Brandon Becker

Explicit content warning

10/18/24 • 77 min

Brandon died February 21, 2024, nearly 3 years after this interview. He was a composer of experimental music, and a very good friend of mine.
This interview touches on topics like: attention (inside & outside of concert settings), processing trauma through music, mental illness, drug usage, the psychology of repetition, the harmonic properties of multiphonics, spectralism, whole number ratios, being in the same room (both acoustically and socially), zoom meetings, music being the artwork of present moments, and many other things.
Pieces, in order heard:
the awakened, lips parted, the hope, the new ships (for six bowed music stands)
Repetition Study II (Music as a Means of Processing Trauma)
the awakened, lips parted.... (reprise)
Proportions/Frame (Brandon's final published recording)
https://soundcloud.com/brandonbecker-2
https://www.instagram.com/brandontravisbeckwr/
https://www.facebook.com/brandon.becker.1612

Previous Episode

Jeremy Haladyna

Interview originally recorded March, 2021.
Eleven trips to the Mayan region and an investigation of some 35 years into Precolumbian thought have indelibly marked and changed the work of this U.S.-born composer. Haladyna’s Mayan Cycle now stretches to thirty-five highly distinctive pieces, including such titles as Zaquico’xol, El Llanto de Izamal, The Maya Curse Pedro de Alvarado, Pok-ta-Pok, 2012, The Oracle of 13 Sky, Copal, and the Jaguar Poems. Among the most novel features of the Cycle is its frequent use of Jeremy's original scales (three in total) derived from the ingenious math of the Mayan calendar.

Jeremy, an accomplished keyboardist and conductor, served as director of UC Santa Barbara’s Ensemble for Contemporary Music for sixteen years (2003-2019) and created much of the Mayan Cycle during that time. He holds prizes and academic qualifications from three countries. A laureate of the Lili Boulanger Prize and diplômé of the history-rich Schola Cantorum on Paris' Left Bank, he also holds an advanced degrees from the University of Surrey (U.K.) and the University of California. He taught undergraduate composition to scores of young composers at UCSB from 1990-2019 (29 years) after being named to its permanent faculty in March, 2000. He is now Emeritus Faculty. His own past teachers include William Kraft, Karl Korte, Eugene Kurtz, Jacques Charpentier, Peter Racine Fricker, John McCabe, Sebastian Forbes, and Joseph Schwantner.

Pieces, in order heard:
Pok-ta-Pok
Maya Zodiac

https://www.mayancycle.com/
https://music.ucsb.edu/people/emeriti/jeremy-haladyna