—Interview conducted by Anastasia Maritsas ’25E, Eastman Communications ALP Intern
Trombonist, freelancer, composer, and current Eastman master’s student Talia Berenbaum ’24E has been named the Eastman Philharmonia Composition Winner for this academic year. Her winning composition, “Untitled (after Beksiński),” will be performed by the Eastman Philharmonia on Wednesday, November 13 at 7:30 p.m. in Kodak Hall at Eastman Theater alongside repertoire by Ravel and Debussy. The piece will be conducted by guest conductor Tito Muñoz, director of the Phoenix Symphony, who specializes in leading performances of new and contemporary works.
A native of Denver, Colorado, Berenbaum grew up with an interest in music, which eventually grew into a love of composing music that is heavily influenced by combining the avant-garde, Jewish folk music, and traditional European classical music. A current Eastman graduate student, Berenbaum also attended Eastman for her undergraduate degree, which she completed last year. That was the same year she was commissioned by OSSIA to create a sound installation that explored kinetic sound using small speakers called “transducers” attached to various surfaces to make them resonate, which the audience was able to touch. We interviewed Talia Berenbaum on her musical background, her compositional and performance experiences at Eastman, and the piece that will be performed at the concert.
Q: You’re a trombonist and composer. Tell us a little bit about how you got into both.
A: I have been interested in music since I was very young––my family had a low-end Yamaha electric keyboard that I loved playing, though I wasn’t taking lessons and had no idea what I was doing. I only started learning music more formally when I joined my school’s band in fourth grade and started playing trombone.
By middle school, my parents realized I was serious enough about music that they encouraged me to audition for Denver School for the Arts, which is a publicly funded arts school in Denver. They had quite a serious jazz component to their program, which introduced me to a lot of music theory and improvisation. Pretty soon after I got there, I started writing lead sheets. Soon, I was bringing in tunes to every combo I was in, and it really helped me get more comfortable with the idea of composing. There wasn’t a lot of “classical” composition going on at any of the programs I was in, though, so I was pretty much on my own for that. At some point I got my hands on an ancient copy of Sam Adler’s A Study of Orchestration, and I started spending a lot of time score copying to try to pick apart pieces I liked to figure out how they worked. About six months before my college applications were due, I realized that what I liked about jazz was the composition, so I decided to go down the route of composition. Fortunately, I got into Eastman, and the rest is history.
Q: Can you share how your studies at Eastman supported both sides of your musicianship. How does being a trombonist influence your work as a composer?
A: Performing and composing feed each other. For one, performing helps a lot with meeting musicians who might end up playing my work, and I’ve ended up playing a lot of new pieces because I know the composers here. Learning to compose is understanding and justifying your own musical choices, which has a lot of crossover with performance. Knowing the mechanics of performance and ensemble work helps a lot when composing. Trombone is an instrument that often has a part in band and orchestra, but we rest a lot, so a lot of my musical life has been listening to other people rehearse. While some might think that could become boring, for me, it meant that I had a good feel for how instruments sound and what is idiomatic to them.
Eastman’s support of me doing both composition and performance is the primary reason I wanted to come here. There aren’t very many conservatories that let composers perform at this level of musicianship, especially for undergrads. Here, I’m able to take trombone and composition lessons, play in band, orchestra, and chamber ensembles, get my work performed, and even play my own recitals—Eastman has supported me in doing both.
Q: Congratulations on winning Eastman’s student composition competition! Tell us about the work that will be performed by the Eastman Philharmonia and the challenges of writing for a full orchestra.
A: Writing for large ensembles has its unique set of challenges. When I’m writing for band or orchestra, I’m thinking more in terms of sections than individual instruments. New colors are typically made by combining different instruments. Since I grew up in band, I don’t find that type of thinking to be too difficult. For me, the real challenge is one of synchronicity. Music that would be easy for a group of five people to put together might be quite difficult for a group of eighty. Orchestras don’t normally have that many rehearsals, so your music has to be able to come together quickly. Finding ways of writing music that sounds complex without being too complex to be put together in a few rehearsals is a real puzzle.
The piece, “Untitled (after Beksiński),” is inspired by the art of Polish dystopian surrealist painter and photographer Zdzisław Beksiński. Beksiński’s work uses a lot of familiar symbols, like buildings, people, or even musical instruments, but they are always “wrong” somehow. The building is actually made of human bones, the figure is contorted, their face is covered by bandages, and the violinist has too many fingers. I find his work to be powerful because there are enough clear details to make you want to find meaning, but few enough that you can never fully piece it all together. He denies you meaning or understanding. I think that’s why few (if any) of his works have titles.
My piece explores this surreal use of symbolism as in Beksiński’s work. Ideas that might be familiar are obscured by orchestration, fragmentation, or even style. However, flashes of familiarity appear blindingly; contemporary “soundmass” style composition is juxtaposed with something you’d expect to have heard from orchestras one or two hundred years ago. Beksiński used a lot of Christian symbols in his work, so pervasive in the piece is the Lutheran hymn “Nunn Komm der Heider Heiland,” though it is rarely audible in its entirety. All of these familiar sounds are shattered against each other. The lines between a “Nunn Komm,” something like Haydn, and contemporary music are deliberately blurred. Just when you think you have a feel for where things are going, the music becomes twisted and falls apart. In keeping with Beksiński’s own titling, this piece bears no title beyond its nod to the great artist.