Elizabeth-an Times: Metaphors and Musing Inform Ogonek’s Ethos

Although the American composer Elizabeth Ogonek won’t turn 30 until next May, she’s already earned a great deal of attention and acclaim for her ever-expanding body of work that has included commissions from the London and Chicago Symphony orchestras as well as smaller ensembles and chamber pieces. Her music is markedly colorful and dramatic, with vivid imagery that is often inspired by poetry or other texts or visual experiences.

Ogonek comes to the Music Academy as one of this year’s composers-in-residence, where she’ll lead a masterclass and work with faculty and Fellows as they perform two of her recent works in concert on Tuesday, July 17, at the Lobero, and next Saturday, July 21, at the Granada. In a far-ranging phone interview, Ogonek discussed her background, approach, set of evolving values and desires in such depth that there isn’t enough space here to delve into specific pieces (but please see MAW’s program book for some notes.)

Q. What led you to composing, both the decision and the path?

A. I started playing piano at 5. My mom was a single parent, and she moved us from Minnesota to New York so she could go to Columbia. We lived across the street from the Manhattan School of Music and she needed something for me to do, so I took classes there. I had turbulent relationships with playing, which came to a head when I later went to an arts boarding school for high school to study piano. I promptly stopped practicing. But that’s when I discovered a love for composition through my theory classes. It sounds nerdy and dorky, but it really wasn’t. I had very intensive theory classes every week and a teacher who thought I did his exercises in a most bizarre fashion. He kept encouraging me to perhaps just sit down and write a piece. I blew him off for a long time but went home during a school break and just did it. And that was it. That was the decision. It was like walking into a store and meeting the love of your life and knowing nothing else is necessary. I just knew that it was what I was going to do with my life.

That’s quite a story.

I just never looked back. It was an instantaneous thing. Composing is a very challenging profession, one that comes with existential crisis as well. But it’s such an important part of my identity. I’ve questioned my decision many times, but not ever in a normal way.

In the past you’ve talked about a sense of wanderlust, and of not belonging, as a big influence on your music. Still true?

I do feel a lack of belonging. There are a lot of compositional camps or scenes, and I don’t feel that I really belong to any of them. Maybe that’s a good thing. I’m a New Yorker with weird Midwestern roots who went to school in California, but who also has an affinity for the Southwest and was educated in Europe. So, there are a lot of places and strong identities that pull at me. But even more, I’ve started to realize that while I do have musical influences that are important, I have visual ones too. That’s how I think about things. Many of those visual elements in my music are inspired by feelings of wanderlust. I love patterns and the way you can hear them, and the idea of obscuring and then clarifying, haziness and distortion.

More visual and emotion than musical?

Oh, there are a couple of composers I always come back to. Oliver Knussen, who I worked with a lot in the U.K. (and who just died earlier this week), I’m so intrigued by his music because it’s incredibly expressive but also technically perfect and yet somehow emotionally elastic. I’m fascinated by that concept. Another one is Ligerty, whose music I love because it’s weird and quirky, and he had no qualms about that whatsoever. He just followed any interest he had and it’s always intriguing to me. I also love Montevierdi, and a lot of French composers like Debussy, which I think shows up in my music. Another is Stephen Hartke, my colleague at Oberlin who was my teacher at USC. I’ve never encountered a composer as witty as he is. So there’s that too.

It sounds like you’re drawn to the technical structure as a container that allows for freedom to explore.

Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m saying. The more you limit things, the greater the space for freedom. That’s a huge value for me. I’m constantly looking for that dynamic no matter what the medium.

How is your composing evolving?

I think I’ve become more attuned to the visual influences, which are almost a musical metaphor, using the material of notes the way a visual artist might with the paint. But mostly, I’ve become less shy about my values. In school, I felt like I needed to please my teachers and others’ expectations. But I realized I never want to let go of my melodic sensibility. I actually just want to cultivate it more as I get older. I realize now that it’s a huge value I have as a listener, so I’m constantly thinking about my music from their point of view as well. That might have resulted in surface-level shifts in my music, but I don’t know want to quantify it because it’s probably very personal for each listener.

How much is a piece fully organized or outlined before you start, or is there a lot of improvisation in the process, which I imagine is more like poetry is constructed? Or is it something else entirely?

