Local Composer

Finds His Way By Ear

By Shannon Hicks

When he was growing up, Steve Danyew’s parents played a little bit of everything when it came to music.

Janice and Craig Danyew would have everything from Pink Floyd to Charlie Parker or Bach playing on the family stereo. It is not surprising to learn that those early influences continue to drive the choices of music Steve listens to these days. One day recently, for instance, it went from a recording of Mahler’s Symphony #5 to the long celebrated Miles Davis album Some Kind of Blue.

What is a pleasant surprise is to learn what those early and continued musical influences have helped to produce: A 20-something award-winning musician and composer who has co-formed a chamber music ensemble, has seen some of his compositions debuted by that ensemble (and celebrated by at least two newspapers, The Palm Beach Post and The Miami Herald, both of which were local papers while he was living and working in Miami for a few years), and continues to study for his master’s in music even with some very impressive life experience under his belt.

The composer and saxophonist was one of five composers selected earlier this year from a national field to participate in the Yale Summer Music Festival. In the fall Steve will begin studies for his master’s degree at the renown Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y. Meanwhile, he has been spending the summer with his parents, who still live in Sandy Hook, while keeping tabs on his chamber ensemble from afar and planning for the future.

“I always had a wide range of music influence, which I’m sure has formed what I’m coming up with now,” Steve said recently, sipping a coffee while talking music, performance, and plans. “I’ve definitely always had preferences, but as a composer, it’s my philosophy to expose myself to as much as possible. That informs me as a musician.”

His performance experience began when he enrolled in piano lessons, which gave him the basics but was not a strong enough pull to keep him going back for more.

“I stopped piano lessons after not really wanting to practice and not really enjoying the recitals,” he said.

In fourth grade he was encouraged by his then-music teacher Michele Hiscavich to play the violin, which he took to and was more enthusiastic about. That was also the first year he was able to perform as part of a group, and Steve became a member of Sandy Hook School Elementary Orchestra.

It was a more comfortable fit, said Steve, but it still was not quite right.

“I knew I wanted to be playing a band instrument,” he said. So the following year, having watched older brother Jonathan study and perform on trumpet, Steve again switched his musical focus, this time picking up — and sticking with — the saxophone. He also began writing music while in high school, and continued studying and performing while in high school not only with the NHS ensembles, but also with local jazz ensembles, including The Sonny Carroll Orchestra.

“They gave me the opportunity to play with them a few times and that was a great opportunity for learning,” Steve said of his work with the professional orchestra.

Today his performance skills have been celebrated and awarded. Following an August 2007 performance, correspondent Lawrence Budmen of The South Florida Sun Sentinel called Steve and fellow Project Copernicus member Jason Kush “saxophone virtuosos par excellence, making the instrument sing as well as shout.”

His composing skills are being equally celebrated. He has collected honors and accolades from Composers Conference in Wellesley, Mass. (selected as fellow, 2006), The APSU National Young Composers Competition (second prize, 2006, for his work Lhotse), Amateur Musicians’ Committee at the Composers Conference (unanimously selected to serve as commissioned composer, 2007), and ASCAP Morton Gould Awards (finalist 2006, 2007, and 2008), among others.

The Miami Herald has called his work “startlingly beautiful” and “undeniably well crafted and communicative.”

Steve began writing some of his own music while in high school, but admits it was exploratory at best.

“I didn’t really know what I was doing,” admitted the 2002 Newtown High School graduate.

It was not until he was in college — Frost School of Music at the University of Miami, where he received his bachelor in music theory and composition, cum laude, in May 2006 — that he first called himself a composer, “once I knew what I was doing and what that really meant,” he said. “I think very early, right after I began performing, I realized I couldn’t get enough. I saw very quickly that music was going to be a very important part of my life.”

It seems he has immersed himself not only in his studies (Steve was a Dean’s List, President’s Honor Roll, and Provost’s Honor Roll student, with a 4.0 GPA, while at the University of Miami) but also in the world of music. He had a three-month internship with New Haven Symphony Orchestra during his summer break following his junior year in Miami.

He joined and eventually became president of UMiami’s Society of Composers (May 2004–May 2006); in 2005 he founded and served as president for Youth Music Campaign, also based at UMiami, a student organization with the mission to foster musical opportunities for underprivileged youth, which continues to operate at the university. He also served as the assistant coordinator for the 2007 Festival Miami, responsible for, among other things, planning and executing 25 world-class concerts over a six-week period.

And then in August 2006 he joined with friend and colleague Chung Park to co-found Project Copernicus, his most ambitious undertaking to date. One of the goals of the group, named for the 16th Century astronomer who designed the sun-centered model of the universe, is to foster younger musicians and “get them out to their career,” said its composer-in-residence.

“Here is this person who redefined how people thought about the universe, so we took that and we said we want to realign the way people think about music,” Steve said. “We thought there was no better tribute than to name ourselves for someone who realigned a way of thinking.”

