

Drake Mabry
*20 January 1950
Works by Drake Mabry
Biography
In the early part of his career, Drake Mabry pursued a traditional classical music career performing as first oboe with symphony orchestras in three countries. He then switched to tenor saxophone, flute, and clarinet, playing primarily in jazz big bands and small ensembles. From 1976 he continued his educational studies with Master and Doctoral degrees in music composition. His alma maters include the Manhattan School of Music, Juilliard, Rice University, and the University of California, San Diego. The principal teachers with whom he worked include Harold Gomberg, Alfred Genovese, Paul Cooper, John Cage, and Krzysztof Penderecki.
While he was teaching at Dartmouth College in 1984, a chance encounter in the music department hallway resulted in Mabry's traveling to France for a year to explore the musical worlds of Paris. After a short return to the U.S., he moved permanently to France in 1988, and today he lives and works in Nice, France.
Two unexpected events in the 21st century presented him with his current focus of activities.
In 2003 he began developing a music in which silence is equally important with sound. The result is over 60 "Silent Duration" works, from solo instruments to full orchestra. Over 25 have been performed or recorded.
Then in 2011 he went to visit Istanbul, where he stayed several years and studied the Turkish ney and ebru painting. Although these Turkish studies of music and art were rooted in the historical style of each, he also explored and developed new concepts and techniques, combining them with the tradition.
The outcome of all of these life experiences is a constant interest in perpetual development, curiosity, and collaboration between who he is as a person and how this is expressed through his art forms. In addition to music and art, Mr. Mabry is also a published poet and photographer.
About the music
The works of Drake Mabry distributed by Universal Edition fall into two main categories:
1. The Silent Durations series - where sound and silence are treated as equals, each being complementary to the other as two perspectives of the same source.
2. The 21st Century Turkish Ney series - works including one or more Turkish neys, combining their rich musical traditions with new contemporary and experimental performance techniques and sounds.
More information, on each category, follows.
Drake Mabry: Silent Durations
Beginnings (1996-2002)
My inspiration came primarily from my workshops on musical improvisation held in the Vosges region in 1996. At one point, because everyone played continuously when they improvised in groups, I gave instructions that the next improvisation would be two minutes in duration and each performer could only play five single events. No circular breathing allowed, and strings were restricted to one downbow or upbow at a time. For example, if someone played a five-note trill on the pitch E (E-F-E-F-E,) they would be finished. With the first improvisation everyone used up their musical events in the first thirty seconds. I waited until the two minutes were up before signaling the end so they would have an idea of the total duration. After a few more tries almost everyone felt the two-minute duration and the musical events were sometimes a held note, sometimes a couple of short notes, a chord, etc. I loved the result: lots of silence with musical events from time to time and the feeling that the phrasing continued during the silences connecting the sounds. At that time, I said to myself that I should write a composition like this improvisation.
In October 2002, I was standing in front of a collection of 4000 CD's trying to find something I wanted to listen to. After a few minutes, I realized that despite all those CD's I couldn't find what I felt like. I looked at Classical, Jazz, World, Rock, Film, Poetry, and Sound effects without results.
I then set up my audio recorder, sat down at the piano, and began to play what I wanted to hear. I didn't know what to expect, and I just let my hands and fingers find their way to the keyboard whenever they wanted and as they wanted. I played for about ten minutes before stopping. This was the beginning of what became a series of just over 60 works in this style. A few weeks later I added a second and third movement to this initial movement of Silent Durations I.
This is the kind of music I like to listen to.
Note: In giving equal consideration to sound and silence in these pieces, the durations of both are precisely indicated in the scores. For the moment, there is only one silent duration piece that leaves the durations of silences up to the performers. In this case, I was one of the performers and Maria Dorner-Hofmann was the other, both of us at ease with silences in 'live' concerts.
Postlude: Nice, France (2022)
Some have described my Silent Durations pieces as a zen moment in time with each silence and each sound to be heard as flourishing individual elements within a cohesive overall soundscape. Some might say they don't know what to do while waiting for the next sound event to appear. And some will just enjoy the silences linked by sounds.
All of these explanations are valid and, in my Silent Durations, I have no philosophy to demonstrate or social statement to make, but am just expressing what I want to hear through the act of composition. They are what you want them to be and my only wish is that you enjoy this listening moment regardless of the labels you might or might not want to apply to the experience. The Silent Durations Collection began in 2003 and today numbers over 60 works.
The following is the original explanation page as an aid for performing silent duration pieces:
Silent Durations - Performance notes for all instruments, 2003
In all "Silent Durations" pieces the silences are an active component of the piece and not "dead" or "empty" time. These musical silences have the same importance as the notes. Do not be tempted to shorten the duration of the silences as they are key elements in the architecture of the work.
