In preparation for the announcement of the winner of the SOUNZ Contemporary Award we spoke to finalist Nathaniel Otley about his piece the convergence of oceans, being a composer in Aotearoa today and sharing this experience with his wife Ihlara.
How did the convergence of oceans come about? Tell us a bit about the inspiration behind it and the journey to completing it.
The piece came about as I was very fortunate to be selected as the 2023 composer in residence with the NZSO National Youth Orchestra (NYO). This opportunity provides emerging composers from Aotearoa the opportunity to write a 10 minute orchestral work to be premiered by the NYO, an orchestra of some of the incredible young musicians we have here in Aotearoa.
In terms of the extramusical inspiration behind the piece, the idea of convergence and specifically oceanic convergence was actually something I had in the back of my head for some time as something that I thought would be interesting to explore compositionally. That said, I also knew it was the sort of concept that required the right circumstances to execute effectively and honestly and it wasn't going to work unless I knew who was going to be performing the work and where. There were a couple of false starts with other projects in which I was going to use this idea, but they all fell through due to funding and/or COVID disruptions. Eventually, the NYO opportunity came up and it felt like the perfect opportunity for me to finally explore these ideas properly as the NYO itself is in many ways a convergence of musical talent from across Aotearoa.
From this point I did a lot of thinking about convergence, how it functions, and how this could be translated into a musical context. One thing I found most interesting is that convergence is often not a frictionless process but rather a negotiated process between different objects and/or forces. This tendency means that convergence, and particularly oceanic convergence, tends to be messy, with a vast array of environmental factors determining how it takes place at any given moment. As a result the piece is often in a state of flux as various internal negotiations play out, it rolls and undulates as texture and melody negotiate, occasionally coming to rest only to quickly begin to shift again.
Did you encounter any challenges while composing this piece? If so, what were they, and how did you navigate them?
There are always challenges with any piece you write and this work was no different. The orchestra has such a vast colour palette to work with that it is often difficult to know both where to start and the boundaries that a given work you are writing should exist within. I have older works that tried to do far too much and use as much orchestral colour as possible and then a later work that was perhaps too minimal and controlled so the convergence of oceans was an attempt to chart a course between these approaches. To an extent there is also a lot more formal rigidity to an orchestra than what I like to work with when I write for chamber ensembles. Practical considerations mean things like scordatura (re-tuning string instruments) and even small preparations are impractical for a 10 minute piece on a programme with Elgar and Copland so you have to be imaginative and try to mould break within those constraints at the same time.
There is also a balance to strike when writing for an orchestra like the NYO where you have incredibly talented musicians but not all of them are super familiar with more contemporary techniques that I tend to use in my work. As a result there is sort of a negotiation through the compositional process that occurs where you try to introduce things in a gradual way, tuning the musicians into a sound world in a way that aids them in realising and finding the sound that a given techniques is supposed to produce. This then needs to be coupled with a rehearsal process that gives the piece time to settle and take shape. I was very fortunate that NYO conductor Giancarlo Guerrero was willing to give the piece a good amount of time and allow me to give pretty extensive notes and discuss things with the players over the week and so.
Written for the National Youth Orchestra, the convergence of oceans, has underlying themes of coming together. Can you speak to your time working with the youth orchestra and the importance of fostering the arts in the younger generation?
The composer in residence role with the NYO is very special as it gives a composer a chance to work with an orchestra of players who are either their contemporaries or only a couple of years younger (depending on how old they are at the time). In my case I was also fortunate enough to have played in the orchestra in 2018 so I felt like I had quite a good sense of the energy, commitment and the high level of playing that existed within the ensemble. This knowledge obviously helped immensely in the writing of the piece but it was also invaluable during the week of rehearsals as I felt I had a good sense of how to engage with the musicians so that the unfamiliar aspects of the piece could be understood and realised most effectively.
I think it is so incredibly important as artists to help support and educate younger artists as much as possible. I have had so many incredible teachers and mentors in music and as such I have tried to stay as involved as possible with educational initiatives whether that is conducting school/youth orchestras and community ensembles in Dunedin or being involved with things like the Composers Association of New Zealand Nelson Composers Workshop and general teaching. I do think if we want to get the most out of educational initiatives however we need to be a bit more conscious about what makes these opportunities possible and that's advocating for and building a sustainable environment for artists more generally. The post university landscape in Aotearoa for both performers and composers alike can be pretty bleak and this can make building anything resembling a sustainable career very difficult. When you're struggling just to do that it's very challenging to then find both the time and capacity needed to effectively teach, mentor and educate. When this happens we then lose important and diverse voices from both our music education and compositional landscape because people get burnt out and have to either stop creating as much as they would like or look overseas or to shift into other fields of work meaning we lose musical work that is just as interesting and full of potential but that challenges us in unfamiliar ways or takes longer to find its place.
Do you have a favourite moment in the piece, why is it your favourite?
