"Full Circle" Features Music for Clarinet & Piano by Rick Sowash

Greg Kostraba: This is KBACH’s First Take. I’m Greg Kostraba. Rick Sowash is a Cincinnati-based composer with a new album of his music out on the RSP Classics label. The release, Full Circle, features music for clarinet and piano. Rick is on the phone from his home in Cincinnati. Welcome!

Rick Sowash: Thank you, Greg. Nice to be with you.

Kostraba: For those who don't know much about you, tell us a little bit about Rick Sowash.

Sowash: I'm a lifelong Ohioan. I was born and raised in Mansfield, a rural county seat, but I live in Cincinnati now and have for 30 years. I write music for the joy of it. I'm an independent, outsider composer. I'm not affiliated with any university or school of music. Whenever anybody asks me, "What do you do?" and I say, "I'm a classical composer," they immediately say, "Oh, where do you teach?" Well, I don't teach anywhere. I just write music; I'm a classical composer. I'm also an author, though. I actually supported my family over the decades more from my work as an author than I did as a composer. Music always has generated a welcome trickle of income but never enough to live on, and that's all right. I keep it as a separate vocation, a calling. It's my primary identity, but it has never been my primary source of income.

Kostraba: And over the years when you were in Mansfield and here, you've done a variety of things to actually make a living. You mentioned the books, but there are other things that you've done over time as well. Can you talk a little bit briefly about some of those?

Sowash: (Laughs) Well, I'll try to be brief. I've done a lot of interesting things. I was a church music director, first thing right out of college, a Lutheran church in Mansfield, Ohio. And then I became a classical music radio broadcaster at WOSU-FM in Columbus. ‘Learned a great deal about classical music and about radio doing that. I went on to be an arts administrator and saved from destruction a beautiful 1500-seat theater that was slated for the wrecking ball. I led a community effort to revive it, restore it, reopen it, and it is still going strong today. It's called the Renaissance Theatre. From there, I ran for public office. I like to say I'm the only American composer of classical music ever elected to a public office, so far as I know. I was a county commissioner in Richland County, Mansfield, Ohio. Served a four-year term, and then from there, I launched myself freelance as an author and speaker and creative spirit at large. I visited over 2,000 elementary schools all across Ohio as a visiting author. My most successful books were written for fourth and fifth graders, and they are about Ohio history, geology, geography, folklore, animals, in terms that a fourth and fifth grader could understand and appreciate. I have to add on the side, whenever I was a little short on money, I painted houses. (Laughs) I also was an art museum guard for eight years, and finally, a teacher. I taught part-time French and music at a wonderful alternative school in Cincinnati called Leaves of Learning. So, I've had a colorful career and done a lot of things that are non-musical, but those things all informed the music in one way or another, and I like to think enriched it.

Kostraba: You've talked about composing as a vocation, as a calling, so let's dig into this album. You've written a lot of music for the clarinet over your years of composing, including but certainly not limited to a concerto, dozens of works for clarinet and piano, and a lot of chamber music featuring the instrument, including 13 trios for clarinet, cello, and piano. Tell us why you enjoy writing for the clarinet.

Sowash: The clarinet is probably my favorite musical instrument, although the cello is my other favorite musical instrument. Both of them have a very wide range, both in terms of the pitch—the high pitch and the low pitch that they can play—but also expressive range. The clarinet, in particular, on the one hand, can be sassy and sarcastic and biting, but it can also be ineffably tender and passionate and noble. I love the variety that's inherent in that and exploring those extremes in its expressive register. The clarinet is something of an autobiographical instrument for me. I don't play the clarinet, but I think of it more than any other instrument as a kind of a reflection of my own capacity for silliness and humor on the one hand, but with a capacity also     for deeper expressions: expressions of wistfulness, or of angst, or passion. The clarinet is just poised, ready to go to those places in a way that I don't think any other instrument quite is. And I like the other instruments, and I've written a lot for them as well, but you'd be right in saying I've written more for clarinet than any other musical instrument.

