redefining the hierarchical musical ecosystem (with Derek Weagle)
How do we define the role of composer, conductor, or teacher? How can we use sound to heal and connect our communities? What is the effect of our language on the space we hold?
Dear reader,
Happy Sunday! This week, I’m writing to you from the Chicago Public Library on a short trip to visit my sister at college. It’s been nice to travel for personal reasons, rather than business, but I’m looking ahead to a few more intense weeks when I get back home to Ithaca. I hope you are able to take some time for rest, relaxation, and time with your community this week, whether you celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday or simply enjoy the changing season.
This week’s interview is a long one, so I’m going to jump right into it. Derek Weagle is another of the wonderful friends I connected with during my time at the N.E.O. Voice Festival last summer, and I am incredibly excited to share our conversation. We talk about a lot of things, from their definitions of education and the roles of the conductor, composer, and teacher to imposter syndrome to language and its power over the space we create and hold. I hope you enjoy reading!
Who are you, and what do you do?
My name is Derek Weagle, and I do lots of things! I usually say that I am a Wearer-of-Many-Hats, or a Jack of Many Trades, Master of Some. To be more specific, I am a composer, conductor, teacher, and healing artist.
I am a freelancer, which created the opportunity to have all of these parts of my identity be realized. I used to work in arts administration, and at that time, I was thinking a lot about how we are often so focused on clinging on to one single label, often out of fear that we are perceived as not being devoted enough to that one craft. There is a lot of focus placed on the “mile deep”, and not always on the “mile wide”, and so I wanted to figure out what my mile wide looked like. As I was sketching out all of the things that I do and am interested in, I realized that they all actually feed each other, and that they are all just one facet of who I am. I don’t necessarily perceive a massive difference between composing and conducting as mediums. There are obviously skills that go with each of those that need to be refined and used, but I see them as an organic outgrowth of the same thing. It’s the same thing with my teaching, language work, and healing - they’re just spokes on the wheel that has artistry at the center.
I currently have an adjunct job on Long Island, directing the Adelphi University Vocal Ensemble. As a composer, I am still working on case-by-case projects, but not fully on commission yet. I’ve had some lovely opportunities to collaborate on some small and some big commissions this year. I actually have an orchestral piece being premiered in June 2024. As a conductor, I work with the Queer Urban Orchestra. I have also done a lot of work in the choral realm, as those are the opportunities that have been available to me in New York, but I’m excited to be getting more experience on the orchestral side now!
As a healing artist, I have studied sound healing from different practices around the world at Sage Academy of Sound, and am one of the founding members of Bloom Sound Collective. We combine healing artistry and musical artistry into one experience that is both performance and transformance. Not only is it an experience that we hope is unique and meaningful for the audience, but it also gives the collaborating musicians and artists the opportunity to use the skills that they've cultivated for good things in service of other people and of liberating their own beliefs and identity about who they are and what they do.
Could you tell me more about those experiences with sound healing?
One of the things that I often tell collaborating artists is that sound healing is really about using sound as a raw medium. If music is a refined matter that we create with sound, we are going all the way back to the iron ore. Composers use sound as steel beams to create a structure, and we interact with that music as a structured experience, whereas sound healing is really more about examining and observing and experiencing sound in its natural form, without any sort of value judgment. That’s a big challenge for a lot of people, especially because we’ve been taught lots of ideas about what makes a good sound and a bad sound, or a stylistically accurate sound, and what is dissonant and consonant, and so forth. There are so many binaries and dichotomies and qualifiers that we learn to use to measure music, but these suddenly fall away when we get into healing. It’s just about putting sound out in a way that feels honest and responsive to the room that you’re in and where you are yourself, and doing it in a way that is just meant to help people have a good experience.
It’s been difficult for me, especially as all of us as musicians are trained with these ideals and standards in mind. Now that I’ve moved into primarily conducting and composition, I feel as though it is even more important that I’m doing this work, but it is even more distant from where I am. As a composer and a conductor, there is so much responsibility and emphasis placed on finding and cultivating the “right” sound, and so this is my own way of evening the scales out.
It sounds like it’s really important to have that balance for yourself. As a composer, conductor, or teacher, you do hold a position of authority within the traditional hierarchy. How do you define your beliefs about this structure, and how do you define these roles for yourself?
