From the Maslanka Archive features media and stories of David’s life and work. Did you work with David? Please consider contributing material.
It’s time for another edition of From the Maslanka Archive. We are actively building the Archive, but it won’t be ready for public viewing for a while. In the meantime, we wanted to show off some great items we’ve already collected.
We also wanted to inspire YOU to help grow the collection. We would love to feature you in an upcoming edition! Simply provide us with photos, video, audio, or stories of your time together and you may find them on the front page.
This week, we are excited to feature Part 2 of Julian Velasco’s interview of David from his home in Missoula, MT in 2016. In Part 2, David discusses active imagination, composition, and touches on aspects of his following works: A Child’s Garden of Dreams, Symphony No. 3, Symphony No. 4, Sonata for Alto Saxophone and Piano, Recitation Book, Concerto for Alto Saxophone and Wind Ensemble, Give Us This Day, Heaven to Clear When Day Did Close, Traveler, Mountain Roads, Songbook for Flute and Wind Ensemble, Duo, Hell’s Gate.
“But what happens to a person who is organized as a composer is that stuff pushes at you and you find a way to deal with it. So as a young composer that’s all I could say, the best I could say. Things pushed at me, and I was required by the push to find a way to satisfy that, to find the notation that would satisfy that. So stuff was coming up through me and it was coming out onto notation and that’s the best I could say, I was a composer. I began to discover this quality that there was another quality of mine that I did not know about, but was operating. A quality which I think was operating in any case, it just now began to come into consciousness. So lets put it that way: good artists are those who can allow the deep impulses to come forward in them in whatever way it happens for them. This is composers, this is creative artists in the sense of making something, and it’s also performing artists.” – David Maslanka
Listen below to Part 2 of Julian Velasco’s interview with David.
From Julian Velasco’s Official Website:
Hailing from Los Angeles, Julian Velasco is a Chicago-based saxophonist who’s passion for music has lead him to collaborations with musicians from a wide variety backgrounds. His studies have taken him across the country to places such as: Carnegie Hall, Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts, Segerstrom Center for the Arts, and the Richard Nixon Presidential Library. He has also performed at various music festivals and conferences such as: Music For All, the Detroit Jazz Festival, the College Band Directors National Association National Conference, the Midwest Clinic, the North American Saxophone Alliance Regional and National Conferences, the Summer Solstice Jazz Festival, Music Teachers National Association National Conference, and the Hispanic Festival of Grand Rapids.
An active orchestral musician, Julian has performed with orchestras such as Elgin Symphony, Lansing Symphony, South Coast Symphony, Orange County School of the Arts Symphony Orchestra, Michigan State University Symphony Orchestra, Southwest Michigan Symphony Orchestra, and the Waukegan Symphony. Julian has also been an invited artist to join the Chautauqua Music School Festival Orchestra on multiple occasions.
Julian had the rare opportunity to work closely with composer David Maslanka, and studied some of his largest saxophone works directly with him in Missoula, Montana in the summer of 2016. David remarked him as “one of the finest young saxophonists I know”. An active supporter of new music, Julian has premiered music from composers across genre lines such as: Billy Childs, David Biedenbender, Zhou Tian, and Matti Kovler.
A very special thanks to Julian for sharing this special interview with the David Maslanka Foundation.
Would you like to be featured in an upcoming edition of From the Maslanka Archive? It’s easy! Please send us anything you have (picture, audio, video, concert poster, concert program, correspondence with David, etc.) and we will feature you!
