The three musicians met late one January afternoon at a
café in Hollywood after finding each other on Craigslist.
Daniel Gall, an undergraduate music student, had a proposition for
the two strangers, sisters Claire and Anna Temin: He wanted to
compose a piece for their local ensemble, Rue 22, to play. After
two months of work and rehearsal, the three met again this past
Wednesday night. This time, the setting was Jan Popper Theater in
the Schoenberg Music Building, where the Temins and a third member
of their group performed together for the first time. Gall was in
the audience, listening. “When I hear my music in concert,
I’m petrified,” he said. “Lots of times I am. I
can’t even imagine why.” On stage, Claire was relishing
the limelight as the notes poured from her flute. She said
Gall’s piece has a “devilish” quality to it.
“Student concerts are always sort of chaotic, but it was
fun,” she said.
The Composer Wednesday’s concert showcased two of three
movements in Gall’s roughly eight-minute piece, titled
“Diabolical and sweet” and “Fiendish rain,”
respectively. He originally wrote the introduction for the harp,
but decided it wasn’t harsh or percussive enough on that
instrument. After meeting the Temins, he reworked and built off the
existing transcript, creating parts for Rue 22’s flute,
clarinet and piano. Starting a piece is the hardest task in
composing, says Gall, who wrote his first song as a third grader.
Sometimes he throws down notes on the score and tries to
“make sense of it.” Or he’ll let his hands do the
writing, sitting down and playing the piano until something
appeals. This method requires little planning, so the music becomes
less intellectual, he says. “I don’t wait for
inspiration,” he said. “You’re going to be most
inspired as you’re writing. “I’m a binge
composer. I’ll work on it, work on it, work on it for eight
hours, and just go, go, go until you’re finished.” To
write for an array of musicians, a composer must take time to
understand everything from a saxophone to a violin or piano, Gall
says. Music is filled with patterns, and creating it can mean
playing a melody backwards, transposing notes to new pitches, or
having a different instrument replay a tune, he says. Gall knows
when a score is complete and says the end is a feeling that
can’t be described. But even after the notes are fixed on
paper, parts remain open to interpretation. Gall met with Rue 22
about three times to listen to rehearsals, and says criticism can
make a piece stronger. He says he often scours the Internet to link
up with performers, and his music has traveled to audiences in
Canada, Ireland and Arkansas City in Kansas. “The composer
doesn’t necessarily know best,” he said.
The Flutist, the Clarinetist and the Pianist An East Coast
native, Claire said she left Fifth Avenue and Central Park last
October after studying music at New York University. She moved to
West Hollywood in search of what she calls a less elitist scene.
She says she found it in Los Angeles. “Here, people would
only listen to stuff that’s nice to listen to,” she
said, a change from the super-intellectual New York crowd and
musicians that “don’t really care about what the
audience thinks.” Anna, fresh from The Julliard School of
Music in New York City, joined her sister this year, and while
seeking a third member for their ensemble, they responded to a
Craigslist posting by pianist Adryn Miller. The group’s name
fuses their lives together ““ Rue, a reflection of the
Temins’ French background, and 22, the number of the Santa
Monica street where Miller lives. The flute-clarinet-piano
combination is unusual, so few scores are written for such a mix.
The three arrange music, each concentrating on their own parts.
Rehearsing Gall’s composition in past weeks gave the ensemble
the rare chance to work with a living composer. Miller, born and
raised in Alaska, said everything is about the weather, so she saw
the song as a storm ““ a calm introduction followed by
intervals of heightened sensation. She said Gall was easygoing but
knew exactly what he wanted from the music. “Obviously,
you’re always a little nervous,” Miller said. “Oh
no, am I massacring this? What exactly did he intend?” Claire
says she likes interacting with composers and telling them how she
thinks sounds should be expressed. The trio said she didn’t
like the beginning of Gall’s piece, and the four chatted
about how it should be played. Claire says she expects to
collaborate with Gall again. As for Rue 22, the three are planning
the days ahead, hoping to make a living in music. They say the
solidarity of the group in its first couple months was unexpected
but welcome. “I’ve just been in the mindset where
I’m up for anything,” Claire said. “I had no idea
that day that I posted on Craigslist what this was going to turn
into,” Miller said.