It’s all emotionally driven. So whenever I’m feeling very strong about something, that’s when my mind and spirit kick in with my heart and everything starts to flow. Those three aspects are at work all the time. There’s always a very intense intellectual aspect when my brain kicks into high gear. There’s also a very intense spiritual aspect. I’m looking for deep meaning in everything. Then there’s an emotional aspect that’s just purely human, and so those three things are always at play and, you know there’s just times when all three of those wheels just lock in beautifully together. And I’m like, “okay, here we go, I got it” - I know what I’m doing. Sometimes under deadlines I have to say “all right, here we go, lets get it all going guys.” At the same time I’ll be doing something entirely different and I’ll realize “I got it, I got it.” It just kind of happens. That happens I think with everybody in life. There are epiphany’s that happen with everybody at unexpected moments, and that’s because those three wheels that makeup who we are just kick in and at random times. I guess, as a composer, I’m always consciously looking for when that element is kicking in. The inspiration comes when those three elements are working together well.

 

RV: When did you first become acquainted with these elements within yourself?

Jerod: That’s a good question.  Both my parents were artist. My father is Chickasaw, my mother was Manx Irish. My mother was a dancer and choreographer, My dad is a pianist and a bass/baritone. I grew up watching them performing and I was like, wow! I loved it. And then, of cours,e I grew up in a lot of theater. I was just always observing a lot of elements going on in a work and I always thought it was fantastic. I became a pianist and went to Northwestern University as a piano major. Fortunately, I had a teacher who thought very descriptively when it came to music. In lessons we would be playing Debussy, Händel, Beethoven, etc. and he would play things and point things out to me and look at me and just say “is that not incredible!?” And I thought “yes it is, you’re right.” And, of course, it was. That’s what makes great music: it’s just simply wonderful. That’s the bottom line. And that would always be the context in which he would talk about music. All the theoretical things - form and everything - were in the context of “wonderful.” Everything was “wonderful.” It was super-positive and, of course, very emotional. This is where his human condition was so plugged into and,on top of that, he would say “okay, now see this relationship of the third Brahms exploited, he was so much into the thirds.” Then he would say“now isn’t this incredible how this sounds?” He helped me plug the piano in a very life-dramatic way, and all the technical aspects and theoretical analysis had emotional attachments as well. So when I was learning theory in college, I equated it with emotional and spiritual aspects as well. That’s not new; musicians have been doing that for a very, very long time. For me it was a very personal growth that became really critical because when I started to compose I was looking for that combo - the mix of all that happening at once. I want the meaning, I want the emotion, I wanted the spirituality and I wanted the intellect. I want the intellect to be as high as well! I want every aspect to be high, all the time, on every layer. I don’t want any of them to be less than the other, which I think is a really a wonderful demand to put on one self. I grew up in a really good artistic environment from both of my parents, and then I had some mentors that really helped me think about why I am doing this. So, by the time I graduated college, I had incredible meaning to what I was doing - just pure musical meaning. So then, as I was getting ready to graduate from Northwestern, that’s when my mother commissioned my first work. Of course, the irony was that my Irish mother was commissioning me to do a ballet based on Indian stories. That was interesting. She taught at the University of Wyoming and set ballets on her students all the time. I grew up with really great ballet repertoire like Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet. I watched these kinds of works in rehearsal all the time, so I was very familiar with ballet. I had a lot of opinions about it myself - including feelings. So she asked me if I would compose a score for her score and my initial impulse was “no, that’s ridiculous, I’m not a composer.” I was being way too formal about it. But my mother provided me the opportunity to express my classical training mixed with my Indian identity. It was the first opportunity that I had to bring those two together. I never saw them as having anything to do with each other as a kid. They were just completely separate experiences. And so this was the first time that I had a chance to bring them together and marry them.  That’s when I became a composer. Everything on both sides came into focus for me as a composer. Consequently, everything that I do as a composer is based on Indian subjects and materials and expressing Indian identity with classical training.

