On Thursday, February 1, 2024, as part of New Encounters, the Array Ensemble will give the premiere performance of my new work ex tempore (ik’stempəri – out of the moment / out of time / at the time / from time), for flute, clarinet, percussion, violin, and cello. The piece is dedicated to the memory of composer Ann Southam, a pioneer for women in Canadian composition.
Recently, I found an old cassette which contained a fragment of an interview I did with Southam at CIUT in 1999. I was reminded that I had asked her if she had advice for young composers, to which she responded, “Don’t get pushed around by influences, just listen to your own voice as much as you can.” That seemed a good starting point for a piece, flipping the intention to explore the nature of influence as another kind of listening.
The title is intended to encompass several possible interpretations; for example, something improvised (in terms of compositional decisions rather than performance), or an immediate judgement without full consideration (as a legal term and reflecting our current times). The temporal theme applies to Southam’s minimalist pieces, in which material is spun out gradually over an extended duration, allowing it to be explored in detail or meditated upon. While I don’t quote Southam’s music, her technique of layering patterns to “spontaneously produce little tunes” has always appealed to me.
I juxtapose concise structures from pop, R&B, rock, and reggae absorbed in my formative years with the influence of minimalism present since my early work. Southam was inspired by Steve Reich, whose music I studied informally while also briefly studying Ghanaian drumming performance. I came to understand that the interlocking parts and West African timekeeping patterns which became a minimalist signature have always been part of African diasporic musical traditions, suggesting broader connections and possibilities in terms of style.
ex tempore is a companion to ex harmonia (2023), which was dedicated in memory of James Tenney, another important figure in my development. While both are chamber quintets written while I’m the Composer-in-Residence at Arraymusic, there are differences between the two pieces in terms of form and instrumentation. Each piece finds a unique balance of formalism and intuitive expression. In contrast to the earlier, longer piece, this one is focused less on systematic development of the material than casual variations on diatonic chord progressions, groove, and a sense of play. There are four key sections: D major, F major, B major and A-flat major (which includes a short passage in E-flat major/C natural minor). All the chord progressions in the piece are based on a cycle of fifths, with which I create melodic sequences and canons. The outer sections are busy, the inner ones, calmer. The tempo remains steady, while changing note values create a sense of the music being fast or slow moving.
My other projects of 2023, Loss (a multi-media live show written by Ian Kamau and Roger McTair and presented at Luminato Festival Toronto) and cane (for Artemis Musicians’ Society, premiere TBA), were neighbouring points along the creative curve.
New Encounters marks my first event as a curator. An interesting part of the process was gathering the other composers through their works and then only afterwards deciding what to include of my own, which was eventually a newly composed piece. I didn’t necessarily try to relate my music to the other composers, but I did get a sense of how special and unique all our voices are as Black creators. Greater than the sum of our influences, perhaps, and yet those influences are always there, manifest, or not.
I’m honoured to program my music in the presence of the celebrated work of Anthony R. Green, Hanna Benn, and Kathryn Patricia Cobbler. Each of their contributions to the program are so compelling in their own ways, reflecting a lot of loving labour and lived experience. I’m also thrilled to once again have the top flight musicians of the Array Ensemble performing my work.
EL MAHBOOB 