We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Erin Busch a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Erin, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?
The two most important lessons I’ve learned from composing are:
1) Trust yourself & your instincts. You are the only person who has them! No one can tell you whether your music is right or wrong. A good teacher will help you to hone your skills and technique rather than try to change your sound.
2) Don’t wait for inspiration to strike. Composing is a cumulative practice – you need to give yourself frequent opportunities to be in a creative space in order for true inspiration to arrive. I used to take much longer breaks from composing because I just wouldn’t have any ideas, therefore I wouldn’t sit down to write. Now, I know that most of the good ideas will only arrive after I’ve committed myself to spending the time to compose. Many of my breakthrough moments have come when I’m doing mindless tasks after a period of active composing, like when I’m walking the dog or cleaning the house. I’m grateful for voice memos!
Erin, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I’m a composer, cellist, and arts administrator living in Philadelphia, where I’ve been based for the last 14 years. In 2018, I founded the nonprofit Wildflower Composers, which amplifies and supports the work of female, transgender, nonbinary, and genderqueer composers in Philly and all over the world. Our flagship program is the Wildflower Composers Festival, a two-week composition festival for composers ages 13–19 at Temple University, and we recently launched a suite of Virtual Mini-Courses that run throughout the year.
I started Wildflower Composers for very personal reasons. Although I started writing music fairly young, I don’t really remember thinking too much about the “art” of composition for quite a long time, but I continued to compose regularly throughout my childhood and always had fun making up songs and playing them for my friends. I knew logically that humans had written the music that I was playing in orchestra and in my lessons, but so many of the pieces that I was asked to perform were written by people who had died long before my time – composers with names like Mozart, Beethoven, or Bach. It was only many years later, when I was in high school and starting to think about going to college for music, that I remember playing a piece by a living composer for the first time. That composer’s name was Christopher Theofanidis, and I played one of his orchestra pieces called “Rainbow Body”. I cannot express how much it impacted me to play music by a contemporary composer – the harmony sounded fresh and exciting, and each instrument in the orchestra blended into this beautiful collage of sound that I had never heard before.
It was the first time I really considered that people today could still make a living as a composer. I started to envision this kind of life for myself, and began to do some research on well-known living composers to learn more about their lives. I was distressed to find out that there were very few women in the field – at least, very few that were appearing in my google searches – and, upon further reflection, I realized that I had never before played a piece by a female composer, nor did I know any personally. The few composer friends I had in high school were male as well. For the first time, I felt doubtful that I would be able to pursue a composing career, and wondered if I should even bother trying.
I ended up still applying to a few schools for music composition, and when I was eventually accepted into the music composition program at Temple University a year or so later, I was the only girl in the program. It was disappointing, and isolating. Of course, I still became friends with my male peers and learned a lot from my male teachers, but it felt once again like I was not supposed to be there, like this field was not meant for me. It was around that time that I learned more about the staggering statistics that show that this was not an isolated case, and that the music world remains incredibly homogenous, even today. A recent study by a UK-based organization analyzed the repertoire of 15 major orchestras worldwide during their 2019 / 2020 seasons, and found that out of nearly 4,000 works programmed, only 142 were composed by women. That is 3 percent!! Think of all of the young women who are still absorbing the message that the world of contemporary music does not value women.
In 2018, I started what is now called Wildflower Composers but what was first called the Young Women Composers Camp. With the assistance of faculty and staff at Temple University, we welcomed 18 young composers from all over the country for daily seminars, private lessons, and the world premiere of a new composition by each student. During our festival, our students get to experience what it feels like to try out a new sound or musical idea in a nonjudgemental space, to learn about female and nonbinary composers that may not appear in textbooks, to workshop their own piece of music with professional musicians. For many of our students, our program is the first time they have ever heard their music performed, and for many more, it’s the first time they’ve ever been in a music classroom without any men in it. I still remember how special that first summer felt, not just to see the palpable excitement and relief and joy in the faces of my students, but also to feel it myself. At Wildflower, we envision a truly equitable and diverse field of contemporary music, where composers of all identities have the opportunities and resources they need to succeed.
I know that some out there might think that this is a fairly niche problem. Maybe you don’t listen to classical music, or you don’t know any professional musicians. The gender gap in music is a drastic inequality to address, certainly, but maybe not something that most people have to face very often, right? However, I bet that most of you watch movies or TV, or maybe you listen to podcasts, or maybe your daughter or niece or student has started to experiment with playing an instrument or writing their own music. Whether we realize it or not, composers are present in our everyday lives. We need to work collectively towards narrowing the gender gap and welcoming more women into this field; not just through increased representation on the stage, or audience education, but also through purposeful and accessible opportunities that uplift and amplify these young composers who have been historically left out of the narrative. Wildflower Composers is just one way that I’m hoping to help address this problem, and I hope that someday, our work is no longer needed.
Looking back, are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?
The biggest resource is emailing composers to ask for advice or a lesson! I was floored to learn that many (very famous) composers still monitor their own inboxes, and often take one-off lessons with students to provide them with life advice or to take a look at their score. Oftentimes, they’ll do this for free or for a limited fee. You might not hear back from everyone, but it doesn’t hurt to ask!
For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?
It’s hard to pick just one rewarding aspect of my creative career, but one of my absolute favorite things about this life is the fact that I get to meet and work with new & amazing people ALL THE TIME. It is so refreshing and fascinating to constantly work with a mix of new and old colleagues, and it’s not something that happens in most careers. I would extend this to include all of the early-career composers I work with through Wildflower, who have such cool ideas and energy about the craft.
Contact Info:
- Website: wildflowercomposers.org
- Instagram: @wildflowercomposers
- Facebook: /wildflowercomposers
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@wildflowercomposers667
- My personal info: erinbusch.com
- IG: @erin.cello
Image Credits
Festival Photo Credit: Rec.Today Headshot Credit: James Diaz