HCP 18: Robbie Labanca on founding a choir specialized in new music and the commission of new music by living composers
Robbie Labanca is a vocalist and composer, and co-founder of Inversion Ensemble. In this episode, Robbie shares with us the process of creating a new choir that performs contemporary music. Inversion Ensemble specializes in music created within the last five years, many of his pieces being a world premiere commissioned by the ensemble. Robbie tells us all about the process and what he learned by creating and making this organization grow as much as housing 3 different choirs within one brand.
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In this episode, you will learn:
- Robbie’s piano lessons and band memories
- Discovery of choir while in high school
- How hanging out in the band hall and a encouraging teacher helped him join choir
- The importance of text in choral music that draw him to choir
- How the repertoire in his early choirs didn’t encouraged him to be a composer
- How composers and writers relate to each other in the struggle to find listeners and readers
- The importance of reaching living poets to set their text to music
- A combination of external mentors and inner motivation to keep pursuing music
- How he enrolled in classes that allowed him to have a career as a singer and not just music education
- How Robbie describes himself as a musician and why
- Immortality through fulfillment of the ego and why he likes this as a composer
- All of your activities inform each other
- The creation of Inversion Ensemble
- How this ensemble created validation in Austin and how it helps composers
- Every piece is a place for collaboration
- What was going through his mind before his first concert with Inversion Ensemble and how he worked through it
- You don’t have to start perfect, you just have to start and later get better
- Recognize the things that you are good at in your ensemble to discover ways you can help grow the organization. Find your role within the new ensemble.
- Have open and honest conversations about what people do well and what they openly recognize they don’t do well or don’t want to do
- The importance of being able to ask for help
- Why singing your piece as a composer is very important
- Why giving altos great parts (not just filling out notes) will earn you friends forever
- How being open to new music and producing new sounds makes you a more marketable singer
- Why Robbie disagrees with calling some vocal techniques extended techniques
- Why conductors would benefit from reaching to living composers
- Composers have email addresses! Email them.
Share it with me
- Do you work with living poets? Do you set their poems to music or use it as standalone poems in between pieces in your concert?
Links mentioned in the show:
- Inversion Ensemble Website
- National Alliance for mental illness central texas
- Robbie Labanca Website
- Robbie Social media: facebook, instagram
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Produced by Carlos Cordero.
Thank you for listening!
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Hugs,
C.
