Music in the Afterglow:
An Interview with Oliver Caplan

I tend to find music in the afterglow, when I’ve gone back home from nature and am still trying to savor the feeling.
 

Introduction

I met Oliver Caplan during our first year at Dartmouth College amidst a silly but studious cadre of musical misfits. He played piccolo in the marching band, and I played French horn in the wind symphony. Sometimes I sat in the stands with the band and played kazoo, just for the company. The first things that struck me about Oliver were his irrepressible smile and infectious laugh. He worked at the local Ben & Jerry’s and always gave an extra-large scoop to friends.

As Oliver began to devote himself more seriously to his work in musical composition, I was doing the same with poetry. Our shared love for hiking and the electric feeling of being intricately connected to the natural world around us was what birthed our first collaboration, Oliver’s setting of a poem of mine called “Origins.” “Fireflies astound the darkness,” I wrote, and the music—violin, viola, cello, and voice—said the same. Hearing it gave me goosebumps.

Oliver’s music may not be what most people would expect from a contemporary composer. While it can be playful and experimental at times, it is deeply rooted in traditional forms. Think of Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring, and you might have a little sense of the flavor. Whether composed for a whole orchestra or just a few instruments, his harmonies and melodies are clearly intended to move people, to speak to our emotions, and to appeal to our better selves. In divisive times, his music reaches out for human connection grounded in connection to place and the natural world. It celebrates beauty, social justice, conservation, and the communities that bind us together.

Winner of a Special Citation for the American Prize in Orchestral Composition as well as two Veridian Symphony Competition Wins, the Fifth House Ensemble Competition Grand Prize, and eight ASCAP Awards, Oliver is the artistic director of Juventas New Music Ensemble, based in Boston, Massachusetts. His recordings include his 2017 release You Are Not Alone—a testament to love, resilience, and connection—and his 2021 album Watershed, inspired by a favorite river walk that became a lifeline during the COVID-19 pandemic, among others. His award-winning works have been performed in over 200 performances nationwide. He has been commissioned by the Atlanta Chamber Players, Bella Piano Trio, Bronx Arts Ensemble, Brookline Symphony Orchestra, Columbia University Wind Ensemble, and New Hampshire Master Chorale, among others.

After graduating from college (some two decades ago now), Oliver and I went on an Alaska backpacking trip of many adventures. Of course he brought his penny whistle. Of course his playing it on a grassy knoll seemed to attract a small group of curious Dall sheep—because he’s Oliver. You can’t help but smile.

My work tends to draw inspiration from the things that bring me solace and joy. If the music can bring even the tiniest ray of light to someone else, then the hard work—and it is hard work—is worth it.

Interview

Hannah Fries: Oliver, you and I have known each other for, oh, going on 24 years, and I think we’ve always enjoyed a kind of kinship in our feeling of connection to place and the natural world and how we attempt to express that connection creatively through art—largely through poetry for me, and musical composition for you. I love that we knew each other as much less experienced artists, trying to convey our sense of wonder in a way that would connect, also, to others.

Oliver Caplan: I do think there’s something special about having watched each other grow up as both people and as artists. Our collaborations have been rooted not just in shared interests, but shared experiences. I remember a summer night, lying in a field in Vermont, watching fireflies. You spun that into the most gorgeous poem, which would move nearly anyone, but of course had special resonance for me, having been there. You were so gracious to let me set it to music, and we were off!  All these years later, we are of course both the same and different, but I will never get enough of seeing the world, especially the natural world, through the lens of your poetry, and I do think it’s fun seeing how we’ve both grown with our craft and found greater confidence in expressing what we want to say.

Hannah Fries: It seems like your love of music and love of nature have always been entwined in your composition work. Did you grow up with both in your life?

Oliver Caplan: I have always also been drawn to the natural world, and friends knew me as an environmentalist long before I came to music in a more serious fashion. In elementary school I had a hobby of cracking rocks open to see what was inside. A scar on my left-hand—from a smash gone awry—helped me identify left from right. Then I discovered birding, gardening, hiking, foraging… I could go on forever.