Many of the things I like most about the piece are moments where an instrumental line emerges from a broader texture and blooms into something fleeting but meaningful. One of these is the way the violin solo about a minute into the piece (performed beautifully at the première by NYO concertmaster Peter Gjelsten) emerges and takes off in dialogue with the harp (Harrison Chau) and piano (Emma Qiu) before handing over to the first of the works contrabassoon solos (Tor Chiles). The way the players leant into the interplay of the melodic lines and found ways to rise out of and then sink back into the textures was really inspiring to see. I think this moment really tunes your ear to the sorts of ebbs and flows that permeate the work.
the convergence of oceans: bar 21-23
How does being from Aotearoa New Zealand influence the music that you compose?
I think it's a quite difficult yet important question. I think it absolutely does influence my music in many ways but I do also think that sometimes the composer themself is not the best person to answer that question. It can be a bit like trying to map a forest while standing in the middle of a thicket in that way and so the answers that I may give may not be the ones most obvious to someone who would look at my music from a greater distance. That said, I think the most important way is in how being from here influences how I try to think about and write music in a way that is self-reflective and critical of what I am doing and the structures it exists in, in a way that opens me up to a broader variety of ways of thinking. This comes from a number of places including the teachers I've been lucky to have here in Aotearoa who have often above all encouraged curiosity as well as an exposure to the many other fabulous musicians, artists, thinkers and writers whose work challenges and expands our understanding of artistic practice and indeed more broadly of society here in Aotearoa.
Last year you were a finalist for the SOUNZ Contemporary Award for your chamber work Mycelium. What does it mean to you to be a SOUNZ contemporary award finalist again this year?
It's a real honour to have my work selected for the SOUNZ Contemporary Award again and I'm particularly delighted that the musicians in the 2022 NYO have the opportunity to see their hard work recognised nationally in this way as well. That said, I think it's also important to note that both my nominations are as much of a reflection on the privileged opportunities that I've been fortunate to have as it is on my compositional work. Yes you still have to write the piece and that is not easy but to have an environment where you know how, when and by whom the work is going to be performed lets you really be more adventurous and trust yourself more. It's not a coincidence that the convergence of oceans and Mycelium are two of the first works I've gotten to write where it hasn't been for a "call for scores" or some other type of competition or 'workshop' but rather a situation where there has been an organisation willing to trust me and has given me the time to gradually develop my ideas before giving ample time to work with the ensemble to find the life and energy that exists within the work.
Above all however, I just feel incredibly fortunate to get the opportunity to be a part of this celebration of music from Aotearoa and to get to know the amazing musical work being created by fellow finalists; this year Karlo and Ihlara, last year Victoria and Joshua. I wish we had more opportunities like this to celebrate all the work that composers from Aotearoa are doing!
What is the best piece of composition advice you have ever received?
I've been so fortunate to have had lots of people who have given really meaningful long term input into my compositional development and so often what has been incredible is that they have been able to give me advice that was perfect for the place I was in at a given moment. Through my undergrad this was a mix of Anthony Ritchie and Peter Adams at Otago coupled with input from Mozart Fellows Dylan Lardelli and Chris Gendall (who in a lovely full circle moment was the composer mentor during my time as NYO compert in residence), then during my time in Sydney I was very fortunate to have supervision from two incredible composers, Liza Lim and Benjamin Carey.
A couple of pieces of compositional advice do stand out though, although they're more ways of doing practice advocated for by teachers than individual pieces of life changing advice. The first is the aforementioned urge to keep being curious following the things within what you are doing that interest you. The second is repeatedly stopping while composing to go back and ask yourself why you have made the decisions you have already made writing a piece. This is not just about finding the things that are not serving a purpose or that could be better but also to help you better understand your compositional instincts and decision making so that you can both use that knowledge effectively, challenge it, and subvert it when needed. The third was a piece of feedback received from Anthony Ritchie at the end of my third year of undergrad. The exact wording escapes me but it was essentially that while quite technically proficient he felt there was a need and potential to try and find a greater emotional resonance within the work that I do. This was something I was feeling about my work at the time as well but it was really useful to have that push and it's something I have been trying to strive more towards in subsequent work in my own way.
Your wife Ihlara is also a 2024 SOUNZ finalist, how does it feel to be sharing this experience with her?
It's really lovely for us both to be finalists for this year's SOUNZ contemporary award. Mirror Traps (Ihlara's SOUNZ finalist piece) is such a beautiful and moving work that was given an absolutely stunning performance at its premiere in France. The way Ihlara set Hera Lindsay-Bird's text in such a clear and expressive way gives the piece such a wonderful energy and her management of emotional tension across the piece, dropping hints of what is to come but simultaneously very much keeping you guessing, means the arrival of the final movement is just breathtakingly beautiful. More generally it's very special being able to follow the creative trajectory of Ihlara's pieces as they progress from initial ideas and sketches through to the final product. She has such an incredible way of creating works that blend serious topics and political statements with humour and irony whilst still retaining the ability to suddenly take your breath away with moments of vulnerability and beauty. It's always really inspiring to see what she creates and I'm so thrilled that her work is being recognised as a finalist this year.