Dale Trumbore
Dale Trumbore is a composer and writer based in Southern California whose music has been praised by The New York Times for its "soaring melodies and beguiling harmonies." Trumbore's compositions have been performed widely in the U.S. and internationally by ensembles including the American Contemporary Music Ensemble (ACME), Los Angeles Master Chorale, Los Angeles Children's Chorus, Modesto Symphony, Neave Trio, Pacific Chorale, and Pasadena Symphony. How to Go On, Choral Arts Initiative's album of Trumbore's choral works, debuted at #6 on Billboard's Traditional Classical Chart.
Trumbore has served as Composer in Residence for Choral Chameleon and Nova Vocal Ensemble, as well as Artist in Residence at Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts, Copland House, the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico, and Willapa Bay AiR. She has written extensively about working through creative blocks and establishing a career in music in essays for 21CM, Cantate Magazine, Center for New Music, and NewMusicBox. Her first book, Staying Composed: Overcoming Anxiety and Self-Doubt Within a Creative Life, was hailed by writer Angela Myles Beeching (Beyond Talent) as a "treasure trove of practical strategies for moving your artistic career forward." Trumbore also writes poetry and fiction, with recent publications in or forthcoming from Jabberwock Review, failbetter, Tupelo Quarterly, and SFWP Quarterly.
Artist Statement
There are a few crucial questions I ask myself before, during, and after the writing process. They inform all of the work I write, and if I can't answer them, I don't write the piece. They are:
• Why am I writing this piece at this moment in time?
• How does this piece reflect what’s happening around me in the world right now?
• What emotions and experiences are made available to the audience through this music?
• How might listeners (and performers, if the piece is played live) be different at the end of the work or the process of learning it than they were when they first came to it?
• How might this piece leave my audience in better shape, mentally or emotionally, than they were before they encountered the work?
In answering all of the above questions, I aim to write music that makes space for listeners to move through emotions that aren't one-dimensional—sadness, grief, joy—but multi-faceted. I may never know whether I've entirely succeeded in leaving my listeners in better shape than they came to me. Anyone who hears my work will bring their unique life experience to how they process that music, and I'll never have complete control over their experience. But within my own composing process, asking this question forces me to consider how my music moves a listener through emotions that—hopefully—deliver them to an insight or positive emotional state that they may not have felt at the beginning of the piece. I believe words and music have the power to achieve this separately, but the effect of words and music together can be nothing short of transcendent.
At Tusen Takk
The piece Dale composed in residence, A Calendar of Undoing, is a twenty-six movement, 70-minute work with a libretto by contemporary poet Barbara Crooker. This new piece explores how our relationship to change is mirrored in our relationship to the changing seasons. These range from small changes, like the impact of our personal triumphs and failures on how we move forward, to more wide-ranging, urgent changes, like the effects of global warming. Crooker’s resonant questions (“Is it impossible to plant change?” “How can we let it all slip through our fingers?”) hold us accountable for changing our lives for the better, calling for reflection and action in recurring refrains and with several call-and-response movements that invite the audience to join in singing.
This cyclical piece takes the shape of a calendar year and features multiple starting points, allowing the piece to begin or end in the same month as the piece is performed. While a December performance might start with the January movements, for example, an April performance could start with May and conclude, full circle, back in April. Commissioned by The Esoterics and Artistic Director Eric Banks, this new work will premiere in Seattle, WA on December 9 & 10, 2023.
While at Tusen Takk, Dale work-shopped the piece, and its audience participatory element, with Northern Michigan College’s Canticum Novum choir directed by Jeff Cobb (pictured here).
Score of “Without You”
Public Programs
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