Episode 2.4 - Dr. Gina Gillie
Episode 19 features Dr. Gina Gillie. We talk with Gina about the label of “composer,” her position as a professor and journey to get there, and diversifying horn repertoire. Transcripts to all podcast episodes are created by Hollyn Slykhuis and are posted on our website!
To learn more about Gina and all recommended groups and resources, check out the links below!
Full Transcript
Carrie Blosser 0:03
Welcome to Diversify the Stand. Together we build a community to listen and learn from the stories and experiences of passionate musicians.
Ashley Killam 0:11
I'm Carrie Blosser and I'm Ashley Killam. In our second season, we talk with musicians, performers, educators, historians, and entrepreneurs to expand how we think of the music we perform and follow non-traditional career paths. Our guest today is Dr. Gina Gillie. Gina is the Associate Professor of Music at Pacific Lutheran University up in Washington where she teaches a little bit of everything, including horn, composition, aural skills, chamber music, music history, and capstone courses. She's a composer, a researcher, a hornist, and her works are performed across the globe. So we are so excited to chat with you today, Gina.
Dr. Gina Gillie 0:49
Thanks for having me. I’m glad to be here.
Carrie Blosser 0:51
Well Gina, thank you so much for joining us. We wanted to start off with asking a little bit about your background in music, how you ended up becoming a composer and a researcher, and kind of doing a little bit of all of the things at Pacific Lutheran University.
Dr. Gina Gillie 1:06
I've always been involved in music as a kid, I was started out in children's choirs. And I took voice lessons, which when I was young at the time, I did not enjoy because my voice was not fully formed. So that was a somewhat difficult experience. But I also took piano lessons. And then when I went to junior high, I started in band. And in the seventh grade, I picked up the horn. I did not play trumpet before I played horn, just started right on the horn, and immediately fell in love with it. And I fortunately had a band director who played the horn. And I think she could tell that I was really interested in this instrument. And so she actually gave me free private lessons for all three years that I was in junior high, which is incredibly privileged on my part, and was a huge jumpstart into being a horn player. So then when I got into choir, I took up the singing again, I'd taken a choir hiatus in junior high, but in high school I did choir and band again. And then when I went up to college, I knew I wanted to be involved in music. But my family was not convinced that being a music major was a viable option. And so they were not encouraging in terms of being a music major. But as I kept being involved in music, and I was in the music building for 16 hours a day, it just seems like what else am I gonna do? I really am doing music. And so I did, I majored in horn performance. And then I went off to graduate school at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and I got a masters and a doctorate. And although I majored in horn performance and took auditions and went to Tanglewood and got accepted into PMF and NOI, I always knew that I didn't want to play in a major orchestra. So teaching college, where I could work individually with developing students, and I could play in chamber music, and I could give solo recitals seemed like the best fit. So getting my doctorate made a lot of sense. And then right as I was finishing up my DMA, the horn position at PLU you opened up, which is where did my undergrad, and I got that job. And although I had never formally studied composition, I had dabbled in it throughout my schooling. And I was encouraged by my horn professor in grad school, Doug Hill, who liked to get all of his students to write at least a little bit. So in this exploration of composition in grad school, I felt like I had a bit of a knack for it. And I took on a few composition projects. My dissertation was a 20 minute composition for soprano, horn, and piano, which was my first big work, and I got that one published, and that was kind of the start of things. And so things trickled in about one or two items a year. But in the past few years, people have started asking me to write more. So I've been getting more commissions. And my identity as a composer is becoming something that I identify with more. And part of it is a playing injury, an embochure injury that I that I sustained in 2016. And so not being able to play for a year or so, being a composer was right there, it was ready for me to really grow into it. So that was really fortunate for me, an injury is never fun. But if you've got some other musical type of expression that you can grow into and you can have fun with and you can explore, that's very fortunate. So that's been a little bit of my journey and where I am right now.
Ashley Killam 4:47
That's awesome. You're actually not the first composer I've heard of, too, that's kind of, like, transitioned into the composition route after an injury, but it's definitely not the traditional composer path. And with that, you know, unique pathway, what advice do you have for kind of all musicians, no matter their age, that are in this place of trying to find their own identity and their path within music?
Dr. Gina Gillie 5:12
Sure, I think that for any developing musician, a bit of encouragement that I have to offer is that the uniqueness of what you have to offer is exciting. And everybody has their own voice. And that can be kind of hard in terms of you looking out at the rest of what's happening, you can judge yourself based on what you see and hear around you. But the beauty of everyone having their own voice means that we have variety. Not everybody likes the same type of music, and not everyone wants to listen to one type of sound all the time. So there's space for all kinds of voices, and whatever it is that makes you excited, and whatever it is that you create, and get excited about creating, go with that. And if you strive to be a certain thing, study great examples of that thing. And if you want to be a composer, study a bunch of scores, or do a lot of listening, or hang out with other people who get excited about creating in the way that you do. Do your own experimenting. And perhaps a good thing to keep in mind is that whatever you are creating doesn't always need to be the best thing you've ever made. Some things are just experiments. If you think about the hundreds of works that composers of the past have written, we only perform some fraction of those words. So not everything you create is going to be amazing. But the more that you do, the more you learn about yourself, and about the craft, you can just have fun with it. From my own personal experience, I know that when I started writing, and when I did this doctoral project, at the beginning of it, I was a little bit paralyzed, because I thought it had to be the best of everything. It was hard to get started when you start from that point of “it has to be the best of everything.” And it’s not going to be everything. For one thing you'll find out with composition that your freedom comes in actually giving yourself limitations. Pick one or two or three things that your composition is going to be and then go with that. And the beauty of it is there's so many options and there's so much variety that you can end up writing hundreds of pieces. And they'll all be a little bit different. But they'll all still have your voice.