 

RV: So a lot of times when you’re envisioning some of these compositions; your inspiration and focus on being Indian is the power behind your creativity?

Jerod:  It is, and to be honest, every piece that I write is about how I feel about being Indian. That is really, actually, the bottom line. You know, it always has been. So, yes, everything that I compose is about being Indian. It’s generated from feelings about being Indian.

 

RV: That is so cool Jerod.

Jerod: I appreciate that. You know one thing is, and of course, this is all personal exploration for me, but as time went on, I realized something that was just staring at me right in the face that I wasn’t thinking about earlier: while was growing up on piano playing Debussy, Händel and Beethoven, I was playing composers who were completely locked into their national identity. All great music, in classical history, is made by people who identify with their nationality. Take Beethoven for instance. Nobody could write music more German than Beethoven, and he was unbelievably German. The same thing with Debussy. Debussy set out to create a specifically French voice in classical music. He was completely anti-German and anti-Russian. He was like “no, no, we have to create a French voice” and then, of course, all the great Russians were a product of an environment in which the government was dictating that they create a national music theme. Of course, they came out with this unbelievable repertoire that we’ll never stop listening to. I mean, Tchaikovsky was unbelievable. His music is incredibly Russian and everybody listens to the Nutcracker every single year. And, of course Stravinsky - his ballets were so revolutionary and unbelievably Russian. So,  think about these things which have going on in general art work within Indian country. By in large, there’s an entire nationalistic movement of Indian art that’s been going on for over a hundred years. So here I’m going, “oh yeah I found my identity," but there are so many Indian artist that have been doing that for a long time already. I’m not doing anything new, but for some reason music has historically been behind the other art forms and, for some reason, it’s just now that Indian

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Click to listen”

 

composers and musicians are focusing classically in music.

RV: You know, but that makes sense too. Mozart was commissioned to write many forms of opera, say Italian, for instance. The classical composers were historically versatile and each country had it’s own symbolization of expression so why wouldn’t Native Americans? I guess its taking people a while to understand the culture as far as adopting it and allowing native people to express their creativity and taking it seriously for its own values that it is justified in receiving.

Jerod: Well I agree, and I think that you are absolutely right. I think that there are a lot of factors in it. By in large, the mainstream, and the world, likes to see Indian culture preserved in a time box. That’s for sure. Music is really powerful, and everybody has their music. There’s a reason why iPods are off the charts in sales. Basically, all of our lives have become a soundtrack and music has become so extremely personable to everybody. I believe that there are subconscious demands on Indian country expressed in music; you know what I’m saying? So, people want to hear traditional pow-wow stuff and, then, if it ever gets contemporary-ish, it’s generally kind of in a new age.

 

RV: And you’re right, they fall into the classical type of traditional stereotype or into the new age category but they aren’t actually put alongside other artist and given the same distinction even though they are standing on a level playing field.

Jerod: Yeah, and for some reason people don’t want that to happen with music as much. It’s okay with literature. We have contemporary Indian writers who write in English. Everybody uses English and nobody even thinks of the fact that they’re not writing in their own language. And so you’re talking about breaking from tradition, but it’s still purely an Indian expression. We have all these great Indian authors - we have so many of them.   But it’s all in English and it’s all written on paper in a medium that is completely not from this part of the world and it’s completely accepted. But music is specifically targeted for criticism. It’s a funky land. You know, you get Indian painters and people are like, “oh yeah,” even if you can’t see the icons so much anymore, people very much accept that as contemporary Indian art. Music has a different battle for some reason.

 

RV: I think that you along with other Indian composers are making headway.  I’ve listen to your compositions and I have to wonder why this isn’t behind the silver screen somewhere.  Your music and you has lot of magic and it’s fabulous. Why isn’t your work used as a score on a major motion picture? Have you thought about getting into commercial theatrical?