Project Copernicus

It was Mr Park who came up with the idea of Project Copernicus, but Steve accepted the invitation to work with his friend to create the ensemble. While neither had led a chamber ensemble to that point, both decided to forge ahead with their plan.

“We just sort of went into it to do some great musical things, and figured we would just learn as we went,” Steve admitted. Having led two smaller-scale student nonprofit groups already, Steve felt he could handle the next step. “We both brought our own leadership sensibilities to the table.”

The group’s first performance was in January 2007 and its second was in August, and The Miami Herald had already taken notice. In a March 2008 review for the group’s third performance, Lawrence A. Johnson opined that while “Project Copernicus is still only an occasional presence on the local scene … conductor Chung Park and composer Stephen Danyew have served up thoughtful, unorthodox programming that has provided a spark to Miami’s nascent contemporary music community.”

The March concert was also the most venturesome of Project Copernicus to date. While neither founder is partisan, the theme of the March 8 performance was war, or specifically the anniversary of the one the United States finds itself mired in.

“We had the idea to present a concert in honor of the solders and military personnel” involved in the Iraq war, said Steve. Project Copernicus concerts have each been tied together with a theme. The fifth anniversary of the March 18, 2003, invasion was therefore the theme Steve and Chung decided to work with for this spring’s performance.

Planning began with the choice of Stravinsky’s L’histoire du soldat, or A Soldier’s Tale, a work completed in 1918.

“Stravinsky’s piece — a magnificent work — is still relevant, and we decided to contrast it with a modern piece,” said Steve, who was naturally given the task, as the chamber ensemble’s composer-in-residence, of writing an original work for the contemporary contrast to Stravinsky’s 90-year old music.

The work that evolved was Letters from Iraq. Steve used four letters found in the book Last Letters Home, the companion book to an HBO documentary that had in turn been inspired by a New York Times story. The result was a 25-minute, four-movement work.

“I was trying to portray scenes of these soldiers that didn’t merit a terribly technical work,” he explained. “I thought these stories would be best served with a simpler piece of music.”

Steve used motorlike rhythms to represent the engine when a female soldier wrote to her mother about the excitement of learning to drive a tank. In another section, rising violin solos represented the tears of an Iraqi girl who had been given a candy bar by a soldier in an effort to calm her.

Work on the modern piece, however, could not begin until last fall since Steve was already “deeply involved” in other projects and programs to which he was also committed. He did not begin writing until December, and was not ready to present it to the ensemble until February… three weeks before it was to be performed.

“It wasn’t a very complicated work technically for the musicians,” he said. “When [the musicians] first looked at it, I think they felt it was of moderate difficulty. There were going to have to work to make it work.”

In addition to their musicians, Steve and Chung enlisted actors from a troupe called Group Up & Rising to add a visual element to the performances. Actors read the letters to begin each movement, overlapping the start of each musical section.

On March 10 and 11 Letters from Iraq debuted, with the first performance on Saturday in Miami Beach and the second the following day in West Palm Beach. The performances, said Steve, were “fantastic.”

“[The performers] all felt like it was something special,” he added. “I think at the performance they began to understand the weight of the subject matter and I think that came through in their work. I think the audience felt that as well.’

The Miami Herald was also positive in its critique. Lawrence Johnson called the work “attractive, unabashedly tonal and, at times, startlingly beautiful. There’s a kind of homespun American naiveté that suits the innocence and honest eloquence of the soldiers’ words. …If not the most individual of Danyew’s works, the music is undeniably well crafted and communicative and was given sterling advocacy by the Copernicus musicians under Park’s sensitive conducting.”

A few months after that performance Steve came north, back to Sandy Hook for the summer before he heads to Rochester for two years of studies at Eastman School of Music. Chung has also moved away from Miami. A resident of Idaho, he is a professor at Idaho State University and director of the Idaho State Civic Symphony. But both plan to remain involved in leading Copernicus, just from afar.

“We have a network of people in Miami who will help us continue to plan and execute concerts,” said Steve. “Both of us are working on various aspects of the ensemble. But I think because of the way we started the group — because of who we established relationships with, and because there is a core of Miami-based musicians — it makes it feasible to continue this way.”

Upon his return to New England one of the first things Steve did in May was participate in the 2008 Yale Summer Music-Norfolk Chamber Music Festival. He was one of only five composers nationally to attend the event, during which his newest work, The Black Flash, was premiered.

The remainder of his summer has been devoted to working on new and existing compositions, and revising existing ones.

Steve’s summer break at home ended earlier this week. Tuesday was his last full day in town with his family, and on Wednesday he hit the road so that he would be settled in Rochester once term started at Eastman.

“It’s a little bittersweet today,” he said Tuesday afternoon, “this last day at home. But I’m excited about the future for sure.”

It will not be hard for folks to figure out what Steve Danyew continues to do with his time and talent. Just keep your ears open.