Composer Carleton Macy, retiring Macalester College professor, presents swan song concert

Carleton Macy, Professor Emeritus of Music at Macalester College, will be delivering a swan song concert on March 2 with performances of his music by students, faculty, and alumni of the college, among other guests. The evening will include six premieres, two of which were written specifically for the concert, as well as pieces from Macy's early career that have never been performed.

Although Macy is no longer teaching, he has for the last four years continued to compose music for students and faculty at the college. "I'm on the Macalester College retirement program," he said, "which gives me four years to unwind. It's like a four year sabbatical," he said.

When Macy began teaching in 1978, there was no jazz band at Macalester, so he started one and directed it for 28 years. He served as chair of the department and received the prestigious Thomas Jefferson Award. He also directed the Collegium Musicum Macalestri, a chamber group that plays medieval, renaissance and baroque music, and collaborated with the Theatre and Dance Department on numerous productions.

Macy's former students speak of his sense of humor and enthusiasm as well as his dedication to the art form.

"I had Carleton as a composition professor for classes and independent projects," said Zack Kline, a fiddler who will be performing at the concert. "I remember him talking about how his teachers told him, 'every aspect of a piece should develop constantly in every way.' That is one thing I specifically remember and try to follow." Kline also remembers that Macy presciently called him a minimalist. "At the time I was not quite sure," says Kline, "but that turned out to be an important part of my style in the end!"

Joe Dolson, the concertmaster for the Minnesota Philharmonic Orchestra, also will be playing at the concert, and was Macy's student. "Carleton always had an excited approach to everything you did with him," Dolson said. "He was enthusiastic about every class, rehearsal and assignment."

Dolson calls Macy's music fun, and also intricate — rhythmically and harmonically. "There's always something deeper to find," he said. "Every choice has clearly been made with an eye to the bigger picture of the piece. Nothing is just noise for noise's sake, or just a sound effect; there's no repetition that doesn't move the piece forward. The notes and patterns seem simple when taken individually, but when put together as a group the picture is molded together in interesting ways. It reminds me of the style of sculpture where a pile of found objects throws a recognizable shadow: the individual pieces make a whole greater than the sum of their parts."

As a composer, Macy is most interested in "finding a way to say the same old thing in a different way," Macy said. "There's not much new under the sun — there are just new ways of doing it, new ways of putting it into music." Macy said that while he doesn't write strongly tonal music, he's not an atonalist either. "I always try to find the melody," he said.

Macy has found particular success writing saxophone and woodwind quintet music, for which he has won awards and has been played all over the world. However, though Macy's music appears on various compilation CDs, his work hasn't been published, which he attributes to the nature of the industry.

"Many of us are taking to the idea of giving our music for free on the web," Macy said. "I don't have any preconception of making money as a composer." He finds kinship with Franz Liszt, whose work was stolen by Wagner, but who reportedly didn't mind because at least it would be heard.

Of course, Macy's day job as a college professor has made his career possible. Macy likens academia to the aristocracy that supported composers in past centuries. "Academia is really the supporter of so many good composers," he said.

For the concert, Macy will present three of his Prairie Trios — which he doesn't plan on writing any more, because he's leaving the prairie when he relocates to California later this year. The program will include Road Songs, which sets text by Walt Whitman and Robert Frost; and November, which takes as its subject Macy's point in life. (He notes that he hopes to continue to be a mid-career artist, hence the piece isn't called December.) "It's kind of blustery," Macy said of the piece. "It's kind of pre-December bluster. Plus there's a stillness in the piece."

The concert will also include a performance by the Minnesota Chinese Ensemble, of which Macy has been a conductor for 25 years. "They'll be playing a piece of mine called Deep Water as well as another piece. They say it's very Buddhist."

One of the premieres Macy will be presenting is a string quartet that Macy wrote in 1993. "It was basically the last piece I ever wrote without a performance in mind," Macy said. "Composers are dead in the water if they don't have a recording of their piece."

Music by Carleton Macy starts at 4 p.m. on Sunday, March 2 at Mairs Concert Hall, Janet Wallace Fine Arts Center in Macalester's Music Building.

Macalester College alumna Sheila Regan is a Minneapolis-based writer. She writes frequently for the Twin Cities Daily Planet and City Pages, among other publications.

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