The name "Pantaleoni" has been associated with music for me ever since I came to Oneonta as a young teacher/musician and met the multi-talented Pantaleoni family.
Hewitt, the father, was a member of the State University College at Oneonta's music department faculty, where he pioneered studies in ethnomusicology.
Mrs. Patricia Pantaleoni was (and still is) an extraordinarily talented concert pianist and chamber musician, and she is also one of Oneonta's most respected lawyers, practicing law with one of her daughters, Lucy Bernier, who is also acting Oneonta city court judge.
It was no surprise that the Pantaleoni children would inherit the intelligence and musical flair of their parents, but it is not always easy to predict what young people will do with the talents they have been given.
Would the children follow the example of their parents?
I was very pleased to have the chance to talk with one of the Pantaleoni children, Mer (Mary) Pantaleoni Boel, who is now grown with a family and career of her own.
Mer's childhood musical experiences in Oneonta reminded me how rich our community is in creative opportunities and how important that can be for children.
Here is Mer (Pantaleoni) Boels' story:
Growing up in music
Growing up in a musical family was great for me.
My father had wide-ranging interests, from Ghanaian drumming and dancing to Balinese Gamelan, folk guitar and madrigal singing.
My mother, trained as a classical pianist as well as playing by ear ever since she was a child, played in various groups in Oneonta.
We had two pianos at our house, in separate rooms, and I have memories of playing underneath each of them while listening to the music, as well as inventing all sorts of pieces on them.
My siblings are all musical as well, and we would play musical imitation games and sang madrigals together after dinner, led by my father, who taught us our parts by ear.
Our house was always full of music, with my brother Tim playing drums, singing and leading the West Kortright Centre choir, and sister Maud playing the piano and singing, me playing the violin, my sister Lucy the flute, and my sister Alice the ukulele, then banjo, then bass and voice.
I relished singing in chorus first at Bugbee, then at Oneonta High, and took violin lessons with local violinist Byron Green, where I developed the joy of singing while playing the violin so that I could perform both parts in the duets in my method book all by myself. I danced and drummed in my father's African drumming group. As a senior in high school, I played in the Catskill Symphony Orchestra, and that was a big treat being surrounded by all the wonderful sounds of the orchestral instruments. For three years I took up the 12-string guitar, and became a folk-singer; for one summer I played recorder, during another semester and summer I played viola da gamba. The year I attended Phillips Exeter, my violin teacher gave me a book of traditional Irish fiddle tunes, which I quickly set about memorizing.
College in NYC
When I enrolled at City College in New York, it was as a jazz vocal major, but I also played violin in several ensembles. However, when I graduated, it was not immediately clear to me how to make a living with the skills I had. I tried auditioning as a jingle singer and backup singer, and did gigs backing up a vocalist, singing as a church choir soloist, etc. But this was in New York City in the early '80s, and it was too discouraging to me to get rejected routinely, and the City was a tough place to live then _ lots of crime and tensions.
Second career idea
So I put my idea of having a musical career aside and went to get a degree in computer science. I ended up going to Binghamton University, and my studies there prepared me very well for work as a programmer, systems designer and project manager. However I still continued music on the side, with the violin as my primary instrument.
Back to music!
In 1999, I felt an intense desire to put much more of my attention toward music, and I began to seriously try to compose pieces, initially for solo violin, mostly fiddle tunes, but also some pieces for violin and voice; I would improvise vocally over the violin lines I was playing.
I quit my computer job for a bit to concentrate on my string group, Water Bear (initially a trio _ two violins and cello), and we released our first CD in 2001. I contacted several likely record labels and distributors with materials, and didn't receive any indications of market interest.
Both careers at once
So I returned to my "day job," but mostly now it is part-time and consists of consulting to programming companies, and I get to spend a fair amount of time composing pieces for my group, writing string arrangements for local roots-rock groups' CDs (John Brown's Body, Sim Redmond Band, Crow Greenspun), scoring plays and a film, plus writing pieces for other chamber groups, and even string and chamber orchestra. Almost all of my compositions incorporate improvisation, even the orchestra pieces, and it is exciting to hear players in a symphony, many of whom are improvisers in other settings, play out in this arena.
Process
For me, composing starts off being very much like improvising, no matter what instrument I try to do it on. I might be trying out ideas on the violin, the piano, an accordion, panpipes or a kalimba, but basically I'm just noodling, making things up. But often I start with a pattern that I can repeat, and if it is appealing to me, I want to sing over it, and often that is the starting point for me. Once I have enough of it scribbled down on notepaper, I transfer what I have to my Sibelius software, and play it back with my Audigy Soundblaster sound card, using the Kontakt Player digitally sampled string sounds. The way I can tell if a piece needs more work or isn't right is from a feeling I get in my gut, so I continue until my body feels comfortable with it while listening back.
Name music mapping system
I also invented a violin-centric pitch-to-alphabet mapping scheme in 2000 that allows me to spell out names in music, or even entire sentences. You might think that this would lead to a very abstract sort of sound, but I think it depends very much what the intention is. And always, I intend for my music to be uplifting, even if it goes through some trauma or sadness to get there.
Importance of early
involvement in music
I think all the sounds I heard growing up prepared me for being able to compose, even though there was a 20-year gap when I felt like I wasn't doing much with music, compared to what I do now.
Still I think my early upbringing in an eclectic musical household and the opportunities I had to participate in groups in Oneonta, like the Catskill Symphony, the high school choir, the High Street Boys, Sultans of Swing, all somehow contributed to the development of my musical brain, which is what I draw upon now. Also, I'm very fortunate in having the support of another source of income while I develop the music " and it is building more and more.
What am I doing now?
Last Saturday, I had the final recording session for a piece commissioned by a local man for his father. At the session, this man asked me to write and record another piece, this time for his mother. I've got the first draft done of a five-to-six minute piece for Cello Big Band that will be played at the New Directions Cello Festival this June in Ithaca. I'm big on pieces that involve improvisation, because I think it is such fun, everyone should do it!
A group of Octet Instruments (newviolinfamily.org) hopefully will play this year a composition called "Carleen Octet" I wrote for them, honoring their founder, Carleen Hutchinson, and featuring the bass overall as well as in the improvisation section. These instruments are all sized like violins, and the sound is quite striking _ I am especially taken with how clear the lower voices become, which is what inspired the piece.
I'm also looking for ways to promote the recordings I've already done, for example through a TAXI membership, and music libraries, and finding ways to market the scoring for plays to other theatrical productions of the same play. It often comes down to a question of time _ where to spend the time that I have to devote to music, and since I get so much joy from composing it is hard not to just compose as much as I can. Quite a juggling act, I think!
Dr. Janet Nepkie is a member of the music industry faculty in the music department of the State University College at Oneonta.
Industry Tips
Mer Boel has already had success in finding groups to perform her music and use her compositions in many media. She helped her musical career grow by joining the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, a performance rights society that will collect royalties for performances of her works. She has also joined TAXI, www.taxi.com, an organization that helps unsigned bands, artists and songwriters get record deals, publishing deals and placement in films and TV shows. She has recorded her own CDs and owns her own master recordings. That's great!
She might consider joining the National Association of Recording Arts and Sciences, because this group is a helpful source of industry information, and she should consider making better use of her membership with ASCAP, (www.ascap.com), an organization that can be a gold mine of industry information and contacts. To learn more about Mer Boel and to hear her music, visit her webiste at http://cdbaby.com/cd/waterbear.
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