, and then started arranging my own version and the opening theme which is the fire theme grew out of one of those experiments. I took a folk song as my inspiration and then reinvented it. And the same with the other theme. The glass is actually a silly children's song about a rabbit. It doesn’t sound anything like a silly children’s song about a rabbit. For some reason I just couldn't get that melody out of my head. I actually didn't even find it for this piece. I found it because I was putting together some World folk music for my students to sing, and then I happened upon the song and I just could not get it out of my head. And again I changed it quite a bit, so it's really not recognizable at all as the song that it is, but it definitely was my starting point. So I intentionally sought out Greek folk music in a way that I hadn't done before with the thought that would use that as a springboard in writing this piece.
So that leads to my next question. What is it about original material that makes you say ‘that's a great thing that I can develop’ and ‘I can use that’ or ‘I can transfigure that’? People like Kodaly or Bartok take transcriptions of original folk material and incorporate that. Composers for the orchestra have always been inspired by and utilized folk material. I know not all of your music is using folk elements, but can you talk about your parameters or what you look for?
This is the first time I've ever done anything like that, but I've always admired the music of Bartok especially and the way that he incorporates both elements. Even Brahms and Chopin do that. They take these aspects of different cultures and make them their own and I've never intentionally done that before. But I love that music. So I just thought, I will try it this time. I just played through Greek folk music until I found something that really got my attention and gave me ideas for something new. It was not just that I enjoyed the melody and the harmony and the feel of the piece, but I also felt inspired by it. I had ideas for what I could do with something like this.
So I’d like to move on to spirituality in music. Composers relied heavily on this, people like Anton Bruckner, who was an organist and a very staunch Catholic writing big symphonies, glorifying God and creation, or even going back to Bach who wrote to glorify God. I feel all composers are connected to some higher source channeling through them that allows us to be receivers of something that is unifying and unable to be expressed in words. Can you talk about how that element influences your music?
A couple of composers that have really inspired me the way they incorporate spirituality into their music are Messiaen, and Arvo Pärt. Arvo Pärt is a really devout orthodox Estonian. They write this really beautiful music that is not preaching at anybody, it's not saying you should believe what they believe. It's just a heartfelt expression of how they feel about what they believe. And I think it's really beautifully and really well done. Faith has always been important to me. I grew up with parents for whom it was very important. They have spent their careers serving poor people medically and all over the world and I've always felt like that's a really great example of loving people and expressing your faith in a way that serves and helps people. So I grew up with a really good example and it was very inspirational for me. But I really shied away from incorporating it into my music because I worked with a few composers early when I began writing, who used it almost as a crusade: preaching in people's faces about what they think and what they believed, like a statement that I felt was not serving the music at all. It was not well done. It was not good music, in my opinion. And I was afraid that if I ever tried to incorporate my faith into my work I would either do the music a disservice or do my faith a disservice. So the first time that I did that was actually As Lightning Flashes and it was very inspirational. I was reading and I was really struck by this one passage, and it struck me in a musical way. It felt honest, it felt like an honest expression which is why I chose to incorporate it into that piece. But I still am very cautious about how I express my faith in my music because I want to be sure that it's done in a way that is honest, you know, and that is musical and artistic and in a way that you bring something beautiful into the world that is for a good purpose. I haven't actually done that a lot, I haven’t actually incorporated my faith into a lot of music. Just a few pieces, and every time it sort of came about naturally.
And in the case of As Lightning Flashes I think that was partly inspired by Berlioz’s use of the Dies Irae. Music’s relationship to the church has been there, and composers have been responding to that, for centuries. Composers like Berlioz, Liszt, and Rachmaninoff utilize the Dies Irae to symbolize death as a calling card. Similar to Beethoven's Fifth Symphony opening, it's Beethoven's four note motive that he has to overcome in his life and music. Was your inspiration from the Berlioz and the Dies Irae?
I remember now, you're jogging my memory. When you asked me about writing As Lightning Flashes you told me about the Dies Irae and day of wrath. I think that was the title of the concert. That passage that I used as inspiration as lightning flashes from east to the west, it's talking about the coming of Christ which is supposed to be like a very hopeful way of thinking about the end of time instead of it being this day of reckoning with fire and brimstone. I decided to take the opposite view of the day of wrath. Still a day of reckoning but not a day like destruction. That definitely was a part of my thought process because that was the theme of the concert, and I wasn't sure what to do with that. I didn't want to write some ominous doomsday kind of piece, but I wanted to write something that would fit with the theme.
Yeah, there's plenty of destruction in Western art.
Maybe I was looking for some kind of inspiration as I was reading. I honestly don’t remember. It seems like as soon as I finish a piece that piece goes out of my head and I go on to the new piece and forget what I was thinking with the previous one. I don't know how people write multiple pieces at once. I can't do it. I have to finish one and start a new one.