My feelings about that hierarchy started emerging even before I started studying sound healing. That was just the positive experience that helped me to articulate the feelings behind my beliefs. Before I was working and studying sound healing, I was having largely negative experiences around the idea of authority. Before, when I worked in administration, there was an interesting sort of dissonance because I was told I was, “just an administrator.” It wasn’t appropriate for me to weigh in on musical matters, to have an opinion, to share something that I was excited about, or offer critical feedback in any way.
There are the common adages that “those who can’t do, teach,” or that “arts administrators are failed musicians,” or that it’s inappropriate for them to offer any of the creative part of themselves up, because that’s not what they’re being paid to do there. And that’s a very inherently uncollaborative mindset, right out the bat. I absolutely hated that experience. That was my first introduction to the notion of authority and the way that it exists unfairly in this business.
I have a lot of beliefs in life about this, especially as a composer-conductor-teacher, and I feel like some of these beliefs might be controversial in some ways, or might be seen by some people as proof that I’m “not cut out for these positions.”
I’ll speak to being a composer first: I’m not married to what I write on the page. As much as I love what I do, and craft things as carefully as I can, and am excited and passionate about the things I’m able to put down on paper and share with other musicians as a composer, I’m always open to the fact that performing musicians are going to know as well as, if not better then, me about what they and their instruments can do. I always tell people that I don’t consider a piece finished until it’s had at least a premier, or at least one performance. And I don’t mean a reading, I mean a real performance, where people can get into the true performing mindset and bring something to life. Very specifically, I always tell people that I will always refer to percussionists to help me come up with interesting parts. I feel like they often tend to write my parts with me, and I take their advice on where the flavor should come from in their natural instincts, and I incorporate that during my editing process.
The roles of teacher and conductor overlap quite a bit, especially with the things I do in my day-to-day. I feel as though, if you just look at the role of teacher without the musical framework, there is more of a receptive attitude for teachers who don’t know everything. I believed for a long time, and this is shown in my teaching philosophy, that my job is not to take all of the information that I am super sure about and just shove it into the minds of the people sitting in front of me. The directive of being a teacher, to me, is about curating and cultivating and protecting community, and facilitating the learning experience. My definition of education is the synthesis of presented information, lived experience, and personal identity. This took me a long time to be able to put into words, but my role is to help facilitate and protect those things.
As a teacher, I am always very comfortable saying that I don’t know something, and that’s an experience in which I can share a learning moment with a student. It allows us to remove the hierarchical construction that we mentioned earlier. I really value those moments. One of my biggest responsibilities, as far as information goes, is that if I don’t know the answer to a question being asked, I have to know where to go to get that information. I focus a lot on cultivating and discovering resources that I can go to with my students to find out new information. I’m very devoted to life-long learning as a directive; I feel like a lot of people can see that as a trope, but for me, it’s very true. I live it everyday, and I personally don’t find there to be a reason to keep doing the things I’m doing if I’m not learning about new things. Part of the beauty of being a musician is that, in our lifetime, we will never hear even a fraction of the music that is out there. That alone is enough of a reason for me to want to keep diving deep into discovering new things.
Lastly, as far as the conductor hat is concerned, I have always looked at myself as a teacher first, and I approach a lot of things as a teacher, including being a composer and being a conductor. There’s not always the same type of receptive energy to being on the podium and saying, “I don’t know.” Especially when you’re working with professional musicians; they are often just expecting to be given instructions for pay. I emphasize with that - they’re being paid to play, and my job is to have the vision and convey that vision. I try to balance myself out with that, and make sure that I can perform my end of the bargain in that job by being as prepared and sure about what I want when I walk in the room for rehearsal. That being said, I have worked with groups both professionally, in the community, and with students, where people are more likely to have a musical idea and share that with the room. And I love that! It’s collaborative music making! Even though it is my job to keep everything in check and make sure the vision is being realized, I love when people feel comfortable enough to come up and share those things so that I can consider them too. Naturally, I am only ever going to have one point of view - my point of view - and having other people’s is invaluable.
Do you think there is space for that reciprocal collaborative process? Do you think there is a way to make sure everyone along the way is actually involved in the creation process, from composer to performer to conductor?
I think so. I know so. It’s hard, especially when the human element of this gets involved. But that happens in a raw and beautiful way, with what we do, people are always going to be people, and have their own feelings and opinions, and we can’t completely remove any of that. There are spaces, though, that are working as collectives, and that equalize all of those positions. I think of groups like C4, The Choral Composer-Conductor Collective, and C3LA, The Contemporary Choral Collective of Los Angeles, both comprised of composer-conductor-performers, where everybody has equal stake and takes turns being in those roles. Like I said, it’s not easy to do; running music democratically is a lot of work and requires a lot of emotional maturity, but I think that it’s fair and worthwhile, and there is space for it.
