Ep. 59: Breaking Down Jake Runestad's "Earth Symphony"

Jake Runestad, welcome to the show.

Thanks, it’s great to be here.

We both are recently returned from the ACDA Choral Conference in Dallas, where you were literally the grand finale.

Your Earth Symphony was the last piece on the last concert.

You got to conduct.

It was a combined orchestra and choir from a number of different schools.

Tell us a little bit about what putting that kind of a performance together is like.

I think on the pantheon of like high pressure, high stakes performances, that’s got to be pretty high.

I mean, there’s not many scenarios where the audience is literally full of experts in your field that have spent all week meticulously studying the art.

Right.

Yeah, no pressure.

Yeah, you know, that’s very true.

It’s intimidating in some ways, but it’s also, I think, really beautiful because it’s all people that love the choral art, and they want to see the people on stage succeed, and they want to be touched by the music that they’re hearing.

And I had a lot of friends that were in the audience, you know, because I have so many friends in the choral world.

So it was a really beautiful experience.

It was a ton of work.

So it was three different university choirs from Texas.

Baylor University, the a cappella choir there, University of Texas, San Antonio, and University of Texas, Arlington.

And so I had traveled to all of those different schools to work with the choirs, just to prepare everyone for the performance.

And then it was the Baylor University Symphony, which is a superb university symphony.

I had worked with them back in October.

And then also the week of the conference, I was at Baylor for a couple of days to work with the orchestra and the choirs.

And then we had rehearsals the week of the concert with the choirs separately from the orchestra, and then the dress rehearsal with the orchestra in the Meyerson.

And yeah, it’s a lot of moving parts.

It’s a lot of details.

It’s a lot of notes in this piece.

It’s a big piece.

But it’s also just a thrill and a great honor to be able to bring that music to the audience that was there at the American Choral Directors Association Conference.

Well, let’s dig into the piece a little bit and sort of use that as an excuse to talk about your compositional process.

And if people haven’t listened to it, if they weren’t at ACDA, I’ll put a link to a YouTube video in the show notes so they can go hear what it is we’re actually talking about.

But see if I described this accurately.

It’s a multi-movement work for choir and orchestra from the perspective of the Earth after humanity is all dead.

So this is the-

So bluntly, yeah.

So we’ve all destroyed ourselves and this is Mother Earth recounting the story of how the creation and then the eventual destruction and her coming to grips with everything.

Is that accurate?

Yeah, more or less.

So the poet of the text, Todd Boss, and I think this is our ninth or tenth collaboration.

And we were trying to figure out how do we approach the climate crisis.

And there’s a lot of art that’s been created about it that is very on the nose and kind of accusatory of how we’re acting.

And we wanted to find a different approach because I don’t know that that’s always the most useful.

And so our approach was how do we foster compassion for the Earth?

And that idea of the Earth Mother, I think, is a really important and beautiful one.

And if we can relate the Earth to our Mother, us being her children, can that reframe the way that we see this situation?

And so, yeah, the piece is from the voice of Mother Earth herself.

And she’s recounting our history.

Again, imagining that humankind has become extinct due to our actions.

And so she takes us through our evolution to how we studied her, how we fell in love with her, with our sciences, with our arts.

We try to express aspects of her.

And then we use the Icarus story to tell about our lust for power and progress and ultimately how it leads to our fall.

And then destruction is the third movement, which is essentially how our behaviors have led to forest fires, have led to terrifying weather conditions that are a result of our actions.

And then after that, we move to the lament, which is essentially Mother Earth sending us off to our sleep.

And I quote the personal Dido’s Lament from Dido and Aeneas’ opera, that beautiful descending baseline and bits of the theme, which is the text When I Am Late in Earth, which I think is a really powerful connection, this idea that we come from the Earth and return to the Earth.

And then the final movement is Earth’s own recovery.

So, what does it look like when she is able to regrow over everything that we had built and destroyed?

And so, Todd uses this beautiful image of IAV recovering every avenue, seaweed swallowing every drain, and this image of a gray whale turning a perfect circle in the shell of a factory, as if the oceans have kind of risen over these things that we’ve built, and now the beauty of other animals and plants are taking over.