Can you talk a little bit about your process from when you get a commission or when you get inspiration to the final product with the ensemble or orchestra?
The way that I write for orchestra has only become established the last couple of pieces that I've written. I’m a pianist so I always started at the piano. And I always write in short score first. I always make a very complete piano score before I do any kind of orchestration because I feel like it keeps me grounded and organized while I’m orchestrating. And usually when I'm just trying to get inspiration, I draw a lot from whatever it is I'm reading, or from dance. Any other medium can inspire a piece. I've written a lot of commissions since I graduated in 2017 from my doctorate. I've had commissions straight on, which is great, I'm very thankful. So I've always had some kind of parameter already set for me. I know what the ensemble is going to be, I know what timetable is going to be. And that helps me to have a starting point, which I honestly like. I like that too because it always gives me a deadline. I know I have to finish something in a span of time and I don't let something hang out for too long. I always start at the piano and I usually just turn a recorder on and sing, play and get a bunch of ideas out: some of which are terrible and some are good. And I will listen back, and if I find something that I think is good I'll transcribe it and I do a lot by hand at the beginning. And then I start working on an overarching structure. I do that pretty early on because I usually need to know about how long it's going to be, and that helps me know how to develop my ideas, and how long to string them out or if I need more material. So I make a really complete piano score, and then I orchestrate, especially if it's for large ensemble, if it's for anything more than 10 instruments. So if it's a large chamber ensemble all the way to a full orchestra, I do a piano score. Actually I do short score for most things because I feel like it helps. It's nice to be able to play the piece with my two hands and double check how it flows and if it works. And then, once the piano score is complete then I start to make notes about orchestration and begin the process of orchestrating. Sometimes if I get stuck in the orchestration process I might skip ahead and orchestrate the end and then work backwards. That's another reason I like having having a pretty complete piano score. Sometimes if I’m not sure what to do in a section orchestrationally, then I can pass by it and go to the end and work and then I'm like “oh well I haven't done this yet...maybe I should do this here.” So, that's my process, especially for large ensemble. My next commission is a choral piece, and I haven't written choral music for several years, so I'm sure I'll go about that differently. And it'll be a learning experience because it’s been a while for me.
As a singer, does that draw you more to choral music? A lot of composers don't actually perform in their music and that's one of the things that we were privileged to do with you on Rose Deep with Shakespeare’s sonnet. Is that an approach you take? Sitting at the piano you're playing, singing, recording. As an ensemble director, that's something that I always try and get musicians or singers to work on when rehearsing a passage: “if you can sing it you can play it” is one of my practices, and if somebody is having trouble with a style or passage, I ask players to sing it because when people are singing, you can tell if they have a good idea of the spirit behind the musical phrase or if they don't. Through singing you can develop that. Do you think that gives you an advantage as a composer being a vocalist?
Absolutely, I feel very thankful for that. Especially if you're writing for any instrument that has to breathe. If you can sing their part, it gives you an idea of it's doable or not. But also even just writing a good melody, if you can't sing it it's probably not a great melody. Maybe that's old-fashioned. I know that there are composers who would disagree with me about that, but if it makes sense enough that you can sing it and remember it, I think that that's good. Also I use singing a lot as a teacher, and you asked me about Kodaly. That's a very singing based teaching method and that's one of the things I love about it: you learn the sound, you learn how to sing it, how to do it, and then you learn how to play it, and then you learn what it looks like on the staff. The last thing you see is how to write it, is how to see it on the page. You experience it before you see it on the page. And to me that makes a lot of sense pedagogically, especially for young kids. You asked me about choral music. I haven't been particularly drawn to choral music just because I found it really difficult to find choral ensembles that are willing to perform pieces that I've written. As a composer it's about connections, it’s about who you know and who you've worked with, and I've just worked a lot more with instrumental musicians than I have with singers. In general, that's just how it's happened. I love choral music. I've written several choral pieces that never ended up getting performed. And so I decided no choral music for me until I know I have an ensemble to perform it. I've written more for solo vocals. I’ve written a lot of songs for voice and piano, which I performed myself or had other people perform. I wrote a bunch of little songs that were duets for two sopranos. My brother had a son, he’s five now, but I was pretty excited about being an aunt so I wrote a little collection of songs for him. I'm still pretty excited about being an aunt, he’s great! I wrote a little songbook for him. And the choral music I haven't done a lot with this. That's one of the reasons I'm excited about this opportunity to write for this festival in Lebanon. Also I'm just excited to go to Lebanon..
You have some music for narrator as well. One of the things that I've listened to recently was You Must Pay the Rent.
Oh yes, absolutely. That was a lot of fun. I love doing narration pieces and I love writing stuff for kids. I've written a few things for kids over the years, including You Must Pay the Rent, and then I wrote a cowboy melodrama, which was very over the top with costume.
Magic Lasso you’re talking about? That’s fantastic!
