by Bruce Rosenbloom

Q: Please share with us your feelings and impressions on how winning the Pulitzer Prize has changed your life.

Winning the Pulitzer Prize has indeed changed my life-for the better. This is widely regarded as the highest honor in American music, and so it puts me suddenly in an empowered position. It can open doors that otherwise may not have been opened to me. And it's tremendously exciting- I still haven't gotten over the shock of hearing the news, and I will probably never get use to it, which may not be such a bad thing.

In another way, though the Pulitzer changes everything, it also changes nothing, since much of its effect depends on how the composer responds to it, how intelligently he uses the opportunities that present themselves. It also depends on how proactive the composer is in pursuing new opportunities and avenues. For example, I used to write music for documentaries, industrials, commercials and small projects like that. I'd be very interested in doing a feature film, an opera, or some large-scale musical theater work, in addition to writing and performing more orchestral and chamber music. All of these things are made possible, not necessarily probable, by holding this honor.
The Pulitzer Effect is astounding. I've known Pulitzer prize winners, and they've spoken about it, but to experience it is really something else altogether.

Q: You have a fairly long and distinguished career. Who are some of your influences?

I'd begin with Johann Sebastian Bach, and composers like Monteverdi, Beethoven, Brahms, Wagner, Bartok, Stravinsky, Shoenberg. There are really way too many to mention here. Among Americans, the composers I admire most are Samuel Barber (who, by the way, won the Pulitzer Prize twice) and Aaron Copland (who won the Prize in 1945 for Appalachian Spring, certainly one of the most popular of American compositions. It's also a masterpiece, a brilliant composition.)

I am also influenced by lots of great song-writers --- who are technically not composers in the art-music sense - but who have done fantastic work: Gershwin, Kern, Porter, Sondheim, the Beatles and so on. Leonard Bernstein (who, by the way, never won a Pulitzer), has undoubtedly influenced every composer in my generation-negatively or positively. Whatever one thinks of Bernstein as a conductor and a composer, his influence is inescapable.

Q: How do you view contemporary music, both classical and popular, and its context in the greater society?

This is a golden age for American music, in the sense that there are some very talented composers and performers currently active in the contemporary American music scene. The technical standards for performance and composition are quite high. There is a lot of healthy, diverse activity. Stylistically, all bets are off-everyone is going in so many different directions.

On the other hand, it is a bad time financially for music. The recording industry seems to be in free-fall right now. The internet has caught the leaders of the recording industry off-guard, and they are all scrambling to contain the damage of internet piracy and to deal with the advent of new technologies. And music is now in competition with a fantastic array of relatively new distractions and forms of entertainment in our society. To put this in some perspective, one should be aware that a century ago, say, before the advent of movies, radio, and recording, one had to entertain oneself at home. You had to do it yourself. Out of necessity, commonly members of every middle-class household could make music on some level: Mom could play the piano, Dad could sing, the daughter could play the flute and so on. And they learned to read music because they had to. They had to make their own entertainment and figuratively speaking, there was a "piano in every parlor." The tradition of amateur musical literacy and sophistication was quite healthy --- we can't even imagine this today. Now with mass electronic media, and the prevalence of recorded music, that amateur tradition seems lost and it probably will not return.

In addition, with a few heroic exceptions, public school arts education is in dire straits in this country -and we're now several generations into seeing the results of this cultural collapse and failure of will. Whereas the professional level is rather high, the general amateur, non-specialist level is problematic, to say the least. And it doesn't help that America's inescapably pervasive popular mass entertainment culture is appallingly stupid and debased. Art-music faces enormous challenges on every level, and so do its educators.

Q: So you really see your mission is to be an advocate of arts education-K-12?

Yes, it's terribly important. One thing I'd like to do with whatever prestige the Pulitzer lends me is to work to improve arts education in our culture generally, not just at Adelphi, through print and electronic media and in residencies, lectures and performances.

The most important thing I do as an artist is to make the best and most beautiful music that I can. But a close second is to be an effective advocate for my mission and the ideas that I believe in. It is an idealistic calling. My mission is artistic and intellectual, and even spiritual. My world intersects with that of religion, but it is not religious per se. I am a deeply spiritual being, but not necessarily religious in any specific institutional sense. As we can see every time we pick up a newspaper, religion divides as much as it unites people with its clashing, mutually exclusive dogmas and ideologies. The genius of art-music, on the other hand, is that while being intensely spiritual, and fulfilling the deeply felt spiritual need in the human condition, it is essentially non-dogmatic and non-ideological. This is part of what people mean when they say that music is the universal language. It is not only universal, it is timeless as well.

Q: How do you strike a balance between teaching, chairing the Music Department, composing, and performing? Is it difficult to find that balance?

I don't have a social life! That about sums it up. I work 24/7.

Q: You talk about your teaching here at Adelphi. You've been here for about seven years. What's been your experience with students and faculty?

I was hired by Larry Newland, in the last year of the Diamandopoulos Administration. Since then, Adelphi has, I think, progressed miraculously, especially since President Scott and Provost Welsh arrived. It's due to the efforts of some truly remarkable people, among them Gayle Insler, the Arts and Sciences Dean. She was not only courageously prominent in the revolt necessary to remove the ridiculous Diamandopoulos crowd, but has been a tirelessly effective leader in the revival of this university.

So my department has progressed considerably, and we serve a lot more students, both majors and non-majors. In the last few years, we have hired the outstanding Christopher Lyndon-Gee for a full-time position, we've built a state-of-the-art digital music studio, the administration bought eleven new pianos from Steinway, and built four new rehearsal/practice rooms. Most ambitiously, we are planning a new arts center, which for me is amazing considering where we were when I started here. I really like the students; they're terrific. And compared to other institutions I been involved with and visited over the past twenty-five years, I can say that this is a relatively happy environment. The vibe at Adelphi is good. We have a lot of work to do, a lot of challenges still to be met, but we're moving forward, and as long as we're doing that, I'm pleased.

Q: How do you encourage students to write music?

In music generally, I teach as much by example as much as by precept. I have taught theory since I got here --- theory is basic music literacy necessary for all musical performance and composition --- and that involves a lot of teaching by precept, things like, "OK, folks, here are the rules of the game, here are the 'laws,' some immutable, some not, of musical construction in Western civilization". But I also teach by example. For instance, our ensemble-in-residence, the amazing Trio Solisti and I did two lecture/demos just last month on my and other composers' music. It's important for students to observe professional artists practicing their art close up, talking about it and answering specific questions.

I should mention that the Pulitzer Prize is a double honor for Adelphi. The people who actually premiered the piece, Maria Bachmann (our violin professor here at Adelphi), Alexis Gerlach, and Jon Klibonoff (all three make up the Trio Solisti, the Adelphi ensemble-in-residence), along with clarinetist David Krakauer, are my co-winners of this award. Technically, the Pulitzer goes primarily to a particular composition, in this case, my Tempest Fantasy. The most important thing is the work itself, not the person who wrote it. The work itself would not have been made audible without the performance of Trio Solisti and David Krakauer- it wouldn't have become ultimately what it is.

Q: Anything you wish to add?

Onward and upward. When I consider Adelphi, I am impressed by its considerable potential. I think it's being realized, and will continue to be so far into the future. In my life as a professional composer, I would say that while the Pulitzer is a culmination of sorts, it is primarily a rebirth for me. On April 5, when I heard the news that I had won, I said to my wife, Wendy, "This is the beginning. Now it begins."