BYU Music Professor Awarded Prestigious Fromm Commission
by Leah Hill
Steve Ricks, an associate professor of music composition at
BYU, was recently awarded a Fromm Commission.
While most people riding public transportation are checking their watches, tapping their feet or thinking about their next meeting, Steve Ricks, an associate professor of music composition at BYU, is taking it all in, listening to the environmental sounds around him, as a springboard for creativity.
Using his digital recorder, Ricks has captured rhythms and sounds from various areas in New York, Paris and London, specifically the sounds of the subway.
“There are a lot of rhythmic sounds with the wheels going on the tracks,” he said. “There’s also, I remember in Paris, kind of a low hum, which might be the rumble of the wheels at a certain frequency. There were also some high-pitched squeaks from the brakes, and this airy sound of hydraulics that releases from the doors when they’re opened.”
Ricks recently received a prestigious Fromm Music Foundation Commission and plans to use rhythmic sounds of urban cities as inspiration for the piece.
Ricks, along with Pulitzer Prize winner David Lang, renowned composer Augusta Read Thomas and nine other musicians won the commission. Musicians receive $10,000 to compose a new score within three years, beginning December 2010.
Other public transit sounds that attracted Ricks were those coming from various musicians playing and people coming on and off the train.
“It might also include actual footage of the sounds that I have recorded as part of the piece,” he said.
Ricks will write the piece for the Talujon percussion quartet, a group he has composed for in the past.
“I have written music and known them for a number of years so it was a natural fit to submit this proposal to the Fromm Foundation to do a new piece for them,” he said.
The Fromm Foundation is known for commissioning established and lesser-known composers to help fulfill its mission of bringing “contemporary concert music closer to the public." The foundation also provides a subsidy for the ensemble’s premier performance of the piece and sponsors the annual Fromm Music Foundation Concert Series.
The Talujon quartet will premiere the new piece by Ricks during its 2012-2013 concert season in New York City.
