The Revenant Composer

Good evening!

There are many ways I could introduce myself: a writer, a husband and father, a career retail employee, or even a bipolar maniac who doesn’t always remember to take his meds. But for the sake of this blog, and what I intend to post over the coming months (and maybe years – who knows?), I am primarily this:

A composer.

For over ten years, I have been failing to be a successful writer. That is to say, I have failed to make a living from writing, not that I have failed to write. I actually have two novels currently published as C.M. North: 22 Scars and The Broken. I have blogged extensively as Satis over at satiswrites.com, and have even written high fantasy novels under that pen name.

But for more than twenty years, I have dreamed of being something else altogether: a musical composer, à la Beethoven or Mozart, or possibly even Howard Shore. I grew up on diets of Brahms and Tchaikovsky, and learned piano to a reasonable degree in school. I even earned a degree in music theory and composition all the way back in 2006, and things looked set for me to continue in the academic field, except …

Well, life gets in the way. In my case, family, money, and all the usual trappings of having to actually make a living ended up taking me on (an often enjoyable) journey in a completely different direction. I ended up working for the past twenty years in big box retail, and have made an honest career for myself in the process. I’m not unhappy with my life, but I’ve always felt something was missing.

When my child started college back in 2022 as a music major themselves, I realized what that something was: I needed to find a way to re-immerse in the world of music, doing the only thing I knew how to do: writing music.

You see, despite the large gap in my musical career, I never entirely stopped writing music. Whether as companion music to my books, or just to listen to for myself, I’ve kind of always kept it up. This past summer, I completed a full-length requiem for orchestra and choir. Earlier in the year, I started working on an album of music for orchestra and rock band. I’ve written piano works, chamber ensemble works, and heavy metal albums. The process of creating music is fascinating and beautiful to me, and something I couldn’t live without.

So this past year, I decided that enough was enough. With almost twenty years behind me at my “day job”, I knew I didn’t want to be doing the same job in another twenty years. The time has come for me to try and change careers.

But what could I do about it? You can’t just … be a composer and have people pay to play your music. The world doesn’t work that way. Most professional composers are academics, a field I’ve been out of touch with for nearly two decades.

But out of touch doesn’t mean out of reach. I did my research, put out the feelers, and this past autumn applied to the graduate composition program at Rutgers Mason Gross School of the Arts. I haven’t been accepted yet – I still have no idea where this journey will lead me – but I can comfortably share that based on my portfolio of work, which included the Offertory from the aforementioned requiem, I have secured an interview with the composition staff at Mason Gross next month!

It’s a small step, but it’s a step in the right direction. And for the first time in a long while, I feel enthused about life; I feel invigorated, energized, and ready to tackle anything. I want this, and I would say I want it more than anything except that isn’t quite true: I want it with a mature, restrained desire that means I’ll be thrilled if I get in, but not devastated if I don’t, because it’s a dream I don’t intend on giving up on. If I don’t make it into Rutgers, there will be other places to try, and other chances to take.

I intend to use this blog to document my journey – slow and arduous though it may be – back into the world of academic music, and share the trials and triumphs that will undoubtedly arise. As time progresses, I will look to share examples of my music here as well, for you all to hear (currently in computer-generated MIDI recordings, as I don’t actually have access to a full orchestra in my basement).

So here I am – not quite back from the dead, but close enough: The Revenant Composer. Wish me well, and I’ll be seeing you all soon – more updates to come!