The Passion of Music
Getting to know composer Robert Avalon
by Timothy Cowell
Photo by BJ Smith

Houston is lucky that classical composer and musician Robert Avalon has chosen to make his home here. He has a presence both locally and internationally, and his work has been garnering high accolades from musicians and critics alike. "Dramatic sweep and authentic emotional power," says the American Record Guide. "Uncommon lyric gift," and "very beautiful … intensely melodic, firmly tonal," says John DeMain, music director of Houston Grand Opera. "A gift for broad, compelling melodies and building the tension of a movement to a resounding peak … [he has a] fresh, innocent exuberance," says Charles Ward, music critic for the Houston Chronicle.

Avalon composes orchestral, chamber, vocal, and solo piano works and is an accomplished pianist. He is such an international figure that he has established an ensemble in Amsterdam that specializes in performing his compositions. Here, he is working to start the first fully improvisational classical orchestra. Other Avalon projects include a national competition for young American composers and the development of talented amateur musicians for Houston corporations. In addition to this, Avalon is the artistic director of the Foundation for Modern Music, a nonprofit organization whose goal is the recording of new works by American composers.

You can get a sense of Avalon’s spirited and worldly career just from his dizzying schedule. In January and February, Avalon will travel to Paris, where he will preview a new work in a salon on the Seine, to be followed by a two-hour concert in Wigmore Hall in London. Avalon will spend spring in Houston in a series of residencies working with young musicians at HSPVA, Stafford High School, and MECA. He returns to Europe in May for more concerts in Paris and Amsterdam, then heads to Taos in July and August with a Wurlitzer grant that provides him with a house in which to compose new works for the Dallas and Austin Chamber Orchestras and his Amsterdam-based ensemble.

A San Antonio native, Avalon came to Houston in 1990. He was contemplating moving to Mexico, but met artist Wayne Dockery and changed his mind. ("It was love at first bite," Avalon says impishly.) Virtually all the wall space in Avalon and Dockery’s home is covered with artwork. The two men are especially proud of a huge surrealist oil painting by Houston artist Phillip Wade depicting their relationship; Dockery is represented by a half-man, half-lion being gazing skyward, while Avalon is symbolized emerging from behind a sturdy tree, an arm-branch holding aloft a red piece of stained glass.

Avalon is personable with a contagious enthusiasm, eager to connect, especially through his art.

"As a performer," Avalon says, "I can feel when an audience is very into the music, really listening, afraid to cough, sometimes even to breathe, it seems. When that happens, I escalate my concentration, putting myself into the music with much more focus, recognizing the urgency of communicating with the audience. That’s what the audience comes away with, too–remembering those moments. Performers yearn for those intensely communicative moments of connection. We dream about them."

It is easy to immerse oneself in Avalon’s music. It has both a passion and a lyrical richness that can just swallow up the listener. "His music must be enormously gratifying to play," wrote a reviewer for Fanfare Magazine. "I can say without equivocation that it certainly is wonderful to listen to, and I look forward to experiencing more."

Avalon often sets his music to poems and other texts. He’s especially fond of Spanish, in which he is fluent. One of his signature works is a setting of three poems by Puerto Rican Julia de Burgos as a "Sextet with Soprano"; the 19-minute piece is melodic, rhythmically rich, and beautiful.

Avalon has also written an opera in Spanish–a lush two-and-a-half-hour work of magical realism called Carlota, set to debut in Mexico City’s Palacio de Bellas Artes in 2003. Carlota and her husband Maximilian were appointed the empress and emperor of Mexico by Napoleon. In a poignant case study of the cultural clash between Europe and Meso America, Maximilian was executed after only a brief reign, and Carlota went mad. The opera follows Carlota’s journey of doubt, revelation, and ecstasy.

Avalon has also set texts in English, Japanese, and Greek, with plans for works in German and French. He is currently working on setting a number of poems by gay Dutch writers. The crowning piece of the composition is a love poem by Jacob Israel de Haan entitled "To a Young Fisherman."

Roses are not as beautiful as your cheeks,

Tulips not as your tender bare feet,

And in no eyes I ever read

Such a boundless longing for friendship

("Such a boundless longing for friendship" is also found engraved on the ground-level portion of the Amsterdam Homomonument, a large triangular sculpture of pink granite dedicated to the past, present, and future struggles of gay liberation. Avalon’s song will be set for a septet.)

I asked Avalon about what seemed to be a high percentage of composers who were gay.

"Composing takes an immense amount of time," Avalon muses. "A certain amount of isolation is essential–it is a very solitary activity. A lot of 20th-century gay composers were isolated [for fear] they would be persecuted.

"Gay composers like Aaron Copland were closeted during their lifetime," Avalon continues. "A few of his select friends knew. But he didn’t feel compelled to marry a woman, to put up the kind of façade that, say, was necessary for Leonard Bernstein that would make it easier for him to circulate in the cocktail party circuit."

Robert Avalon is one composer who lets his passions shine forth–in his life and in his music.

Tim Cowell is a music lover and avid concertgoer. He has published a large number of articles, but they’ve mostly been about polymer science.

To hear Robert Avalon’s music, excerpts may be found on his web page (www.robertavalon.com/listen.php3). Also, he and other musicians perform local home concerts that are often open to the public; to get on the e-mail list for information concerning upcoming concert times and locations, write to ravalon@swbell.net.