So, that’s the overall arc of the piece.

Was it always the Icarus story, or did you have other things you tried in that spot before settling on it?

It was Icarus.

Yeah, it’s just such a fitting story to fit into this piece.

So, yeah, that was what we went with.

So, I’m always curious.

You have composers like Eric Whittaker that post these beautiful hand-drawn, colored sketches of outlines of beginning to end.

And then you have people like me over here with just a phone full of random voice memos that I have to string together later.

Where do you fall on that continuum?

How do you come up with your ideas?

How do you organize them?

How do you figure out where everything goes?

So, for a piece like Earth Symphony, and pretty much all of my choral works, it all starts with the text.

Instrumental works are a different beast in that regard.

But yeah, the text really dictates the theme, the structure, the material.

I take all of those cues from the text itself.

And so, you know, once I’ve spent enough time understanding the text, who wrote it, when they wrote it, all of that context, and I begin to write, one of the first things that I do is sit down at the piano and hit record on my voice memos app on my phone, and just improvise my way through the piece on the piano and singing.

Team Voice Memo, I’m telling you.

Yeah, and see what happens.

And pretty often, there’s some good stuff that I end up keeping, and it’s kind of that initial emotional response to the piece.

And then it’s a mixture, you know, I do write everything by hand first.

So it’s a mixture of that, of little sketches, of little gestures that I’ll write on the paper.

It’s recording things in the Voice Memo’s app.

It’s taking walks and processing things and recording things while I’m walking around the lake here in Minnesota.

So it’s this mixture of different styles.

That’s a really interesting hybrid.

I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone that’s doing Voice Memo’s and sketching things out by hand.

And we should point out, you are a young person, right?

So I think it’s a rarity to have someone your age writing things out by hand.

I mean, I would never, I would never get anything done.

It would take so long.

I just, I just find the computer to be so limiting.

You know, you have to make a ton of decisions right away, like key signature, time signature, all of these different things, note, duration, value.

And for me, it prevents the music from being organic and human and breathing.

I find oftentimes, you know, if I try to write in the computer, I end up composing for the notation versus the music.

And so I like it to live in my body, to live in my voice, live with like, you know, I’m walking around making gestures as I’m singing different lines and things like that.

Because I want it to feel real.

I want it to feel idiomatic for the voice, idiomatic for the different instruments.

And so I find that using my voice allows me to do that so much more easily than even playing the piano or doing anything on the computer.

And so, yeah, that’s my preferred way of doing things.

Do you happen to remember the first idea that you had for Earth Symphony that made it into the final piece?

Yeah, it was, I was actually driving up to Northern Minnesota to go backpacking for a weekend along Lake Superior.

And I was listening to various things, and I was listening to an orchestral transcription of Dido’s Lament, which is beautiful.

And I thought, whoa, yeah, when I’m late in Earth, like, this could be a beautiful aspect of the piece, if it’s the kind of death or the lullaby lament movement.

And so when I was digging into that piece and looking at kind of the tonal structures, I found that there’s this E flat versus D major thing going on in there.

And so then I grabbed that and used that as a concept, where Earth is D major and humanity is E flat, and there’s this constant battle.

And so the opening motto of the piece is, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, which includes things from both of those key centers.

And so I think that was one of the first things that came up with.

So how long did it take in this sort of brainstorming phase before you finally felt comfortable enough to go to the computer and start sort of locking things in?

Or is it all locked in before you go to the computer?

Is that just a formality at the end?

It’s, a lot of it is in place, or I’ve got my sketches all done, and then once I’ve kind of got all that information, then I’ll go into the computer and, you know, flesh things out, because I know this would be a woodwind line or the timpani has this role here, or, you know, I make all these little notes.

And so, yeah, when it goes to the computer, it’s further along in the process.

But then, yeah, I can kind of explode things into their, into their places.

Now, Earth Symphony is a choral work, but I’m struck by the fact that in terms of the labor for the composer, most of it, I’m assuming, would have to be with the orchestra and deciding what to do with all the instruments.

