LUKE GULLICKSON

Word 92 (The Lost Forest)

10/30/2019

 
My latest Golconda, The Lost Forest, is now available on Bandcamp and all the digital streaming platforms. This completes a diptych with Ghost Stories, documenting the songs I wrote at PLAYA in 2018.
For more on the stories behind these songs, subscribe to my email newsletter. Missive to come.

Word 91 (Diligence)

10/22/2019

 
​I think a lot about what Leonard Cohen said to Terry Gross:

GROSS: “Do you feel, as a songwriter - do you feel a connection to, say, Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Harold Arlen - those guys - the kind of classic American popular songwriters?”

COHEN: “Well, I think they're better than I am. You know, I just think they know more about music. Someone like Cole Porter - his rhymes are, you know, much, much more elegant than mine. I have a very limited kind of expression. But I've done the best that I can with it. And I've worked it as diligently as I can.”

I try to remember that the bar has been set very, very high, by people who led harder lives than mine. I try to be inspired rather than discouraged by this. I try to maintain a sense that the work is its own reward, and while I too am entitled to the occasional break, I am never entitled to feel sorry for myself.

Word 90 (Encyclopedic)

10/15/2019

 
Every time a famous composer dies, I read in their obituary that they possessed an “encyclopedic knowledge of music.” As a human creature, I do not aspire to the condition of a book.

I had a few teachers who judged young composers primarily on their knowledge of repertoire. Their voices wormed into my head, and now part of me will forever feel inadequate. Judge yourself based on your knowledge and you will never know enough; judge yourself based on your looks, and you will forever fear the mirror. Anyway the more I learn, the less I seem to know. But the learning gets sweeter.

My knowledge is not encyclopedic, but maybe it’s prismatic. The more I hear, the more connections I hear in any individual piece of music, bridges across time and space. The most recent quantum leap in my music came when I stopped trying to learn new pieces all the time, gave up on “catching up,” and just played the same few Mozart sonatas and Bach preludes and fugues every day over and over again, sat with a few favorite American songbook standards and transposed them through all twelve keys off the lead sheets. I send my attention into this music and watch the multi-colored light streaming out in every direction.

They’ll never say I had an encyclopedic knowledge of music, but maybe they’ll say other nice things. Maybe they’ll say I used music socially, to connect with other people. Maybe they’ll say I had a wide imagination, an abiding curiosity. Maybe they’ll say I listened with love and enthusiasm. Maybe they’ll say I was an explorer.

Word 89 (Good Hands)

10/15/2019

 
One of the nicest compliments I’ve gotten as a performer was when someone told me they felt, from the moment I sat down at the piano, like they were in good hands. I’ve come to feel the same way with certain composers. As I’m learning a new piece, I start to wrap my mind around its language and logic; the piece starts to teach me how to play it. That’s the feeling of being in good hands. I’m learning a piece by Hans Abrahamsen right now. While his music is notated using conventional symbols, there is a strange disconnect between how it looks and how it ends up sounding. He uses meters unconventionally, and the parts relate in unexpected ways. Never mind: after a while, I begin to understand it. Something falls into place. I’m in good hands.

Word 88 (Stagecraft)

10/2/2019

 
One of the only bad things about choral music is how long it takes the musicians to file on and off stage.

    A Selection

    • Gone Walkabout
    • Migration
    • Music as Drama
    • Crossroads II
    • 10 Best of 2014
    • January: Wyoming and the Open
    • ​February: New Mexico and the Holes
    • Coming Up
    • Notes on The Accounts
    • Crossroad Blues
    • Labyrinths

    Archives

    October 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    September 2017
    May 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    December 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    June 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    June 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    August 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011
    March 2011
    February 2011
    January 2011
    December 2010
    November 2010
    October 2010
    September 2010
    August 2010
    July 2010
    June 2010
    May 2010

    RSS Feed