The Nation of Tate
San Francisco Symphony records works of American Indian composer
The Longmont Times-Call (Colorado) 4/18/08
By Quentin Young

When Jerod Impichchaachaaha' Tate was 23 and studying piano at the Cleveland Institute of Music, his mother, Patricia Tate, a choreographer, asked him to write a score for ballet.

He had never composed music before, and he told her no.

But soon he reconsidered, and he wrote a score for the ballet, "Winter Moons" „ the Colorado Ballet has since performed it twice „ and in the process realized what would be his life's work.

In writing the score, Tate did more than just discover a talent for composing. For the first time, he made a connection between his training in classical music and his American Indian heritage.

"It wasn't until my mom commissioned me that I found a way to marry them," Tate said.

The marriage has been maturing ever since.

Tate, a Longmont resident, just put out a CD featuring the San Francisco Symphony and Chorus performing two of his works, "Tracing Mississippi" and "Iholba'." The first piece is a concerto for flute and orchestra. "Iholba'," Chickasaw for "The Vision," is a two-movement piece for solo flute, orchestra and chorus.

The music is intense, and it rarely lets up, even in the quiet parts.

Edwin Outwater, who conducted Tate's music for the recording and is music director of the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony in Canada, wrote about the CD on his blog last month.

"The music is quite virtuosic, dynamic and trance-like," Outwater wrote. "It's quite a trip for the listener."

Toward the end of the "Song" movement of "Tracing Mississippi," which Tate wrote as a remembrance of the Chickasaw homeland in Mississippi before the Trail of Tears removal of Indians from the southeastern states, a drum, struck on every beat in a sacrificial tempo, has an attitude that evokes bared teeth.

Elsewhere the drum is like the concerto's pounding heartbeat, and the sense of being on the run, or in pursuit, is frequent in the work.

Much of the concerto sounds to be set in the shadows of the wilderness or on the currents of a thunder storm. In the movement "Hashi' Hiloha," or "Sun Thunder," the whole orchestra sounds at times to be riding a bolt of lightning.

Some passages are truly frightening. A rhythmic crescendo at the beginning of "Hashi' Hiloha" is the aural equivalent of a beast poised to attack.

"Iholba'" maintains an air of gravity for long stretches. The first movement, the 15-minute "Halbina'," or "The Gift," is profoundly meditative and exquisitely restrained. Much of it has the feel of classical settings of the Latin mass, but it is distinctly aboriginal in tone. The flute is low and reedy. It bends, cries and flutters. The work begins and ends in a literal whisper.

"Talk to me, my child," opens the hushed vocal part, written by Tate and sung in Chickasaw, "Talk to me./Whisper to me/inside my heart./You are my creation./You are supposed to be like this."

The lines could stand as a statement of will by an artist supremely confident of his intent.

Tate, born in Norman, Okla., in 1968, is the son of an Irish mother and an Indian father, Charles Tate, of the Chickasaw nation, a lawyer who was classically trained on piano and played Bach and Rachmaninoff in the house. Tate's grandmother took her kids to the opera in Oklahoma City. There was ample opportunity in the schools to absorb Western artistic traditions, Tate said.

He started piano lessons when he was 8, and he was instantly hooked.

"I don't remember a time I wasn't very serious about it," he said. "I knew I was going to be a musician."

He went on to study piano performance at Northwestern University and performance and composition at the Cleveland Institute of Music. He has enjoyed numerous commissions, but the recent CD is the first full-length recording of his music.

Tate has strong opinions. He reacted sharply to a question about whether his music was atonal.

"I can't stand that," he said about atonal styles. "To me, that's not communicating ... it's a big old denial."

He similarly scorns the political correctness that produces such terms as "native American."

"I'm not a P.C. dude," he said. "I believe in a strong handshake between people who are confident."

Tate is an American Indian, and his artistic purpose is to express a nationalism that reflects the joint facets of his heritage.

"I do have pride on both levels," he said. "I am specifically focused in bringing an Indian identity to classical composition. But I do feel like I have a sense of American grit in writing."