Yeah the Magic Lasso, I worked with a playwright at UT and man, that was such a fun collaboration - everything about that. So I would love to do more things like that. And
I love to narrate and be ridiculous. Just as a performer I really enjoy getting to be a part of that. As a composer and as a performer, it’s very rewarding. But actually, You Must Pay the Rent came out of this game my babysitter used to play with me when I was a kid. She would fold up a piece of paper like a bow, like accordion like a bow and she would put it on her nose as the villain with the mustache, and then on her neck as the hero, and then on her hair as the damsel. Anyways I thought that would make a great solo flute piece.
I'm very happy to hear that and I'm happy to know that that You Must Pay the Rent was not one of your experiences as a grad student living in Boulder, where the villain is the landlord.
Thankfully no, although the rent was very high.
One of my favorite pieces of yours is Flight. Can you talk a little bit about that and where the inspiration came from?
That was a really, really rewarding project. And it was the first time I wrote for a larger chamber ensemble. Each movement is inspired by an adventure of flying machines. William Cayley, Orville Wright, and Otto Lilienthal. I was inspired because my dad is a pilot. He doesn’t do it for a living, he’s a hobbyist but he loves planes. And so I wrote to the Library of Congress, and they sent me a bunch of materials about inventors of flying machines and I did a bunch of research. Probably not super necessary to the piece, but I was just very excited about it and so each movement is inspired by an inventor. William Cayley never actually saw flight, but he was a dreamer and his research and experiments led to the Wright brothers’ success. So that first movement is kind of a dreamy, hopeful movement because he never actually got to see his work come to fruition. And then the Wright brothers, it's kind of a sad story: they saw, they saw their planes used as weapons for war, especially Orville because he outlived his brother by a long time. And that piece is kind of sad. He died a very sad person, very broken over seeing what his invention began to be used for because he lived even into the Second World War. And then the other one is Otto (Lilienthal). He was very heroic and daring and he accomplished all these feats and people came out to watch him and he ended up dying in one of his crashes which is sad but he was an icon of bravery -- almost like a superhero. So each piece was inspired by the story of the inventor that it's titled after. That was a super fun project.
That's cool. How crucial do you think it is for the composer to be present during the rehearsal process?
That’s so rewarding to be in the room and hear you all rehearsing and get to interact with you all. I think that that's a very important part, and it's one of the beauties of working with living composers, you can ask them directly. Is this what you're looking for and and you know we don't have that opportunity with a lot of composers that we love to play
Even though for this one distance keeps us apart, we're very grateful to be able to play your music, with or without you present!
I think it’s really neat to have that collaboration to be in flesh and blood: you are the people that are playing the piece and I am the person that wrote the piece and here we are together in the same room. How cool is that? That doesn't happen very often, you know. And I'm really thankful, Devin, to you guys and to you especially for being a champion of new music. I know that you do a new piece on every concert I think right? Almost every concert.
We try, yes.
And I think that's amazing. And I am really thankful, you know, that you guys do that because a lot of orchestras don’t take a chance on new music. When I was working on my master's I was told “don't write for orchestra - you'll never hear your music.” I was told that by several of my professors, and I’m just really glad that that's not true. I think I've now had five orchestra pieces performed and that's a huge gift. I'm very thankful. But I was strongly discouraged from writing for orchestra, because a lot of orchestras just don't think that new music will sell tickets or I'm not sure. But I'm thankful that you all do - for myself and for other other composers.
If you had a message to broadcast, you have the ear of all orchestra leaders and the audiences that we serve, what would that be?
I would say collaboration is a gift. It's a gift that you don't have in the same way with a composer who is not living. When you're working with living artists, you're creating something together. You as the orchestra are the first to perform this piece ever, you are pioneering it just as much as I am pioneering it. It's never existed in any other place at any other time, and that is a really beautiful thing. That is a really neat opportunity not just for an orchestra but also for an audience to get to hear something brand new, and just like any music, it's not all going to be a masterpiece. It's not all going to be perfect but that's how composers grow. And if we don't have that opportunity, then we don't grow. The greatest composers in the world have written pieces that may not be the greatest pieces at times, but they wouldn't have become who they were if it hadn't been for orchestras, ensembles, and musicians taking a chance on their work and giving them an opportunity to grow and to learn, as well as audiences. So I think there's a really beautiful opportunity with living artists working together to collaborate and create new things, you know, even if it isn't perfect the first time, even if it isn't the best thing you've ever done, you're always learning, you always learn from experience like that. And I think that that is very valuable.
And with dead composers we just can't get any answers out of them.
Yeah, that's true.
Because as performers we’re seekers, we want answers to questions...sometimes.
Sure, absolutely.
Well, we are really looking forward to playing more of your music and I hope that we can assist in any small way to get your music heard and get your really beautiful and unique and amazing voice out into the world.
Well, thanks so much it's such a pleasure working with you, and I’m really looking forward to our performance coming up in December.