The Gift of Erin Gee
By Jonathan Shipley
Seattleites will get to hear the music of Erin Gee for the first time on June 15 at the Chapel Performance Space as the cap of Seattle Modern Orchestra’s concert season. Erin Gee is an American composer and vocalist who is currently an Assistant Professor of Composition at Brandeis University. She recently sat down with Seattle Modern’s Orchestra’s social media lead, Jonathan Shipley, to discuss bird species that don’t exist, the International Phonetic Alphabet, and the Cocteau Twins.
JS: What were your first tastes of music as a child?
EG: My family was very musical. My mother was an ardent arts supporter. We had musical instruments all over the house. She played “Fur Elise” on the piano. She could play the flute, the guitar. She could sing. She wrote songs for fun. And my grandmother. She played a lot of Chopin. She wrote poetry. She painted. She composed, too. She had one published – a piece of 1940s music.
JS: What did you listen to in your teenage years?
EG: Throwing Muses. The Cocteau Twins.
JS: What got you interested in playing music yourself?
EG: My family. I played violin at 4 and started playing piano at 5, though I wanted to play sooner. I liked Tchaikovsky. What child doesn’t like ‘The Nutcracker’? My mother said I’d sit at the piano for hours.
JS: When did the human voice catch your attention? Why?
EG: I came into it very late. I didn’t start composing until very late into my college career. I was in a Gregorian Chant choir in college but that was it. My undergrad was in piano performance. I wasn’t trained in voice but I was in a class in grad school. “Words and Music.” The final project was that I had to compose a piece for solo voice. It really got me thinking. I tape recorded. I wrote a list of everything I could do with my mouth. I was very influenced by John Cage at the time. I was getting more interested in non-semantics. That piece became the first of my ‘Mouthpieces.’
JS: How do you compose something like this?
EG: I use the International Phonetic Alphabet. It’s an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin alphabet. It was devised as a standardized representation of the sounds of all the spoken languages. Where the lyrics go – I put in the text there.
JS: Are your ‘Mouthpieces’ driven by what you want to see what the voice can do? Or are they based on specific themes that you want to explore?
EG: Both. Some are connected to certain themes. For instance, corporeal empathy. How can we have empathy for another species not our own? I studied bird song. I came up with 28 new bird species, singing as if them. I, myself, became new birds.
JS: Do you plan on continuing writing ‘Mouthpieces’?
EG: There are always new areas of research. There is always something I haven’t explored enough. I can dig deeper and deeper and I can branch out. The concept, itself, is quite flexible.
JS: What are the limits for the human voice? How much further can you go?
EG: We search for ways to express ourselves in this world. My definition of art is that found compassionate connection to others. I do that through my music. I go on stage with a gift. And I give my gift. The human voice? It seems infinite. The voice will always be changing with us.
Seattle Modern Orchestra is fiscally sponsored by Shunpike.