Jerod: Hey, thank you I appreciate that. I’ve gotten that compliment from some other people as well. And I take it as a compliment. But my music was never meant to be for movies. I’m a very dramatic expressionist in my music. Movies are pure drama and I feel that people are walking in the same kind of aesthetic with it and I appreciate that, I really do. That just reinforces the fact that I grew up with so much theater. That’s just the kind of large expression that I look for when I’m writing music. I would welcome anybody who wanted to use my music for needle-dropping, pre-existing recordings and that kind of a thing. I actually have actually written for television. I wrote music for Native American Public Telecommunications (NAPT) the series called Indian Country Diaries and there were two in that series. One is about the Cherokee (Spiral of Fire) and one about urban Indians in Los Angeles (A Seat at the Drum). R. Carlos Nakai provided the music for the Eastern Cherokee and I wrote the music for the episode about urban Indians of Los Angeles. I scored it, laid down the vocal and drum tracks, then went to Utah to record the orchestra. But being a classical musician and being a movie composer are two different disciplines. There’s no doubt about it. While I may have some criticisms of what happens in movies, artistically…I will say this: I have a tremendous respect for the people who write music for film because I don’t do it very well. I have tried it and, to be honest with you, I don’t have a good impulse for it. When I’m watching a movie, I always listen to the music because I’m always interested in what they’re doing. Every time something cool comes up I’m like “Wow! That is so cool! I would not have thought to do that.” I think it’s an art of its own that takes a specific impulse and I don’t feel like I have that flexibility in my impulse. When I’m watching something on screen, I get visually distracted and I don’t think as abstractly as I do when I’m just in my studio thinking abstractly. Does that make sense? I guess a better way to describe it is that I’m distracted by the movie and so I’m not coming from a pure well-spring of abstraction, I haven’t found the skill of letting those two things flow at the same time. Of course, for me to do that would mean a complete career shift. That means that I would dedicate myself to it and go “you know what, that’s what I want”. I just don’t have the desire to do that. I love the medium in which I work. I love live performance more than anything else. At the same time, at age 41, I’m not going to drop everything and go to the bottom of the ladder of movie scoring and see if I can make it there. My career has been laid out in orchestral and chamber music.

 

RV: I’m actually still surprised that somebody hasn’t come along and said, “you know what, that would really work great with this scene”. I feel that everybody should become familiar with your work. I think when they hear your compositions they’re going to be very moved. You’re just wondering if someone in the movie industry is going to say, “Hey, you gotta’ listen to this guy”.

Jerod: Absolutely. I think somebody out in Hollywood with a big fat check would be really great to hear from! There’s no doubt about that! Look, to be honest, the reason why is because it hasn’t fell in the hands of people who think that way about it. It’s just because I’m not famous. That’s kind of the bottom line with that. I’m not as well known as other composers. You’ve got to remember there are a lot of composers in this country; it kind of hearkens to another point, which is that classical music in America is at an incredible apex. There are so many players and there are so many composers. We’re busting at the gills. There are just so many people. There are tons of artist’s. There are so many different photographers and playwright’s. There is a lot of art going on in this country, there’s no doubt about it. In the music industry, people really have a lot of specific feelings about it and it’s very competitive when it comes to taste. Getting back to the point, there are a lot of composers, and we all have very specific circles that we run by and so most of the guys out there doing films are hearing a lot of music by a bunch of people that are within their own realm. I’m out here working in Oklahoma with my tribe - well, that’s just not a real direct conduit into Hollywood. Over time, of course, I want to be known. I don’t know an artist that doesn’t want to be known. I’m looking at it as a long-term project. What I’m doing is I’m making sure that I’m prosperous at home. I can pay my bills and feed my family. That’s really critical, but at the same time, I make sure that every project that I take on is going to be an artistic step. As I build my repertoire and stack up the recordings, what I’m hoping that I’m doing is creating a volume that can be tapped into when the time is right. Say Steven Spielberg comes and says, “You’re my next man”, I’m like, “here’s albums, dude.” I guess I see it as, when the time is right, those things will kick in and I try to be patient about it I guess is what I’m saying. If I turned over and started marketing myself too heavily like that, I wouldn’t be writing music as much. It’s kind of a funky little balance. I hope that kind of makes sense. I agree with you. I think this stuff could go with different things. I would love to hear some of the choral stuff in Iholba' in

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

some really great scene. I think that it would fit very nicely. I think that one of these days it may just happen but for right now, no. I’m still building my notoriety. I’m still building my presence in this country and that’s fine. It’ll happen at some point when the time is right.

