Liova Bueno, composer

Who or what have been the most important influences on your career as a composer?

This is a hard question to answer since – as an avid listener and score-studier throughout my life – part of me feels that everything I’ve delved into as a musician has influenced me. Hundreds of years of Western classical music yields too many composers to list individually! However, what some composers achieved feels particularly profound to me, including composers such as Bartòk, Messian, Debussy, Ginastera, and Lutoslawski. And many of “the greats” have a very special place in my heart and soul as well: Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms…

However, in addition to the Western canon, I have also been significantly influenced by non-Western and non-classical music. Growing up in the Dominican Republic, I was steeped in Afro-Caribbean music and merengue styles, and the poly-rhythmic elements and approach to harmony as a macrocosmic entity in those musics definitely emerge – unconsciously – in my compositional style. I could also list other styles such as jazz, hindu ragas, and African music as influences…the list goes on. I guess the way my connection with music works is that I absorb a little bit of everything I immerse myself in – and then perhaps something about that experience influences a subsequent work.

What have been the most significant challenges in your musical career?

Balancing life and art is a big one. Finding a way to reconcile one’s needs as an artist while taking care of more mundane life details (such as a roof over one’s head, etc.) – all while raising a family – is no small task.

It’s also challenging to gain exposure when one’s music isn’t easily defined by category, or which doesn’t follow some of the current classical music trends. I don’t believe that melody, or harmony – or even tonality (in a broad sense) – have been done so much that there’s nothing left to say.

What are the pleasures and challenges of writing a commissioned piece?

The beautiful thing about a commissioned project is the chance to build new relationships – and the fact that often those relationships lead to future projects and more in-depth collaborations as both sides get to know each other even better. It’s always interesting to create a work for a specific occasion/ensemble/performer, since the necessary parameters make for a different compositional experience than being told “anything goes.” That said, one of the challenges with commissions can be that I have to gain as in-depth a sense as possible of the particular strengths and aptitudes of any given performer or ensemble, in order to write a work that will suit them and their abilities to a T, while also giving them a unique, interesting, and appropriately challenging project. It can also be a bit of a tight-rope act to balance one’s own musical ideas with someone else’s wishes, and to find the middle way. One very technical challenge about commissions can be…..dealing with committees!!

What are the pleasures and challenges of working with specific performers, ensembles, or orchestras?

What I love most about being able to work directly with performers is the back-and-forth that takes place during the process of bringing the music to life. Speaking as a teacher, I would say that just as teachers learn from their students, composers learn from performers. It’s so interesting and useful to receive direct feedback from performers about any given work, and to witness the ways in which the score speaks more or less clearly to them. My goal is always to write music that will feel intuitive to the performers, both in terms of the physical and technical capacities of the instruments, but also in terms of the musical feeling required. As such, being able to witness in real life the way what I’ve written – a certain bowing, a breath point for a singer, a character marking for an orchestra – is interpreted by other humans is always fascinating and instructive. I find that there are rarely anything other than very small changes that need to be made – but sometimes those small changes (a slightly different accent, a more colourful tempo descriptor, etc.) can make a world of difference when trying to convey to someone else’s mind what I hear in my head.

Of which works are you most proud?

Some of my most recent pieces that make me particularly proud are my Duo Fantástico (guitar duo), Two Moods: Dusk and Carnaval (orchestra), Piccola Serenata (chamber orchestra), Poema Místico, Nocturno to name some.

How would you describe your ompositional language?

Hmm. It’s always hard to unpack what makes up a composer’s voice, when one is the composer and sees/hears everything from the inside. However, if I may take a slight tangent for a moment, I will say that what I have aspired to – and thankfully been encouraged to do by mentors – is to develop my own voice. Not in a vague way, but in a concrete way that involves a life-long process of approaching music in a certain way: listening, studying, absorbing, understanding, and synthesising everything that one encounters…and then remembering that there is always more than can be learned and perceived from any great work. This all while developing an understanding of and fluency with the technical and theoretical aspects of music throughout the ages – accumulating a toolbox of compositional options, if you will. To learn from what others have done, but not to rely on imitation. To gain tools with which one can organise one’s thoughts and inspirations into a cohesive form that will make sense on paper, and that will be written intuitively and with understanding of the instruments in question.

So what does this boil down to? I might choose an array of different compositional methods, techniques and tools based on how I think I can best convey the music I hear in my head. Multiple layers of rhythm and harmony create unifying textures in my music which never allow it to fall into stasis, even when there is silence. My sound world has been generally described as simultaneously sounding linked to tradition, yet also new and from our time.

How do you work?