Carrie Blosser 7:28
I love that. It reminds me a lot of improvisation, too.
Dr. Gina Gillie 7:31
Sure.
Carrie Blosser 7:32
Like, the more constraints you put, kind of, as you're teaching, like, improv, whether it be a jazz or just a general improvisation setting, like starting with constraints actually is, like, more freeing, because then there's more, like, you know what you can do and you're not thinking of all of the things.
Dr. Gina Gillie 7:48
Right, exactly. Yeah, I have students that I encourage to do little composition projects. In fact, in the fall, I said, okay, everybody's gonna write etudes, we're gonna have six of them, you're gonna write six etudes, and a lot of my students at the beginning were worried or scared that they wouldn't be able to do it. But we all started from a very basic level and with one student, in fact, I said, okay, how about your etude this week is about one note. And they said, okay, I think I can do that. And of course, it turned into something that was a little bit more than just one note. But when they decided I can do something that's super basic, and it can be helpful. It can be an exercise in tone production, it can be an exercise in ear training, then they realize that they could do it, and they could move forward from there.
Carrie Blosser 8:35
Yeah, absolutely. But with the same kind of thought, we'd love to hear your thoughts or words of wisdom for anyone who hasn't had a composition course that's interested in composing, or maybe has done a little bit, but maybe doesn't feel like the word “composer” fits them just yet.
Dr. Gina Gillie 8:52
Yeah, and I definitely understand that, I didn't identify as a composer until in the middle of the 20-teens. And what I would say is that if you've had any kind of musical study, be it private lessons on an instrument or voice, or participation in an ensemble, you've actually taken composition, and I never formally studied composition in lessons. But all of my piano, voice, horn lessons, all of my ensemble experiences were a constant study of composition, which I didn't realize or know at the time, but if you've taken the time to craft your musical performance skills, you've actually spent a lot of time learning how music is put together. And I think that is some of the best musical training. And if you have an interest in composing, go for it. Write the music that you like for yourself, maybe some friends, get your friends to play your music, and you'll start to build relationships. You can surround yourself with as much listening as possible. Soak up all those ideas, develop your own voice out of the stew of things you've learned and listened to all of your life. Personally, as a young child, I would dance around the living room to records of Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Chopin, and Brahms are some of the ones that I remember that we had. And that's where I think I developed my sense of musicality and phrasing and melody. And those are key aspects of my musical voice. It's not surprising that I write in a somewhat Neo-Romantic style, because that's the music that I was stewing in as a very young child. And that's the music that I studied for a lot of my career as a music student. So all of these influences that you've listened to, that you've explored, they're going to percolate in your subconscious. And that's going to be what comes out when you start writing, that's going to be what your voice is. One thing that's challenging for me is that I always feel like I need to be more complex in my writing. But a quote that I love from Nadia Boulanger is she said “When you are writing music of your own, never strain to avoid the obvious.” And for me, that gives me freedom. And it gives me permission to write what I'm hearing without judging it as it comes out. And without judging it from an external framework saying, well, that's not fancy enough, it's not complex enough, it's not cool enough. So I usually just, I get my ideas out onto the computer, I tend to write right into a notation software program while I'm at my keyboard. And then, after the ideas are out, I start to massage them into something that's more refined. So you don't have to be perfect at the beginning. In fact, you're probably never going to be perfect. But just get something out there, get started.
Ashley Killam 11:46
That's so great.
Dr. Gina Gillie 11:47
I don't know how relevant this is, but I have a female composition student right now. Actually, all of my students are female, which I think is great that we have multiple genders of composition instructors, because I think it's really important that you see someone who looks like you doing what you want to do. But I do have one particular student who wants to get into film music. And she really has a knack for it. She's actually quite good at it. But I've been trying to get her to write some concert music where you have to spend a bit more time developing motives and expanding things. And she struggles with that a little bit. But one thing that really paralyzes her is she sees the field of film composition and who's represented there, and who mainly holds the power and gets the gigs. And a lot of it is men. She feels like in order to break into that scene, she has to be the best and amazing at everything. Anything she puts out has to be super-top-notch-better than anyone else. Because her impression is that because she's a female, she's not over and above, she'll just never get noticed or recognized. Maybe there's a little bit of truth in that. But it's paralyzing for her right now. So I'm trying to figure out ways that I can get her connected with other women who write for film, get her surrounded by people that are encouraging, and create a situation where she feels like “I can just try stuff out. Doesn't have to be great. Maybe it'll be great, but I can at least try stuff.”