That being said, the other side of that is the way that we value and pay musicians in the gig economy. What is their job? What are the boundaries? What is an equitable amount of work to be doing in respect to that? When you’re working in a large ensemble context, it is really important that the conductor and the composer, if relevant, are solidly in their role, and are ready to perform them in an efficient way, so that everybody gets what they’re due. Something to think about is the way that we’re envisioning the way that we pay musicians. What is the actual scope of what we’re getting paid for? And how can we set a new precedent for that? How can we create a space in which performers are coming in feeling excited and empowered and financially supported well enough to contribute in a new way? And how can we ensure that they aren’t getting taken advantage of? It’s hard to want to contribute to a project if you’re not getting compensated in a fair, timely manner.
Right - in order to invite everyone to the table to be more equally collaborative, everyone also needs to be equally appreciated, financially and emotionally. This even applies to our language, and the way we label different groups of musicians. I try to be really aware of avoiding naturally hierarchical terms, like the typical “musicians vs singers,” or “musicians vs choir,” grouping that gets thrown around a lot. Our casual language can betray the ways that we value and rank different groups of people in our minds, and that ranking really sets some folks up to be under-appreciated or viewed as less-than.
Me too - and it goes all the way down to gendered language. So often, people default to language that assumes that composers and conductors are men, and refer to them only with he/him pronouns. And in a choral rehearsal, using terms like “trebles and profundos,” or “high voices and low voices,” instead of “ladies and gentlemen,” or other gendered pairs like that.
It’s so important, especially considering the effect that language can have on our mindset. The way we talk today becomes the way that we write the history of our time and the narrative of the rooms that we’re in, and that dictates the way that each person within the room feels they are able to show up. That consideration comes from the group, and it’s up to us to think it through: How do we refer to people? How do we refer to voices? How can we equalize the playing field, instead of continuing to speak into the narrative that there is only one type of person who is welcome in a space?
The other important thing is that this doesn’t just affect the present. We don’t just run the risk of disenfranchising the people who are already in the room, but it also determines who will even want to show up in that room in the future.
To pivot a little - what has been your most favorite recent musical experience?
I feel lucky that I’ve been having an increasing amount of those recently. I’ve noticed that the more I get to a place where I can be my authentic self, the more opportunities I have for those experiences. One of the more important for me was the first choral sound bath with Bloom Sound Collective in the city, which we did in June for New York Spirituality Week. It was all of my favorite things in one place, and one of the first times that I felt ikigai in the process. There were four sound healers from the collective, myself, a choir of eight, a synth player, and a cellist. The program that was woven in and out of the ceremony was a survey of a number of different spiritual and religious systems from around the world told through their choral repertoire, as written by all living composers. It was an amazing experience from top to bottom. We managed to pull off 85 minutes of music with only one 4 hour rehearsal, and it was worth every challenging moment. The musicians that we got to work with were amazing, the sound healers are so attuned to the needs of the room, and we sold out at about 80 people! And this was the first independent event that the collective has done.
What was the response from the audience to this experience?
It was all overwhelmingly positive, and many folks said it was very transformational. There was one particular experience that felt particularly poignant. A woman came up to me after, and was telling me how grateful she was to be there, and how transformative it was for her. She found us through the Spirituality Week website, where there are hundreds and hundreds of events. She was interested in coming because we were doing an arrangement of Radiohead’s Pyramid Song, and she had always wanted to be at a live performance of that. She told me that she was in the late stages of terminal cancer, and that she didn’t know how much longer she was going to be here. And she told me that getting to experience this program was a life changing experience for her.
There was a lot of crying and hugging. That was one of the things that really reinforced the fact that we’re doing the right thing. There are people who need it, and if anybody needs it, that’s enough reason for us to be doing it.
That really connects back to the purpose of this work. It’s why we spend so much time learning to do what we do, so that we can give that back to the people that truly need it.
I feel like we really easily get caught up in the idea of changing the world, especially right now, when the world needs to be changed. But we really make an impact when we’re able to just make a person-to-person connection.
It’s important to consider that everyone has their own “lane of resistance,” or way of making a difference. Now that I’m able to name that my lane of resistance is teaching, healing, and space creating, I have a much more sustainable relationship with “the work.”.
Can you tell me about a challenge that you’ve faced so far in your career?
