Timothy Michael Powell, Part 3:
An Expression of the Human Experience
January 21, 2008
This is the conclusion of my interview with Dr. Timothy Michael
Powell, an accomplished conductor and composer. He is the Director of
Choral and Vocal Studies at Lee College and directs the Lee College
Chorale and the Baytown Community Chorus. Dr. Powell holds a DMA in
Conducting from the University of South Carolina and was the 1999
National Choristers Guild Scholar, a 2002-2003 Fulbright Scholar to
Bulgaria, and a 2002 Fellow with the prestigious South Carolina
Conductors Institute. He received both his Bachelors (cum laude) and
his Masters degrees in Church Music from Belmont University.
He
was the Rhodes College Conductor-in-Residence for the 2004-2005 Season
and the Director of the Honors College Choir at the University of South
Carolina from 2001-2002. His compositions include numerous major works,
including his "Wedding Mass" which will be premiered in Carnegie Hall
in June of 2008, and his opera "His Terrible Swift Sword" which was
premiered in April of 2007. Go to www.DCINY.org for more information about the concert.
Dr.
Powell is an active clinician and scholar and holds memberships in the
Pi Kappa Lambda Music Society, The Texas Music Educator's Association,
and the American Choral Director's Association. He serves as the
Director of Music at St. Matthews United Methodist Church in Houston,
TX. Samples of his music can be heard at www.myspace.com/timothymichaelpowell.
LM:
Your MySpace site lists about two dozen musicians who have influenced
you. Pick two or three and tell why and how they influenced you.
TP: I
think that Giovanni de Palestrina is my model for small-scale motet
construction. His music is so beautiful and loses none of its emotional
impact, even after 400+ years. Yet at the same time, there is a certain
succinctness and crystalline sparseness of form, almost a conservatism,
that allows the climatic moments to develop and emerge and then hit you
over the head like a hammer. I'm thinking particularly of his piece In
Monte Oliveti, which is a setting of this biblical text: "On the Mount
of Olives, he said to his Father: ‘Father, if it be possible, take from
me this cup: Let it be your will.'" There's a moment in the last line
which gives me goosebumps just thinking about it.
As for living
American musicians, I would say that I have an affinity for composers
like Eric Whitacre and Morten Lauridsen, who are part of a neo-tonal
movement in classical music. I think the text painting of Whitacre has
been influential for me, and the large-scale motivic construction of
Lauridsen's music has influenced my larger works, particularly the
Wedding Mass. As for pop stuff, I'm definitely influenced by country
and bluegrass. I spent some time in grad school playing in a rockgrass
band, which was a great outlet for writing songs. The band, Salt Creek,
produced a studio album which included a number of my songs. However, I
feel like there is an approach to musical climax in my pop music that
actually comes from groups like U2 and Coldplay. They have a rhythmic
drive and energy that explodes on you that I just love.
LM: Does your faith impact your music? If so, how?
TP:
In the sense that I am a Christian and a composer, then yes, but I do
not consider myself a "Christian musician" in the sense of the
Nashvegas CCM world. I hope that my faith impacts all that I do, and I
don't think it would be possible for there not to be some bleeding of
my faith into my art. Art is quite personal. You can't create something
artistic in a vacuum and also cannot expect that you can create art
without exposing vulnerability. My classical music is almost
exclusively Christian, because I set sacred texts for choir. That,
however, is also driven as much by the practicalities of being a church
choir director and an administrator of a collegiate choral and sacred
music program.
I don't shy away from secular subjects, however.
Music, and its composition, to me is an expression of the total human
experience. I think that Christ is incarnate in the every day, as well
as in the highest worship. He's present at the conversion of new
believers, but also in the midst of the relationships between people,
the suffering in the world, politics, war, hunger, etc. As such, I
don't see much disconnect between being a composer who writes music for
the church, and who also can write a pop song that doesn't refer to God
at all, or in fact references taboo subjects like sex. My opera His
Terrible Swift Sword, as an example, is based on characters from
Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath as well as the Biblical story of Job. It
tells the story of a preacher who loses his faith after having an
extra-marital affair under the temptation of a devil-like figure. It is
certainly PG-13, and deals with very difficult questions about
morality, faith, and providence. But so does the Bible, I think, and
you have to ignore a great deal of messy stuff to believe that God
doesn't have something to say about all of it (which He does), or that
everything is black and white and cut and dried (which it is not).
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