Music was always there too. I started learning piano in kindergarten. I rarely practiced the assigned Bach, but played for hours on end, improvising my own melodies and recording them with a Fisher Price cassette deck. My teacher was not impressed and nearly “fired” me, but with hindsight, it seems clear I was a budding composer at work!
 

 
Hannah Fries: When I think of how I hear the natural world reflected in your work, I think of mainly two different ways in which that happens. In the first, the music is capturing the mood of a place, or the mood of a human experiencing a place. On your Watershed album, for example, the piece Willow Spring Path contains movements called “Rippling Lake,” “Towering Pines,” and “Return of the Warblers.” It’s so easy let my mind conjure a visual picture while listening—of the light twinkling on the surface of a lake, of the grandiose trees, and of the warblers flitting up high in the canopy. Where is the Willow Spring Path, and what is its significance to you?

Oliver Caplan: Willow Spring Path is one of my favorite trails in the Middlesex Fells Reservation. Just a mile from my house in Medford Square (and six miles from downtown Boston), this 2,200-acre preserve is a woodland treasure, teaming with songbirds and other wildlife. Willow Spring Path is significant to me not for being some exotic hike in a faraway place, but the opposite. Its specialness lies in its proximity to home. It is the trail I can hop on after a hard day of work and clear my mind. I walk it often enough to see the seasons change inch-by-inch, and despite this familiarity, every time I notice something new.

Hannah Fries: Do you ever start to hear bits of music when you are in such a place? Or is it the feeling or mood that you take home with you, and then you begin to compose later? (I find my experience with poetry is more often the latter—I begin with a wordless sense of urgency to express something that I feel.)

Oliver Caplan: Similar to you, I tend to find music in the afterglow, when I’ve gone back home from nature and am still trying to savor the feeling. Sometimes it’s the very same day, sometimes it’s weeks or even months later, looking back. Sometimes I’m thinking about one specific moment and sometimes I’m thinking collectively about what a place means to me across many encounters.
 

 
Hannah Fries: I remember you having a love for film music (The Lord of the Rings!). Do you feel like you have been influenced by film music?

Oliver Caplan: Film music was definitely one of my gateways to classical music, speaking of “classical” in the broadest sense. Again with my Fisher Price cassette deck, but growing up, Disney Music soundtracks would have songs on Side A and excerpts from the film score on Side B. This is the Alan Menkin era, and it was a magical intro to the world of orchestral music. But zooming out a little bit, for most of my life—until recently—the contemporary music scene centered around music that was atonal and dissonant. Film music offered a world of composers who wrote music that was more romantic and melodic.

Hannah Fries: Certainly music is often used in film to evoke a sense of place. Do you have any favorite examples of where and how that happens?

Oliver Caplan: Speaking of that The Lord of the Rings soundtrack I love, Howard Shore did something very interesting, pairing various folk instruments with the Western classical orchestra, to give each of the different peoples a unique sound. For example, the hobbit theme is often played on a tin whistle, whereas the Hardanger fiddle is deployed for the Rohan theme.

A more recent example is the Bridgerton soundtrack, which features recordings of the Vitamin String Quartet playing contemporary pop songs. While the music itself is actually of this moment—something fresh that can connect with younger audiences—the string quartet arrangements imbue a more old-world sound that harkens to the period in which the series takes place.

Hannah Fries: I’m also thinking of your piece In the Direction of Dreams, with movements called “Walden Pond,” “Adams Woods,” and “Fairhaven Bay”—all places frequented by Henry David Thoreau. What inspired you create a piece about this trio of places?