I’m just assuming, maybe I’m wrong, but I’m assuming that it took longer to do the orchestra than the choir.

Does that change how you write?

Does it change what the choir parts end up looking like?

Or do you see all composition as essentially being the same process?

I don’t really think of it as separate entities because it’s one ensemble on stage.

And so really, it’s how are they, what’s the interplay, how do instruments support voices, how do voices support instruments in certain moments, how do I make sure that the voices are heard, that they’re not covered, and that’s a really tricky one when you’re writing for choir and orchestra.

And so yeah, it’s really, for me, it’s not one or the other, it’s both and happening at the same time.

But yeah, it’s a ton of work writing for orchestra.

I love it.

There’s so many colors to play with.

And my background is an instrumentalist, but I also have sung for a while.

And so I love being able to come at both of these sides and unify them.

Well, as a trombone player, I have to ask about the water glasses.

Okay.

First of all, it was very brave of you to trust us with that kind of power.

But yeah, so for those of you who haven’t seen the piece, there’s this, there’s this section where a number of the brass players, they take out.

I was way up in the cheap seats, but you know, I assumed they were glasses filled with water to a certain level and they were running their fingers around the rim to create this, you know, like shimmery sort of effect.

I was actually shocked by how much they carried over everything.

I’m assuming that took forever to figure out.

Walk us through that part of it, because I’m dying to know how that all came to be.

So the final movement of the piece is Earth’s Recovery.

And throughout the piece, for me, the brass instruments have kind of symbolized machinery, right, human made things that we’ve mined from the Earth and created with our hands and have kind of built and destroyed.

And so in the final movement, all of the brass instruments are gone, to kind of signify that the humans are no longer there.

And so it’s all of the instruments made of wood that are now kind of flourishing, because really wooden instruments are singing trees.

And so I wanted that to be an important aspect of this final movement.

And I imagine this final movement as maybe we’re floating in outer space and we’re looking down at the Earth and we’re seeing the green taking over.

And so it begins, yeah, with the wine glasses.

So all of the brass instruments, you know, now that are gone are turned into these maybe star space solar system like ideas of these shimmering wine glass sounds as we’re floating.

And then maybe, you know, we gradually kind of zoom in to the Earth and then we see everything, everything regrowing and flourishing.

And how much time did you have to spend at the sink figuring out, like, the exact amount of water to go into each of these cups?

Well, fortunately, I didn’t have to do that.

The percussionists, you know, are seasoned in these kinds of things, so they’re always so great about, you know, doing it.

But there was one in particular who would do all of the tuning of the glasses before every rehearsal and every concert, and he was such a rock star.

So I appreciate his work.

I’m also curious the choice not to have any solos, vocal solos in this piece.

I’m sure that was a deliberate choice.

Was there a deeper meaning behind that?

Well, I think that because there’s just one character speaking, except for Icarus, where Icarus speaks for himself, but that’s a, we kind of have this, we go on this way back machine, and we’re launched into ancient Greece.

Yeah.

But I think, yeah, because it’s a single voice, and the choir is that voice, it would be confusing if there was a solo or several soloists, because then it’s confusion about who’s who.

And so just giving them that voice, I think, is important.

So the brass are the humans, the choir is the Earth.

If I was going through like a score study, what are the other groupings of instruments that I ought to pay attention to?

I don’t know that it’s so specific in that way.

Really, the choir is the voice of whoever is speaking, and so it’s either Earth or in the one case it’s Icarus.

But just that immediacy of being able to speak as that individual.

And then, yeah, brass is kind of representing that idea of humankind.

And then I guess all of the strings and woodwinds are plants, you know, natural elements, that kind of thing.

Yeah.

Talk a little bit, if you don’t mind, about the collaboration with Todd.

How did that work?

He was the lyricist, came up with the text.

What is that back and forth like?

Do you have veto power over each other?

You know, if you don’t like a word, do you get to make it known?

And does he get to come in and be like, well, I hate trombones, so I don’t want them here.

You know, like, how does that work?

Yeah.

So Todd and I usually begin with me coming to him with a concept, like, all right, Todd, I’ve got this idea, and then we have a conversation about it.