Kostraba: And in this album, you really touch on all of those aspects of the clarinet that you just mentioned: the sassiness, the compassion, the nobility, the wistfulness, even the silliness. Let's talk about the pieces on this album, beginning with the first one. It's called Beyond the Reach of Words. Is that piece evocative of the fact that words can't express things that music can?

Sowash: You might put it that way. I like to think of it this way: what music does is it brings people, listeners, to a certain state of mind. I don't know how to describe that state of mind. When we're listening, we are intensely aware of it, but as soon as it is over—the music ends—it's as if it's a dream that we had and we can't quite recall. And trying to put that experience into words, as I've just now been floundering, trying to do, (laughs) is nearly impossible. It evades description. And here's the hapless composer who's written a piece of music and it needs to have a title. If I title it simply something like Partita or Sinfonia or one of those bland words that don't quite mean anything, that, in a way, it fails the listener. I think that the best titles are the ones that invite the listener in, offer an entrée. Here, come into this piece of music, listen, see if this expresses something about what the title seems to be hinting at. But, coming up with a title like that is no small trick. Sometimes I have worked harder, it seems, struggling to name the baby than I did in writing the piece in the first place. So, when I wrote this piece, Beyond the Reach of Words, and I couldn't find a title that I thought expressed the state of mind I was trying to bring to listeners, I thought to myself, "This is just beyond the reach of words." And then it struck me, that's not a bad title. I'll add, though, that that seems to, I think, to many listeners, is likely to have a spiritual component. And in addition to the other adjectives we talked about earlier that the clarinet is capable of doing, I think a spiritual element is also ready at hand for the clarinet to convey. So, if listeners hear a hint of spirituality in that title, good. That's a kind of entrée as well. I'll add one more thing. I read somewhere that someone asked Schubert, "Why do you write music?" And his answer, just three words, he said, "To improve reality." What an amazing statement that is, because, of course, music, when it's doing its thing, it is improving reality for a while. How exactly? Try to explain it, and once again, the words slip through your fingers. You can't quite express it verbally, but you know it when you hear it.

Kostraba: That segues perfectly into the next piece. It's the largest piece on the album; it's the Clarinet Sonata, known as the Kassner Sonata. Tell us about the genesis for this work and about Kirk Kassner, who asked you to write the piece.

Sowash: And to whom this entire album is dedicated. Kirk Kassner was a good friend of mine, although I only met him once. These days, we can become close friends with people whom we really might never actually meet face-to-face via, for example, email. And Kirk began writing me ten years ago, expressing a great interest in my music and keen appreciation and a really analytical response. I wrote back, and he wrote back, and soon I was sending him PDFs of my scores, and he's a clarinetist, and he played them, most often in church. He had been himself a military band director, a music educator in public schools. He had gone on to become a very successful realtor, and in his retirement, he devoted himself to music and particularly to the clarinet. And he loved playing my music and discovering my music for his instrument. Well, he began pressing me about two years ago, or three years ago, to write a big, meaty, what he called a Brahmsian sonata. He wanted me to write something deeply serious that he could play and share. So, I wrote this sonata. As I finished it, I sent it to him, and he loved it. He began practicing it, but he became unwell, and before he was able to perform it, his health sank rather quickly. Only two or three months after his diagnosis, he was gone, and he had not had the chance to premiere the sonata. The piece was directly written as a response to his pressing me to do so, so I am calling it the Kassner Sonata in his honor.

Kostraba: And it's in five movements, beginning with a movement called Winter Dawn, and then you have some less-evocative titles: Scherzo, Largo, and Fugue, and then a Rondo Finale. What were you trying to convey in this work besides the bigness that Kirk Kassner asked for?

Sowash: Depth of expression, architectural integrity, motivic development. Let's take Winter Dawn. The way my house is set up here on the east side of Cincinnati, I have a wonderful view of the sky and the horizon off to the east. And every morning, I sit with my coffee and my computer, and I look out the window at the coming of dawn. Watching the coming of dawn over a bleak winter landscape, I thought, there is a topic. What would be the right music for the coming of dawn over a winter landscape? The bare black branches, a gray sky but gradually lightening. That would lend itself to the kind of depth that I wanted to try to achieve in this sonata. I actually thought about naming the whole sonata Winter Dawn, but the other movements don't lend themselves as well to that title. The opening movement is a kind of prologue to what follows, but it also, in a way, a kind of summary.