1. Play with a beautiful sound without vibrato unless otherwise indicated.
2. In general, notes are to be attacked and released in an elegant, non-violent manner.
3. Notes which do not end with a written diminuendo should be gently stopped, leaving a feeling of suspension and continuation.
a. For string instruments this requires lifting the bow off the string rather than
stopping the bow motion on the string.
b. For wind instruments it will be necessary to stop the air flow with the diaphragm
rather than the tongue.
c. For keyboard instruments this means lifting the hands off the keyboard gently
but rapidly.
d. Pianists should also be careful to avoid any noise when releasing the pedal.
e. For percussion instruments, dampen any resonating sound without an additional
ending attack.
f. For plucked instruments, dampen any vibrating string as gently as possible.
g. For amplified instruments care should be taken to avoid any "parasite" sounds
(hum, buzz, etc.) which may be produced by the amplification system. The same
principle of avoiding ending attacks (as described for percussion instruments)
applies for all amplified instruments.
4. Performers should note the following when phrasing occurs over several silences:
a. When playing the first part of a phrase, consider where the phrase is going.
b. When playing an intermediary phrase, consider where the phrase came from,
where it is now, and where it will go.
c. And for the last part of a phrase, consider all that has happened before.
Sometimes dashed lines are used to indicate overall phrasing.
Even when there are no phrasing indications, the performer should consider the
placement of each phrase in relation to the overall evolution of the movement.
5. These are not pieces with an intentional theatrical element. The general idea is to avoid any obvious visual indication of when upcoming entrances are going to occur. Each performer will have to experiment to find the best solution for their particular performing situation.
6. Due to the lengths of the silent portions of these works, outside sounds may intervene in the piece. This does not disturb the composer. These pieces have been played in traditional concert halls as well as in less traditional performance situations such as museums and other indoor and outdoor locations.
7. Conducted Silent Durations:
Silences should be conducted in a minimal, discreet manner only to indicate the passage of time as is often done in opera during dialogues. The moment the performers are to play should be indicated with a subtle cue with a minimum of movement.
8. Ensembles without a conductor:
Stephane Bonneau, the cellist who premiered Silent Durations VI for three cellos, has suggested that the performers return to a position of rest one by one at the end of each sound event and then take back their performing positions one by one (not necessarily in the same order) before playing again. This is to avoid any sense of visual predictability.
The 21st Century Turkish Ney
I went to Istanbul from 2011-2013 to study the Turkish ney along with ebru art. My first ney teacher was Burcu Karadağ, and later Ismail Hakki (who also makes my Bolahenk, Kiz, Mansur and Sah ney instruments). These studies were centered on the ney and its tradition based on the style and repertoire of the Sufi Ottoman period. They included the microtonal makams and the teaching method 'Mesk' in which important elements of the techniques and style are communicated by the oral tradition. My years in Istanbul were rich and intense with learning, discovery, practice, and performance, and I remain in contact with Istanbul thanks to Skype.
The Turkish ney is an oblique, end-blown flute made of bamboo (arundo donax) topped with a mouthpiece usually made from the horn of a water buffalo. It has six finger holes on the front and one on the back and is considered one of the most difficult instruments to learn and to play. The earliest examples date from over 3000 years ago, and the instrument has undergone only modest changes in design since. The music associated with this flute dates from the Ottoman empire; the ney is an important member of the small instrumental ensemble that accompanies the Sufi twirling dervish ceremonies.
Although the tradition of Turkish ney playing includes a wide diversity of sound and expression, the works in this 21st Century Turkish Ney series take the instrument into a new world of instrumental colors. During his studies of the traditional style and repertoire of the ney, Drake Mabry began to research and develop alternative perspectives of sound production. This led to new techniques such as tongue-rams, pizzicato, trumpet technique, finger pops, singing while playing, "ghost ney", and others, all with their own musical expressions. These techniques also work with slightly different results when the mouthpiece is removed and the ney is played from the other end of the instrument. The fruits of this research can be seen in over 60 contemporary music compositions written by 18 composers, a guide book for composing for the 21st Century (academia.org), and a double CD album "The Wandering Ney I and II". I have recorded videos and recordings of contemporary music for the ney in various formats which can be found on the internet and at my website www.drakemabry.com.
I hope the 21st Century will see the continuation of the wonderful Turkish ney tradition along with discoveries of new musical inventions for this instrument.
Two main projects for 2024 & 2025
I have two main projects for 2024 & 2025.
1. I have been helping composers make new connections worldwide with performers, ensembles, and music libraries. This is often for composers who have a work, or a series of works, that they would like to be better known. In most cases, I introduce their music to over 1000 worldwide contacts with each performer or ensemble receiving one or two free pdf copies of their music.
2. I am currently working on a multimedia work combining my 21st-century music for the Turkish ney (improvised and composed), poetry (mostly haiku inspired), and visual art (paintings and photographs) organized as a pathway in time. See my music, poetry, paintings, and photography on my website at www.drakemabry.com.
A similar work of this kind was premiered in Paris in 2013 when I was one of several poets who participated in an evening of poetry. However, I also played improvisations on the Turkish ney as interludes, preludes, or postludes. The Turkish ney was played using its traditional sound and style, as well as my invented 21st-century techniques. Some poems were read in English and others in French and one poem was improvised.