This interplay arises everywhere in both his scores and the performance of them.

In describing why he thought the San Francisco Symphony was the best orchestra to perform his compositions, he said it was because the group was "athletic," adding, "It has to do with an attitude that's very American."

Tate is among only a handful of American Indian classical composers. The first is generally said to be Louis Ballard, who died last year at 75.

Thunderbird Records in Cleveland, which released Tate's CD, is dedicated to American Indian classical musicians, and claims to be the first label of its kind.

Founder Alan Bise, who met Tate when they were both students at Cleveland Institute of Music, said he was inspired to start Thunderbird after attending a
performance of Tate's "Worth of the Soul" in 2004.

"It was just a very, very powerful piece of music," Bise said. "(It was) one of the best musical experiences I've ever had ... After the piece, the place just erupted."

Bise said he realized Tate had a "special voice," and he wanted Thunderbird to offer exposure to other American Indian classical composers.

"I resolved that I needed to start recording this music," Bise said, adding that it was a fortunate accident that Thunderbird's first release was Tate's CD.

"I feel that Jerod is one of the greatest living composers today, Indian or not," Bise said.

In 2004, Bise produced a CD called "Awakenings," featuring compositions by David Yeagley, on the label Azica.

Bise and Tate believe the release was the first full-length CD of an American Indian classical composer.

"That CD was really important," Tate said. "His was the first. Mine was the second."

John Nuechterlein, president and CEO of Minnesota-based American Composers Forum, which supports American Indian musicians through its First Nations Composer Initiative, resists grouping American Indian classical music into a distinct genre, because compositions like Tate's can appeal, he said, to "anyone who likes good music."

"I don't think of it as a genre," Nuechterlein said. "This genre is classical music."

Tate is conscious of himself carrying an artistic torch, passed to him by his family, nation and country. A significant part of his work is passing the torch on to future generations.

One way he does this is by working with students in the Chickasaw Summer Arts Academy.

Cruise Berry, a Chickasaw student at the academy last year, said Tate exposed him to American Indian classical music.

"It opened up a whole new world," said Berry, a high school senior who is applying to study composition at the University of Oklahoma.

It was at the academy that Berry first tried his hand at writing music.

"This is all worthless if you're not teaching anything to kids," Tate said. "It builds life. It builds a whole life experience for them."

Lexington native produces classical CD by Chickasaw Nation native
The News Journal (Mansfield, OH) 3/27/08
By LISA MILLER
 
CLEVELAND -- The roots of a new recording of American Indian music spread from this northern Ohio city to San Francisco to the Chickasaw Nation to Lexington.
 
The compact disc is the first release by Thunderbird Records, an independent record label owned by Alan Bise, a 1990 graduate of Lexington High School. Bise was a longtime member of the Mansfield Symphony Youth Orchestra and, during high school, the Mansfield Symphony Orchestra.
  
He began playing the violin in fourth grade and studied with Elva Newdome for many years.
 
"I owe her a big debt of gratitude," Bise said. His parents, Gary and Dorothy Bise, still live in Lexington.
 
The recording of the San Francisco Symphony and San Francisco Symphony Chorus conducted by Edwin Outwater is of two works by Chickasaw Nation native Jerod Impichchaachaaha' Tate, "Trading Mississippi" and "Iholba." Michael Tilson Thomas is the symphony's music director.
 
Tate is a graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Music, where Bise studied audio recording and violin performance. A review of "Ilhoba" (The Vision) by The Washington Post said, "Tate's connection to nature and the human experience was quite apparent in this piece ... rarer still is his ability to infuse classical music with American Indian nationalism."
 
Owning a record label was "not part of the plan," Bise said, although he "always knew" he would work in recording in some capacity. He is a member of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, and the Audio Engineering Society.
 
His Web site explains the label "is dedicated to capturing and preserving the music of contemporary American Indians for distribution across the world."
 
Bise began his career in Dallas working at TM Century Inc., where he rose to the rank of senior mastering engineer and was responsible for products reaching more than 4,000 stations worldwide. Clients included ABC Radio Networks and Casey Kasem's American Top 40.
 