The whole idea of knowing what a piece sounds like from the beginning is a complete myth to me. It’s now how I think about music. I am an incredibly slow person, and it takes me forever to do things, including understanding the function of a piece of musical material. I’m not one of those who just knows. It’s along process of uncovering the many ways something could work. Because of that, I think about creating a constellation of ideas. I start with a primitive version, which grows and evolves and transforms. Writing from beginning to end is unsustainable for me, because my ideas of music are constantly changing. So for me, it’s a process of trying to keep refining the ideas and allow them to evolve in organic ways and then fit them together. It becomes a puzzle that I end up having to assemble in some way. There’s blood and tears involved, usually. And sleepless nights and grumpy moods. You don’t want to be my partner.

This Week at the Music Academy

Thursday, July 12: MAW’s new four-year partnership with the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) gets underway with an official introduction this afternoon at Hahn Hall as MAW president and CEO Scott Reed and the LSO’s Kathryn McDowell (managing director), Michael Tilson Thomas (conductor laureate), and Andrew Marriner (principal clarinet) join forces to talk about the historic new bi-continental agreement (5:30 pm; free)….. Deborah Voigt, the dramatic soprano famed for leading roles in the operas of Wagner, Strauss, and others who is also an active recitalist and performer of Broadway standards and popular songs, is no stranger to Hahn Hall audiences as she appears regularly – as both performer and host – in the Met’s Live in HD series, shown all year long at the venue. Tonight, Voigt curates a concert featuring four vocal Fellows and five vocal piano Fellows in an evening of songs and arias by two of her old favorites – Wagner and Strauss – plus Verdi and contemporary composer Ben Moore. She’ll also join the Fellows in a special conclusion (7:30 pm; Hahn Hall).

Saturday, July 14: MAW’s Solo Piano Competition, a recent addition to the summer schedule, brings the flash and finesse of the Fellows’ fingerwork on the keyboard to Hahn Hall in a fierce but friendly fight for a cash prize plus an international recital tour presented by MAW in partnership with Steinway & Sons. The winner will also have a brand-new work created for them by the current composer-in-residence Elizabeth Ogonek, who also serves as one of the judges (noon; Hahn Hall; $45)…. It’s a melody madhouse as Gershwin’s American in Paris and Debussy’s La Mer close out a concert that begins with Bernstein’s Overture to Candide and Guillaume Connesson’s Les cites de Lovecraft, a 2017 work in which each of the movements corresponds to a city described in macabre fantasy writer H.P. Lovecraft’s The Dream-Quest of the Unknown Kadath. The work receives its American premiere by the Academy Festival Orchestra under the baton of Stéphane Denève, music director of the Brussels Philharmonic, principal guest conductor of The Philadelphia Orchestra, and the incoming music director of the St Louis Symphony, who is also making his MAW debut (7:30 pm; Granada; $10-$100).

Tuesday, July 17: It’s “Don’t miss our special midweek masterclass” time at MAW, as visitors invade Miraflores campus, starting with composer Ogonek at Lehhmann Hall at 1 pm. Two LSO guest artists also lead the public coaching sessions today, including trumpeter David Elton (1 pm; Weinman) and percussionist Neil Percy (3:15 pm; Hahn). LSO cellist Rebecca Gilliver gets her turn tomorrow at 1 pm also at Lehmann, while clarinetist Andrew Marriner (1 pm at Hahn) and violinist David Alberman (3:15 pm; Lehmann) take their turns on Thursday…. Ogonek’s “Lightnings” serves as the centerpiece for tonight’s Festival Artists Series show, with Altenurg’s Concerto for Seven Trumpets and Timpani and Brahms’s Piano Quartet No. 2 surrounding it. LSO guest artists, MAW faculty members, and select Fellows perform together on the Lobero stage for this special concert (7:30 pm; $10 to $46).

Wednesday, July 18: Until recently, audiences largely only heard Fellows performing selections from sonatas, as the faculty usually offered trios and larger ensembles at the MAFAS concerts. Now, we get to see the sensational players paired up for performances in cozy Hahn Hall, including violinist Edward Dusinberre and collaborative piano chair Jonathan Feldman playing Beethoven’s Sonata in F Major, Op. 24, “Spring”; clarinetist Richie Hawley and Natasha Kislenko offering Schumann’s Fünf Stücke im Volkston, Op. 102; and violinist Kathleen Winkler and Margaret McDonald playing Elgar’s Sonata in E Minor, Op. 82 (7:30 pm; $10 to $35)