Kostraba: Interesting you say that, because I always think of the Moonlight Sonata evoking the first movement of Beethoven's famous sonata, but the second and certainly the third movement, there's not much moonlight involved there.

Sowash: (Laughs) That's a good parallel example, that's right.

Kostraba: On the album, you've also written essentially three homages. You've got two pieces called Two Homages, to Puccini and Richard Rodgers, and then later on the album, there's a Rondo Pastoral that's an homage to Gerald Finzi. Tell us about your desire to create these homages. Are they in tribute to composers? Are you trying to use the composers' language in your composition, but still keeping it your way of thinking?

Sowash: A different answer for different pieces. I've been writing music for 50 years, music that I am proud of. Before that, I wrote juvenilia, younger things that didn't quite know who I was, but in my mid-20s, I found my voice, and I'm now in my late 70s, so it's been 50 years. And all through that time, I've wanted to from time to time emulate composers that I admire. And what I mean is I put on a mask, put on a hat, put on a costume for a while and pretend I'm not Rick Sowash, pretend I'm someone else writing music. This goes back to high school. My high school music teacher, Roderick Evans, he was very important to me. He said, "You must find one style, you devote yourself to writing in that one way that's just unique to you." And I would say, "But Mr. Evans, what if I want to write a piece in the style of Puccini or Mozart or—or Wagner?" And he would say, "Why would you want to do that? You're Rick Sowash, be yourself," which, of course, is really good advice. But I do sometimes want to put on a hat, put on a mask, be someone else for a while. So, I've written homages to perhaps a dozen composers who I greatly admire: Sibelius and Ravel and Gershwin and Copland. But I also should add that I've also written homages to composers whom I adore, but I also kind of make fun of them. I think it's possible to make fun of someone that you love, isn't it? Sure. I mean, we—we tease each other. So, for example, my homage to Sousa is a kind of a pie-in-the-face parody of a Sousa march. And my homage to Richard Rodgers on this album is a sincere homage, but it's also poking fun a little bit at Rodgers and Hammerstein. And if you listen carefully to it, you hear little echoes of Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin' peeking around the corner of the piece here and there. But at the same time, the middle section is very sincere. The name of the piece is actually Curly Prays, that is to say, prayer, Curly Prays. And the middle section, I picture this jaunty, funny cowboy finding a moment of reverence out on the prairie, looking up at the stars, and for a time, Curly is humbled, and he prays a prayer of gratitude, and then he's back to his jaunty self again at the end. Also, another aspect of writing homages: composers who die young, such as Gershwin, I often wonder what would Gershwin have written if he had lived a few more decades. And since he's not here to show us what he would have written, perhaps I can take up the pen and give it a shot, and see what I come up with. Well, Finzi, he died in his 50s, so I can't say that he died young, but the body of work is not large, and yet what there is, I just adore. I think Finzi is a wonderful composer, a lyrical, very English characteristic voice. Now, I am not English, but I can strive to be lyrical, and I can emulate that combination of almost Baroque counterpoint that he has in the keyboard and then the singing melody in the clarinet. I would even go so far as to say that I've aspired to be an American Finzi, you might say. And I—I like to say “Huckleberry Finzi,” (laughs) the American answer to Finzi, at least at certain moments in my composing. And so, an homage seemed completely in order.

Kostraba: And then you've mentioned juvenilia earlier on, and I know you wrote songs when you were a teenager in your early 20s, and you've arranged some of these songs into the Full Circle Suite. You did this back in 2024. The songs go all the way back to 1969 and '71 and into the mid ‘70s. What were you trying to do with this Full Circle Suite? Why did you pick these pieces? Was this to fill out an album? Were you thinking about this album when you decided to make these arrangements, or were there some other thinking in your mind at the time?

