A conversation with Matthew Ricketts, composer,
and Brian Sears, 2019-2020 Collage Fellow.

Brian: Can you tell me a little about your piece “Seven by Seven” that we will be performing in January?

Matthew: I wrote this piece for the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, when I was a fellow at the Aspen Music Festival, and the title reflects the seven players in the ensemble, and the length of the piece. I would say that my music tends to fall into two broad categories, the first being a more programmatic and extra-musically rich like an opera, or setting of poetry. Then I have another side, which is much more traditionally absolute music, and this one definitely falls into that category. Something I remember doing with this piece, was thinking about music as a kind of a body, a kind of an organism that is made up of instruments, a totality but also a sum of the instruments. I remember thinking about bodily functions, panting, breathing and pulse, sighing...despite the overall abstractness I was conceiving of the musical situations as living in some way.

B: I think that comes through well, in that the way the piece unfolds seems very organic, and the pieces are working together to create a singular combined effort rather than a group of individual voices. Something that I think supports that, and then acts in contrast is the restraint of the percussion writing. In the beginning the vibraphone really blends into the texture and is part of the organism, but then there are just a few individual crotale notes that really punctuate the texture. The way that unfolds is really elegant.

M: Thanks, I think my one bit of feedback in rehearsals to percussionists is that it’s too loud (haha), everything is very marked down and soft. I was really conceiving the percussion as a resonant extension of the piano.

B: As an extension of that, I was drawn to a section towards the end where the timbre of the instruments start to shift and pitch begins to become less fixed. How are you using timbre in the development of your pieces?

M: Timbre is always the hardest thing to discuss, and the least scientific/most intuitive aspect of my music. There I was really thinking about smoothness and blend, and again going back to that idea of this singular body that is made up of smaller parts that overlap in a narrow band, losing the distinct qualities of the instruments.

B: The last question I have is not necessarily about the piece, but I was reading on your website that you participate in a lot of collaborative projects, and I’m a big fan of collaboration in the new music/new art communities, so I was wondering how collaboration fits into your work process, and how do you think that collaboration helps elevate everyone in the community?

M: Yeah I love collaborations, as you know writing music so lonely, so it’s nice to have someone there with you to push your ideas up against. I like the tension of having a nice combination of like/unlike tendencies colliding; I think some really fascinating combinations can come from that. For instance I wrote an opera last year with a really outrageously funny librettist, things that are not usually in my domain, and figuring out how my music will respond to these concepts and situations that I don’t usually deal with. I really like that process of meshing my musical world with someone who is so outside of my own sensibilities. That’s the kind of collaboration that I find most productive.

B: Well thank you for taking a few minutes to talk to me today, we are really looking forward to playing your piece next month!