Free and open to the public!
Social Time: ~7:15PM PST / Presentation begins: 7:30PM PST
Presenter: Brian Magill
Musings on the Muse: Creativity, Inspiration, and Obstacles in Music Composition
This talk explores some of the current literature and thinking on creativity and attempts to apply it to music composition specifically. We will try to define creativity, explore sources of inspiration, habits for enabling productive creative work, and look at some tools and strategies for dealing with creative blockage.
Brian Magill is a composer from Portland, OR and a member of Cascadia Composers. He has studied composition with Gary Lloyd Noland and has had his music performed as far away as Tallin, Estonia. After obtaining his music degree from the University of Oregon, he became interested in electronic music. As "Phyllyp Vernacular" he was one of the founders of the Eugene Electronic Music Collective in 1982 at the beginning of the "Home Studio" movement. He has done music and sounds for educational film and spent 10 years composing and performing all incidental music and sound effects for the Avant-Guard Theatre group Thringst. He spent 35 years as a software engineer in the high tech industry and raising a family, releasing two CD's of his electronic music. After retiring, he has sought to combine his interest in Jazz, Classical, Blues and Un-popular popular music with classical forms and instruments.