Sowash: No, I wasn't thinking of this album. I was listening to the radio. Benjamin Britten wrote this Simple Symphony as an adult, but he went back to tunes that he had composed as a teenager and then re-scored them, re-visited them, expanded them as an adult. And Elgar actually did a similar thing. And I thought about my own work. I was not a good composer in my teens or my early 20s, but I was a good songwriter. There's a distinction. I had a knack for putting words to music, and I had an eye for a good text that would be fun to sing. So, I wrote a couple dozen pretty good songs in my teens and early 20s. They're not pieces of classical music for the concert hall or the recital hall; they're just good songs. But I thought they ought to have a life in the concert hall, in the recital hall, on an album—let's put it that way. These eight little songs, and they're all quite short, they make a very attractive bouquet. I arranged them according to the keys that they're in and so forth, so that they make a single entity in eight movements. So, the Full Circle, which is also the title of the album, refers to coming full circle, you know, a person in their 70s re-visiting songs to be sung, that they had written as a young songwriter, but now with the advantages of being a by now a skillful composer and able to give them a setting that, I would even say, elevates them beyond song and into the realm of the recital hall.

Kostraba: And then the album wraps up with a suite from A College Town Diary. You lived in a college town, right? And you were inspired by what you saw and you heard there?

Sowash: It has a story behind it, that one. We lived in Gambier, Ohio, a little tiny college town, not even one stoplight, just a couple stop signs, and this wonderful little Kenyon College. And we lived there for six years, and we had a next-door neighbor, Susan Browning, who played the clarinet. Now, she was very, very private; she would not play in public, not even in church. She only played for her own amusement in her own home. But on summer days, the windows would be open, and we would hear her over there practicing, because she played almost every day, and she played quite well. Of course, we became acquainted, and she discovered that I was a composer, and she said, "Oh, you—you must write some pieces for me to play on my clarinet. Just clarinet, no piano, just clarinet." So, I eventually, I thought, well, what would I write for Susan? Well, here we are at a college town, and so I came up with the idea of 12 short movements just for solo clarinet, one for each of the 12 months as they pass in a year in a college town. There's commencement, there's spring break, and so forth, different things that happen in the life of a little college town community. And I gave them to Susan, and she liked them a lot, played them. I would hear her over there playing them next door. Never played them in public. She took a lot of pleasure in discovering those pieces that I wrote for her. Well, over time, it seemed to me that six of those 12 short miniatures warranted a little grander treatment. So, I expanded them, each of the six, to include piano and arranged them into a suite, From a College Town Diary. Each of the movements expresses some aspect or element of life in a college town, and somewhat tongue-in-cheek. The whole thing is sort of poking fun at life in a college town. For example, the fourth movement is called Eccentric Professor. (Laughs) That was a great little peek into the compositional process. If I ask myself, what kind of music would be right to express an eccentric professor? What would that sound like? That's a challenge to your own spirit of creativity, and when I pose a question like that, pretty soon ideas start to flow, and that is often how I get started writing a piece of music.

Kostraba: It's awfully serendipitous, I think, that your next-door neighbor was a clarinetist, because you love writing for the clarinet, as opposed to, say, a piccolo player or a tuba player. You've had lots of great clarinetists you've worked with over the years. Tell us a little bit about Christopher Bade. He's featured on this album.

Sowash: Well, Christopher Bade is a professor at Taylor University, which is about an hour and a half drive from Cincinnati. And he's taken a great interest in my music and has played it in recitals there, but also in the concert hall. He played my Clarinet Concerto a couple of times. His spirit is very embracing and buoyant, and he's—he's a funny, smiling presence. He brings joy to everything that he touches. So, I really wanted him to be the featured artist on this album. He was thrilled; he accepted the challenge, and arranged to make it happen along with a certain pianist named Greg Kostraba. So, there is a kind of happy alliance of talents and spirits that came together to make this album.

Kostraba: Rick Sowash, thank you so much for your time.

Sowash: Oh, it's been a pleasure. Thanks for indulging me. (Laughs)

Kostraba: The new album by Rick Sowash is called Full Circle, and it's available at http://kickshawrecords.com and all online platforms. For KBACH’s First Take Podcast, I'm Greg Kostraba.