 

RV: Are there any projects that you are currently working on?

Jerod: I’m starting one in January that I’m pretty psyched about. I’m composing a new work that for the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra (SDSO) for solo baritone and orchestra. The solo baritone soloist is going to be Mr. Robert Moore, who is a good friend of mine, and a council member for the Rosebud Tribe in S.D. Mr. Moore is a terrific, classically trained baritone. When the South Dakota Symphony approached me about doing a commission I thought about it for a couple of days and then I went back to the conductor and he asked me if I had any ideas about the piece. I said yes, I want to write a piece for solo baritone and orchestra sung by Robert Moore. The piece is dedicated to Sioux Warriors and is entitled Victory Songs. I’m featuring five historic warriors from Sioux country based on Charles Eastman’s writings. Charles Eastman wrote a book entitled Indian Hero’s and Great Chieftains; this is one of eleven books that he wrote. These are biographies on the men he knew personally. I pray for be a standard text in junior high and high school because these are the stories of all the guys that we hear about in film. Charles Eastman wrote about Red Cloud, Spotted Tail, Little Crow, Tamaha, Crazy Horse, Gall, Sitting Bull, Two Strike, Rain In The Face, American Horse, Roman Nose, Chief Joseph, Little Wolf, and Hole In The Day. They are about ten page biographies on these warriors - a phenomenal book. This is from the horse’s mouth. He knew them personally. When I first discovered this book I got chills. I just wanted to be every single one of these men. That book is so inspiring to me that I thought “you know what? I want to write an orchestral suite for those guys with a baritone soloist.” It will be about a half an hour long talking about all these men and in the Lakota language. I’ve done all this stuff in Chickasaw and now this is my offering to a neighboring tribe that I have deep respect for. I intend this as a gift, from one Indian to another. Cousin-to-cousin.

 

RV: That’s cool, I can’t think of a better gift to give.

Jerod: Of course it’s a lot of pressure, but these are the kinds of ideas that unite within me. This is where everything is flowing together and now, when the pencil hits the page, I hope that it’s good. That’s the fear, but is normal in creating something. I just pray that this is going to be a good piece.

 

Jerod’s music is a triumphal tribute to both Indian culture and classical music. I would also like to give credit to Alana Rothstein for most of the photo’s used in this article, including the front page. Thank you again Jerod for your kindness and contribution in both this article and through your music. Please learn more about Jerod’s work by visiting his website by clicking here.

Jerod Impichchaachaaha' Tate was born in 1968 in Norman, Oklahoma and is a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation. Mr. Tate is dedicated to the development of American Indian classical composition, and a recent review by The Washington Post states that “Tate’s connection to nature and the human experience was quite apparent in this piece…rarer still is his ability to effectively infuse classical music with American Indian nationalism.” This review was a response to a recent performance of Iholba' (The Vision), for Solo Flute, Orchestra and Chorus, which was commissioned by the National Symphony Orchestra and premiered at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

 

Iholba' and Tracing Mississippi, Concerto for Flute and Orchestra, were recorded in 2007 by the San Francisco Symphony and San Francisco Symphony Chorus and are currently available on Thunderbird Records.

 

In 2006, Mr. Tate was the recipient of the Joyce Award which supported the commission of Nitoshi’ Imali, Concerto for Guitar and Orchestra, which premiered in 2007 with soloist Jason Vieaux and the Civic Orchestra of Minneapolis, conducted by Cary John Franklin. His new work entitled Lowak Shoppala’ (Fire and Light) for orchestra and children’s chorus, commissioned by the American Composers Forum Continental Harmony Project, celebrates the opening of the new Chickasaw Cultural Center and premiered November 21 & 22, 2009, in Ada, Oklahoma. In 2008, he was appointed Cultural Ambassador for the State of Oklahoma.

