As part of the John Donald Robb Composers’ Symposium, Annie Merrill received the Scott Wilkinson Student Composer Award and her recent piece, “Torusot,” for flute, clarinet, percussion and cello.
Born is Colorado, Merrill attended the University of New Mexico initially to study French horn performance, she said.
“I’ve been a musician for as long as I can remember,” Merrill said.
When health issues prevented her from further study on the horn, she soon found music theory and composition, she said.
“Theory and Composition is a music better fit for me, because I enjoy it a lot more. I don’t think I was ever going to have the stamina to spend hours in a practice room every day. Trying to learn music in the traditional way with no creativity. People call it creative, but there is performance practice, and it’s kind of unacceptable to not follow it,” she said
During her time at UNM, Merrill studied abroad in Germany at the Hochschule für Musik Würtzburg. There she found more of her own compositional voice and was exposed to a different musical and artistic culture.
“There is an appreciation for the arts much more so than there is in this country,” Merrill said of her experience in Europe.
Not only is there a richer historical background of the arts in Europe, but also more governmental funds for new projects, she said.
“Before I went to Germany I felt really pressured to be all avant-garde and weird. And then in Germany my teacher there was very like, ‘Just do what you want to do, and we’ll look at it and see what we can do to make it the best of what you want it to be.’ And so it wasn’t like, ‘Okay this doesn’t have microtones, or multiphonics or something.’ It’s like, ‘Figure out what you like to do and (do) it.’ So then having that experience, it really helped me figure out what I like to do, what interests me and what I am as a composer, which is still very not set in stone,” Merrill said.
A range of concepts influences Merrill’s music, from math to mental illness. The strange loop, coined by mathematician Douglas Hofstadter, is of especial interest to Merrill, she said.
“So it’s like a hierarchy, but then all of a sudden you are back where you started. It seems like you are always going up, but then you are at the same place and you don’t really know how you got there. It’s quite fascinating to me, philosophical math like that,” Merrill said.
In addition to math, psychology is also a point of inspiration, as Merrill describes it “the ways that people think and the issues that people have.”
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In her vocal piece, “Wie Geht das Jetz Weiter,” Merrill uses extensions on typical vocal repertoire like coughing, clicking and laughing to create a gray area between singing and speaking. This gray area questions traditional expectations while offering a relevant perspective on issues like mental health, she said.
Merrill's work also fits within the theme of the John Donald Robb Symposium. Additionally the natural world and climate change also influence her work, she said.
“Global warming or deforestation: that’s actually a big deal although people don’t make it a big deal,” Merrill said.
Merrill’s piece, “Torusot,” is inspired by mathematics, she said.
“It’s based vaguely on the shape of a torus, which is basically the shape of a donut, of a bagel in three dimensions. But in two dimensions it can be seen as Packman’s little world. I used chords made of certain intervals and then inverted them throughout the piece, then you are back in the same place, same version of that same chord. And then at the end to solidify that feeling everybody (instruments), but the vibes (vibraphones), are all on a C but vary (in) microtonality. So they are all at the same place, but it’s a little bit different,” Merrill said.
With her work being performed by New Music New Mexico in the symposium, Merrill had the invaluable opportunity to workshop her piece, she said.
“I used the combination of sounds to make new sounds, imperceptibly transferring a pitch from instrument to another,” Merrill said.
Merrill is also working on a piece with the UNM Children’s Choir, as writing for the voice is something she wants to develop further.
“I am really fascinated by the flexibility, expressivity and broad scope of sounds that the human voice can make, so just exploring that concept of the human as an instrument,” she said.
Merrill said she views the voice as a bridge between absolute musical and tangible spoken word. This is integral in her exploration of issues surrounding mental illness.
She is set to graduate from UNM this spring. Merrill is not sure if she will take a break from school or pursue a graduate degree to study composition, ethnomusicology or even German, she said.
Aubrie Powell is a culture reporter at the Daily Lobo. She can be contacted at culture@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @AubrieMPowell.