And so we were throwing around ideas and settled on this idea of the voice of Mother Earth.

And then we were talking through what the structure could be and different movements.

And so there’s a lot of that back and forth.

And then once we feel like we have kind of a concept in place, he’ll go to work on the text and he’ll send me drafts.

And I think we probably went through, like, 11 different drafts for this piece where in the first one, I just circle things that I like, X out things that maybe don’t work or I write lots of notes.

So there’s a lot of back and forth.

And so, yeah, we just kind of keep working.

And then I knew that in the lament movement, I wanted things stuck to the structure of the persul, Dido’s lament.

And so then he had to write to that specific structure, rhythmic structure, syllabic structure.

And yeah, so there’s just back and forth and back and forth.

You know, as far as the composing, I’ll show him little bits of things.

But it’s really hard for him to be able to make any sort of judgment without hearing it live.

You know, just because it’s not his wheelhouse to be able to build up the ensemble inside of his head to hear it all in that way.

And so I think because I’m more familiar with words in that way, it’s easier for me to be able to say, actually, we need this here or this vowel needs to change because we’re building to this kind of climactic moment and or can we adjust this line, different things like that.

So a lot of back and forth before I then begin the musical work.

Well, let’s kind of shift gears and talk about more of the business side of being a composer or the behind the scenes aspect of being a composer.

That’s one of the things I try to do on this show is talk about sort of the things that don’t often get discussed in school.

Music education likes to pretend the business side doesn’t exist and focus on their art and that’s wonderful.

But also there’s things that people need to know.

You’ve been really outspoken on some of these topics.

You and Dan Forrest wrote a couple of nice articles for the Choral Journal a couple of years ago, which we can link to as well.

But maybe we can use Earth Symphony as an example.

When you have a work like this, how do you also manage the business side of things so that you are adequately compensated for all of this time spent backpacking, and coming up with ideas, and going back and forth?

How does the business side sort of follow on a parallel track?

Well, this piece was commissioned by True Concord Voices and Orchestra based in Tucson.

And so there is that commission funding that of course, covers my fee and Todd’s fee for the creation of the piece.

And then once it’s made and published through my own publishing company, the choral scores and the full score are all sold, and then the orchestral parts are available on rental.

And so that’s the general structure of how my larger works, especially with orchestra, function as far as getting them out into the world.

Now, as far as I can tell, all of your music is self-published.

Is that accurate?

Yeah, I have one piece with Boozy and Hawks.

It was my first piece years and years and years ago.

But everything else, yeah, through my own publishing company.

And it wasn’t necessarily like a choice of I’m going to do this with you know, early on I had people who wanted to do my music and I didn’t have time to wait around for a publisher to accept a piece and then go through the whole process of engraving and getting it published.

And so I just had a basic website and like little PayPal buttons and people would buy the scores and I would send a licensed PDF.

And so I’ve just been doing that since kind of the beginnings of my career and it’s been really great for me.

You know, not everyone wants to go through that process or have to run a business in addition to their creative work.

But you know, this is my full time job and so it does allow me that freedom to be able to handle it, you know, versus someone who’s maybe teaching full time, which would make it a lot more difficult.

And I have an assistant who is wonderful and handles a lot of the day-to-day things of the business, details, contracts, customer questions, working with retailers, and different things like that.

So that’s really helpful to be able to have that.

But yeah, it’s something that I like having the freedom.

And of course, there’s the monetary side too, where I’m not giving up, you know, 90 percent of the royalties like what happens with a traditional publisher.

So there are definitely trade-offs.

I’ll probably get angry e-mails for this, but I think you’re probably the most successful self-publishing choral composer, at least of concert music, that I can think of.

I see a lot of people who have made inroads for themselves doing arrangements of popular songs and that sort of an avenue to get noticed.

You know, things like a cappella and show choir and those kinds of worlds, you see a lot of independent people making it work that way.

The concert music is so hard because there’s no frame of reference for somebody just on Google looking at titles to realize like, oh, this is what it is that I’m listening to.

And I think it’s even more remarkable that you’ve been able to get the sort of traction without having those previews of the music.

