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Contour of a Composer

Posted by DCA Theater on February 21, 2012 in January - July 2012 Season, Incubator Series: Vintage Theater Collective

Interview with Joshua Dumas, Composer, currently working with Vintage Theater Collective on Lion on the Cheesegrater in the DCA Theater Incubator Series

Who is Joshua Dumas? What is your musical background?
My name is Joshua Dumas; I’m an artist in Chicago primarily composing music for dance, film, and theatre. I tend toward a distractible curiosity, so sometimes I make photographs, and artist books, and perform, and make films, and write poems, and make semi-operas.

I took the long back way to music composition, from years of playing punk, and then art-rock, then discovering free-jazz and noise, and from there drone, to finally realizing that these experimental musicians were looking to 20th century classical music for influence. I fell in love with that music, and with putting notes on a staff, and with that moment when notes on a staff become music in a room.

Q: What excites you about Lion on the Cheesegrater?
J.D.: A lot. I’m a huge fan of the work that Vintage is doing and was honored to be asked to participate in this project. I think the very basic conceit, setting Lysistrata in Prohibition-era Chicago and playing it as noir, is really brilliant. Working with Sarah (the director) and our fantastic ensemble has been amazing. I’m loving the opportunity to write smoky, slow-burning piano tunes. And the chance to workshop a piece is a dream. It is really rare in my world that I get to spend an entire month tinkering, and imagining, and mucking about, and not have to deliver something polished at the end of it.

Q: What sources of inspiration are you using to develop the music for the world of the play?
J.D.: I first took a closer look at the vibrant jazz scene that was happening in our city at the time our play is set. I spent a mess of time digging through Earl Hines stuff; he’s a brilliant player, was Al Capone‘s personal pianist, played in the Hot Five with Louis Armstrong, fronted Ellington’s orchestra, played with Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, everybody. So good. I can’t even stand on the same block with his chops, but I hope his ghost forgives my attempts as homage.

We also have been talking about whether this piece is noir, or perhaps post-noir or neo-noir. That thinking led me to Vangelis’ score for Blade Runner, Bernard Herrmann‘s score for Taxi Driver, and Neil Young‘s score for Jim Jarmusch‘s Dead Man. Dead Man, of course, is a Western, but I think Young remakes the tropes of that genre so gracefully, it was a study in how I might do so for noir.

Q: What’s it like to improvise/write music by working with text, a director, and/or actors?
J.D.: It has been fascinating and challenging. We are working pretty much without any tech (set, lights, etc), which means this music has a big responsibility—it needs to evoke that grey noir landscape. It is so fun when it works. Sometimes I’ll play a few sparse chords in our rehearsal room and suddenly you can see the actors take the music into their bodies, and we’re all transported, suddenly the streets are rainslick and a low fog damps the moonlight, and we’re wearing fedoras and everyone is beautiful.

It’s challenging when it doesn’t work, when I’m stumbling around on the piano trying to find something decent to give to these amazing performers and don’t find it. I totally realize that failure is the most important part of experimenting, but wouldn’t it be fab if we were always just stunning on the first go around….

Q: Do you have any goals in regards to this workshop?
J.D.: I think my role in this workshop is to help Kristin continue to refine this text, to help Sarah cultivate her vision for the piece, and to give the actors whatever allows them to do their best work. Music is my means. If this music can do even one of those three things, I’ll be super pleased.