The first thing that comes to mind is my struggle with imposter syndrome, which is very common. The most important thing I’ve learned is that I am often my own worst critic, but this is frequently reinforced by the structures around us. When I first applied for my undergrad, I was so sure that I was going to be a music major, but I got rejected from all of the schools that I applied to. That was one of the most crushing things to go through. I ended up having a good experience at a different school, which wasn’t the path I expected, and I spent the next decade grappling with feelings of not deserving the space I was taking up. When I got into grad school, going from a state school to a conservatory, then moving to New York and interviewing for jobs, I questioned myself at every step. But I realized that that is nobody’s business except my own.
I appreciate that you brought that up, because I think it’s something that everyone experiences on some level. Each person is just trying to show up and find the right space for themselves, but we can so easily get caught up in comparison.
Comparison is a killer. For an example - one of my pieces just won the American Prize in Composition. I am over the moon about it. It’s a great opportunity, and the piece that won means so much to me, and I’m glad that it’s receiving notice like this. At this point, it feels like it lives outside of me. But I’ve been in this weird state of mind for the past few months after receiving this, because I’m still having to make it by essentially scrounging to get gigs to have some money in my bank account. And this illustrates the trap of comparison. Because it’s not often a comparison to other people, but it’s a comparison to what we think “should be” when certain things happen. If you had asked me years ago about what my life would look like having won this award, I would have assumed that I would have “made it,” or at least would be financially stable. And I think this has a lot to do with the conversation around imposter syndrome.
I think this is completely natural, but it can get in the way when it causes us to hold ourselves back from opportunities that we decide for one reason or another we’re not qualified for. I’ve started calling this the “audacity,” this idea that you have to just start to go for the things that you really want to be doing. Because nobody is going to come over and tell you that you’re ready, that you’re in the right place to do what you want to do until you’re already doing it.
And you’re also never going to feel like you’re ready. One of the biggest pieces of advice I was given when preparing to go fully freelance was that “if you wait until you feel like you’re ready, you’re never going to do it.” There’s always going to be the feeling that you could be more comfortable, or have more of something, but if you just do it, not to sound like Nike, if you take the step to approach it, there’s a lot of the world that will open itself up to you. I say this with the caveat that I have a lot of privilege as a white, male-presenting, maybe-straight-presenting human being, and the understanding that there are a lot of systems rigged in my favor. But I do really believe that there are opportunities that will present themselves to you when you become open to it. Just in the concrete sense: when people know you’re available, they can tell other people that you’re available.
What advice would you give to your 17 year-old self?
Stop trying to chase a path that someone else laid out, and try to find your own. I always tell people that my background is non-linear. My ultimate philosophy as a teacher is to help students at least be engaged citizens and to have a handle on what their gifts are, what they do well, and what they care a lot about. And I think if I had spent more time focused on my gifts, the things that I cared about, the things that excited me, and found a way to bring those things together instead of focusing on my deficits for so long, I think I would have been in a very different place.
Anything else you’d like to share or promote?
I do have an upcoming premier that I’d like to share. The subject matter of the piece is big and important to me. The Queer Urban Orchestra, which I work with in the city, has commissioned me for a large new work which they’re premiering in June 2024. The piece is called Doubtless Magick, and it’s one that I’ve wanted to write for a while now. It’s about the divine origins of Queerness in nature, and how the universe is basically Queer. This piece is really letting me get a lot of my feelings out about the importance of Queer identity, and how much I love being Queer, and how much I love my Queer family. It’s also for a very “Queer” instrumentation. I’m really excited for that, and really proud of what I’ve written.
If anyone who ends up reading this is in New York City in June, definitely come check it out!
If you couldn’t tell, Derek and I have a lot of shared views about these topics, and it was wonderful to talk with someone with their range of experiences and thoughtful nature. Thank you, kind friend, for you time and thoughts!
Next week, this newsletter will look a little different. I was inspired by my recent engagement in a competition to write a personal essay about the role of competitions and auditions in my musical journey, and to reflect on the intention behind my choice to attend them. Stay tuned to hear more about that! :)
Upcoming Performances:
December 9, 3pm; Ford Hall, Ithaca College: Dorothy Cotton Jubilee Singers Winter Concert
December 16, 7:30pm; Ford Hall, Ithaca College: Handel’s Messiah with Cayuga Vocal Ensemble and Cayuga Chamber Orchestra
December 17, 4pm; Pebble Hill Church, Syracuse: Behold, the Handmaid of the Lord with Syracuse Schola Cantorum
Thank you for reading <3
Love,
Caitlin
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