 

Mr. Tate received his BM in Piano Performance from Northwestern University where he studied with Dr. Donald J. Isaak. He then completed his MM in Piano Performance and Composition at the Cleveland Institute of Music where he studied with Elizabeth Pastor and Dr. Donald Erb. Shortly after beginning his piano studies at the Cleveland Institute of Music, Jerod’s first composition, Winter Moons ballet score, was commissioned by Dr. Patricia Tate and premiered at the University of Wyoming in 1992. Colorado Ballet subsequently performed it in 1994 and 1996.

 

Since then, Tate has received numerous commissions and his works have been performed by the National Symphony Orchestra, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, Colorado Ballet, The New Mexico Symphony, the Contemporary Music Forum, the Philadelphia Classical Symphony, the Oklahoma Youth Orchestra, Dale Warland Singers, the New Jersey Chamber Music Society and the Oklahoma City University Wind Philharmonic, to name a few.

 

Mr. Tate is Artistic Director for the Chickasaw Chamber Music Festival. He is Composer-in-Residence for the Chickasaw Summer Arts Academy and was Composer-in-Residence for the Grand Canyon Music Festival’s Native American Composer Apprentice Project in 2004 and 2005. In 2007, he was Composer-in-Residence for The Joyce Foundation/American Composers Forum, teaching composition to American Indian high school students in Minneapolis. Mr. Tate received the 2006 Alumni Achievement Award from the Cleveland Institute of Music and has also received awards from Meet the Composer and the Percussive Arts Society. He is happily married to Ursula Running Bear, an enrolled member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe (Sicangu Lakota).

 

Mr. Tate’s middle name, Impichchaachaaha’, means “high corncrib” and is his inherited traditional Chickasaw house name. A corncrib is a small hut used for the storage of corn and other vegetables. In traditional Chickasaw culture, the corncrib was built high off of the ground on stilts to keep its contents safe from foraging animals.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

RV: Listening to Tracing Mississippi and Iholba’ the words captivating, thunderous, emotional, compelling come to mind as I listen.  There is an apparent native voice thundering in your music and most definitely a playwright with a message in it. Could you please define the emotional factor that you experience as you compose?

Jerod: Absolutely, starting with Iholba'; that is actually a piece that is very, very personal. Honestly, it’s a piece that is straight up about my feelings about being Indian. Of course it’s elusive because poetry is naturally elusive and abstracted. So it’s not direct - it’s imagery that helps express the different feelings that I have about being an Indian person. It’s basically a very poetic expression of me. I wrote the poetry first in English, because I don’t speak my language well enough to create it first in Chickasaw. I had one of my cousins, Catherine Willmond translate it for me. The Chickasaw language itself is non-abstract, where as English is a language that has been abstracted into poetry for millenniums. As English speaking Indians, we know how to abstract in English already. Actually, it’s quite natural to break the rules and to bend syntax and we do it without really thinking about it too much. I intended to write it in English and have it translated. Of course it wasn’t that easy because, to somebody who is truly a deep native speaker, that’s just crazy!

 

Catherine and I had to really talk a lot about what I was going for. She pointed out that “you never speak that way, you never say ‘time is soft.’ You really don’t say that in any language as a literal way of saying it”. So, these kinds of translations were really interesting and challenging and Catherine was a real champ about it. She was breaking up the language in a way that she had never done before and came through with translations that I thought were really, really good. That was really a big eye opener for me and, again, as an English speaking Indian person, we think English and we forget about our old traditional ways - about what we are doing now, which is just not at all traditional in any sense. It was a very big learning experience and, since then, I’ve written two other works that feature the Chickasaw language.  Catherine continues to translate and I’m finding I will not be quite as abstract. We’re having a meeting ground that’s worked out beautifully. I can tell you that Iholba' is the first piece in the classical repertoire in Chickasaw language, so that composition is very important to me to bring out onto the world stage.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

RV: Are the other two works that you’ve been working on complete?

