Guitarist, composer, and podcast producer Anthony Joseph Lanman has racked up over 350,000 followers on Soundcloud – a number most classical musicians can only dream of. In this episode of Composer Quest, Anthony talks with me about his career path, his music, and his answer to the question, “What would Beethoven be writing today?”
The stereotype of African rhythms being complex and fascinating is completely true. I found out firsthand during my nine months in a very remote part of Tanzania, living at Hanga Abbey and teaching English, computers, and music to kids in the village. Since most of these kids don't have access to instruments, they found a way to make totally compelling songs using only their voices.
I set out to create the first episode of Composer Quest Season Two, and ended up with this heavenly look back at my musical history, embarrassing demos and all.
I hereby challenge you to the 4th Composer Quest quest! We will be writing songs for a new Christmas musical, to be performed by the first, second, and third graders at KMS Elementary (in the rural Minnesota town of Murdock, MN). I wrote music for their Christmas musical last year, and it was a blast hearing my songs performed by these kids, who were so excited about it. Maia Hamann, from episode 10, teaches music at KMS, and she'll direct the musical. Her mom, Zita Hamann, taught at KMS Elementary for many years, and she has just written a fun story called Elfluenza.
Tinderbox Music's Patrick Hertz specializes in promoting music to college radio stations. In this special episode of Composer Quest, I ask Patrick a bunch of listener-submitted questions about the music business. He shares advice on how to get noticed by music supervisors and get your music licensed for TV and film. He also explains how the artists he sees get ahead are (unsurprisingly) the most organized and business-minded. Although our conversation is geared more towards promoting recorded songs, I believe his commonsense advice is useful for classical composers, too.
MusicWorks MN Director Tim Cheesebrow (from Episode 19) is the mastermind behind the new Young Composer's Contest here in Minnesota. Two talented White Bear Lake composers were chosen as the winners. It's pretty impressive what these students were able to do with their string quartet pieces. In this special Composer Quest episode, Taylor Isberner and James Farrell share their insights for other young composers thinking about trying out this contest next year.
In this special episode of Composer Quest, I talk with entertainment lawyer Blake Iverson of Friedman Iverson Law Firm and entertainment law student Sarah Howes about how to copyright your music and make money from royalties. They provide a bunch of great tips and legal myth-busting for us composers and songwriters.
Join us for the third Composer Quest Quest! Write a classical aria for the Twin Cities Opera on Tap group to perform.
We recently had our first ever Composer Quest concert at Yoga Sol. The Twin Cities Trio performed some awesome listener-submitted arrangements of pop tunes and film/video game scores for bassoon, clarinet, and oboe. We also got to hear the indie pop duo Matt & Donna Schubbe, indie rocker Peter Frey of Kazyak, and indie folker Paul Spring. Here's a special Composer Quest podcast episode with highlights from the concert.
Composer and Princeton professor Dmitri Tymoczko shares some excellent composing advice in this season finale episode of Composer Quest. Dmitri says that working on music theory as a composer is like lifting weights as a football player - it helps improve your intuitive composing. We also ponder the morality of exposing babies to only atonal music for experimental reasons.