The spirit of arts activism is the driving force in New Music composer Mark Mantel’s (Ph.D. ‘93) work – not that he has any choice in the matter.
“As an American composer, you have to be an organizer,” he insists. “To be heard, you have to be an activist. You can’t just write.”
Mantel started his musical life as a percussionist, performing orchestral and chamber music, avant-garde, experimental rock, punk and new music. He also had regular studio gigs as a freelance percussionist, audio engineer and producer.
His most recent feat of arts activism was founding FestivaLong Beach, an international interdisciplinary performance festival in Long Beach, Calif. The three-times-a-year event, according to Mantel, was an “artistic and economic engine, giving artists a regular venue to perform. Yearly events are cool, but they’re not life sustaining. What musicians, painters, writers, poets, filmmakers need is the ability to gather and do things with semi-regularity.”
The festival included exhibits, community outreach, evening performances and kids’ events designed to expose them to cutting-edge art. Venues were underused locations—an airport hangar, shipyard, smaller spaces. Mantel’s goal? Challenge audiences and help artists make money. He specifically invited political works to wake up the Southern California community, “without really being in your face,” he says. “It wasn’t guerilla theater, but it wasn’t for the faint of heart.”
Mantel performed at the festival: “I did some works with text settings—changing the music and text in real time—like improvisation with a jazz group.” He also performed a version of Collision, a collaborative project with visual artist Richard Clar, in which orbital space debris positions are used to generate a work that unites science, art, technology and live performance.
FestivaLong Beach ran for two years. Today, it’s on hiatus for retooling.
“We stopped just before 9/11,” Mantel says. “We’re rebuilding our board of directors so we can keep it in Long Beach. And I’m thinking about how a mid-career composer and other artists can make stuff happen—fiscally, artistically, socially--in the current climate. I also need to do my own work.”
A doctor in music composition, Mantel credits the people who inspired him at UB—composers David Felder, Morton Feldman and Jan Williams, among others. Their influence wasn’t only academic. After reviving with Felder the June-in-Buffalo Composers’ Festival/Seminar, Mantel served as the event’s associate artistic director for seven years. He concurrently worked with the North American New Music Festival (based at UB), and later coordinated American Music Week in Los Angeles and produced several contemporary and experimental musical events in black box and alternative spaces throughout the country.
Mantel’s writing is focused on the artistic process, the similarities between music and other arts.
“I’ve always been fascinated by what makes a great painting or poem or novel work,” he says. “What makes it profound, gives it meaning?” He’s spent the past five or so years creating and exhibiting installed works based in painting. The pieces might have speakers for music, use video and images, include constructed components.
Says Mantel, “I’ve also started to write a piece for string quartet that has become a bunch of metal. I started to see the piece with steel, with a collection of metals reflecting sounds and musical ideas. It goes from canvas to freestanding to oral.”
Mantel’s latest CD is nearly complete. Each of the disk’s pieces was derived from the rhythm of a text except “Junk Bonds/Junked Bombs,” which is derived from, according to Mantel, “obscene and rampant fiscal and military mismanagement.” One piece for electronically processed hand drums, vibraphone and spoken text is based on The Cliff by Samuel Beckett and “is very austere,” Mantel notes.
Another piece was inspired by a Czeslaw Milosz poem, Pastels by Degas. ”It’s a musical piece about a poem about painting about dance,” he says, offering four layers of artistic context. He also is looking to release a book, The Rantings of an Underutilized American: Music, Essays, and Poetry of Mark Mantel, in 2004.
“I’ve derived a lot of excitement from curating and providing opportunity to artists,” he says. “I was a very expressive musician when I was young, while my time at UB was very focused. I’ve come full circle; the same creative spirit is there. It’s still very important to me to be socially and humanly connected, connected to community and still take artistic chances.”
Written by Grace Lazzara
January 2004
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