OUR INTERVIEW WITH COMPOSER MICHELLE ISAAC
Michelle Isaac holds a Chicago Sinfonietta fellowship in Composing and will be premiering a piece at our spring concert, Limitless Horizon. Keep reading for insight into what to expect with Moshe's Dream...
Michelle, you are in your second year of your fellowship, correct? How did you find your way into the world of music and composing?
Yes, I am thrilled to be in my second year with Project Inclusion! It’s such an honor to be the first composing fellow with Chicago Sinfonietta and to get to work with the amazingly talented conductors and ensemble members.
I come from a very musical family – it was a constant in my household growing up. I’m the youngest of five siblings, and I followed in their footsteps by joining band in school (I studied percussion from 4th grade through college) and taking piano lessons. I like to joke that I started composing as a means of procrastinating practicing the piano, but there’s a lot of truth to it! I loved to sit at the piano and follow my own instincts and curiosity at the keys, and that distracted me rather often while I was supposed to be practicing. Before I knew much music theory, I would painstakingly press keys at the piano until I found the notes I was hearing in my head, and then I would rope my big sister into writing it down for me. By the time I got to high school, I was hooked on composing and wanted to soak up everything I could about it – which is what led to studying it in college and graduate school.
Are you from Chicago originally?
I grew up in Waukegan, IL, which is on Lake Michigan about halfway between Chicago and Milwaukee. I spent a lot of time in Chicago growing up, and then I moved to the city for graduate school and have been here ever since. My early musical training came from the Waukegan Public Schools, and I can’t emphasize enough the importance of public music education.
What influences your composing style?
Everything! And nothing! I’ve been working very hard this past year to get back to the instinct and curiosity I composed by as a kid. When you dedicate years of your life studying brilliant pieces of music and the people who composed it, it can be painfully easy to cast doubt on yourself and to cloud any inherent impulse to create. My first year with Project Inclusion has helped me start to let go of that and to adopt a healthier mindset, and I can sense my composing style freeing itself from the pressure to sound a certain way, elicit a certain reaction, or live up to any ridiculous expectations, and it can now just be its own perpetually-changing thing. At this point in time, my style is pretty close to what it was as a child - I love to make people laugh through my music, and I love to take them on epic adventures. My music is very cinematic in that regard.
Without giving too much away, what can folks expect from Moshe's Dream?
The full piece, Moshe’s Dream, is dedicated to my 99-year-old grandfather, who called me during quarantine last year and said he had a dream that I started a klezmer (Jewish folk music) band, and that I wrote a piece in the klezmer style titled Moshe’s Dream (a piece in the dream about the dream he was having!) – so of course I had to write that piece! The Theme from Moshe’s Dream, is basically a theme song with variations I wrote for my grandpa to musically capture his prodigious humor, heart, intelligence, and magic. The piece has a lot of quirky energy and should be a lot of fun!
Cheers Michelle, we are so fortunate to have you with the Sinfonietta!
Learn more about Michelle on her website and check out her series for CS's Youtube channel on composing.