Bise is a freelance producer and serves as chief classical producer for Azica Records, another Cleveland company distributing the Thunderbird discs.
 
"Whoever hires me to do a project, I will do," he said, which means he travels quite a bit to record musicians in their concert halls, churches or other sites picked for the acoustics.
 
Bise first heard Tate's work in 2004, the same year he founded his company. He was moved, and realized almost nobody else was recording Native American music. Bise said he approaced the San Francisco Symphony to record the music because it is one of the top orchestras internationally.
 
Funding for classical recording is difficult to obtain, Bise explained, because the CDs don't sell enough. The Chickasaw Nation footed the bill, according to a story in the Plain Dealer.
 
While some say the death of the CD is imminent, Bise said that isn't necessarily the case for classical music, which appeals to a bit older demographic that still wants a physical product. Classical musicians always have plenty of CDs to autograph at their performances.
 
"That's hard to do with MP3s," Bise said.
 
And he doesn't believe classical music is going away, either, because young people are embracing it through technology. Bise said classical music makes up 15 percent of iTunes sales, compared to 3 percent of CD sales.
 
Next up for Bise is a soundtrack that will feature Comanche music.
 
His own playing takes a back seat these days. Bise joked that the only time he would play would be in a soundproof room "just for myself." He said he feels "very lucky" to be making a living in music.

What our music critics are listening to
Democrat and Chronicle (Rochester, NY) 3/08
by Anna Reguero

SAN FRANCISCO SYMPHONY AND CHORUS: WORKS BY JEROD IMPICHCHAACHAAHA' TATE.
San Francisco is one of the most cutting-edge orchestras, performing with Metallica as guest soloists and nose-diving into contemporary classical music, but to my own ignorance, cutting edge didn't necessarily include American Indian music. When this disc of Tate's music, a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation from Oklahoma, ended up on my desk, it immediately caught my eye. Tate is one of the few American Indian classical composers out there, and like the rest is trying to somehow fuse the classical tradition with his own. He does this with two flute concertos, one performed by the Buffalo Philharmonic's prized flutist, Christine Bailey Davis, who performs with such intensity and skill that she shows up the whole orchestra. While Tate composes for modern flute, he asks the performers to do as they would with a wood-trimmed traditional Indian flute: blow air over the mouth opening to get wispy air tones and bend notes up and down slowly, like the slow cycles of the wind across the open planes of native land. The music can be somewhat busy and feels laden with the hardships of American Indians today, but the feat is that Tate is able to maintain a link to his heritage through sound no matter how modern he manages to write.

The following is a review of the track "Iholba".

The Washington Post
Gail Wein
September 23, 2005

Music scholars spend a lot of time analyzing Western classical music and explaining its meaning to the rest of us. But no expert was needed to understand the emotional nuances in the world premiere of a work by Native American composer Jerod Impichchaachaaha' Tate on Wednesday at the Kennedy Center's Millennium Stage.

You could hear the quiet prayer, sense the heartbeat and feel the wind in Tate's "Iholba" ("The Vision"). Tate's connection to nature and the human experience was quite apparent in this piece, which is based on a traditional Chickasaw song, with original poetry sung in Chickasaw.

Conductor Emil de Cou led National Symphony Orchestra flutist Thomas Robertello, accompanied by a chamber orchestra of NSO musicians and a chorus, with sensitivity and empathy through the 20-minute piece. The chorus, eight members of the Master Chorale of Washington, capably handled the challenge of singing in the Chickasaw language, with its nasal vowels and glottal stops.

Robertello's solo part required not only singing as well as playing the flute but also slapping the keys of his instrument percussively and bending notes. He executed all that with careful dignity. The piece began with the celestial effect of Robertello breathing incantations into his bass flute while the chorus whispered so gently that only their sibilant sounds could be heard.

Tate is rare as a Native American composer of classical music. Rarer still is his ability to effectively infuse classical music with Native American nationalism. Wednesday's premiere, a Kennedy Center commission, was timed to coincide with the first anniversary of the opening of the National Museum of the American Indian.