I looked on your website and on Pepper, a couple of different places, I didn’t find anywhere that had a score preview.

How are you getting people to find your music?

How are you getting them to listen to it?

And what’s the secret sauce?

Well, I wish I knew all the secrets.

I think that I’ve just been fortunate that people believe in the music that I write and they connect with it.

And I’ve had some wonderful conductors that have programmed things and then other people learn about it.

And so it’s kind of this very small web from when I started out, that just slowly begins to grow.

And I think that’s kind of grass roots movements, and that’s kind of how I feel like it’s been.

And it’s just grown more and more over time.

Yeah, my music is available through JW Pepper.

And I’m actually going through a rebrand right now, and so there will be updates soon with the score preview and everything.

I have all of the previews on my website.

You can look at the full scores and listen to all audio and all that’s available there.

But yeah, I think it’s just people will hear things through performances, or they’ve seen videos on YouTube of performances.

And yeah, I think that another aspect maybe is I’m really interested in writing things that are relevant and speak to what it means to be alive in the world today.

And hopefully in ways that aren’t hokey or aren’t just overdone, but are hopefully artistic and elegant.

And I think sometimes we hear a lot about social justice music.

And for me, I tend to write a lot about themes that deal with things that someone would call social issues.

But I think sometimes if we address those two on the nose, then it converge on hokeyness and maybe isn’t that powerful in the end.

And so for me, how do I find that balance of creating something that can maybe speak to this issue but just isn’t so overt?

And so it’s, yeah, it’s a fine balance.

But I think maybe all these elements have helped people to get to know my music.

You write a lot about some pretty heavy themes.

I mean, not everything.

You’ve always got nyan nyan to take a break from that, right?

But when you’re tackling one of these big heavy subjects, PTSD, suicide, climate change, you know, those sorts of things, how do you know that you’ve done the topic justice?

Because like you say, those are some issues where if you get it wrong, you know, it really strikes people the wrong way.

I think a big part of it is the amount of research that I do before creating the piece.

I treat every piece like a massive research project.

So I’ve got notes and notes and notes of things that I’ve learned, that I’ve looked up, that, you know, books that I’ve read, articles I’ve read, people I’ve spoken to, depending on what it is.

And so I want to make sure I’m as fully informed as possible before I create something, so that when I’m creating, the music is all informed by and influenced by what I’ve learned.

And I think that’s really crucial.

You know, if we’re setting a text, we have to know exactly who wrote it, and when they wrote it, and why they wrote it, and all of that information behind it in order to do it justice.

And I think in order to illuminate that text through music in a powerful and meaningful way, I have to find my way into the life and voice of the poet or the writer or whoever it is that created the words.

If it’s an instrument that will work, like I have one that deals with wildfires called World on Fire.

And so, I’m learning about the history of wildfires in the US.

I’m learning about how they’re started, learning that something like 85% of wildfires were created by humans.

How does fire work?

I’m going through all these things.

I have another piece called The Way of Stars about a scientist, Mariah Mitchell, who was an astronomer, who was an incredible woman.

And so, as a part of that process of writing that piece on her words, I taught myself how to navigate using a sextant, as if I was someone in a ship, you know, before we had GPS and using the moon and the stars.

Just because I wanted to find my way.

So, in a way, it’s kind of like method acting, I suppose, where how do I get into the world of the person who wrote these words so that I can do justice to what they were trying to say.

I’m assuming the majority of your work is commissioned.

Are you then getting to choose these topics, or are people coming to you and saying, I want something about fire?

Most of the time, I get to choose what it is that I want to write about.

You know, someone might come to me and say, hey, we just want you to write us a piece.

Here’s the instrumentation, here’s the duration, here’s where it’s going to be performed.

You know, that’s all helpful information.

Sometimes someone will come and say, hey, we’re celebrating this big anniversary, the theme is, you know, spaghetti.

And so then I’m going to have to write a piece about spaghetti in some way.

All right, I’ll take that hint that lunch is coming and we need to wrap it up.

Exactly.

And so, yeah, it depends.

But, you know, I often get the question, well, do you ever just write for yourself?

