Composer Profile: Mark Carlson
Mark Carlson is a composer, UCLA professor, flutist, and founder and Artist Director of one of the longest running Los Angeles based chamber music organizations, Pacific Serenades. To me, he has been a mentor both musically and administratively, an inspiration with his genuine craft, and most importantly, a friend.
On the second concert of its 26th season, Pacific Serenades will premiere Mark Carlson’s most recent composition for quintet, Cave Paintings, in between works of Schumann and Suk. I recently spoke with Mark about his new work, scored for alto saxophone, violin, viola, cello, and piano, and cast in four movements. Carlson describes it as a loving look backwards at music from an earlier time, especially music from American popular culture of the 1930s and 1940s, as he explores the breadth of melodic and harmonic invention of that era and reinterprets it in his own unique, classical-music voice.
“I grew up hearing that music, partly because my mother loved it–the music of her own growing up years–and partly because it was always such an integral part of our culture, and still is.” But it was when he was a graduate student at UCLA in the 1970’s that he really became enamored of that music, listening to so much of it that now, he says, “It is a part of me.” He mentioned the Great American Songbook–music principally from Broadway and Hollywood musicals and from jazz by the likes of George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Billy Strayhorn, Harold Arlen, and Cole Porter–as an inspiration, but he was also inspired by the scores to the great noir films. In today’s youthful musical climate, this music might seem distant, yet it is so vital to the foundation of contemporary American culture.
When I asked about his evocative title, Cave Paintings, he said, “I was imagining what it would be like to enter a cave and see paintings from a distant time, to feel their vitality, and to realize These people were real. These painting are about their daily lives!” He said that he wanted the piece to also be a tribute to the people of the 30s and 40s, including his parents–the living, breathing people who lived with those memorable and wistful tunes, whose sinuous and subtle harmonic gestures reflect the things this era stood for and cared about.
The first movement opens with a moody and evocative atmosphere that sets up motivic musical elements that will permeate all five movements. The alto saxophone, an instrument Carlson loves to compose for, is featured prominently in both melodic and virtuosic passages and slyly maneuvers its way around the other instruments. The following movement, Dance Noir, is a dance that calls on the musicians to set aside their classical chops and swing as if in a jazz combo. Late Autumn, the third movement, is an homage to the beautiful and lyrical ballads of the 1930s. To conclude the quintet, Carlson calls on the musicians to rejoice in a lively and up-tempo dance, a combination of a waltz and a tango.
Pacific Serenades has always been, to me, one of the most important chamber music series in Los Angeles because of its devotion to its core mission–to commission and present new chamber music from Southern California. This concert, aptly titled Cross-pollination, symbolizes both Pacific Serenades’ ability to spread its influence through the music they’ve commissioned around the world and the eclecticism of its Artistic Director and composer, Mark Carlson and manifested in his new quintet, Cave Paintings.
Nick Gianopoulos is a Los Angeles based composer and volunteer of Pacific Serenades. He is currently the composer-in-residence of the Symbiosis Chamber Orchestra where his music enjoys performances around Southern California.
