Getting a big boost from a Pulitzer loss
Kendrick Lamar won, but S.F. composer is suddenly in spotlight
Composer Michael Gilbertson is in the middle of a busy summer. He’s scheduled for stints at music festivals in Iowa and Maine; he’s spending some time in Washington, D.C., in preparation for a commission he’s working on for the U.S. Marine
Band; he’s getting to work on a new woodwind quintet and revising an old one-act opera — one he had considered “dead forever” — for a production by the Virginia Opera.
It just goes to show, you shouldn’t underestimate the career boost that comes from losing the Pulitzer Prize.
Gilbertson, a personable and softspoken 31-year-old who has lived in San Francisco since autumn, was suddenly in the news in April, when his “Quartet” was a runner-up for the music award. It wasn’t the also-ran status that he shared with composer Ted Hearne that drew attention, but rather the jury’s striking decision to upend traditional genre categories by awarding the Pulitzer to Kendrick Lamar for his hip-hop album “Damn.” Still, Gilbertson’s phone began to ring.
“It’s really astonishing how much it’s changed things,” he said during a recent interview in his Diamond Heights one-bedroom home. “I’m in my 30s, I’ve made connections and there’s a natural momentum to my career at this point.
“But now, people who would not have met with me are willing to meet with me. Amazingly, people want to be associated with me. It’s improved my social life.
“And it’s made me think about how we treat artists in our society — how one little piece of recognition changes how people see you. I’m grateful for it, but it also scared me a little, to be honest.”
What the recognition for “Quartet,” a limpid, richly expressive two-movement work for strings, hasn’t affected is Gilbertson’s continuing, and seemingly tireless, creative activity. His extensive catalog includes music for orchestra, choral works and chamber music, all steeped in the communicative directness that he prizes in music.
“People who would not have met with me are willing to meet with me. Amazingly, people want to be associated with me.”
Michael Gilbertson
“During the last few years,” he says, “as I got past the point of applying to graduate programs, I stopped writing to impress teachers. I do think a lot of people in this field write for other composers, and I’m just not one of those composers. I write for myself, for the musicians and for the listener.”
And even though his list of creations keeps growing, Gilbertson says he considers himself a slow and laborious composer.
“It takes me a long time, because I care so much about the pitch material and harmonic content of my music, and because my orchestration is very detailed. Of course, a choral piece moves much faster, because there’s a text to provide a structure and because there are only four voices to deal with.”
Most recently, Gilbertson premiered “Graffiti,” a three-movement orchestral concerto for the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra. He’s got a three-year composer-inresidence position with the orchestra, for which he’s already written a Guitar Concerto and an Oboe Concerto. The residency, along with a teaching position at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, is what enabled him to act on his long-standing desire to move to the Bay Area after a life spent in the Midwest and on the East Coast.
Gilbertson grew up in Dubuque, Iowa, in a community and extended family in which farming was heavily represented (his own parents worked in manufacturing and teaching). He credits the Iowa public school system for sparking his interest in music — and, like Haydn before him, credits his geographical isolation for helping to give free rein to his creative voice.
“I think if I’d grown up in a place with more composers, where things were more competitive, I might not have been able to develop a distinctive style so easily. I wasn’t surrounded by various schools of composition, either on the East Coast or in California. I was right in the middle, so I was able to soak up whatever I wanted.”
Gilbertson studied composition at Juilliard and Yale but seems to have been averse to forming any strong bonds of mentorship or stylistic affiliation.
“Once you study with a teacher for a year, you pretty much have an idea of what they’re going to say. I wanted to get as many perspectives as possible.
“But I try not to situate myself in musical politics. There are a lot of scenes out there that I’ve never felt settled in, or completely a part of.”
It was that sense of not quite belonging, Gilbertson says, that he responded to most directly in Lamar’s work.
“I like his music, and in fact I like R&B and rap in general, although I’m not that invested in any one artist. But there are things in his music and lyrics that are incredibly powerful and spoke to me.
“His album ‘Good Kid, M.A.A.D City,’ which is not what he won the prize for, is a coming-ofage story, a story of internal struggle as well as struggle with the outside world. As a gay kid who grew up in Iowa, those issues — of having to be strong and needing that strength to be yourself — meant a lot to me.”
As for the broader issue of artistic prizes and the blurring of genres, that, Gilbertson says, “feels so out of my hands. It’s not really something I feel I can influence. If more classical musicians become attuned to an artist like Kendrick Lamar — or if maybe some people in that world find out about my music or Ted Hearne’s music, then that increases everyone’s awareness and elevates everyone.”
In the meantime, there’s more music to compose. In addition to the pieces for woodwind quintet and band, Gilbertson is planning his next works for the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra. There’s one meant to be paired with Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony, and a young person’s guide to the orchestra, along the lines of Britten’s famous orchestral primer, for family concerts. On a larger scale, he’s laying plans for a cantata, tentatively titled “Denial,” on the subject of climate change, for the Chamber Orchestra and the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus.
“It’s a lot of work,” he says with a sheepish grin. “But it beats being bored.”