A Conversation with the Composer: Rich Wilder - "Where Is My Love?"

Rich Wilder and Gwen Gassler

It’s not often that a singer gets the opportunity to chat with the composer of a piece she’s singing – he or she is either inaccessible or dead.  So I was excited to learn that Richard Wilder, composer of Where Is My Love?, which will be premiered at Concentus’ June concert, is not only alive, but local!  He graciously agreed to meet me for coffee and conversation.  I had lots of questions about the song, and how he came to write this specifically for us to perform, but first wanted to understand more about him, since he’s frustratingly un-google-able.

Turns out Rich, who, at 77, is extremely actively retired, was not just a choral music teacher in the West Irondequoit school system for 30 years after he graduated from the Eastman School of Music, but he is also a world traveler.  He spent five years sailing in the Caribbean, he has biked solo in France and Belgium, and he and his wife enjoy camping (according to Rich, “there are two bad times in a trip – when you leave, and when you come back”).  All of this speaks to his passion for nature.  In the rest of his free time, he composes, and volunteers in aid of the homeless and the hungry.  

While he has composed some 45 vocal and choral pieces, this is his first one for women’s chorus.  Apparently, in true Rochester fashion, he’s related through some convoluted in-law trail to Michelle Brown, one of Concentus’ singers.  He heard the group sing, and met with Gwen Gassler, our conductor, to discuss composing a piece specifically for us – what an honor, to be given the gift of such beautiful music!

I asked him which comes first, the music or the words?  Definitely the words.  He loved the poetry of Sakura, as well as the traditional Japanese folk tune on which this piece is based, and also the connection to nature.  “The Japanese take their cherry blossoms very seriously, and their ephemeral nature is important to Japanese mythology,” he explained.  He inserted a contemplative, emotional passage in the middle of the piece.  As he remarked, “anyone can write a melody, an A section.  The hard part is the B section,” and how to transition back and forth.  He stressed the importance of “unity and variety”:  the balance needed between “what holds the piece together and what will hold an audience’s interest.”  He joked that “you can repeat something twice, but the third time must be different.”  He also pointed to passages in the song where he imagines swells, and then “gliding before you fall down the other side.”

He admitted that he loves the middle range of women’s voices, and that one of the challenges of this piece was for it not to get too low, since it has such a wide tessitura.  He also specifically wrote the solo because he likes the contrast between the single voice and the full chorus – to him “the sound of a single voice appearing out a choral work provides interest without straying too far away.” This is also the first piece he’s written for a non-Western instrument, and he chose the koto not just because it’s in keeping with the tone of Sakura, but for his friend and kotoist Debbie McCullough. This presented another compositional challenge: the need to stick to the pentatonic scale for this instrument, without having the piece feel static and flat.

Rich modestly describes himself as “an ordinary guy, doing some stuff.” He doesn’t consider himself a “real composer.”  I hate to be disrespectful, but he is wrong on both counts. Concentus looks forward to performing Where is My Love? and hopes our audience enjoys hearing it as much as we do singing it!

For more information about the upcoming concert, visit Concentus' website:  www.concentus.org

(written for Concentus Women's Chorus' blog)