Jerod: One of the two most recent works that I’ve composed is a woodwind quintet for R. Carlos Nakai - the À Bec Quintet that we just premiered at the  Sante Fe Chamber Music Festival. The next work that I just premiered was with my tribe in Oklahoma - a work entitled Lowak Shoppala (Fire and Light)', which is on my website, but just because it’s so demanding, I haven’t had a lot of time to advertise it like I normally do with other woks. It is also sung in the Chickasaw language with the Chickasaw Children’s Chorus. This piece is quite large, for lack of a better explanation.  It’s a production for stage - but not a musical, not an opera, not theatre. The whole idea was for it to be a community project. We had the Oklahoma Youth Orchestra perform, the Chickasaw Children’s Chorus, our Chickasaw traditional dancers, the East Central Dance Company and a couple of vocal soloist from East Central University. We also had a story-teller from our tribe named Laurie Michelle. During the whole piece we had voice-over poetry that was written by Linda Hogan who is a Chickasaw author and a Pulitzer Prize finalist. We had all the costumes and stage designed by our Chickasaw artist named Margaret Wheeler. This was a very large work produced entirely by my tribe and involved several layers of the community. The title Fire and Light is taken directly from one of Linda’s poems entitled Fire and Light. And she wrote additional poetry for this production. We just premiered it on November 21st and 22nd, 2009. It was a beautiful program. Fortunately, my tribe has a really, really good arts and humanities division. We have wonderful people in multimedia and communications, so we have a lot of talent and people to put this stuff together, it’s beautiful! We’re currently editing together a DVD and a CD and I’m going to go down to Ada to mix it with the guys, but there’s so much visual to this, it’s so beautiful. The costumes by Margaret are amazing! You’ll see it when you look at the program. There’s a section in there that focuses on our historic clans and so we just picked seven clans to focus on while the orchestra is playing. Linda’s poetry is read for the clans and there are guys just literally modeling these wonderful replications of ancient styled outfits. It’s a really cool scene and, of course, we got all these guys photographed and in the programs. You’ll be able to see it and the work that Margaret was doing. She’s plainly replicating a style that’s 1500 to 2000 years old.

 

RV: She’s starting all of this from scratch?

Jerod: In a manner of speaking There’s been a lot of history research on details. We still have some old material from the old mounds down in Mississippi that’s been recovered. We do have some of the old cloth that is in fragments. There are old head-pieces that have been recovered from our old mounds and so we’re able to, with a lot of accuracy, replicate things - which is really cool. This is the first time in history that one of our own tribal members has replicated our old outfits, our own clothing.

 

RV: It makes the whole production very authentic.

Jerod: We have people like Dan Townsend doing the old shell art; he’s revived that beautifully. Joanna Underwood has revived the old pottery making and her stuff is incredible. What Margaret has done with the clothing is fantastic. You know, you don’t usually think of Indian Country in terms of fashion. This project was a real triumph, I feel. The main artists involved are our own Chickasaw people and it involved so many layers of community and I feel we pulled it off beautifully.

 

RV: I can’t wait to see it.

Jerod: The multimedia guys are putting the DVD together now, but the live performance is hard to beat. You have to be there.

 

RV: I bet that every time you do something live, you get something different from it?

Jerod: Every performance has its unique qualities to it and that’s what’s great about live performance.

 

RV: You said that you worked with students, what’s that like?