And I think what’s really wonderful about writing concert music is that when I’m commissioned, I’m commissioned because people trust and respect my artistic voice.

And so they want me to say something with that voice.

And so I get to create something that I’m passionate about and explore topics that I think are important and interesting.

So it’s really a joy to be able to do that.

So is that how you would describe your music?

That it’s music that’s, you know, intensely researched and about current issues?

Or is that getting too specific?

I think it’s that.

And I think it’s, I think there’s a lot of that background work.

And then when it comes time to creating, it’s really led by heart and emotion and sound.

And so I think what’s nice is I can do a lot of that background work, which is a little bit more cerebral.

You know, the research, learning, engaging.

And then when I’m creating, it’s really more of the, what is the human response to all of that?

What is the kind of pure emotion behind it?

And how do I communicate that in a really human and organic way?

You’ve worked with both high school collegiate groups as well as professional choral ensembles.

Is there a difference between those two groups in terms of the commissioning process?

Like, is it a whole different beast when you’re writing for someone like Conspirare?

Or is it pretty much the same thing where you’re trying to understand the group and their voice and their abilities and writing something that’s tailored to them?

I think it’s exactly that.

Yeah, I have to know exactly who I’m writing for and what their strengths are, maybe what their weaknesses are.

How do I give them something that’s going to challenge them just enough, but also help them feel like they have achieved something and not feel defeated and fall in love with the music?

Something that’s relevant to them and their community.

So as part of my research, I’m learning about who is that I’m writing for as well.

Where are they from?

What’s their community like?

Who makes up that community?

All of those different things.

So yeah, I think it’s similar in that way, where I just have to know as much as I can.

And could you also talk about the Grammy and Emmy nominating processes?

Because you’ve been nominated, I think, twice for the Grammy, you’ve won the Emmy.

Those are not generally awards that we hear the choral arts talked about frequently.

How did that come to be?

Was it a conscious decision by you, like, we’re going to go for this?

Or did it just kind of happen?

And what was that like?

These processes are a little funky.

I mean, you never really know what’s going to happen.

Both of these were led by the ensembles that had, you know, commissioned or recorded things.

So for the Emmy, it was through this program that was televised of Earth Symphony.

And so I didn’t really have too much say or control over that, but, you know, they had submitted it and we’re thrilled to have won.

And for the Grammy, you know, when you do an album, especially with, you know, professional choirs, like the two that were nominated were Conspirare and True Concord.

You know, part of that process is submitting it for the various categories of the Grammy, and so that’s handled by the record label.

And, you know, then there’s just the hope that people are going to, you know, hear it and like it and vote for it.

It’s a difficult process because I still don’t really understand how it works.

I mean, I’m a member of the Recording Academy and I voted, and, you know, friends voted and various things, but there seems to be a lot of stuff behind the scenes that I still don’t quite understand of how it all works.

But, yeah, you know, you just keep your fingers crossed and hope that, you know, it might win.

Well, I appreciate you taking the time to come on the show.

This has been a very insightful conversation.

I’d like to leave you with a quick lightning round, if you don’t mind, of just some faster get to know you questions, I guess.

What time of day do you compose the best?

Morning.

What is your go-to snack while you’re working?

Chocolate.

No, actually, well, chocolate, but I love these peanut butter filled pretzels from Trader Joe.

That’s a good one.

That’s a good one.

What’s your favorite shortcut or hack for dealing with technology while you’re writing?

So I used Sibelius for like 20 some years, and I’m now a Dorico guy, and it has saved me so much time.

But they have what’s called the jump bar, and you press J and you can search for lots of different things that just quickly show up to to handle different tasks.

And it’s a dream come true.

And finally, if you could have lunch with any composer living or dead, who would it be?

Beethoven.

All right.

Yeah.

Well, thank you again.

It was great getting to know you and your music.

Anything you’d like to plug before we go?

Yeah.

Just thanks for having me on.

Thanks for talking about these things.

Yeah.

People can go on my website to see all my music if they’re interested.

And of course, the various social platforms we can connect there too.

It’d be great to connect with everyone.

Awesome.

Well, thanks again.

Have a great day.

Thank you so much.

You too.