Notezart by composer Cindy McTee is a highlight of our Winter 2024 program. This will be the Northshore Concert Band’s first performance of this work.

Ms. McTee describes this work:

My Notezart was inspired by the beginning of the third movement of Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, but you will also hear melodies and harmonies that don't sound like they were inspired by the music of Mozart. This is because I enjoy the challenge of featuring various kinds of music within the same piece while exploring both the similarities and differences between them.

Hailed by the Houston Chronicle as a composer whose music reflects a “charging, churning celebration of the musical and cultural energy of modern-day America,” Cindy McTee “brings to the world of concert music a fresh and imaginative voice.”

The Washington Post characterized her work as “unmistakably American-sounding, [composed] with craftsmanship and a catholic array of influences across several centuries.” “There’s also a polished gleam about her colors,” according to the Detroit Free Press, as well as “an inventive approach to form and a respect for tradition.”

Cindy McTee has received numerous awards for her music, most significantly: a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Fulbright Fellowship, a Composers Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, two awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Music Alive Award from Meet The Composer and the League of American Orchestras, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra's third annual Elaine Lebenbom Memorial Award, and a BMI Student Composers Award. She was also the winner of the 2001 Louisville Orchestra Composition Competition.

We contacted Cindy McTee and asked her to share with us her journey in music, musical influences, and inspirations.

Cindy McTee with husband, conductor Leonard Slatkin.

Please tell us a bit about your journey in music and life.

I was born in 1953 in Tacoma, Washington, and raised in the nearby town of Eatonville. As the daughter of musical parents (my father played trumpet and my mother played clarinet), I often went to rehearsals of their small dance band, where I heard popular music and jazz from the 1940s and 1950s. This experience later informed much of my own music, which relies heavily on jazz sounds and rhythms. I began piano studies at the age of six with a teacher who encouraged improvisation (the beginnings of my career as a composer), and I began studying saxophone with my mother a few years later.

After many years of study at colleges and conservatories in both the United States and Europe, I embarked upon a teaching and composing career, most of it while a faculty member at the University of North Texas in Denton, Texas. In 2011, I both retired from UNT and married conductor, Leonard Slatkin. Together, we now travel the world, making music together and independently, while also finding time to enjoy days off as tourists.

What have been some of your musical influences?

I've already mentioned the influence of jazz. But beyond that, I think it was my father's record collection that inspired me to write for large ensembles. He loved Respighi, Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, and many others, and I remember going to bed as a young child, anxious to imagine my own orchestral music after having heard these wondrous works during many an evening around the record player.

Please share a bit about your favorite musical memory.

In 1995, I was given the opportunity to take my first bow before an audience of nearly 2000 people attending a subscription series concert of music played by a prominent, professional ensemble — the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. I quite literally felt as if I'd died and gone to heaven.

There is a coda to this story . . . 15 years later, I married the conductor of that performance, husband Leonard.

What is on your Spotify playlist or in your music library?

I don't listen to recordings recreationally, preferring the live experience instead. And I would be hard-pressed to provide a list of favorite pieces, as almost every piece contains something of interest. But if I could only take the music of one classical composer to my desert island, I would probably choose Bach.

Which composer/musician, past or present, would you most like to meet for a coffee and why?

Wouldn't it be interesting to ask composers from the distant past to comment on performances of their music today. For example, would Bach enjoy listening to the Northshore Concert Band play his Toccata and Fugue in D Minor as arranged by Donald Hunsberger? I think so, and I would like to see the expression on Bach's face when the tubas come in, a sound among many, that he could not have previously heard.

What inspires you?

I am inspired by beauty in all its forms — musical, visual, or otherwise. For example, the impetus to compose is often triggered by hearing sonic and/or structural beauty in the music of another composer's work. Or when I witness the depth and breadth of an Ansel Adams photograph, I am inspired to take my own pictures.

What do you do to relax

I've never been one to relax. Life seems far too short. But I've always had hobbies: backpacking and mountain climbing, snow skiing, competitive ballroom dancing (before Dancing with the Stars made it popular), exterior and interior home design, amateur auto racing, language study (German and French), and most recently photography for which I have developed a huge passion. When I was a kid, I wanted to grow up to be a visual artist — music was secondary then.

The similarities between music and photography become ever more apparent to me as I gain experience seeing textures, lines, and shapes as intently as I hear them. I have discovered that visual patterns have rhythm too, that a landscape can be as contrapuntal as a Bach fugue, and that cameras and lenses can be "played" as artfully as musical instruments.

There are technological parallels as well. For example, both a macro lens and a microphone provide opportunities to see or hear beyond the realm of normal experience to a magical place of abstraction and wonder.

So at the age of 70, I am just beginning to fulfill a lifelong dream. It's never too late to get started!

Do you have any advice for young musicians?

Yes. Continue to perform for as long as possible. The benefits will last a lifetime. But also take a stab at creating your own music. Start by making subtle alterations to the music you love to play or sing — it's okay to borrow in order to learn. Then try extending that experience by making more and more changes until you are essentially composing your own melodies, rhythms, and harmonies. The act of trying to create music will at the very least give you insights into performing it. And who knows, it may lead you to a career as a composer for concert ensembles, film, television, or video games.

Please share any thoughts that you may have about the Northshore Concert Band.

I am very grateful to Northshore Concert Band and its director, Mallory Thompson, for choosing to program my piece, and for the many hours devoted to individual practice and rehearsals. That represents a lot of time, and I thank you.

Please add anything else that you would like our audience to know about you.

I would like you to know why I think new art is necessary, and by extension, why your commissioning program is so important . . . I believe we need new music, new books, and new art, to reflect who we are as a society, to provide a lens through which future generations can know and understand who we were in this time and place.

I would also like you to know why I think artistic engagement is essential, whether as observers and listeners or as active participants. Because, in my opinion, artistic endeavor will lead to a kinder, gentler, world. I believe that a person who has experienced and truly felt the magic of a Picasso painting or the emotional depth of a Beethoven symphony will be a more compassionate person with an expanded appreciation for what it means to be human. So we must encourage young people toward careers in the arts, and we must advocate for greater focus on the arts in general education.

A special thank you to Cindy McTee for speaking with us and giving permission to reproduce this material. Please visit her website cindymctee.com to learn more about her and her work.

A LIFETIME OF MUSIC
Sunday, February 18, 2024, 3:00 p.m.

Pick-Staiger Concert Hall, Evanston, IL

Learn more about the Northshore Concert Band at www.northshoreband.org

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Composer Cindy McTee