The Inside Story: Samuel A. Livingston and AMERICAN SCENES

AMERICAN SCENES from composer Samuel A. Livingston is, as its title suggests, a painterly tribute to America. The album’s title piece, Three American Scenes, is a three-movement suite that expresses the grandeur of the American west, the serenity of a mountain lake at dawn, and the bustle of a busy day in a large city. AMERICAN SCENES is thoughtfully-crafted and unabashedly jubilant, expressing appreciation for America and the world beyond with refreshing sincerity.

Today, Samuel is our featured artist in “The Inside Story,” a blog series exploring the inner workings and personalities of our composers and performers. Read on to learn how Renaissance and Dixieland music influenced him, and how international folk dancing introduced him to unusual time signatures…

What inspires you to write?

I enjoy the process of composition. It’s a series of decisions to make and problems to solve. Sometimes the solution comes easily, but usually it doesn’t. When I finally get something right, it’s very satisfying to listen to the playback and know I got it right. And when I listen to a finished (or mostly finished) piece and think, “this is really good,” that’s a kind of satisfaction I can’t get any other way.

If we looked through your music library, what would we be surprised to find?

I don’t know what would surprise you, but you would find lots and lots of vinyl LPs (most of which I haven’t listened to in years). You would find classical music from the Renaissance to the 21st century. Jazz, mostly Dixieland, and swing. Folk music, much of it from the 1960s, and only a few albums of band music.

Do you have any specific hopes about what this album will mean to listeners?

I want people to enjoy hearing the music — the melodies, harmonies, and rhythms of each piece. For the descriptive pieces, I’d also like the listeners to get the feeling of the place or event the piece describes. And I hope that the listeners who play in school or community bands (and especially those who direct them) will want their bands to play these pieces, because I compose for the musicians as much as for the audience.

How have your influences changed as you grow as a musician?

There’s a lot of music I like that I hadn’t heard when I was young, including many pieces that hadn’t yet been composed. Playing in a community band for more than 30 years has helped me learn how to score for a band and how to avoid doing it badly. International folk dancing with my wife introduced me to music written in unusual time signatures. Playing the clarinet in a Dixieland band required me to learn to improvise, and that made me think about how to create melodies.

What were your first musical experiences?

When I was about 6 years old, a man came to my elementary school to play the violin for us kids. I really liked the music and wanted to learn to play the violin. My parents bought (or possibly rented) a quarter-size violin for me and took me for lessons. Unfortunately, the teacher was very old-school. He had me playing nothing but long notes on the E string, and I didn’t like the way they sounded. He also insisted that I learn to hold the violin under my chin without using my hand to support it. The violin fell to the floor, and that was the end of my violin playing.

What was the first performance you remember seeing?

When I was 18 and not familiar with much classical music, I went to hear the Chicago Symphony play Beethoven’s 1st piano concerto and Mendelssohn’s “Italian” symphony. I thought both pieces were great, and 62 years later, I still think so.