It depends on the project, and whether I have initial material to work with (e.g. a poem to be set), a very specific set of parameters, or absolute freedom to write what I want in every aspect. If I have a poem, I will spend time with the poem and get to know it, and over time I will start to have musical ideas enter my head. In other less-specific situations, I will simply have the idea of the type of work or ensemble in mind, and over time I also start to hear snatches of melodies or harmonies as the beginnings of the idea. Sometimes I write down some of these first musical teasers (always by hand – I find the process of putting pencil to paper is crucial for my creative process), but often it takes days or weeks – sometimes months – of allowing the seeds to take root and grow in my mind before I begin to write. Once there has been quite a bit of internal development of the ideas, I then generally just sit down and write everything. I guess I know that I’m ready to write when it feels like I must! After I’ve written the piece, in an ideal timeline I can then let that sit a little before going to back to review and possibly revise. If I’m working with specific musicians, there often are certain amounts of feedback and discussion that occur at this point and which can influence the final version.

As a musician, what is your definition of success?

I think I can probably best answer this question as what I think success is for a composer specifically, which is to my mind twofold. For artistic success: to have one’s music connect with performers and listeners as a truly felt experience. I don’t write music that is supposed to be programmatic or have any particular message – but I do want people to feel alive when they hear it. To me, this is the great gift that music of all sorts can give us as humans, and surely is the reason music exists, after all! As a feeling, connecting thing that we experience and which reminds us of how alive we are. I believe that being in the position of creating music is an honour, and a humble privilege.

For career success: to have one’s music disseminated to broader audiences, and to also have the opportunity to work with a variety of performers and ensembles.

What advice would you give to young or aspiring composers?

I would say the idea of “finding one’s voice” is crucial to becoming a composer – but the caveat with that statement is that the process of doing so should entail a lot of (often self-directed) hard work in terms of learning from many hundreds of years of music writing. Studying the many developments and branches of theory and harmony, listening and doing score analysis for anything and everything, listening to non-classical styles and understanding what goes into different styles of writing – it’s all important. I’ve seen young composers who are not helped in developing all the tools that would enable them to truly develop and organise their ideas – and the sad thing is that then their music often never proceeds beyond an initial phase of exploration/development. I say ‘sad’, because to my ear composers in this situation don’t ever really connect with the core of themselves and what they want to be creating.

Another purely technical piece of advice would be for composers not to forget about the financial aspects of performances. Writing a work for an unusual ensemble type can be enjoyable and interesting, but it’s a shame if one’s music gets shelved simply because the concert budget doesn’t allow for the extra players to be hired for one piece. In terms of programming considerations, it’s always wise to have a variety of repertoire types in one’s oeuvre.

How do you think we can grow classical music’s audiences?

Well, I suppose my convictions about music and its role for us all will yet again emerge in this answer. Music lives, it speaks, it holds kernels of human experience within it. If we want audiences to grow, we need to be exposing everyone – especially children – to classical music as a living, breathing, exciting, sad, funny, expressive art form, not something from the past that’s a stuffy relic to be venerated from a correct and respectful distance. So of course, music in schools is crucial – they key being that we need to show and talk about the ways in which the music is expressive from Day 1. Also, if children are exposed to all the sound worlds of classical music, their ears and minds will more readily accept it as familiar, interesting, and something to think about and explore, rather than as something that is hard to understand when compared to Top 40 hits. After all, all music was ‘popular music’ at one time… My favourite performers are those who truly bring the music to life, regardless of the era in which it originated.

What’s the one thing we’re not talking about in the classical music industry which you really think we should be?

I would say that a hard truth that is not always mentioned is how crucial it is to have a good PR team in order to get your music out there. Talent and hard work are wonderful things and crucial pieces of the puzzle – but without some sort of connection to marketing, publicity and distribution, the chances of expanding one’s career can be very slim.

Another important topic is that in today’s world it’s increasingly common for musicians to be what I have heard termed ‘portfolio artists’ – i.e., their musical career is at least partially supported by a job that is not directly related to the creation of their art. I think it’s important to have young artists realise that the financial reality for most artists (especially those who want families, dependable income etc.) may involve work that isn’t necessarily exclusively artistic – and this shouldn’t in any way be seen as a failure to succeed, or as a reflection of a lack of commitment to one’s art. La Bohème may be a wonderful opera, but how many artists really want to live hand-to-mouth?

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Liova Bueno’s music is performed in concerts and music festivals internationally, from countries in Central and South America to Europe, the United States and across Canada. He has received commissions from and has collaborated with various ensembles, including Cuarteto de Cuerdas de Bellas Artes (Mexico) (formerly Cuarteto Chroma), the Trio Dominicano (Dominican Republic), the Vaughan String Quartet (Edmonton, AB), Vox Humana Chamber Choir (Victoria, BC), the Vancouver Peace Choir (Vancouver, BC), the Victoria Choral Society (Victoria, BC), the Janáček Philharmonic Orchestra (Czech Republic), BRNO Contemporary Orquestra (Czech Republic), the Illinois Modern Ensemble (Illinois), the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional Juvenil of the Dominican Republic, members of the Orquesta Sinfonica Nacional of the Dominican Republic, and members of the Victoria Symphony. He has worked with various conductors and soloists including Darwin Aquino, Stanislav Vavrinek, Pavel Šnajdr, Brian Wismath, Pierre Strauch, Patricia Kostek, Mark McGregor, Robert Ward and Alexander Dunn.

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