Q&A with Alumnus Brandon J. Rolle ‘19

Composer and founder of the Impulse New Music Festival

Interview by Audrey Sandlin on April 21, 2021 via Zoom

Brandon J. Rolle is a composer and conductor who lives in Los Angeles. He received his PhD in Music Composition from the University of California, Santa Barbara in the Spring of 2019. Rolle’s music is published under Precious Noise Music (ASCAP), and he is represented by Black Tea Music; his debut album, Glitch Portraiture, is set to be released at the end of 2021 by Arpaviva Records. Rolle spoke with us about recent projects, including the Impulse New Music Festival, a non-profit organization that Rolle co-founded and for which he serves as Artistic Director. Impulse’s 2021 festival was held online this past August, and included nearly 150 events, sixteen commissions, and four concerts of new music.

What was your motivation for creating the Impulse New Music Festival, and what is the festival’s mission?

“The festival was started with a colleague of mine, Vlad Vizireanu, who was working with the UCSB orchestra. I was lending a hand with the orchestra and teaching quite a lot, and working with these students really made me reevaluate how we could better support and prepare these young musicians for the early stages of their career. Honestly, this was a topic close to my own heart, having just gone through that transition myself, and it had become clear to me that there are certain aspects of working in the field that can be difficult to address in an academic music program—how to receive commissions, create a business plan, work with non-profits and fiscal sponsors, adapt to nonacademic grant writing, where to even find those grants and know which are a smart investment of your time. These were things that I had only really learned after diving into the deep end and having to figure it out for myself. The pivotal early stages of your career can be extremely difficult, especially if you don’t have personal or family financial resources to help weather that storm for the first few years as you’re figuring it out. Ultimately, it means that the music community loses out on bringing a lot of new voices into the fold. So, more than anything, it was important to me to find ways to help early-career musicians explore and develop the tools to express their own musical language, which absolutely must include strategies for these types of professional development issues.”

Who is the INMF faculty composed of, and what kind of support and guidance do they offer attending composers and performers?

“These are some of the most outstanding musicians, people, and teachers I know. If the faculty I’ve put together is trying to model one thing, really, it is a virtuosic open-mindedness. They want to share what they know, learn what they don’t, and explore new pathways in musical expression wherever they arise. Helping our participants build that particular combination of confidence and receptivity is ultimately what we would hope for them to get out of our program.”

On the set of the Impulse New Music Festival “New Voices Concert,” a live-streamed concert from Brandon J. Rolle’s living room, featuring works by 6 female-identifying composers, performed by Robert Demaine, Principal Cello of the LA Phil and a member of the INMF faculty. Pictured left: INMF Executive Director Vlad Vizireanu.

Photo by Brandon J. Rolle

We talked a little bit about the pandemic already. Could you elaborate on the transfer to the online format?

“Translating the program to an online platform turned out to be a...Herculean task, haha. In the end, though, we managed to get the program moved to an online platform and our participants in 2020 were able to take part in readings, workshops, and lessons, as well as evening lectures and masterclasses. This year, since we knew in advance that the festival was going to be online, we were able to plan a more robust program, which included the recording and premiere of all the composers’ works as part of a streaming concert series.”

Is there anything else that you’d like to say?

“Thanks so much for interviewing me about my work! I am really grateful for my time there at UC Santa Barbara—Professors Emeriti Joel Feigin and Clarence Barlow profoundly impacted my craft and work, and I am so thankful to have them now as colleagues and friends. Also, I want to give a shoutout to the incredible cohort of graduate composers and performers I was with at UCSB. Maybe everyone feels this way about their cohort, but I really do think I hit the jackpot with the colleagues I overlapped with while in Santa Barbara. Many of them remain close friends who inspire me as people and as artists, and I am very thankful for them—especially this past crazy year.”

Read the full interview on the Department of Music website at music.ucsb.edu/news/announcement/2306.