Scaling The Peaks

As a professor of Music at SFA, Stephen Lias reflects upon nature to inspire the notes of his life.conversation with composer Stephen Lias spins my mind and tips my tongue with references that range from a favorite quote of mine regarding John Denver from the movie “Dumb and Dumber,” to startling literary memories of transcendental moments in the woods with the likes of Henry David Thoreau. I didn’t think I’d be playing with references to a Rocky Mountain high when writing an article about a composer, a man who I discover divides his time between Nacogdoches and various mountain peaks across North America. I thought our conversation would be academic and entirely technical. Instead, I find that this award-winning recording artist and professor of music recalls a seemingly anachronistic but classical creative figure – part lover of music, part lover of nature – who is furiously working to unite his two passions in a way that resurrects the creative heritage of some of art’s most memorable masters.

Classical music lovers, may I offer a quick mea culpa for anything I say that seems insulting or novice? I just realized I called you all “academic” and “technical” … sounds like a criticism, when I’m actually fascinated with your gifted, technical minds. What I mean is that for those of us not versed in the intricacies of composition, the process of creating and talking about classical music is daunting and foreign. But Stephen breaks it all down in a way so that even I (lover of all things punk rock) can relate to what he’s trying to do. In an essay describing his recent Longs Peak climb in Colorado where Stephen was an artist in residence, he says:

“How could I make music speak about this feeling … this scenery … the drive that pushes us to test our boundaries and explore…? As I wandered the park, I turned this issue over in my head. I tested the quality of the experience like deliberately tasting a new food. What were its elements? How might those elements become sounds?”

By now, you’re probably wondering how Stephen came to be on the mountaintop. Are you humming “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” yet, because I have been for about two days. Our composer’s musical career began in a very typical manner. He says that he took piano lessons, discovering at some point along the way that he was only a mediocre singer. “I was in musicals and choir and band in high school. I decided to major in music with the half-hearted goal of becoming a high school choir director or something like that,” said Stephen.

Both Stephen’s creative outlets and his career aspirations evolved as he pursued his undergraduate degree in Music Education from Mosiah College in Pennsylvania. After graduating, he was offered a job as a vocal coach in Lindale. He moved to Tyler and began teaching vocal lessons and classes at Tyler Junior College. He also began working on his Masters at Stephen F. Austin University (SFA), a school well known for its music department.

He became more focused and finally put a name with something he’d been practicing all his life. “I didn’t decide that it was okay to start calling myself a composer until I was working on my Masters degree, around 1990,” he said, “however, I don’t remember ever not writing music. From very early on in my childhood, I was making up music and writing it down, it just didn’t occur to me at that point that it would be a career.”

Stephen says that his time at SFA has connected him with artists and opportunities that have shaped his career as a composer, and perhaps one of the most significant examples of this is when he was invited to write original music for a play that was being produced at a little theatre in Tyler some of you may remember called The Brickstreet Playhouse.

“Their very first production was called ‘Our Town’ and they invited me to write original music for that production,” said Stephen. “That began a really long trajectory in my creative life that put me in touch with the Texas Shakespeare Festival. They heard some of my music and hired me to be the resident composer.” Stephen went on to become the Music Director for the Festival and served in that capacity for 11 years. “For about a decade, most of the music I was writing was focused on being music for live theatre production. That was one of the most important things about my development as a composer – forming those relationships and having the amazing creative outlet to write music for that group of people.”

As a professor of music at SFA, Stephen teaches composition and some music theory classes. About three years ago, he says “Out of the blue, I got the idea of writing musical works about National Parks.” I would definitely call that and out-of-the-blue idea, but if you really think about it, this idea of reflecting on nature in your art is, well … natural. Think of all the pastoral landscapes painted by old masters. A contemporary Walden-esque example of this relationship in music is that of singer/songwriter Justin Vernon (front man for the indie-folk band Bon Iver) who secluded himself in a remote cabin in northwestern Wisconsin for months while writing the band’s debut album. I have to say, the songs ooze the cool and woody solitude of a forest, something you can feel without even knowing how the record came to be.

Stephen found that many of the national parks offered artist in residence programs, open for artists of all kinds, and he began the application process. He was awarded the position for Rocky Mountain National Park, where he began a literal and artistic climb. Sitting in a tent situated along the challenging trail of the fabled Longs Peak Mountain in Colorado, Stephen worked out his fourth composition in a series focusing on national parks. He wanted to capture the beauty and sensual experience of his surroundings without reducing it to something like “Happy Trails.”

There is a precedent in classical music, as well, one that Stephen understood. In his Longs Peak piece, Stephen says,

“My primary struggle was just what you might suspect – what does the experience of the park sound like? While mimicking the sounds of nature is one possibility, the results can sometimes trivialize the subject matter by sounding a bit ‘cartoony.’ While Vivaldi and Mendelssohn were able to get away with imitating bird sounds and donkeys braying, they didn’t have to contend with the legacy of Tom & Jerry, the Roadrunner, and their ilk.”

His journey culminated in the composition of a sonata for the trumpet and piano called “The Timberline Sonata.” “We were especially fortunate because one of my fellow faculty members at SFA agreed to premier the piece, and we were able to go up to Estes Park, Colorado – the town there at Rocky Mountain National Park – and have the piece happen right there in the town where the park is,” said Stephen. “It was very exciting for us.”

Stephen has already completed five compositions related to national parks, and is working on a sixth. He just received a faculty research grant through SFA that will allow him to explore several national parks in Alaska during the summer of 2012. This newest adventure will take Stephen into the third-largest designated wilderness preserve in the United States, the Gates of the Arctic National Park which features, among other unbelievable topographical characteristics, a frozen desert, six rivers and spiking mountain peaks.

I, for one, would really like to hear what that sounds like.