Ashley Killam 13:31
Here's one of Dr. Gillie’s great works. This is the third movement, the Rondo, from her Sonata for horn and piano.
And now back to a few more questions. Are there any projects upcoming that you're excited about, or any pieces that you'd like to share a little bit more about?
Dr. Gina Gillie 17:34
Last year was actually fairly productive in terms of composition. But the production of recordings, of course has not happened yet, or performances. So the making of the music, yes, but the listening to the music has not happened yet. So I'm excited about a trombone octet that I wrote in 2020. That should be coming out soon. It was written for a consortium. It's titled Mountain Ascent, and it takes the listener through four miniature movements, beginning with seeing the mountain in the distance, then starting your hike in the alpine meadows, getting into the ice fields, and then finally reaching the summit. So you've got different styles along the way, it gets kind of hairy in the icefields section. But then the summit, of course, opens up and blooms because I can only imagine that it's amazing to summit a mountain. So I really look forward to hearing that with real instruments because I've only lived with the Sibelius sounds for the last year. And even though I get excited at the climax of the piece with Sibelius sounds, I really would love to hear it with actual trombones. I've also written a trio for horn, trombone, and piano. That was another commission last year, and that's called Whimsy. And it's meant to be a concert opener. So that premiere and recording have been delayed because of COVID. But I'm hoping that they can happen sometime maybe this summer, maybe next year, not sure when that premiere is gonna happen. And I'm also looking forward to the release of this trumpet book that Diversify the Stand is doing. My piece, I chose to write a lyrical piece, which is called Song for the Lost, and it's about unexpressed and unacknowledged grief for all the people, time, and things that we have lost personally and as a society as a result of this pandemic. I feel that despite half a million deaths, there has been no national reckoning with our loss. And this piece is meant to rectify that in a small way. And to be an expression for any who wish to put that acknowledgement into a musical performance. So that's what my contribution to the trumpet book will be.
Carrie Blosser 20:00
I'm really excited to hear it and to play it. And thank you for joining us in this commission.
Dr. Gina Gillie 20:06
Of course.
Ashley Killam 20:07
Our last question for you is the question that we ask everyone on this podcast, and that's what's on your music stand this week? And how are you diversifying your stand?
Dr. Gina Gillie 20:16
On my actual music stand there's not a lot. But I am working on a horn duet that was written by a former PLU student of mine, Sophie Apgar. And in this particular term, I assigned my PLU studio the project of preparing and recording a duet, and Sophie, who is now in grad school in Indiana for school psychology, has been participating in the zoom seminars of our studio. And she got interested in composition during her time at PLU. So I always encourage her to showcase her music whenever she gets the chance. So I figured I would collaborate with her to do the duet project that I assigned to everybody else. So I am working on that right now. And in terms of new voices, I'm not yet playing any of their music, but I am seeking out new voices because I am the president of the Northwest Horn Society. And we're trying to put together a consortium of sorts, where we will commission composers of diverse backgrounds and representations to write something for horns. And our first project is going to be hopefully a horn sextet. So we're looking at different names that we can ask of people to do that. We're hoping to make this a recurring thing, so we don't just do it once, but we ask more and more people and get more and more representation. So in our initial discussions, we've come across names like Jean Ahn, Jeeyoung Kim, Marcus Grant, who I just met in your seminar the other day, Jared Tate, Alex Temple, Errollyn Wallen and Eleanor Alberga, which are names that I didn't know from before. So we're hoping to turn this project into something that has a life longer than just a one time deal. And in doing so, really build up the repertoire for horn. It is becoming more inclusive, but it's still pretty limited. I find that one of my biggest areas of lack is I don't know a lot of female Black composers. And I would like to get to know more of them. And also encourage more writing from that particular segment, because I don't see a lot of it in my sphere.
Carrie Blosser 22:30
That's great. Well, Gina, thank you so much for joining us.
Dr. Gina Gillie 22:33
Oh, yeah. Thanks for having me.
Carrie Blosser 22:34
Links to Gina's website, plus the groups and projects she's a part of are listed in the podcast description and also on our website.
Ashley Killam 22:42
Thank you for listening to Diversify the Stand. I'm Ashley.
Carrie Blosser 22:45
And I'm Carrie. If you'd like to support us and our projects, find us on social media and visit our website. We now have a store where you can pick up some Diversify the Stand gear.
Ashley Killam 22:55
And as always, a huge thank you to Trevor Weston and Whitney George for allowing us to use their compositions in our podcast. The musical introduction is Trevor's trumpet duet Fanfare for Changes, and the ending music is Whitney's Incantations for trumpet and piano. Both composers websites are listed in the podcast description.
Carrie Blosser 23:13
Until next week, what's on your stand?