Oliver Caplan: I wrote In the Direction of Dreams for a program commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act. This trio of places maps another one of my favorite walks. I follow the trail alongside Walden Pond in Concord and cross the train tacks (the same ones Thoreau writes about) into Adams Woods in Lincoln. From there, I wander down toward Fairhaven Bay on the Sudbury River. This route is extremely beautiful, but it’s also hallowed ground. It won’t surprise you to hear that a young Oliver was fascinated with Thoreau’s Walden. There’s something almost spiritual about following in these footsteps.

Hannah Fries: The other way that I hear the natural world reflected in your work is in the way that you sometimes sort of mimic sounds or movement in nature. And this might not really be separate from the mood-setting kind of piece—those warblers, for example. But I’m thinking in particular of how you set my poem “Night Migrations,” actually letting the voices and instruments sound like the chirping of birds at times. Could you talk a bit about this kind of mimicking? It seems risky to me, somehow—like, it could get cheesy if you’re not careful. But getting it right makes it delightful and transporting.

Oliver Caplan: I’ve been increasingly interested in using source material as seeds for new works. In “Night Migrations” and “Return of the Warblers” (Willow Spring Path) it’s more of an abstraction. In my string quartet Canciones de Monteverde, I took seven bird calls and transcribed them as best I could—a bit of a challenge, since they don’t quite fall in the Western diatonic scale. My goal is to foster a more direct sonic connection to nature. It’s probably my worst nightmare that audience members might think it is cheesy, but these musical interpretations are just one part of the larger fabric in each piece, and I hope listeners will feel that I’m exploring this with sincerity (and yes, sometimes a bit of humor!).

Some of my recent works have a parallel exploration of human source material. For example, my new piece Siglufjörður (horn, cello, piano) is a theme and variations based on an Icelandic folk tune I heard in the northern fjords. Again, just a very small part of the piece is a direct quote of this melody, and then I take it in my own direction. This is of course a time-honored tradition, practiced by many of my favorite composers from the past: Copland, Vaughan-Williams, Dvorak, Bartok, and so many more.

Hannah Fries: Remember when you played a penny whistle for a curious Dall sheep on a hilltop in Alaska? Does an interspecies experience like that ever inspire you in some way?

Oliver Caplan: How could I forget those sheep! My current interspecies music-making is with my corgi Simon, who likes to nap next to me while I compose. That might sound fairly domestic, but he’s my first dog and it’s a brand-new adventure for me. That said, out in Washington state, a violin-piano duo called The Musical Mountaineers have been performing spontaneous mountaintop concerts in the Cascades and they’ve added my piece Krummholz Variations to their repertoire. I love imagining their human-less audience of marmots, birds, and bees!
 

 
Hannah Fries: I love that! One of my favorite musical experiences was hearing Yo-Yo Ma and Emanuel Ax play an intimate outdoor concert in a field near some grazing sheep. When a quiet moment at the end of a piece was interrupted by a baaa, Yo-Yo just played along, baaaing back with his cello in response. We (at least in the Western world) often think of music as existing in its own time, set apart from the rest of life, but I think these kinds of experiences show us how music can actually bring us into more direct connection with each other and the world around us.

Oliver Caplan: Mahler’s sixth symphony has a very famous part for cowbell, inspired by his summers in the Austrian alps. I can’t help but chuckle, listening to this grand symphony and then hearing the sounds of lumbering cows in the mix.

Hannah Fries: You’ve written pieces for both full orchestras and for very small ensembles, for instruments only, and for voice and choir. When you are thinking about, say, a musical piece written to evoke a sense of place, how do you choose the scale of instrumentation that seems to fit that purpose?

Oliver Caplan: I’m very lucky to be in a position that most of the pieces I’m writing are for a specific ensemble, so I’m usually starting with the instrumentation and then deciding what I want to do with it. Sometimes I’ve been wanting to write a piece about a certain place or topic and it becomes clear it’s the perfect fit for the ensemble at hand and what resonates with them. I tend to think of the instruments as color options in my palette of sounds. Smaller chamber ensembles have a clarity and intimacy that can be really special, and I love getting to work with musicians in smaller settings. On the other hand, the symphony orchestra comes with a huge dynamic range and veritable rainbow of timbres. I enjoy both very much and the variety keeps things interesting!