Jerod: Wonderful. I teach kids all the time and I have an affinity for working with kids. There’s an old saying that working with kids keeps you young and it’s very, very true. I find that when I’m with kids I get very energetic and I get very focused. They charge you and make you feel revitalized. There’s just this energy with kids! I also realize that they’re listening to me. And so for me, when I teach kids and I work with kids, everything just becomes super intense. So life just goes into overdrive and I really love that.  It’s really cool.  The Oklahoma Youth Orchestra is an auditioned orchestra made up of high school kids from Oklahoma. They are all fantastic players and of course, none of them have ever heard any Southeast Indian kind of music ever! There is a section where the traditional Chickasaw dance troop comes in and performs a Double Header dance. It’s a really cool dance. I orchestrated this dance and, of course, the traditional dancers have never danced with an orchestra and the orchestra has never heard of this stomp dance style and, when we put it together, it turned out to be really something. Everybody was in this sensory overload of what was going on with the other ensemble. It’s a cool process because I’m conducting the orchestra and I’m watching them and they’re playing but they are watching the dancers. Then a comfort level is reached and everybody really digs in and starts working together as an entire ensemble. That is just the coolest thing in the world. I’m telling you, kids are great to do that with because they take risks so easily. Of course I had this traditional group who is much older and I found that they are much more careful. You know, because as you get older, you get more careful. And so it was a beautiful thing to watch - all this dynamic going on and at the very end everyone ended up very comfortable. I’ve got like 90 kids staring at me and I’m saying “okay, just go with me on this.” It’s a really cool thing to lead a group like this into something that they’ve never done before. It’s great, it’s awesome.

RV: That’s interesting because kids don’t really have an ego to bruise like adults do. Adults are a little more careful and protective over making mistakes and kids are like, I goofed up, laugh about it and move on.

 

RV: Is there a composition that is personally compelling, that stands out for you?

Jerod:  Well, each piece has very deep meaning for different reasons. I will say that the flute concerto, Tracing Mississippi, is a real landmark piece for me. When I started composing that piece, I had previous works that I was definitely proud of but Tracing Mississippi was the first piece that I just let so much go. I took what I consider to be an enormous amount of risk.

 

RV: How so?

Jerod: You know, in a lot of different ways - first of all emotionally. I just went ahead and said that whatever I’m feeling, that’s what’s going to happen. I’m just going to go with my impulse, very heavily. The piece literally depicts my feelings of the old country back in Mississippi. So this was the first piece that was a complete overt expression of my feelings about the old country. It was a piece that was generated entirely out of my visits with my grandmother back in Mississippi. She showed me everything, she knows where all of our people lived. We know the plots of land that our ancestors lived on before we took the walk to Oklahoma. That’s where history became so real for me. It’s a funky feeling because all of Oklahoma Indians are displaced and so going back to the old land is really, really powerful and it is so beautiful and just amazing. So I decided that I was going to use this piece as a vehicle to express my feelings of those visits. The flute of course is generally a great icon of Indian Country, That’s the most overt icon that I use and the western flute is so versatile. I could do anything on it, that’s very convenient. I had just decided to go ahead and look for expressing myself entirely as a Chickasaw person in that flute concerto. Emotionally, I let myself go and then, theoretically and technically, in my composing, I decided to completely dive in. I can explain to anybody, in any measure, what is happening in that piece theoretically. It also became a very decisive, mental project that I wanted to do. T entire piece is based on Chickasaw Gar Fish Dance song, as is Iholba'. The Gar Fish song is a song that resonates with me very strongly. Iholba' came a little bit before the concerto. Iholba', theoretically was much looser, it was kind of more impulsive in terms of harmonics. The flute concerto was deliberate in its theory and, of course, I don’t expect you to hear that all the time. It’s just like in any kind of literature, when you have to stay to form but then when you read it you don’t want to hear the form - that kind of a thing. It just became a very intense endeavor and with a very specific intent of expressing myself fully as a Chickasaw modern classical Composer. That was the piece that I felt finally defined me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Winter Moons Ballett) “Click to listen”

 

RV: Let me ask you something because we’re talking about your poetry, we’re talking about your music and creativeness. Where do your ideas come from? Do you envision these ideas? Do you play them in your head? Is it inspiration?

Jerod: It comes straight from my chest. It comes straight from my heart. That might sound really cheesy. Let me put it this way: everything begins with an impulse. There’s no doubt about it and I’m not always sure when those impulses are going to happen. A lot of times when I’m working out in the gym, that’s when I start hearing music and I’m like “okay, I’m in the middle of running on a treadmill and I don’t have paper with me!”