Steven Bryant is no stranger to Juilliard. He studied composition with John Corigliano in the Professional Studies program during the 1996-97 academic year. That same year, he joined the staff of the then fledgling I.T. Department, first as lab manager, and later as operations manager. He left Juilliard in February to pursue a full-time career as a composer, and this month he is honored to have one of his pieces premiered by James DePreist and the Juilliard Orchestra in the annual Commencement Concert. The Juilliard Journal caught up with Steve to find out about the commission.

Steven Bryant

How did this commission come about?

Maestro DePreist came into the computer lab one day with his PowerBook so I could set up his Juilliard e-mail and Web access. During the course of our conversation, it came out that I'm a composer. He asked to see a couple of scores of my works, and was apparently quite taken with a piece for wind ensemble that Indiana University had commissioned in 2000. I had long planned to orchestrate it, but before I ever mentioned this to Jimmy, he suggested the exact same idea! I of course immediately said yes, and he chose to program it on the Commencement Concert. I owe every bit of this opportunity to his generous nature and to his interest in new music.

How would you describe the piece?

The title is Alchemy in Silent Spaces. It is music of transformation: sonically, of silence into sound, and emotionally, of optimism into rage. The first five minutes of the first movement are extremely sparsely scored and the music gradually builds to an enormous, warm, harmonically consonant blanket of sound. The second movement (rewritten from scratch for this new version) is for string orchestra and solo flute, and is melancholy and rather introverted. The third movement then erupts into a five-minute release of the tension and restraint from the previous 19 minutes. The musical language is largely consonant and tonal, though the third movement might belie that statement just a little bit.

You also conduct; which is scarier, conducting, or composing on deadline for a commission?

I'm not sure I would characterize either as "scary," though I do get a bit nervous when I conduct, mainly because there's always the possibility I will wreck my own piece! I'm growing to love conducting almost as much as composing, and so far, I've avoided disaster. My very first conducting experience was to premiere a work of mine for a 648-piece ensemble (SATB chorus, symphonic band, and string orchestra), which certainly had its moments of terror! Compared to that, subsequent gigs have been slightly less stressful, though to answer your question, I guess I'd say conducting.