Hannah Fries: Although you do explore grief in your music, I find your work overall to be very full of joy and wonder. I think people often associate vulnerability in art with expression of darker subjects and emotions, but I also think there’s a certain vulnerability in baring your joy to the world. Do you agree?

Oliver Caplan: It’s true, I’m always searching for that kernel of hope, sometimes stubbornly so. For me, the vulnerability in being so optimistic is perhaps a general conception of happy and sad as opposites. The truth is, these emotions tend to co-exist. I carry more grief than a lot of people know, but it’s not typically what I focus on. We have one life to live and I try to find the light in each day. My work tends to draw inspiration from the things that bring me solace and joy. If the music can bring even the tiniest ray of light to someone else, then the hard work—and it is hard work—is worth it.

Hannah Fries: Does it give people permission to feel joy and wonder too?

Oliver Caplan: Nobody should need anyone else’s permission to feel joy and wonder!
 

 
Hannah Fries: So true! Speaking of wonder, you have a piece named “The Tree with Lights in It,” a phrase taken from Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. Dillard tells the story of a young girl who was blind and then had surgery allowing her to see for the first time. When the bandages were removed, she was led outside and saw what she described as “the tree with lights in it.” It is a pure kind of seeing, seeing to the very essence of something. It becomes a way of describing a heightened, transforming experience of perception—seeing, if only for a moment, as if a veil between the seer and the world has been drawn back. Could you describe how this became the title of your piece?

Oliver Caplan: I wrote “The Tree with Lights in It” as a wedding gift for my husband Chris and it was performed in our marriage ceremony. The title has a double significance: Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is both Chris’s and my favorite book, and that conversation starter is what initially drew us to each other. Then there’s the scene you describe about the girl seeing for the first time. While her experience is more literal, and I don’t want to diminish that, for me, there was something about falling in love with Chris that felt like seeing the world anew. As an aside, since this is conversation between you (Hannah) and me, I would be remiss if I didn’t note your own love of this book, and the conversations we had about it on that Alaska trip! Someone reading this interview is going to think Pilgrim at Tinker Creek was all the rage amongst young people in the 2000s, but let me remind you this was the height of the Harry Potter era. We were quite against the grain for our age and the moment. In this light, it’s not surprising you and I were drawn together as friends, and Chris and me as partners.

Hannah Fries: What, Dillard wasn’t all the rage in the aughts? Okay, now we’ve opened the door, and I’m going to get philosophical. Music—what is it? A collection of notes, of pitches, distributed over time, but those pitches don’t have any direct referent themselves like a word has meaning attached to it. So why should certain collections of notes make us feel so deeply? Is this mysterious quality of music part of what makes it such an ideal medium to explore our own sense of wordless interconnectedness with the living world all around us? Nature itself is full of music, after all.

Oliver Caplan: Oh wow, we could spend a few days talking about this alone! Certainly, there’s music in the natural world; and physics underpins a lot of musical fundamentals. Beyond the endlessly fascinating how and why questions, the most important thing is the music moves us. Music has an incredible power to help us heal and come together, and that’s why I compose.

Hannah Fries: So what’s next? Can I ask what you are working on right now?

Oliver Caplan: I have my Carnegie Hall debut on November 11! The 150-year-old Oratorio Society of New York is performing Cloud Anthem, my setting of the poem by Richard Blanco. The poem envisions a future in which we all come together as one for a better tomorrow. It opens, somewhat uniquely with “until,” a word that is repeated throughout, like a prayer. The text is filled with evocative imagery (“until we realize we’re muddy as puddles, pristine as lakes not yet clouds…”) that was a lot of fun to set to music.
 

Learn more about Oliver Caplan at www.olivercaplan.com.